'90s Memories - Spacehog

In the Meantime - Spacehog.



Awwwwwwesome.

'90s Memories - "Sister" by The Nixons

The post the other day about favorite bands reminded me (again) how much love I have for '90s bands and the music of that era. I'd venture to say I'm stuck in the '90s. Even more than that, I'd say I'm loyal to a lot of those bands. So, from time to time, I'll dig up a gem from a "'90s band." There were a lot of great one hit wonder kinda bands from that era. Songs I "found" on Napster and still have in my iPod.

For today's post, please enjoy "Sister" by The Nixons -

Favorite Bands

Like most people, I enjoy lists. I have a pretty solid list of who my Top 5 Favorite Bands are, but if you ask me to expand that list to a Top 10, I am stumped.

I base the Top 5 mostly on the percentage of a band's output I enjoy. Even a crappy Foo Fighters song is better than most stuff out there. I also factor in how often I've seen each artist in concert and how good of a performance they gave. The problem with coming up with #6-10 is it's pretty much an 8-way tie. I enjoy the majority of their songs, and have probably seen them live once or twice. So, in an effort to nail this down, I'm going to go on record as saying this is my Top 10 Bands list:

1. Better Than Ezra
2. Foo Fighters
3. Alanis Morissette
4. Dave Matthews Band
5. Nina Gordon / Veruca Salt (only when she was in it)
6. Ednaswap / Annetenna
7. Hootie and the Blowfish
8. Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers / The Refreshments
9.
10.

...and this is where I run into a problem because Ingram Hill, Athenaeum / Mark Kano, Everclear (even though their last album suuucked), Our Lady Peace should probably have a spot on there. And I also really like Soul Asylum, Metallica, Fastball and Garbage.

With only have 2 spots left, I think I should just stick with a Top 5.

Better Than Ezra - Absolutely Still

If you head over to Better Than Ezra's newly redesigned website, you can download their first single "Absolutely Still" for absolutely free!

You can also stream their entire album from the Alternative Addiction website.

Also, you can also see their music video for "Absolutely Still" here:

Wedding Websites

With my wedding coming up shortly, we've talked about doing one of those websites. I've been opposed to it mostly due to privacy issues. Think about most of those sites and the amount of information given away - full names of bride, groom and the wedding party, dates and locations of events, and registry lists that frequently have a "ship to home address" option if you purchase online. That's an incredible amount of information to just give away to strangers if you want to set up something fun for your family and friends to see.

By the way, I found all of those examples by simply Googling a random first name, followed by "wedding website." Incredibly easy.

I think we're going to do a very simple website without full names or any mention of dates. It's going to be a sub-section of my own personal site so I think it nearly impossible for someone to just randomly come across. I understand people are excited about their wedding and doing a website can be fun, but it makes me wonder how many people snoop around for private information on these things. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I'm a frayed knot.

Time Travel Fund

They talked about this recently on Kevin & Bean - the Time Travel Fund. Basically, you invest $10 and whenever time travel is invented, they will come back and bring you to the future. Even though it sounds about as legitimate as the International Star Registry, $10 is too cheap of an investment not to make.

The exciting news is I hope I will get to see my swampus and flish after all! :) So, in case you don't see any new posts for like two months or so, it's probably because I'm living in the year 33,561,162. Hope to see some of you there.

Tweet

Damn it. My favorite band started using Twitter. So now I'm subscribed to one Twitter feed on my Google Reader. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

I was talking with a friend of mine over the weekend and we both agreed that Twitter is lame because you can do the exact same thing on Facebook, but without all of the photos, videos and interaction. You can update your status on Facebook every second if you wanted to, and it has the incredibly convenient 'wall-to-wall' feature letting you see the conversation between two people, instead of that stupid @username BS, so then you have to click over to someone else's username so you can see what the original comment was.

Can anyone explain to me what advantage Twitter has over Facebook?

Brain Development

*sigh*

No, let's make that a *SIGH*

Last night during Survivor, I saw a commercial for Juicy Juice Brain Development, a juice drink aimed at 2-year olds to promote brain growth. The beverage is "enhanced with DHA, an essential building block for brain development."

Yeah, instead of...I don't know - teaching our children, or interacting with them to build their social skills, let's just cram a juice box down their gullet and see if that makes them smarter. Need I remind you that Juicy Juice Brain Development was not around when Stephen Hawking was born, and that Albert Einstein never watched a Baby Einstein video. Stop relying on commercial products to promote the growth of your kids, their bodies and their brains, and start raising your kid right.

On a somewhat related note, isn't it amazing how humans have survived over 200,000 years without Purell? That might be another rant but I just wanted to throw that out there while I'm grumpy.

Earthquake Stories

Last week, there was a mild earthquake at 1:25 on a Thursday, so during the work day. I was in my car at the time and felt my car sway a bit. It honestly felt like a strong Santa Anita breeze - it was no big deal. I had to clock back in so I walked back to find people from my office standing outside. Was there an order to evacuate? I decided to take my chances since I'm new and I wanted to clock back in, at least. I walked back to my desk and sure enough, my least favorite thing about earthquakes started - earthquake stories.

