Why Won't You Just Let Me Hear It, Already???

What the hell is with the 'hidden song'? Is it necessary, really?

I got to thinking about it while I was listening to the Kings on Leon the other day in my Jeep. The end of the CD came up, I was in traffic, paying attention like I'm supposed to be doing (in actuality, I was lighting up a cigarette, updatine my FaceBook status on my Blackberry and checking out the brunette in Acura next to me. All during a red light, I might add. I'm quite the multitasker).

So, the light changes and I continue on my to wherever it was I going and several minutes go by before I realize that there is no sound, no music and all I can hear is the sound of the snow crunching underneath the tread of my vehicle. I look to the CD player and see the track seconds ticking by, so I decide to check to see if this is indeed a case of the 'hidden song'.

I begin fast forwarding and sure 'nough. Another song starts, still on the eleventh track, some four and a half minutes after the four minute original song ended. The song was a little country diddy, purdy good but the name I couldn't tell you because the god damn thing isn't listed in the jacket.

Now this got me to thinking. Is there a reason for it, who does it and has anyone been sucker punched in their lip for doing it? All good questions.

I got some answers. Not all of them, but some.

The Beatles are credited with being the first to do it. They did it on Abbey Road. 'Her Majesty' was the thirteenth track and was never listed on the UK version but did indeed show up on the U.S. version. This decision was based on the fact that people just didn't get the whole 'Paul is dead' message, heard played backwards on 'Revolution #9 and their popularity started to wain, so they had to do something creative like place a song on an album that no one could find. This tactic proved to save their careers (except of course Ringos.) Funny sidenote to this whole story, Paul happens to be the only one alive, whether in life or career. Ha ha ha!!!

Other reason that artists do it is as simple as just to surprise the fans with a hidden 'gem', just to be sneaky, I guess. Or scare the bejeezus out them. Wierd Al Yankovic tried this after his song 'Bite Me' ended. A ten minute pause ensued before the new song came on, thus scaring the shit out of the listener because they had gone into a kneeling position, thanking God that the CD was finally over when all of a sudden a new one came on.

The Ramones, the Clash, Lauryn Hill have all done it and the Counting Crows and Marilyn Manson have done it countless times. The Blur did it, calling the song effectively enough 'Me, White Noise'. Cold Play did it a couple times on their latest album, 'Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends'. I have to presume they did this because they didn't have any money left to actually put the names of the 'hidden songs' anywhere on the jacket because the whole budget for the album art went to just the name of the album itself.

So as you can tell, I put a lot of research into figuring this out and I still don't get it. It confuses and frustrates me, which I think might be a 'hidden' reason for the artist doing it.

Let me put into another sort of perspective. A demonstration of how I see a 'hidden song', a comparison to what hiding a song might be if an author did the same thing. Here goes.

After writing in a normal font, now I've changed to the smallest possible one I could come up with. It probably has you pissed off, because you're desperately straining to see it, and if your like me, your vision isn't so good any more so it makes it a major pain in the ass. You're probably having to get right up close to your monitor, maybe rubbing your eyes trying to focus on a type set that's way to fuckin' small, and if I was writing in a normal font, you wouldn't want to walk away, maybe never reading my blog again. Right?

Okay, back to normal. So you see, the product may be there but why in the hell should we have to strain to find it? Sucks!!! Please don't do it.

Which leads me to the fact that the next time I'm checking out the hotty in the car over from me and I suddenly find myself in a state of musical void, you can count on that I'll be cussing those hippy sons of bitches and not so secretly hoping there is someone that has taken me up on my proposition of punching these punkass' in their face.

David Caruso must die!!!

I watch way too much CSI-Miami.

For one thing, it's on all the damn time, doesn't matter if it's prime time or three in the morning. It's on. And since I'm an imsomniac (and pyro, but thats a different story) I can't help flipping channels, always finding my way to the South Beach. For obvious reasons, I like the show, though, just as everyone else must, due to the constant and steady high ratings. The scenery, the bikinis, the detail to rotting corpses and flights of slugs intercepting beating aortas, the bikinis (said that already, didn't I?), the cool Hummers that speed across the long ocean bridges, and especially the hot little blonde investigator played by Emily Procter with her tight little butt and southern accent. These are the main reasons that bring me back, time and time again.

