Something Shiny

Most of the mammoth bands of the 1980s had one thing in common… they were “er” bands.

ForeignER. SurvivOR. Night RangER. LovERboy. JOURney. EREO Speedwagon. SupERtramp.

This was the apex of arena rockin’, fist wavin’, “woooo” hollerin’ mullet rock. Even before I mentioned the “er” connection, you would have known what I meant if I placed these bands together.  They had that overproduced mass-appeal commercial sound that was perfect for the Reagan era and more accessible than their more purist prog rock cousins (i.e. they recorded songs you could hum).
Somehow Bon Jovi, Boston and Styx belong in that group, but I can’t figure out how to coax the “er” sound out of their names. Maybe if you get the Target lady from Saturday Night Live to say it: “Bern Jervi, Berston and Sterx.”

If “Top Gun” was a band, it would be an “er” band.

And it’s easy to distinguish “er” bands from “not er” bands.

Wham? Not an “er” band. Not really a band, if you want to be precise.
The CURe? Nope. ChristophER Cross? Nay. CommodORes? Nice try.

Yeah, some of them had their heyday in the 70’s. Don’t make me jump through the Intarweb and slap you. This is not my doctorate dissertation. I’m just thinking out loud.

While we’re on it, AERosmith could be an “er” band, but they precede almost all of the others, and they don’t quite fit the mold. Don’t ask me how, I just know.

Now go back to your thousands of friends on MySpace.

Searing commentary on the hubris of asshats:

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/59/two-phrases-that-destroyed-american-culture

If you dig up a body buried last week, you’re a grave robber. If you dig up a body buried four thousand years ago, you’re an archaeologist.

Let’s choose a number that demarcates the two. What represents your comfort zone? Is five hundred years enough time for your personal cemetery plot to remain off-limits? Is a thousand years a good time to call it excavation and not desecration?

Our current civilization makes that determination for preceding ones. I don’t take a stance on whether it’s good or bad, we should just have a standard. Like it or not, there will be archaeologists in the distant future who will be curious about your skull. I plan to be cremated, so they can do whatever they want with the ashes if they can find ‘em.

Here’s an innovation that could actually save some lives. Don’t know if anyone has tried it, but I’m sure not going to try it in my basement with a toddler around. Some mechanical genius out there builds a monster truck (obviously with more sophistication than my janky clip art schematic) with a lift in back for meeting the non-landing-gear-having plane as it drifts down to the runway.
Instead of Live Breaking News about planes trying to land without landing gear, we will have Live Breaking News about planes landing atop kick-ass vehicles with hydraulic payload platforms designed to cradle them as they descend. If you make a bung-ton of cash off this idea, send me an iPod or something.

Don’t ask me questions or point out how this wouldn’t work. I’m a musician, not an engineer.

Perhaps by chance, perhaps on purpose, everything you touch is either non-functional or on its way to being broken.

This website will fail you if you try to take it through its paces. All I wanted was to upgrade Wordpress to the new version. Nope, you have to uninstall ModPhp and downgrade to version 4.2. Just so I could write a few lousy sentences that won’t really help anyone. That’s broken.

On my way to work every day there’s a traffic light with a left arrow. Since I first visited that intersection, I’ve never seen the left arrow come on. When traffic is heavy, it is theoretically possible to never be allowed to go. Broken.

How many times a day do you use something that plain does not work the way it is advertised, the way it is supposed to work, the way it used to work, the way it would work if multinational conglomerates had a financial interest in it working?

But I’m not gonna let it get me down. Optimism is the new cynicism. Fix that.