Gooooooo - Layyyyyyyyyy!

Bob ba pa doo doo dee dee dah ba poppa dee

It’s a rap!

Last Saturday night, the wifey and I squeezed into our old spandex and went and saw Van Halen at Joe Louis Arena. The “Rockers with Walkers” tour features David Lee Roth back with the band, minus original bassist Michael Anthony. The new bass player is Eddie’s son Wolfgang. Dave introduced the line up as “Three parts original - one part inevitable”.

Man I’m getting old.

Not only did my fat ass barely fit into the seats, I wasn’t alone. I might have actually been the youngest one there. There was a row of 5 guys in front of us all wearing khaki’s and button down oxfords. They were checking their email via their blackberry’s constantly before the show. 50+ year old women stuffed into tight fitting pants, and the old geezer behind me who lamented about the time he saw Humble Pie at Cobo and that Peter Frampton turned into a pussy when he left to go solo and start singing them faggy girly songs. Whew.

The show started on time, and they opened with “You really Got Me”. Right from the start it was obvious that DLR was in shape and well tuned. His vocals were right on the mark, and despite the crappy sound from where I was sitting, he was nailing all the familiar screams, indian calls, and high notes just like the old days.

Eddie seemed to also be in top form. His playing was inspired and he looked like he was having a good time on stage. Although his trademark guitar solo was a bit boring - “Lets turn on some effects and watch me make strange noises” - it got tedious after a while.

Wolfgang, besides providing a vehicle for Daves game show personality to “educate the young boy”, seemed to be very low in the mix (deliberate). The bass parts in VH where never anything complicated, but rather it was the harmony vocals that Michael Anthony provided that where a hallmark of the band. Unfortunately,Wolfie was just adequate in that department.

Alex played drums.

Early on Dave tried to do a few of his trademark windmill karate kicks. They didn’t quite make their mark and looked a little awkward. But by end of the night - he was nailing them just like the old days.

With no “new album”, the set list consisted of only early hits, including a few oldies that they rarely played on tour before.

So did they live up to their ticket price? Who the hell cares, it’s Van Halen with David Lee Roth! The Rawked! End of Story! Period!

Fuckin-Ay.

So this video has been going around lately and show one of there first shows where something terribly goes wrong. Rumor is that the keyboard recording was played back at a slightly faster pitch resulting in it being in a higher key, which in tune make all the other instruments out of tune.

Un-Freaking-believable. Whack-Jobs, all of em.

For the second straight day, Fox News stood virtually alone in advancing thinly supported speculation to raise fears that the wildfires ravaging California are not the result of a confluence of arid heat and high winds but were set deliberately by al Qaeda terrorists.
“In a post-9/11 world, we have to consider all possibilities,” a guest warned.

read more | digg story

Staff at a drinks stand in the Netherlands resort of Zandvoort were amazed to find a 2.5-meter (8-foot) Lego man washed up on the beach Tuesday. It was rescued from the water and placed upright on the beach, to the delight of children. Nobody had any idea where the smiling Lego figure had come from, but there was speculation it might have come over from England, while suspicious pundits on the Web site Reddit feared it might be a Trojan horse “full of small Lego people about to attack Holland.” However the ungrammatical slogan on the figure’s chest, “No real than you are,” led via a Google search to www.egoleonard.com, a Dutch Web site which appears to belong to an artist or art collective.

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!

Make the pie higher!

This is a poem made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush, arranged for “aesthetic” purposes, by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.

Wikipedia defines Noodling as the practice and sport of fishing for catfish using only one’s bare hands. Also sometimes known as “Hogging”,”Catfisting”, “Grabbling”, “Graveling” or “Tickling” this strange sport is becoming more popular. Five U.S. states have laws explicitly permitting handfishing and Missouri has an experimental noodling season started in 2005.

Although the concept, catching fish with only the use of the arm in the water, is simple enough, the process of noodling is more complicated. The choice of catfish as the prey is not arbitrary, but comes from the circumstances of their habitat. Flathead catfish live in holes or under brush in rivers and lakes and thus are easy to capture due to the static nature of their dwelling. To begin, a noodler goes underwater to depths ranging from only a few feet to up to twenty feet, placing his hand inside a discovered catfish hole. If all goes as planned, the catfish will swim forward and latch onto the fisherman’s hand, usually as a defensive maneuver in order to try to escape the hole. If the fish is particularly large, the noodler can hook the head around its gills.

Most noodlers have spotters who help them bring the catfish in, either to shore or to their boat. When a catfish bites onto a noodler, it holds on for quite a while.

With some of the biggest fish caught weighing in at up to 50-60 pounds, very few noodlers are strong enough to attempt noodling by themselves. Although carrying the fish after they have been subdued is not difficult, trying to secure a fish and remove it from one’s hand at the same time can be a challenge.

Of course maybe now you can see where the “This is crazy” factor comes in. Sticking your hand in underwater hiding place don’t always produce fish. Rather the occasional snapping turtle, snake or beaver can quickly end a noodlers banjo playing career.

Here is a great story on a writers first time noodling experience as well as the videos below.

“HOGGING” WEETOWN STYLE

Oh and before my rant….I’m listening to my just downloaded DRM free Radiohead album In Rainbows and it kicks ass!

Yahoo! Music’s Ian Rogers gave an inspirational talk to some music execs with two messages: one, I won’t build DRM anymore for you, because Yahoo customers hate it; and two, let’s focus on all the ways that free-as-in-speech music can kick enormous amounts of ass.

I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

If, on the other hand, you’ve seen the light too, there’s a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web.

By way of illustration (and via exaggeration), in a manner of speaking iTunes is a spreadsheet that plays music. It’s context-free. You just paid $10 for that album — who plays drums? I dunno, WHY DON’T YOU GO TO THE WEB TO FIND OUT, BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE THE CONTEXT IS.

Look at the picture below and determine which way the dancer is spinning - Clockwise or Counter-Clockwise

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor wrote on the NIN site that the writing is on the wall for the traditional music distribution model, saying that the music business has radically mutated from one thing to something inherently very different today and that “it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as

read more | digg story

Some of the music industry’s biggest names are considering offering their music free online following the success of the experiment by the band Radiohead to let fans download their new album without charge. Now Jamiroquai and Oasis, two major names not contracted to record labels, might be following Radiohead and giving their music for free as well

read more | digg story

Recent moves by Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and others may point to a sea change in the music industry
—one that leaves the record labels on the sideline. The head of Yahoo Music also had some tough words for the recording industry.

read more | digg story