But there are things that drive me nuts, to the point where I would like to pick up the t.v. and drop it on the remote, crushing it into tiny plastic pieces, putting me out of my misery.

The black Chief Medical Examiner, Alexx Woods. Why the fuck does she have to talk to the bodies that have sawed open chests or the front lobe of there brain blown to mush? Not just that she talks to them but she talks to them as if they were past sex partners. Yick!!!

Goes like this, in screenplay format.

Int-Morgue

A beautiful hispanic thirty year old woman lays on the cold, metal examiners table. CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER, ALEXX WOODS strokes the woman temple, slowly moving down her cheek, her neck...

ALEXX WOODS

Oh, sweety, why? Why does this always happen to the beautiful ones?

A tear begins welling up in her eye.

ALEXX WOODS

God, baby, we could have had it all.

As she lays her head between the hispanic womans ample cleavage, the door opens and in walks DET. HORATIO CAINE.

HORATIO CAINE

Uh...uh. You, you aren't molesting the vic again are you?

Speaking of David Caruso. God! Why!? What made the producers decide this guy should be cast as the lead character? Am I the only one that thinks this guy should quietly slink away into the Florida Everglades and be swallowed up whole by a hungry alligator?

What the hell is with the idiotic one liners? Makes me want to be the victim of a drive by shooting in southern Florida, where I would be the guy lying on the table with the black coroner touching me in indecent locations. Okay, I understand the cheezy one liners began with the likes of Stallone's Rambo character or Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies, but good god damn, this is David Caruso. The tilting of his head, whipping off his Silhouette sunglasses and proclaiming to the smug, yuppie sailboat owner, that he knows raped and killed the 18 year old college student on spring break, "Oh, the DNA will put you there. Count on it." Then he gives that 'make-you-wanna-rip-my-spleen-out-with-a-spoon' grin before he stiffly walks away.

And I understand that there are writers that make this shit up, but even Stallone pulled it off better then David Caruson. At least you walked out of the theater enjoying the blood shed and the cool slo-mo shots of his overly built up biceps leading to a 22 inch knife that you knew was going to slice some Vietnamese throat. The point is, even with the written in one liners, David Caruso isn't a pimple on Stallones ass.

And, as far as I'm concerned, Clint was the only guy that could pull off the one liners. Spaghetti westerns, Dirty Harry. Now that guy was a stud in his day, and even now he could still pistol whip Caruoso into oblivion with a good, "Go ahead, make my day!"

So Caruso, go away, and let someone that can actually act, that can step into the role and pull off the one liners, be the guy for a while. Then at least I'll know that when I'm lying awake, not able to sleep and watching the fake scientific study of the maimed and murdered beautiful people of South Beach, knowing I'll be exhausted in morning, I won't have completly wasted my time.

Not completely.

Pizza Delivery Guy

I was having a smoke on the back porch the other day, minding my own business, when a sort of epiphany came to me.

Two actually.

First off, I am bored. A comatose type of boredom. Work is boring the snot out of me. I barely have an ounce of social life to speak of, and recently I'm finding that Joe Camel is becoming my best friend. This is the kind of boredom that make you think and do things that you might not normally think. The kind of boredom that isn't coralled by just sitting in front of the television and subconsciously flipping from station to station and chowing on a whole bag of Buffalo flavored Doritos, until sleep deprivation takes over.

Secondly, probably because I'm bored but, I was thinking I should do something different with my life, professionally that is and the it struck me that I want to be a pizza delivery person!

Whaaa...???

Sounds weird right but bare with me. I don't want to be a delivery guy for the obvious reasons like the countless hours driving around in the dark looking for addresses on houses that have burnt out front porch lights, or the great money, or the expense of paying huge gas prices on a vehicle that gets 12mpg. Not even for the fringe benefit of a free meal each self-satisfying night on the job.

