happy thanksgiving

i hope everyone has a great holiday-be back with more ranting next week,thanks for saying hi-

(please note family ear heritage kicking in!)

young country as an enigma wrapped inside a fuddruckers

let me define young country thru my eyes-i googled the term and it doesn't really seem to exist as anything tangible-so i'll try and explain if you aren't familiar (garth brooks to the left throwing the javelin at OSU)

young country( as a timeline)-well, around the 70's things started to get a little fishy with your novelty hits and crossovers (um your charlie rich, your mickey gilley uh, yeah, your ray stevens) the 80s were about slicking it up but keeping it real (alabama, conway twitty, your ronnie milsap if you will) the 90's i'm afraid is when we had a tough little marketing major from stillwater, oklahoma named garth brooks appear -you can't pin the entire, final demolition of real country on garth, just like you can't pin the entire holocaust on hitler, but you can make a fine argument. With his degree in marketing tucked under his saddle, the untalented mr. brooks unleashed his cracker barrel touchstone 'no fences' on society, forever destroying any chance real country music had left -oh sure, a dwight yoakam pops up here or an alison krauss pops up there, but that's pure anomaly. This is when 10's of thousands of sorority girls took notice of the hats and belt buckles -this is when garth was hosting frickin' SNL -this is when hank sr started spinning so fast in his coffin that an F5 twister erupted from the Oakwood Annex Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama. To today, well- i just can't say what it's turned into -it is such a disfigured, wholly unrecognizable abortion that it leaves no trace of the stark, genuinely moving art form my dad forced on me.

i didn't mean to lament so much on the death of country music -that's been done a billion times-the real mystery here is, young country- who buys it and why?who makes it and why?

first i gotta tell you, whenever i was on the road, we would always tune in one of these stations for laughs- the flag, the lord, cold beer, takin' a stand, sexy tractors, lovin' dirt roads! then into the right now- the bizarre transition into emasculated country male singer-singing about his woman's monthly cycle, how she takes the kids to soccer practice (didn't bob wills cover this ground already?)and he's just gosh dang de durned boodle doodle doodle amazed at his baby's love for him. When did the young country hotshot hand over the keys to his truck and his nutsack? So there's that, i mean it's just slumming it for laughs and you would never buy something like this, it's just snarky pass the time bs-but MILLIONS do-they think it's real-they don't appear to understand these songs are being written in conference rooms across america by a team of marketing geniuses aiming right for their rednecks. These songs mean nothing and are about nothing-please ref craig morgan's 'bonfire' for a perfect example of the crass, blatant disrespect country songwriters have for their audience currently. It's not EVEN CATCHY- WHY WOULD YOU BUY THIS-BECAUSE IT'S ABOUT PARTYING?/? IS THAT REALLY IT? yeah it is!- the genre now is whatever cliche is being hammered into the brain of american society and then you build a 'song' around it- i have a bunch i've kind of half started so here you go nashville, these are on me -'too much information' 'tell it to the hand' 'sucks to be you' 'it was my bad' 'he's been drinkin' (the kool aide) again' and the ballad for the female recording artist, (i've noticed girls don't get to be funny in young country -just serious or sassy) 'what color is the sky in your world?'

the second part is the most disturbing for me as a musician first and then as a fan. I realize nobody wants to hear that being on the road sucks and all the countless hours you spend writing, rehearsing , recording, revising , eating fast food , various intense pressures, i could go on-all i'm saying is you have to be insane to do this for any other reason than you love it with all your heart and soul- and i know these guys (your trace adkins, your toby keith, er uh your brad paisley-etc etc etc) didn't set out on this journey to be shoveling

this shit-that seems impossible - YOU COULD NOT KNOWINGLY WANT TO SING 'HONKY TONK BADONKADONK' i just can't imagine being in the booth, singing that seriously -i did one jingle my entire 'career' just to see what it was like -i felt so dirty and ashamed i literally ran home and took a bath-you could dig a ditch or landscape or help the elderly rather than record and toxify the world with one more of these calculated insults. I just don't know how you go out and sing it night after night-money ain't everthing, cowboy. As a fan of all the greats, you know who they are, it just makes me sad. I know things change and progress but that doesn't mean it has to become unlistenable feces- i love the ridiculous pop song que sara sara from 1956 and i love the ridiculous pop song womanizer now-there's still good to be found in all music from then and now is what i'm saying-except for country-and man, you used to be beautiful...

