Music is cyclical too

Now this is a post I have been formulating for a while. I am huge into music, as FuW could attest. I think the third thing I would run out of the house with in an emergency is my ipod behind FuW and the cat. Itunes is on everyday for hrs. Anyway, I have discovered a few groups and there sounds is very familiar, probably because of my age more then anything else. And I really didnt discover them, just found them on MTV. Anyway, I am amazed how some of my favorite bands and artists sound alot like some of my favorite bands and artists from the past. Here are my examples...

The Killers=a very modern sounding band, ala Depeche Mode, or most definetly the Cure, listen to the lead singers voice modulations in some of his songs.

Franz Ferdinand=heavy on the guitar, but not at that metal level. I can easily compare them to The Clash and one of my favorites Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Keane=I struggled alot with this comparison, until it just hit me while I was in the shower. At least on the surface, which is all I have heard really from them Keane reminds me an awful lot of Crowded House.

Usher=talent wise he is cross between a more normal Michael Jackson, and a doubly more normal Prince. A showman, who can probably sing the ingredients to a martini and make it sound good. Plus he works with some of the best producers in the business.

The Black Eyed Peas=ya I cant fit them into anything, I mean they remind me alot of the fugees, the female singer is not as talented as Lauryn Hill, but better looking, but how can the Fugees be a classic influence when they were out in like 1999.

anybody else have any ideas on groups.

Oh and I heard this song by Straylight Foundation today, great great great song.

My New Favorite Song

probably because I think I have been where the lead singer is a time or two.

Mr Brightside by The Killers


Coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all

It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss
It was only a kiss

Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag

Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest now

He takes off her dress now
Let me go
And I just can't look its killing me
And taking control

Jealousy turning (saints into the sea) corrected
Swimming through sick lullabyes
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cos I'm Mr Brightside

Coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all

It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss
It was only a kiss

Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag

Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest now

He takes off her dress now
Let me go
Cause I just can't look its killing me
And taking control

Jealousy turning (saints into the sea)corrected
Swimming through sick lullabyes
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cos I'm Mr Brightside

I never
I never
I never
I never

You can tell its sweeps

Because all of the Philadelphia news stations are offering blanket news coverage of the "snow storm". So what does this team coverage add up too? 3 weather people and 3 reporters sprawled all over the Delaware Valley, looking at wet roads. Yes ladies and gentleman, its a horror. The pavement is actually wet!! Though we do have 3 inches of snow or so, on the GRASS!

Barry Bonds press conference

I watched a great deal of the Barry Bonds press conference the other day and overall, he is a great baseball player who is a pompous arse with no real regard for anyone but himself, at least when it comes to baseball, I don't know how he treats his family, so I am sure they are doing just fine. It was a circus like atomosphere for about an hour or so.

I will say one thing that I gleaned from the conference that i agreed with. Bonds said sports is the only job where a reporter comes in and asks you questions in your workplace. yes they get paid the big bucks and yes there lives are loads more interesting then mine would be. But I can also understand how that can get annoying. I used to get annoyed when questioned by my supervisor in regards to why I did not get more widgets. Imagine how annoyed I would be if the person asking the questions did even work with me and was just there to be critical.

OK Im Pathetic

So in between commercial breaks of The Apprentice and Without a Trace, and while the news was on, I picked up a book that I had been reading since Mid January. Its one of those chick lit books that the FuW had read last year sometime, she flies thru them in a week while on the train, so we have an abudance of them to go thru. Anyway, the name of the book is The Ex Files : A Novel and while it is written with some London, England humor, it is really quite enterntaining as books go. And here is the pathetic part. There is one part in the book where something good happens for one of our main heroes, and I found myself getting a little choked up in my throat because of it. That is kind of sad, especially since I was not drinking any martini's at the time. Now I must admit I am a bit of a sap, I get knots in my throat during certain parts of a Wedding Story and Extreme Home Makeover, but it never really happens to me during a book. I guess I better start actually working on my rough side more.

Valentines Recap

Well Valentine weekend was good and bad. The Grammys were pretty decent the other night, but I do think that the reason that the big J-LO/Marc Anthony duet was in spanish, alot harder to tell that Marc Anthony was carrying J-Lo's sorry ass. The Tsunami song was ok at 1st, but when I 1st heard it I was drunk, the next day, it did not sound like they practiced the damned thing too much. FuW made a lovely fried chicken dinner. Fried chicken is one of my favorite foods in the whole world and this recipe really tasted like Popeye's Fried Chicken. AWESOME.