Nope. None of those more than rewarding reasons have anything to do with it.

No, the reason I want to be a pizza delivery guy is I am sure I would be that would be that one delivery dude that would get all the hot chicks.

You can see it, right?-------------------------------------------->

You might wonder why a man of my age, would be saying such things and you probably are saying that I'm being absurd, but...this is my blog and this is my story so if you don't like it, well...keep reading, 'cause it gets better.

I wouldn't only be a pizza delivery guy that gets all the horny women that show at the front door wearing pink nighties and sexy Santa teddies, although that all sounds nice but my story is a whole lot better than that.

I would be the pizza delivery guy from...Penthouse Forum. Yep, the guy you always see in the movies and you comment that never happens in real life, but damn, you sure would enjoy it if it did. The kind of job that could only be made up in the insides of smut mag.

I figure I would show up at the front door and there would be the local college cheerleading squad having a slumber party, wearing only panties and watching slasher flicks. I would stroll on in, cool as ice, three of them would hop up off their sleeping bags, run over to me, giggling and would offer up a joint. After a few minutes I would be as high as they were. The large breasted, head cheerleader would grab me by my hand, leading me toward the couch where the other two had stripped down to their birthday suits and they would start yanking at my belt, pulling my....

Then the other scenario involving the horny MILFS (two of them) drinking a brilliantly dark red wine, one recently divorced, the other consoling her. I would drop the box on the kitchen counter, turn to leave when I would notice the divorcee would have big puppy dog tears rolling down the cheek of the divorcee and I'd ask "Why the long face, sweetheart?" She would slip up real close, shove a twenty in my front pocket, and say "Hey big boy, that's not what appears to be long..."

Good Lord, I really must be bored. Where the hell is the Doritos and remote control?

WTF ;)~

What ever happened to conversation? Just two people sitting in front of each other and saying whats on their minds. It seems we've become a society of retards that can't do this simple task any longer, but have to rely on other means to get our thoughts across.

Now, as a guy, I'm not saying I necessarily want this to go on while I'm trying to read the Sunday paper. Not while I'm getting my morning absorption of useless sports information and choking down a bowl of Cookie Crisp and gulping at my quad shot mocha. Not for this talking thing to take place. I don't want to be asked questions, whined at, made face at, and I sure as shit don't want to hear that you want me to put up the interior molding of your asshole fathers house that we rent from!

So, please, for the love of God, don't bother me during that time.

What I'm really talking about here is, when something is important and when the time is right, how 'bout just saying, "Hey, what ya want for dinner?" or "You want to go to the lake this weekend?" or "Go fuck yourself!" See how easy that is? When put in those terms there is no deciphering, no question of what is meant. I don't need to try and figure out what the hell is really trying to be said. After all, I am a guy and can only take so much blathering.

Then, even more than all that, let's all stop with the conversational texting. K? For a couple of reasons. First off, my fingers and brain do not, on any level, think alike. They don't work together and I suspect there has been an ongoing quarrel between them since just after Dick Cheney lost his conscience (no, that is not at all true. He lost that around the turn of the twentieth century, long before I was a twinkle). And then there is the problem of trying to communicate by way of texting; it comes out jumbled and full of all kinds of symbols that only the ancient Egyptians would understand. They'd be walking through a dark, cavernous hallway, somewhere inside a pyramid, and King Tut would say, "Hey what the hell is that?! All of his followers would look to see what the young king was looking at and they'd see a crude drawing of a young pharaoh getting it on with a goat. General laughter amongst them all would ensue, and then in order for their imminent deaths not to take place they would have to grab him, wrap him and stuff him in a large, gold casket, that eerily kinda looked like him.

It's all the symbols and shortened words that suck! LOL, ;), TTYL, fyi, Ur, gtg, ;(, LMAO!, thx, etc, etc. WTF!!!! (interpretation-What The Fuck!!!!)