Without fail, whenever an earthquake happens on work time, you can expect the following scenario to happen: 1. mild earthquake happens; 2. people freak out; 3. everyone spends the next 20-30 minutes standing around talking about the earthquake and sharing earthquake stories. This. Annoys. The. Crap. Out. Of. Me.

Why? Because there is no story. Unless something actually falls and breaks, there is no story worth telling. This was a 4.2 and the building barely shook. There is nothing to talk about. Anytime someone came back from lunch, the first thing someone would ask is, "Did you feel the earthquake?" Then they'd talk about the magnitude of this earthquake, what it felt like, where they were when it hit and any other irrelevant stories barely related to earthquakes just so they could kill time. Get back to work, you assholes!

Paper Empire

Today is the official release of Better Than Ezra's new album Paper Empire. If you pre-ordered it from their website, you got it early so I've been listening to it since Friday. I was a little puzzled after my first listen but overall, I like the album a lot. I think my confusion lies from the fact that singer Kevin Griffin was working on a solo record, and had some demos of songs up on his MySpace page. A few of these tracks ended up on the BTE album so I'm not really sure how much was written as a "BTE song" and how much was written as a "Kevin Griffin solo song."

Some of the tracks seem very pop-ish and experimental to be Better Than Ezra songs - songs like "Nightclubbing" and "All In." The track "The Loveless" even has a kind of gospel background vocal track to it. Other songs seem like straight up Ezra we've come to know and love like "Absolutely Still." I remember reading somewhere that "Hell No!" was written as a kind of response song to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Of course I'm going to recommend the album to you, but I'd say the standout tracks are "Absolutely Still" (the first single), "Black Light," "The Loveless," "Nightclubbing," "Hell No!" and "Fit" which seems primed to be a wedding first dance song. But not mine.

Amazon MP3 link
iTunes link

Uncle Bozo

This past weekend was Mother's Day and I have a story to share. My fiancee blogged about my uncle's exploits on Mother's Day last year, so here is this year's story. "Brad" offered to come out for Mother's Day this year for lunch, and said he'd bring pizza over for lunch at 2:00 for me, fiancee, my Mom, my Grandma (his Mom) and the two of them. First strike: bringing your Mom a pizza lunch for Mother's Day.

At 2:15, he called on his way and asked if we'd ordered the pizza yet, when he told us he'd take care of everything. Strike Two.

At 2:30, he showed up while my own Mom was out getting the pizza and salad. (Fiancee and I were busy planting two trees in the front yard.) Ultimately, Brad spent more time with his wife and dog, instead of with his mother. Strike Three.

And another Mother's Day bites the dust. I wonder what will be on tap for next year.

Nelson - After the Rain video

While listening to my iPod the other day, I rediscovered this gem of a song - "After the Rain" by the band Nelson. As I was rocking out at my desk, I had a vague recollection about the bizarre music video they made for this song. I seem to remember it involved Native Americans, and some dude wearing a bandana. God bless YouTube. Any Nelson song that can be stretched into a 7 minute music video is GOLD. If Nelson came walking out of my bedroom poster, I'd be scared shitless but this guy takes it pretty well.



I think this video was conceived while smoking peyote, which explains why they kept the Native American in the video. I also remember seeing this video and wondering where in the hell they shot it. Surely, Nelson never did a full tour with a faux rocks and nature stage set, did they?

Snapple Dip

I started listening to the Adam Carolla podcasts and I'm surprised by how good they are. I'm kind of sad I never listened to his show on 97.1 before it got the axe. His podcast the other day with Jim Florentine had me nearly crying at work. I had to pause it a few times just because it was so bizarre and funny.

On this particular podcast, they talk about guy pranks. Adam tells a story about working on The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel. During a meeting, Jimmy once stuck his schvantz in Adam's Snapple without him knowing about it. Someone in the office thought that was the gayest thing they'd ever seen, but both Adam and Jimmy argued pulling a prank like that was one of the manliest things you could possibly do. Guest Jim Florentine related a story about his brother taking a crap in a lunchbox and hiding it under his bed, and then an even weirder tory involving a Jack in the Box that almost made me lose it (my control of my laughter) at work. If these two stories sounded amusing, download the podcast. If you're already grossed out, then just read the next paragraph and be done with my post for today. :)

All this to say, hearing about these pranks made me kind of sad I've never done anything on this magnitude in my life. The only person I could have established such a manly rivalry with is my brother. Much to my sister-in-law and my fiancee's delight, I have to admit I think we're too old to be pulling such pranks on each other. I'm not saying you have to guard your Snapple like the Secret Service, but I still feel like a missed out on a little guy bonding over the course of my 30 years.

Weeding Update

One week of banishing songs from my iTunes. Now I'm down to 8,338.

Ah, progress.

So long, entire Hoobastank catalog!

Movie Theaters

Dear Everyone,

If you're going to see a movie on opening weekend starring a character from a film series that's grossed over $1 billion, could you please not show up to the theater 2 minutes before showtime? I'm trying to watching the previews and you walking up and down asking if seats are taken is annoying. Did you think Wolverine was some indie art house movie no one was going to see on opening weekend?

Thanks,
Chris