FuW surprised me with cards around the house, while my surprise of a delivery of flowers never came! Kind of hard to do a nice surprise on Valentines Day when the surprise don't get there. We also went to a Sixers game last night, which is why we did the Valentines Dinner Sunday. The Sixers, well AI played well, but the game showed you two things

1.Philly is really Allen and everybody else
2.The Knicks really really suck!

Talon News? Should be no Talent News

I was watching that discussion of Jeff Gannon or Jeff whatever his name was yesterday from "Talon News". Not only is this "news" service backed by a Republican delegate and fund raiser, but the questions that were sometimes posed by this reporter were so softball, a 3 year old could hit them out of the park. It seems like politicians can never get out of the way when it comes to doing something underhanded. Right now the Republicans have been on a bad role with that Williams character and now this fake news reporter, but Democrats don't escape these problems either, they have just been less successfull at getting far with it so far.

Check out Wonkette and Bloggermann if you want more info...

WEYCO, INC

This is the company with the smoking ban on its employees. I feel it is a right of privacy, so we should send them an email or two no? WEYCO, INC - Home

Weyco is an outrage

Ok this is plain and simple wrong. I am beginning to feel wronged as a smoker, everyone is out to get us. I have no problem with not smoking at work, I can wait until my lunch hour and leave the premises, but to be able to test someone and fire them for smoking at home? Smoking is legal, so I do not think it is right to be able to legislate what I do at home if something is legal. Weyco fires 4 employees for refusing smoking test Now the CEO said on the news that he does not wish to have his insurance go up because of what smokers do to there bodies. I can understand the arguement, smokers know the risks. One arguement I do have though to his logic, Is the CEO now going to force his employees to lose weight as well, because obesity is another high risk activity that leads to multiple health problems, that for alot of people can be controlled? Its just sad when rights get trampled, FuW and I were pissed.

Kanye on Charlie Rose?

Whats next, P. Diddy on Meet the Press, Ice Cube hosting the CBS Evening News? I mean from what I have seen, it is not a bad discussion between the two, I just do not think that Kanye West is going to do to well holding a Charlie Rose audience.

Well, is this good or bad?

You're Thailand!

Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you,
you have a long history of rising above adversity.  Recent adversity has led to questions
about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a
number of tourists and admirers.  And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good
meal whenever it's called for.  Good enough to make people cry.
face="Times New Roman">Take the Country
Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

SB 39

AAAAARGGGHHHH

and

This is an actual time where the fans should boo McNabb!

McElhiney resolved

For any of you who followed even briefly the story of the Nashville Rhythmn and coach Ashley McElhiney firing, turns out she is not fired at all. The league is one of those communal leagues, where every owner has part ownership so majority rules to fire a coach, so when one of the co-owners pulled a George Steinbrenner and stormed the court to demand a player be benched and fired the coach because she disobeyed her, in the end all it did was make the owner look like a bigger boob then she already was, and a jealous shrew. And this is why the owners have owners boxes.

Bitten from ESPNs Bill Simmons

A great explanation of the difference between the genius of Dave Letterman and the total Vanilla of Jay Leno. Conan O'Brien cant replace him soon enough.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- As you're reading this, I'm probably standing in a buffet line at Media Day, waiting for a 300-pound sportswriter to stop loading chicken fingers on his plate. But I wanted to post something about Letterman's tribute to Johnny Carson last night, just a talented guy paying tribute to another talented guy. Letterman ended up speaking extemporaneously for something like 15 straight minutes, focused and emotional, giving a heartfelt eulogy for the man who inspired his career. And since it was the highlight of my first night in Jacksonville, I thought I would write about it.


The Letterman-Carson dynamic always fascinated me. In the mid-'80s, when Letterman would occasionally visit Johnny's show, then Johnny returned the favor during the transcendent "Letterman Goes to L.A." Week, Carson was the one guy who always left Dave a little flustered. And Dave never got flustered, not even when Crispin Glover whistled a karate kick at his head. Letterman always had too much nervous energy when Johnny was in the room -- it was obvious -- so he would over-laugh at Johnny's jokes and rip through his own material with a little too much gusto. There was something endearing about it, like watching a son trying to please his father.