And don't even get me started on the late night 'drunk texting'. BITCH!!!! (interpretation-BITCH!!!!)

It isn't so much that text is a bad thing. By no means is it evil, or the end of the world. It's just been mismanaged thus far. It's a tool, and a useful one in communicating with another person, if you keep it short, folks.

Example:

My text to a buddy - 'meet me at the Doors to watch the Zags'.

My buddies text back - 'K, cool;)~'. See how he ended it with that fuckin' stupid symbol?

My text back - 'Your a fag!'

Now, notice the symbol I sent back? Mine had a lot more meaning, right? A good old fashioned exclamation point to emphasize that I think he's a fag. Regardless, in the end, it was short, to the point and highly effective exchange of messages that led us to the Swinging Doors, drinking a pitcher, chowing on wings and watching the Zags stomp North Carolina for the national championship;)

Guilty Primates

I found a gorilla suit recently, the day after Halloween actually. It was dangling outside of the cardboard recycling dumpster out back of my work. At the time I saw the arm of the this fake primate hanging out I worried that, perhaps, just maybe there might have been an actual person inside the suit, maybe passed out drunk or seriously wounded. I cautiously opened the top of the dumpster, and sure enough, staring at me was the face of a mean looking gorilla, all fangs and nappy fur. So I did what any sane, concerned and cautious person would do. I found a rotted, three foot, 2x4 laying in the alley and stepped back toward the dumpster, took a deep breath and proceeded to beat the wholly living shit out it, first in the torso, then when I got no reaction, I began banging it over the head as hard as I could.

Still nothing.

So, then, I did the second thing that any person in my situation would do. I pulled it out of the recycling bin and threw it in the back of my Jeep.

But after several days of this ugly, hairy beast, staring back at me through my rear view mirror, it's large claw hanging over the back seat, it got me to thinking. Why would this suit be just tossed aside like an ugly stepchild? Thrown away like last months left over Chinese take-out? Hidden away in a back alley trash can as if it...

Then it came to me! This monkey suit must have committed some heinous crime against society like only a monkey suit could. Made sense. No one, in there right mind throws away a perfectly good costume that probably cost a Brinks truckload of cash. But what kind of crime? I'm no CSI, but with closer inspection I detected no blood spatter, no gun powder residue, and no stab wounds. Not even DNA under the finger nails to suggest a struggle ever took place. Nothing evident that should make me suspicious, but I wasn't convinced.

At this time I started checking the local paper looking for some sort of clue that this gorilla should be deported back to the Congo. This went on for several days but nothing to implicate this mangy beast in any crime turned up, but other interesting things did. I've known this for a long time, but my research turned up other tidbits of fact that I might have known in the past but had forgotten.

I found proof that people truly are idiots.

For instance, Scott Bennett, 48, from Sioux City, Iowa not only lost an eye in a barfight in July at his local watering hole, but several months later he decided to go back, get in another fight where he ended up losing his other eye. Hey Scott!!! Yooo hooo...we only have two eyes and they're our primary source of vision. Dumbass!

Then there were the two 18 yr old idiots from Salina, Kansas, that panicked when police showed up at there trailer park (need I continue) and instead of flushing their drugs down the toilet or hiding it in that ceiling vent that all trailers have, they decided to toss them out the window. Cops saw this and arrested them. Ha ha!!! Thing is the authorities were there to serve a warrant on the neighbors in the tornado target next door.

But, my favorite is this story, but not necessarily because he's the biggest idiot that exists, although he would be a close runner-up, but because what he did was so cool (don't try this at home, kids). Michael Mills of Chesapeake, Virginy, decided rather than be caught by the cops on whatever charges (doesn't matter really), he would try at all cost to evade them. So, in his speeding car, when he approached a drawbridge that was lowering, but needless to say, was not all the way down, he decided to try to jump from one side of the bridge to the other. Michael didn't make it, but dang if he wasn't heard giving a good ole Bo and Luke Duke holler as he reached the pinnacle of his stunt, before, plunging into the river. He survived but can you imagine the story he'll have to tell while he's awaiting trial in county lock-up?

