Xmas Eve OR: Kill the Advent Calander Day

It seems Negativity and Cynicism are the primary currency for a lot of Blogs. It's easy to let your mind go down many different creative avenues when you talk about things you don't like. Whether it's a case of knowing ones strengths, or simply laziness, many blogs thrive on negativity, and as much as I'm as guilty a participant as anyone else, I try to make a conscious effort to not make this a site where I bitch about things and thats all.

That said, it's Christmas time, and just like boner pills, the season's inferred positivity can sometimes be underscored by negative side effects. If you ask me, the salt on that open wound is Christmas Music. No haphazard trip through an overcrowded mall can go without the hum of tinny Christmas cheer in your eardrums, causing your eyes to glaze over and your urge to murder rise.

So without further ado, Here's the Top 3 Worst Christmas Songs Ever:

3. The Christmas Shoes
Patton Oswalt does a hilarious bit about just hard morbid and terrible the song is, and I can't write up my own description without feeling like it would plagiarize his bit, and he does it much better anyways, so I'll just link it, with my firm endorsement. Check that out here.
Fuckin' Creepy!

2. Baby, it's cold outside
I've only recently discovered this, but now that I've come to this conclusion, I can't see this song as anything else:

This song is a musical date rape.

For those who are unfamiliar, it's a call and response type duet between a man and woman, wherein the man is, with increasing force, trying to get the woman to stay to (presumably) have sex with him.
Here are a few lines to give you an idea:

"The neighbors might think - Baby, it's bad out there
Say, what's in this drink - No cabs to be had out there
I ought to say no, no, no, sir - Mind if I move a little closer"

Thats really only a prelude to "I should really g-- DON'T TOUCH THE DOOR!!" etc.
Add to the fact that the most recent incarnation of this song to gain attention is a duet between Anne Murray and Michael Buble just makes it all the more disturbing. I'm sure sprightly young, 33-year old Michael Buble is ready to do whatever it takes to get into the granny panties of someone 30 year his senior. That makes me vomit into my own mouth.


1. Paul McCartney - A Wonderful Christmas Time
Really, Paul McCartney, Really!?!
You wrote fucking "Hey Jude", man. How does this happen?
It's like if Van Gogh were alive 11 years after doing "Starry Night", and he was drawing gimpy, foot-obscured Rob Liefeld drawings.
The B-Side of "Wonderful Christmastime" is (seriously) called "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae". Do I even want to hear that?? Will it make my ears fall off? Would listening to this song fall into the same catagory as watching viral gross-out videos?

So, as I said earlier (when I wasn't likening the Christmas season to erectile dysfunction medication) blogs can be entirely too negative, so to counteract this, I've dusted off a Christmas Compilation I put together last year, and made a few adjustments (like Punk-O-Rama 2.1).

DOWNLOAD IT HERE.

enjoy!

Rage Against the Packaging Regulations OR: yes, it always does come down to Batman in the end.

I've never been much of a flag waver, But living in Canada has it's advantages for sure. Our health care is free, we have ample blogs to celebrate our music scenes, the majority of funny people are from here (or the UK), and our overall rep' in the world isn't nearly as tarnished as the people living below us.
But there are also a few major bummers, one of which made itself abundantly clear last week.

See, most packaging in Canada has to be Bilingual, except in Quebec, where everything can be only in French. I'm not a graphic designer, but as a design enthusiast, I can only imagine this is absolutely killing the creativity in that field. Like clean yet effective labeling? I know I do. Well, you're out of luck, as you must include the French translation.
How are people suppose to know it's Grapefruit Juice if it's only labeled "Grapefruit Juice" and it shows a picture of a grapefruit next to a glass of pink or yellow liquid?? You had better put "jus de pamplemousse rouge" in a slightly smaller typeface.

This unfortunate situation same to a head last week with the much anticipated release of Dark Knight on DVD. Ofcourse, there were many different exclusive versions, and a multitude of different packaging options for nerds like me to deliberate on (and deliberate I did!). But in Canada, they all had "Le Chevalier Noir" on them, and they all looked fucking silly.


I mean, look at this one:


That Joker is such a diabolical mastermind. He even took the time to write "Why So Serious" in English AND French, to get his grim, bloody message across to people of both languages. How unsettlingly sinister.

Even the awesome Jokerized back cover is made to look ridiculous by the inclusion of french!

It's a well documented fact amongst movie fans that DVD packaging is often pretty shitty. It serves a different purpose than the official poster, which is usually cool, or the Teaser poster, which is usually the best of all 3. DVD packaging throws subtlety to the wayside and has a tenancy to make the stars faces the focal point of the cover, so that when housewives are idling through Walmart will say to themselves "Well, I just love Rene Zelwigger" and buy a DVD, regardless of the story or anything else. So, There are enough problems with lame DVD package design without having it muddled and underscored even more by bilingual packaging regulations. Personally, I've taken to downloading covers from other countries as replacements.