Two decades later, I was watching Letterman pay his respects to Johnny on his own show. Since both men meant a great deal to me as a kid, it was emotional to watch -- especially since Letterman should have been the one who replaced Carson in the first place. And I'm not sure if he's ever really gotten over it; since he moved to CBS, it's like he's been playing a caricature of himself, except for those rare moments when he turns into a real person again (like after his heart surgery, or those painful days after 9/11). I don't think he's cared about his show for some time, but he probably can't imagine doing anything else. So he's stuck. Unlike with sports, your skills can't slip that noticeably in late-night TV -- it's more of a gradual decline, and there's no way to pinpoint when someone wasn't as good as they used to be. With Letterman, the show that used to be a parody of a TV show somehow became a parody of itself, and I'm not even sure when it happened. Then again, if he had taken over Johnny's spot, he would have defended that territory much more zealously, and he never would have allowed himself to trail a hack like Leno in the ratings.


Of course, no moment illustrated the difference between Leno and Letterman like the days after Johnny's death. Letterman may go overboard most of the time, but you never lose sight of the fact that he's a real person -- flawed, deeply troubled, somewhat anguished, but a real person nonetheless. Leno? He's a blank slate. Seriously, do you know one thing about him? Would you want to have dinner with him? Hell, would you want to have coffee with him? Me neither. Even the magazine features about him invariably drift towards his overall elusiveness as a human being, like even his friends can't figure him out. He's like the Manchurian Talk Show Host.


Last Monday night, Leno came out with a predictably awkward tribute to Carson, devoting his entire show to the man he replaced, conveniently forgetting how his manager leaked the "NBC pushing out Johnny?" story in the New York Post that hastened Johnny's retirement in the first place, or how Leno didn't even ACKNOWLEDGE Johnny on the night he took over the "Tonight Show," or how Johnny famously avoided Leno and his old show after his retirement, compounding the insult by writing jokes for Letterman's monologue as recently as last month. His "tribute" to Carson remains a defining Leno moment, like watching a female Olympic gymnast giving another gymnast one of those fake hugs they don't really mean. What a crock. May we never take this man seriously again. If we ever did.


Am I biased? Absolutely. I'm a Letterman guy. I wouldn't be doing this for a living if not for a handful of people that passed through my life, and he's one of those people. With that said, I thought the past eight days illustrated the difference between Leno and Letterman better than any show ever could. It's not that Leno is a bad person -- obviously he isn't -- but that it's physically impossible to feel any semblance of a connection to him. Maybe that's what some people need when they're falling asleep at midnight -- someone safe and harmless, someone who doesn't challenge them in any way. But he shouldn't have been the guy to replace Johnny. That's the bottom line.


As for Carson, I loved two things about him over anything else: Nobody was better at saving a bad joke, and no celebrity walked away with more dignity. Carson headed to Malibu and never came back -- not for an Oscars show, not for a Barbara Walters interview, not for a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" cameo, not even for an informercial -- and only because he wouldn't allow us to remember him any other way than we already did. Even in his final few years with the "Tonight Show," Leno and Letterman were breathing down his neck, a clown named Arsenio Hall was stealing some of his younger viewers, and SNL was running that vicious "Carsenio" sketch on his own network. The writing was on the wall. He was the face of a dying generation of comedy. So he left. And never looked back.


I just hope Letterman has the good sense to do the same one day

Last Night

Tell Sparky, was there some sort of speech or something on last night? FuW and I had an ipod night and did not turn on the TV until like 11 pm and being in the Delaware Valley, the news is all Eagles all the time. Something about bankruptcy and a hug?? Anybody got a clue??

Super Bowl Coverage Continues

Hey someone discussing something else besides whether T.O. will play, a god send...

What's That Smell? Jacksonville

By Tony Kornheiser

Right after Chad Lewis caught that touchdown pass with about four minutes to go, the touchdown that cemented the victory and ensured the Philadelphia Eagles would be in the Super Bowl, some guy in the stands joyfully held up a sign that said, "We're Going To Jacksonville."

And I thought: What on earth is second prize? You have to build there?

How did Jacksonville get the Super Bowl? What, Tuscaloosa was booked?