So maybe, just maybe, I'm over analyzing what might have gone on that Halloween, what my fake monkey might have done. Probably didn't rape, pillage, plunder or terrorize a village of natives, and by God, if he did, he surly didn't caught, but if anyone asks me, he did all that, and then some.

The reality is...

It's my day off! I have my quad shot mocha in front of me...ahhh! Cheerio spill cleaned up...damn it!! I have my favorite grungy flannel shirt on that I don't believe has been washed since Kurt Cobain lived. Remote control in hand...yes! Life couldn't get better.

After catching up on the ESPN highlight reels and meaniless opinions and checking in to see how bad the Dow is tankin', I go on to other seventeen thousand channels. Just moving around, looking for something, anything, to watch, but jeez, there just doesn't seem that there is anything of value on the tube anymore. Nothing.

Not that there was a whole lot to choose from back in the day. Hell, there was only three channels to choose from, and PBS, but that doesn't count. And kids don't have dad screaming "Get up you lazy shit and change the channel. Christ, you know 'All in the Family' is on, same time, everyweek! And while your up get me an 'Oly!" So you change the 'knob' and slink into the kitchen toward the fridge, you hear him laughing, saying, "Damn'd if that Archie Bunker don't have the world figger'd out."

Okay...I understand that it is Wednesday afternoon. And Regis was off the air before I ever woke up, but I'm bored and I want to watch something. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. So I continue.

What I find is disturbing. There's the normal crap. Soaps for instance. They've been on the air since the invent of the televison arguably by Philo Taylor Farmsworth (arguably because there was this guy named Vladimir Kosma Zworykin who might have invented it...but his name is too hard to prounounce). Farmsworth was a privately funded Utah farmboy who first transmitted television signals in 1927 in order for the Republican National Convention to go off without a hitch so all the NRA and pro-lifers could watch from the comfort of their high horses. Then there are the news channels that broadcast the same stories over and over til, finally, an Amtrak derails in Toledo, or a three legged cat named Tripod gets stuck in a tree somewhere other than a place where I'm at, so why the hell should I care?

I flip on, but I am finding that I shouldn't have because what happens next is beyond frightening...the realization that the world is doomed, Armageddon (without Ben Affleck), the second coming of Christ is apon us.

Reality Television!!!!

Did you know that not only does reality t.v. rule the airwaves during primetime, but it is king during the day as well? MTV, Bravo, VH1, CMT and Paris Hilton TV. Celebrity Chef, The Pick-Up Artist, Top Model, 20 Greatest Celebrity Fights, Made, Celebrity Rehab, Brett Michaels Creates a New Strain of VD (OK...I made that one up, but do you really think we'll have to wait too much longer before it is reality?). Why can't there be more sitcoms on like Scrubs or Family Guy re-runs or Dane Cook stand-up broadcasts or a good movie on, even one I've seen a dozen times. Heck, even more Judge Judy during the day would be better than the faux reality that litters the airwaves.

Entertainment on television. Rembember what that meant? Don't know about you but sometimes I find myself beginning to forget.

It' all too much. I think I'll grab myself a can of 'Oly and take a nap.

Black T-shirt

I'd like to start my latest diatribe by quoting Ben Folds, one of the greatest philosophers of our time.

"Fuck you too. Give me my money back, Give me my money back, you bitch. And don't forget to give me back my black t-shirt."

Now, that being said and out of the way, I will forewarn you that this posting was to be all about me pissing and moaning, griping, slinging monkey shit, and basically tearing my ex-fiance a new one, but....I decided that was boring and I just might chase away my viewers (all three of them). Sure, I haven't got my t.v. or my tools back from her, nor my coffee pot, and bamboo plant. I won't bitch about the restraining order or the 3 a.m. phone calls asking for help because her Victoria Secrets are walking away from her in the hands of a man she's never met before, after waking up in a Sex on the Beach haze, in the middle of the Tomato Street parking lot. That is all so trite, juvenile and lazy of me to continue on that path.

