All In the Name Of....Get It? (It's a Motley Crue Song!)

In the past I've written about how up his own ass Nikki Sixx is; however this particular entry relates to Motley Crue as a recording entity.

Now, I own most of the albums that are in this little photo montage, and on them there are some really stellar songs. And there are also some colossal turds. Each (studio) album has anywhere from 1-4 excellent songs. But when you go back and look at their albums there isn't one single complete front to back album that is packed with great songs AND no filler. Hell, even their Greatest Hits album has that stupid shit ass song Glitter on it!
I love to go on to Wikipedia and read the reviews and behind the scene tidbits of bands and their discography's; on Motley Crue's page it says that Dr. Feelgood is considered both their "strongest" album and most "consistent". I beg to differ on both counts. Parts of it sound flawless and timeless (Dr. Feelgood, Kickstart My Heart), while in other parts it is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo dated (Time For Change, TNT, Slice of Your Pie). Recently I watched a documentary on the Crue, and on it Vince Neil states that Theatre of Pain is their "worst album" and outside of Home Sweet Home and Smokin' In the Boys Room, he doesn't know a single song on that album. Clearly he has never hear Girls, Girls, Girls, New Tattoo, or Saints of Los Angeles. There are some real sink ass songs on those albums.
Besides the albums, a whole other argument/debate can be made that all of the those guys at one point or another becomes a liability in a live setting. Now, I saw them live in 2005; it was a great show, BUT they all fucked up a lot. No one was more guilty than Vince Neil. He did his infamous every 3rd word "singing" AND what was even more incredible was the fact that he "played" guitar on a few songs, and he broke his low E string and didn't even realize it. I often wonder when he busts out a guitar if it's even plugged in....

Anyways I just wanted to write about this. I do love these guys warts and all. The concert I saw them in was one of the best overall shows I've seen. My favorite albums of theirs would have to be Motley Crue, and Shout At the Devil. In that order.

The End

Pretentious Much?

 I am going to start by saying, that I like Lamb of God. They are a good metal band. Solid players and they write some good ass tunes. Recently though, I found out that Randy Blythe has an Instagram account. Now, I do follow him; he takes some interesting photographs, but I must say that in a lot of instances the guy comes of a bit pretentious. Case in point the photos to your right. Now here we have Mr. Blythe sitting on a couch in a black and white photo. Looks fine, but then you read the ridiculous bullshit that he writes. I get that he misses his friend, but the fact that he staged this makes it super lame. Without the incredibly stupid and over the top artsy fartsy caption, this would have made the photo much better. Together, this just kinda stinks of a musician trying to be a jack of all trades.

Now there isn't anything wrong with someone exploring their creative side, but the way that he did this (and other photos on his Instagram) makes him come off as high and mighty. For a while, he was putting down people who use Photoshop and the camera on their iPhone's and constantly telling us the fancy ass cameras he uses; but recently he has come to a startling realization. YOU DON'T NEED A FANCY CAMERA. You can literally take a disposable camera and get a great shot. A lot of it comes down to art direction. That and not telling the viewer everything that you did to get the shot. Especially because it makes you seem like a pompous ass, who thinks they know about art.

Lazy

So, this was just from me noticing how similar movie posters have been lately. That means a few things. 1) These are basically the same. 2) They look terrible. 3) They all use a similar type of mash up with photos.

I don't know if this was intentional, if these movies were all made by the same studio, if these posters were all made by the same person/design firm BUT regardless, they suck. To me it looks like the same boring ass movie. Also another thing I just noticed; they are all basically ensemble movies.

Anyways, that's it. They look like the same movie and the same poster. And they look like they aren't any good. That is all.

...also, I haven't seen any of these movies and I'm going to keep it that way.

Second Hand News (Like the Song)

Well, nothing super new to talk about here, so I'm gonna do a short run down of my favorite awkward embarrassing stories. Stories that didn't happen to me though. These are second hand stories from the people who saw them, apart of it somehow, or they happened to them.

1) A buddy of mine in a class told me this when we were riding our bikes home from said class. I told him how I hate when dick SF drivers nearly hit you on the road (if you ride your bike on the sidewalk and the cops see you, it's a $170 ticket!). He says "...don't give them the finger. People are used to that, give them the thumbs down. I gave a guy the thumbs down once, he rolled down his window and yelled "DID YOU JUST FUCKING GIVE ME THE THUMBS DOWN?!?!?!" So give people the thumbs down.

2) In a drawing class I had, the teacher was doing a demo and all of a sudden a friend of mine starts laughing out loud. After the demo I ask her why she was laughing. She told me she forgot for a second where she was because she got a text from her mom telling her about a cousin of hers. She then relayed the story to me as follows, "...my mom texted me to say that my cousin had to have surgery because he somehow sliced his nut sack open riding his bike. Somehow his shorts got snagged in the chain and it tore his nut sack open. And his mom posted it all over Facebook. This isn't the first time this happened either. A few years ago he was sitting on a lawn chair, somehow one of his balls fell between the rubber bands of the chair. My other cousins picked up the chair with him on it and threw it in the pool. After a while he didn't come up and they realized he was stuck. They then had to dive into the pool and grab the whole chair with him on it and give some super scissors to cut the rubber to free him."