my favorites playlist

lonesome fugitive -merle haggard

lost highway-hank willilams sr

the grand tour-george jones-

why me lord-kris kristofferson

under your spell again-buck owens

sunday morning coming down-johnny cash

mind your own business-hank williams sr

she thinks i still care-george jones

there stands the glass-ted hawkins version is awesome

hello walls-willie nelson

crazy-patsy cline

she's got you-patsy cline

night life-willie nelson

don't worry about me-marty robbins

you're gonna change or i'm gonna leave-hank sr

this time-dwight yoakam

sorry you asked? -dwight yoakam

alison krauss-new favorite

alison krauss-who can blame you

that's good for now

Clifford the Big Red Fraud

Apparently, this clifford is a dog that has grown to the size of Kong because emily loved him so. This abomination then drives the howards out of their swank brownstone because obviously they can't afford the bulldozer it would require to scoop his messes. After hbomb and i sat thru perhaps the worst, most tone deaf theme song in television history, we settled in for what i hoped what would be a quiet, blissful 30 minutes of mild anesthesia. Today's episode was entitled 'fishing lessons' but in all actuality, it was a lesson learned it shotty character development and stereotypically reinforced gender roles. Seems that charlie likes to fish and promises to show emily how. Emily then of course has dreams about it and shows up the next day for her lesson- but then just like a man, charlie forgets his commitment and blows her off to fly his buddy's glider. Emily drops everything to change plans for her prince and they head to the park to fly the plane.

What are we teaching our kids here? Should emily also keep 5 paces behind charile? Deplorable. Oh, the heartbreak continues, when emily goes out and buys several books on fishing because charlie reschedules for the next day-Guess what ? Charlie hears about the hot new rope swing being put up by emilys jealous, manipulative 'friend' jenna- Ain't it always the way ? Teaching guys to be wary of the slightly less attractive best friend always 3rd wheeling it is a true life lesson to be learned, but isn't this slightly advanced information??

Emily constantly cries on an animal's shoulder that in real life (or in a bruckheimer film) would have been caged and experimented on by the government in the first frame.

Emily ends up alone fishing by herself, putting her sandwich on her line as bait. I can't even begin to get into everything wrong with this cluster so i'll just stop here. But you should know Charlie finally shows up, offers a half assed apology you know he doesn't mean, and then instructs Emily on the man's oldest and most studied craft-LYING-Thanks charile, go ahead and tell them we're not really listening about their day as well. I will say that at least the show instructs children to catch and release. You would never want to eat something as precious and as adorable as a bass.

i still don't know why clifford was even in this episode or why he's around at all

and hbomb was infuriated 90 seconds in- we switched back to college football which works so much better on all levels -

irobot roomba dog agitator

ok, so you know the tired bit on how we're all supposed to have jetpacks by now, right? well, i guess when i sat down with my box of white and whitman's sampler in front my computer that DOES NOT TAKE DICTATION YET (thanks shatner for leading me astray in so many areas), i was hoping this fantasy was inching closer with the roomba- haven't you always wanted a robot to vacuum your house? or replace you when asked to watch abc's brothers and sisters? if you resemble a gray and silver deep dish pizza, you could get away with it, otherwise you're screwed.

so, i admit it i was a little tipsy during a woot off ( you know about woot?-i was real late on this-woot.com) and the irobot roomba is always offered on this site at a great discount. Since i'm not packing up my gear at 230 a.m. anymore and collecting my apple stand money from the club, i need something to do when i'm drinking in the early morning hours.