You fail, Canadian packaging regulations. You're killing your father. I award you no points.

Frenchman Artwork on top by Aaron Hammersley.

O.M.G.S.A.D. W.T.F. OR Who do you love, little girl?

Hey! What do you know. On the same day I discover Dave Carnie's been doing an under-the-radar food blog ("Food On Drunk"), I too, become a published food writer, thanks to Angela's "Hamblogger with Cheese". So, check out my "review"of East Side Mario's burger.

Now, I sort of think that "Seasonal Affective Disorder" (get it?? S.A.D.!) is complete bullshit. Bad weather makes everyone a little down, and I'm no different, but a legitimate medically recognized mental health disorder? Thats a little much.
That said, I do feel as if I've needed some cheering up lately, and maybe you do too, so here's some things that have done it lately, in point form:

• Robocop Rap
• No Cake for Lil' Adolf Hitler
• LOST season 5 preview
• Cop thinking he's overdosed on weed brownies
• Lonely Island's "Incredibad" album details
  

If you've got something totally amusing to share, leave it in the comments. Lets open up a healthy dialogue! Lets hunker down for a rap session, kids!

Anyhoo, I've been knee deep in work and working on other projects, But I'll be back with a real post tomorrow. Promise.

King Goodtimes and his Young Ward. Or: Bloggin' 'Bout Bill Murray.

Reading this article only compounded the urgency in which I'd like to put this out there right now: Bill Murray, I would LOVE to hang out with you.
Much like Ben Stone's not entirely unwarranted assumption that he and Vince Vaughn would make for good friends in Knocked Up (because "Like, I think he'd want to hang out with me") I would make the same not unwarranted claim about Bill Murray. I concede that I'd be more like his partying sidekick, The plucky young Carrie Kelly to his aging Bruce Wayne, in that parlance of Gotham. But, there wouldn't be no party like a Bill and Matt party (as the assumption would be that it don't stop).
I'd almost like to be best friends with him more than I'd like to be best friends with Burt Reynolds, and anyone who knows me knows the weight of that sentence.

Imagine you were throwing a party and Bill and I showed up? You'd stop worrying about the enjoyment of your guests and memorability of your party immediately and just start letting the party flow through you like an Andrew WK song wave pool. You'd know right then and there that this would be the best party you'd ever have. You'd reconsider your previous assumption that your best days might be behind you, and you'll find yourself in one of those rare moments when you actually are aware of a life changing moment as it happens. "This is now, and I'm partying with Bill Murray (and Matt), and this a night I'll remember forever." you'd think.

All thanks to Bill Murray.
and you know, it probably wouldn't be the first time.

Sunday Afternoon Random Or: when we're holding hands it's just like having sex to me

First and foremost, above all else:




The Lonely Island do it again!
It seems like every year around this time, the dudes really step it up and do a fantastic music video (starting with "Lazy Sunday", continuing with "Dick in a Box", etc.) but this one was different, in that for the first time, all 3 of the dudes were in the video, and Jorma was prominently featured. It would be cool if Jorm got more screen time on SNL (he was rumored to be becoming a "featured player" a while back) but I think they really should just get their own show.
Awesometown was the best slept-on pilot since Heat Vision and Jack, I think it's time (SNL contracts not withstanding) they gave it another whirl.


From the frivolous lawsuit dept. Joe Satriani is suing Coldplay for damages and "any and all" profits the band may have made from the song "Viva La Vida", which he says has stolen from his intellectual property. You can watch a comparison video HERE.
From where I'm standing, All that comparison really shows is that Coldplay are tasteful with their subtlety, and Satriani has about all the subtlety of a jackhammer. He just can't help himself from turning every song into a guitar wank fest.
It's a pretty typical chord progression, and the melody diverges from similarity half way through. If you ask me, Satriani is just jealous because the masses like understated pop music more than endless guitar soloing.
You don't see any lawsuits happening with the Boulevard Of Broken Dreams/Wonderwall/That simple plan song similarities. Or from Waiting on the World to Change/Sexual Healing, or Nickleback with that other nickleback song.
Suck it up!