3) In high school my friend Ray went to some stupid party. He came out to his car and said he saw a bag hanging from his rear view mirror. He slowly got in and saw the bag, within seconds a smell was filling his nostrils; he touched the bag and it hit him. It was shit. Not just any shit, it was people shit. He never knew who did it. A few years later, another friend asked me if I had heard about that incident. I said yes, then he asked if I knew who did it. I said no, and he proceeded to tell me who did it. I laughed my ass off and forgot about it. A few months later I was hanging out with Ray and that story came up. He still never knew who did it. I said I knew who it was, I told him and he got super pissed reliving that event. He finally put faces (it was two entitled asses) to the feces. (zing!)

So yeah, there's some funny(ish) second hand stories. Until next time. 

Case in Point

The other day, I was reading some user comments on a favorite blog/website of mine. It is written by one my favorite musicians, who happens to be extremely knowledgeable and articulate. He is also generous enough to take time out of his busy schedule to respond to most, if not all comments. Although, to me some of the user comments come across as totally off base, uninformed, or just stupid. Case in point: "...the 90s' were a terrible decade for rock and metal period."

Seriously? Period? Here is a brief list of rock/metal bands that formed in the 90s', released some great albums in the 90s', or made it "big" in the 90s':

White Zombie

Alice in Chains

Pearl Jam

Soundgarden

Prong

System of a Down

Pantera

Metallica (granted they were "big" in the 80s' but they really broke in the 90s')

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Tool

Faith No More

etc....*

Yeah, the way that rock/metal sounded and looked changed; BUT to say that the 90s' was "terrible" is just a silly thing to say. These bands wrote good songs and albums, had great tones, pioneered new tunings, and song structures. Saying something like that is very short sighted. If one just looks through their CD collection, iPod, Zune, or even just Wikipedia you can find out that the 90s' did produce some good rock/metal. Now this is not to say that it was with out it's low points, but it did produce very well.

* I know I left off a ton of groups/musicians. This was just a quick off hand list, I know that dozens of groups qualify for this, as well as the albums that they produced. So this was not a slam against any group or musician.

Movies For D-Bags Part II

Man, I am getting super lazy with this thing...

Well, I've had this idea of following up my world famous Movies For D-Bags entry with an appropriately titled sequel. And here it goes!

So in the last entry of this I "profiled" The Boondock Saints, well for this new entry I am going to cover The Hangover.

Much like The Boondock Saints, this is one of those movies where I like it less each time I see it. The idea of watching it, annoys me. Really. Just the idea of watching this movie annoys the shit out of me. I mean it's funny, don't get me wrong. I laugh every time I see it, but if I can help it I try not to watch it.
Just like before, one of the more annoying aspects of this movie is the people who watch it and quote it. It's usually turd bomb frat guys, dumb skanks, or just ra-tards (see what I did there?). I knew that I was going to become irritated with this thing when it came out. A coworker of mine at the time kept going on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on about how funny it was. How his roommates and him had seen it easily a dozen times, within the first few weeks of its release. So I saw it with the Mrs. and we enjoyed it. As time went on the pendulum swung the other way though. The characters are annoying, and some of the actors are dumb asses as well. To top it off, they made the sequel which is the same thing in another country, AND they are making a third one!

Thus concludes another meandering, directionless rant.

See you all at the next (insert theme music) Movies For D-Bags!

Office Tales

A few weeks ago I wrapped up my summer job. I won't say where, although if you come to San Francisco there are multiple locations and it's a great way to get some exercise and see the city at the same time. So, what I gonna do is jot down a few of the funnier things that I heard/saw during the three months I worked there. So enjoy, or not.

In no particular order...

1. Two women came in and one of them pulls me aside to ask if Alcatraz was "real". I had no idea what she meant and neither did her friend. She was dead serious and apparently thought that Alcatraz was not really sitting out in the bay.

2. It was my turn to clean the bathroom. This Irish guy who worked there asked if he could go real fast. I said sure. Now in this bathroom there was the door and like a stall door, even though there was one toilet. I left and he shut the stall door leaving the bathroom door open. Then proceeded to take a massive shit and stink up the whole joint.

3. I was walking back from Walgreens on my break one day and I saw Jon Gruden. He is very short.

4. This French guy and girl came in to work. I gave them directions to the Golden Gate Bridge, but was distracted by the French girl's immense mustache. It was like watching a car accident. I couldn't look away.

5. This crackhead came into the store and was just walking around. One of the Supervisor guy's asks him what he is doing. Crackhead says nothing. Supervisor says to him: "Why don't you follow me, we're gonna take a look at something..." They walk out and then Supervisor turns around and walks back in. Crackhead stops and says: "...why...why you gotta treat me like I'm...I'm a turd. I'm not a turd. You're a god damn turd!"

6. A coworker friend of mine saw a hobo take a shit on the sidewalk. Corn hole, balls, shit and everything. Then he proceeded to wipe.

7. On my last day of work, one of the girls didn't show up. Turns out she crashed an electric bike into a metal gate and broke her god damn teeth. They strangely seemed to break symmetrically.

8. Lastly, this crazy ass guy was chasing someone down the street threatening him with a taser; for easily 20 minutes. My boss calls the cops and the crazy guy tries to jump on the bus to get away. Next thing you know 5, yes FIVE cop cars show up. They get the guy and then proceed to play with the taser for another 15 minutes.