If going to Jacksonville for a week is the reward New England and Philadelphia get for being the best teams in the NFL this year, Peyton Manning ought to be happy he didn't get there. Imagine how Manning would have felt, having to play all year in Indianapolis, and then landing in Jacksonville? Which gods would he have offended to get that killer quinella?

The NFL must see itself as handing out some sort of charity when it awards the Super Bowl to any place other than New Orleans, Miami and Southern California. Because, believe me, nobody wants the game to be anywhere but there. So when the NFL insists on putting it in outposts like Detroit, Houston or Minneapolis, people ask, "Are you guys nuts?" But when you pick Jacksonville, people are agape and say, "Who in Jacksonville has a photo of Tagliabue with a goat?"

At least these other places are big cities, with some history and a longtime affiliation with the NFL, as opposed to Jacksonville, which has now been in the league for about 15 minutes. Detroit is where American cars are made, and where Motown music originated. Minneapolis-St. Paul is the home of 3M and General Mills. Houston is the home of NASA, and, thanks to Enron, the gold standard in white-collar corporate crime. Jacksonville is what? (I'm just taking a shot here, Tony, a dump? No. Cut that out. It's a 'Ville! The only good 'Ville is a Coupe de Ville.)

Have you ever been to Tampa? It's heaven, if you like Waffle Houses.

Jacksonville makes Tampa look like Paris!

Jacksonville has this one great thing, the TPC course with the island green on No. 17. (Which is actually in Ponte Vedra.) And the rest of it can be described with this phrase, "Welcome to Hooters."

People in Jacksonville will be very upset with this piece. They will say it's a cheap shot by an effete Northerner who didn't want to be the 28th person on his own paper to write about how great and smart and handsome Tom Brady is. (Which is true, but come on, we kid because we love.) They will yell and scream that their city is hardly a backwater -- it's the 14th largest city by population in the country! Yes, and that's because it's the largest city by area by far. It's an octopus. It's 840 square miles! It takes in almost all of northeast Florida. If Jacksonville annexes all of southern Georgia, it could maybe crack the population top 10.

The NFL will tell you Jacksonville is a warm-weather site because it's in Florida. But Jacksonville is barely in Florida. It gets cold in Jacksonville. Yesterday morning, the low was 31 degrees. That's below freezing, boys and girls. That's cold enough that you need to keep the space heater turned on in the double-wide. And Jacksonville is 20 miles from the beach. Jacksonville is one of the smallest and most remote stops in the NFL. Green Bay is smaller and more remote. But Green Bay has Lombardi, Starr, Favre and the frozen tundra. Jacksonville has a Dairy Queen.

Jacksonville may be in Florida technically. But this isn't South Beach, gang. It isn't the home of Gloria Estefan, Enrique Iglesias and Luther Campbell. Jacksonville is where Pat Boone was born (sometime around the Martin Van Buren presidency), and where the Southern hair band .38 Special got together. Somehow it doesn't sound like hip-hop. It's more like I-Hop.

My friend Tony Reali, "Stat Boy" on the "PTI" show, flew to Jacksonville a few months ago to emcee some dopey trivia contest. And when he walked off the plane, he got a whiff of something that almost brought him to his knees -- it was Jacksonville -- and he made the not uncommon observation, "This place smells."

"I am from Staten Island, and I have lived in New Jersey," Reali explained. "I know bad smells. This was right below Secaucus."

Not as bad as Staten Island?

"Nothing approaches Staten Island," Reali said with conviction.

The next day, while appearing on a national radio show with Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald, Reali announced, "Jacksonville stinks," and asked Le Batard if it smelled that bad in Miami.

My friend Mike Freeman, who used to work here at The Post and now writes a column in Jacksonville, heard the show and went wild. He called Reali "Stat Jerk" and "Stat Punk," and chided him for slandering fair Jacksonville (named for Andrew Jackson, who, by the way, never actually set foot in it -- he was probably waiting on the beach). In his column Freeman said Reali's salvo was probably the first of many that would be fired at Jacksonville now that it was getting ready to host the Super Bowl.

Get used to it, brothers and sisters, Freeman wrote, this is what they're all going to do.

Brady, table for five. Brady, table for five. Welcome to Applebee's. Eatin' good. In the neighborhood.

Yikes!