Lastly, I used to think that Ben Stein was a pretty smart guy. I would watch his game show on the Comedy Network and marvel at the amount of trivia knowledge he had. I liked his bravado and he was rarely beaten by his lowly contestants. It wasn't as good as "Beat the Geeks", but what is?
Anyways, all of that went down the toilet with the release of Stein's "eXpelled: No Intelligence Allowed" documentary, which actually equates Darwinism to Nazism. I imagine he saw it as the other side of the coin to Bill Maher's "Religulous". Luckily, it couldn't muster a theatrical release, and nobodies buying the DVD. Best of all was this week, when Roger Ebert called him on his shit.
This was my first time reading Roger's Blog but I'm thinking it won't be the last. Infact, I've already sought out a movie he reccomended on his Top 20 of 2008 list (which he actually included Dark Knight, Iron Man and Wall-E on, to my plesant surprise).

New Profile Picture OR: I lead a boring life.

Now that it's the 4th of December, I decided to take down the picture of me in my Halloween costume that was currently adorning my Facebook profile and roll with something new.
I went with one that was taken at some point last week, I can't really remember when:

Kind of drab, right?
It might not be as exciting as my Halloween picture, but I thought it was important to not live in the past, and show that with the weather getting colder, life has a tendency just to slow down a bit.
But hey, things will pick up. Christmas is just around the corner.

Triple B OR: This one is not about being fucked to death by a horse...or is it?

So let it first be known that I feel like a bit of a douchenozzle bloggin' 'bout Britney, but I saw this today and I couldn't help it.

Ok, so Britney, and her team of handlers, yes-men and hangers-on are people who have to be acutely aware of public perception. They aren't selling music as much as they are selling her. So, you would think would shy away from things that make her look bat-shit crazy right? I mean she's trying to move past that stage...right?


"So, Britney, whats happening in this picture?"
"Oh, This was the other day, I was just hanging out in bed with my boots on, smiling maniacally when FuzzyButtons, my midget clown butler, decided to burst through my genie beads and surprised me with a 2 layer birthday cake.
This was Thursday, I think."


ps. as an addendum to yesturday's post, THIS was brought to my attention. It's a documentary about the lets-just-say "Horse Lover" video, the events leading up to it, and the trial of the camera man, charged with accessory to murder. Gnarly.

Effed Up Ess OR: It could always be worse...

The vast majority of internet videos seem to fall into 1 of 3 categories; Funny, Gross and Rick Astley.

One I've seen linked all over the place lately has sort of captured my imagination, though not for it's content. Everywhere I see this posted, it's always described as "SOOOOO WRONG!!!11" and "Watch this and a piece of your soul dies!!"...


Not that bad, right?
I don't see what the big deal is. Someone edited a song from an Icelandic children's show with a particularly adult song by a particularly ridiculous American rapper, with hilarious results. What a juxtaposition!
I was mildly amused, the song still routinely finds itself in my head (shit's catchy, it could easily be a Britney Spears song), but I certainly wasn't scarred for life.

Of the 3 catagories I mentioned earlier, I'm definitely prefer "Funny" YouTube videos, although it wasn't always that way. There was a time in my youth when I would see how much gross I could take.

That got me to thinking, What IS the most scarring thing I've ever watched on the internet?
My gut reaction would be to link to that BrokeCyde video a few posts back, but thats more angering than anything else. There was of course the big "2 Girls 1 Cup" craze that was huge about a year ago, and while that was gross, it wasn't what I'd call particularly unsettling. Plus, all of the hilarious reaction videos make up for the first time you were tricked into watching.

I guess the worst I ever saw was the infamous Budd Dwyer suicide video. I watched it at my friend Italo's house one night, as I believe we were discussing fucked up videos we had seen. He watched it like it was just another day at the office. He's also dead inside.
Now, there are plenty of videos on the internet of people being shot, but the way the camera follows the body down and lingers is really the worst part. You'd think in a time of panic, the camera would jerk away, but apparently Ricky Fitts from "American Beauty" was filming that day, and he stayed right with it. The blood coming out of his nose isn't the trickle into a small pool you see in the movies, it's like turning a faucet on all the way. Ugh.

I think thats when my short lived fascination with challenging myself to watch gross things peaked, and since that faithful evening, I've heard of 2 videos that sound way worse that, despite my curiosity, I don't think I'll be watching. The first is the "BME Pain Olympics: Final Round", which came into popularity around the same time as 2G1C, and had similar reaction videos posted. The notable difference being that, while 2G1C yields mostly laughs and head turns, the BME pain Olympics is almost always shock and horror. I half heartedly tried to find this video, mostly to send to my pal Mike, who was on a similar gross-out-quest at the time.
But I never found it and I'm glad I never did.
The second is one I won't ever be seeking out, but Joe Rogan has seen it, and his description of it was enough for me.
What happens in this video, you ask?
Well, A man gets fucked to death by a horse.

So, next time you're expounding at great length on what a soul crushing video it is on youtube that you're linking, just remember: You could be watching a man get fucked to death by a horse.
and theres no amount of Lil Jon that will ever make that funny.