Sorry, this is a review of the roomba, not some crazy, pathetic rant on my 3 highs and 19099283747 lows in the music biz. If your idea of the future is an electronic bar stool whizzing around your living room and scaring the holy hell out of your dogs but not cleaning up anything worth a damn, then for you, the future is now. The roomba kinda gathers dog hair and whatever else it finds in a little pile and then just leaves it there. Like if you wanted somebody to rake your house into piles of disgusting garbage for you so you could get it later. with a REAL vacuum cleaner. That's about all it really does, and it gets stuck under couches and chairs constantly-it makes this unnerving high pitched revving noise when caught and you feel guilty and responsible and you run and bail out yet another person in your life that's let you down. Your latest piece of buyers remorse also has a feature called 'spot clean' that i must say, is at least, hilarious. When you press 'spot'- the vacuum starts spinning in a tiny circle and then gradually widens its diameter, doing nothing but looking even more drunk than i was when i bought it.

I would say it was almost worth the money just to watch my dogs go totally insane during operation, but i get the same reaction out of them when i chase them around with a broom that was 105 dollars cheaper.

also, don't drink and woot, you'll be sorry

www.woot.com

www.irobot.com -hahaha- i just saw on their site the lead review quote is referencing the jetsons. stupid jetpack bit........

so tired

so totally fried -20 hour day with hbomb -cg1(care giver 1) is back on the road and i am forever off it-but it went surprisingly well for all of us-i will say that when cg1 left for the airport at 445am, hbomb noticed immediately that my b cup version of the wade phillips manboob wasn't gonna cut it.....

next week: so many exciting entries -the suck ass roomba, the mystifying genre that is young country, and 'quiet desperation and skull crushing boredom; a manly mother's tale' and how tegan and sara and district 9 both restored a mom's faith in 2 morally, spiritually, and creatively bankrupt 'art' forms-love you

uppababy vista stroller

the pride and joy of all the baby paraphernalia that caregiver 1 and i have purchased is, for me, this thing- it is expensive, but it comes with a multitude of convertors so he can ride around in it until he's smoking cigarettes. (a quick aside-i have been asked by no less than 4 of my angry 19 readers to start using proper punctuation but it disrupts the flow of projectile diarrhea coming from my brain-but i will try on the next one) Back to the stroller -i'll have to admit, when we first got it, we had one of those cliche, new parenting moments-the car was running, hbomb was screaming, and we were trying to fold it up and go-i could not figure it out and my wife couldn't figure it out and we were just glaring at each other-so's i run back inside the house and get on the uppababy site and there's a handy video for people like me (slack jawed buffoons) and then we were packed up and rolling down to the firestation in no time -the stroller seems sturdier than any gm product i've ever owned and hbomb likes riding around in it most of the time-but man when he doesn't, well sir, you have a real problem on your hands- i guess the only improvement i would suggest is installing some sort of children's tylenol mister up in the top of the bassinet for going to grocery store-is that wrong? when you have ice cream and milk and hbomb starts screaming you need to get to the check out line and i mean yesterday!

the bassinet it comes with is top notch so when figuring in the price, you can feel better about that, too-he sleeps in it quite a bit, so we never got the 'real' one -the 500 dollar one you use for 3 months and then put plants in? yeah, we didn't have to do that-so it's 2 fer tuesday all up in this stroller -plus it just looks cool and manly - i hate to be so concerned with aesthetics at a time of pure survival, but when you're carrying a purse filled with diapers and barf rags it helps balance things out -like i'm carrying a purse but i'll run your ass over with this stroller if you laugh at me-you're empowered again-i want to stress -once you get the hang of folding it up, it's so easy and quick that you forget you have a baby and you're like, what am i doing with this sturdy, strange vehicle on my way to the bar? the seat can be turned facing in our out -so if you want to bond, well then bond away! or if you want him to be able to look out at the terrible world he'll have to eventually face, that's also an option -i keep it turned in for now, that way i can talk badly about you to him-he laughs and laughs and never judges the way i do....

in conclusion, if you can part with a modestly priced weekend getaway, this stroller is a true investment in his future and yours-

www.uppababy.com