So instead, I thought I'd discuss a strange desire I have. No, you sickos, it doesn't involve Crisco and Saran Wrap. That's for a another day.

No...what I'm talking about is living through a hurricane. I got the idea from a Carl Hiassen book. See there was a character by the name of Skink, an ex Florida governor that goes rogue/hermit on the hanging chad state. Skink, now he plays a recurring part in Carl Hiassen books, doing all kinds of crazy acts, avenging the mangroves that people so easily desecrate and roasting up all kinds of road kill morsels along the way. But it was at the moment that he ties himself to the girders of a bridge before a Category 3 hits that made me start thinking about that hurricane thingy.

Okay, my plan isn't exactly to duct tape myself to an immovable object and take the full brunt of the Gods devastating destruction, but more like live through it by hanging with several other dozen crazy SOB's in a bar in Key West. You know the people I'm talking about. You see them every time a bad ass storm rolls through the Caribbean. They hang out drinking cheap beer and taking shots, laughing, and taking interviews with the news media any chance they can get.

"So, why are you not heeding the advice of the Monroe County authorities and the Key West police department and evacuating the island?" Katy, the pretty blond reporter from channel 4 news asks, obviously nervous about the sixty mile an hour gusts.

A drunken man wearing plaid shorts, a Dale Jr. ball cap, a t-shirt that reads REDRUM Drinking Team and double fisting two bottles of Corona responds, "Cuz, dude, don't you see this?"

"What?" Katy innocently asks.

"This," wildly flailing his arms at nothing in paticular, twirling his body like a tornado produced from the current natural disaster, nearly braining the pretty reporter. "The wind, the waves, man. Frickin' sweet!"

"Now back to you Charlie," the beautiful but very frazzled Katy says, quickly ending her interview, the drunk man seen in the background running out of the picture with surf board in one hand, still clutching one of his cerzesas in the other.

Now you have to see what I'm talking about, right? To be in the middle of insanity, palm trees being shredded, mailboxs moving parallel to the ground, the stray cow mooing its way upwardly and out of the picture (wait, that was Twister), holding on to the brass bar rail for dear life, and having a ball at the same time. My God, think of the pictures and stories (the hangover) that would come from that night of celebrating. What could constitute a better time?

One day maybe I'll find out but I do know it won't be the same without my black t-shirt.

The State of the Union

This is my first of many spewings and you may or may not like it but here I am, so lets get on with it already.
We have a new president! We could talk about that, and on Nov. 5th that is what is expected, isn't it? The economy, the wars, global warming, healthcare, education and same sex marriage. All that is on the minds of Americans. Hell...Fox, MSNBC, John Stewart, Yahoo and every other outlet is talking about us making history, USA first black president, so why shouldn't I?
'Cause I don't wanna! That's why.
Not that it isn't important, because it is and I know there are many that might stone me for expressing this out loud, but I think there are others that are sick and dang'd tired of it. Besides, ain't there other issues that are just as important?
Take for instance, Coors Light new 'vent' can. Brilliant!?
Or the word spatula. Now I know what it does and the reason for it and why it is important. I do, really. How are we flippin' our flapjacks on Sunday mornings without one, but instead of thinking of the purpose, let's just think of the name itself. Where the hell did that come from? I have to think it was a dying mans last words, but I don't know.
Why does Nomar Garciaparra do that weird adjusting thing with his batting glove before he steps up to the plate, before each and every pitch? Annoying!
That little scruffy dog in the backyard. Why does she eat everything (and I do mean everything) that moves, crawls or just looks edible?
Why is a cigarette great after sex?
Is a motorcycle just not large enough to activate the green light at one in the morning?
Or, does the toilet bowl water really flow the opposite direction in the other hemisphere?
So, are you starting to see what I mean? There are just as many important things to think about in these harsh times, when people are losing there 401k's, our sick are paying way too much for good healthcare, the earth is warming up (or isn't), our kids aren't getting the education they deserve and we're losing soldiers lives on a daily basis.
Ya...maybe not.