Everyone has their own holiday traditions and that includes music.  Whether you’re the type that tunes into the 24/7 radio broadcasts for the entire month, or you have a small collection of favorites that briefly come out for their annual appearance, the sounds of the holidays are inescapable.   The songs that we associate with Christmas are as unique as the individuals listening.  Everyone has favorites linked to specific memories and it’s best not to question preferences.  The holidays are already tense enough.  No need to pile a musical debate on top of political differences, generational gaps, and vegetarians at the dinner table. Continue Reading

If you’ve ever purchased tickets from Ticketmaster (TM) you already know that it’s a multi-step process that goes something like this:

Step 1: Search for the artist (e.g. “the Biebs,” “Rick Astley,” or “Ratt”)

Step 2: Select the quantity and location/price range for the tickets.

Step 3: Decipher an impossibly vague reCAPTCHA security phrase that appears to have been scrawled by heavily sedated kindergartner with mittens on.  (Note:  If during this step you have never clicked the “Vision Impaired” option, you really should.  A very nice computer lady reads a series of words and numbers while a garbled message from Satan plays in the background, ensuring no computers are able to pose as humans.  Scarred for life.) Continue Reading

You remember last year when you picked your shitty Halloween costume up off the floor the morning after and said to yourself, “Next year I’m gonna do better.”  Well, what did you come up with?  That’s right, nothing.  All the perfect ideas that came to you in dreams throughout the year were but infinitesimal doses of creativity, lost in a sea of mundane details. Continue Reading

After 3 years of testing and research and months of second-guessing, re-research, re-testing, and time-biding the spokesman for CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), Antonio Eriditato announced on Thursday that light may have just been dethroned as “the fastest shit¹ in the universe”².  Neutrinos, which are elementary subatomic particles, were fired from the CERN laboratory (in Geneva, Switzerland) and arrived at the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy approximately 60 nanoseconds faster than if they had been traveling light speed.  “Big whoop, Poindexter.”  Big whoop is right, Spicoli.  Here’s why. Continue Reading

This past weekend saw the return of NFL Football and while I’m not an avid follower, I realize that it does command the attention of millions of Americans; some to the point they will disregard a cardiologist’s opinion, claiming it’s “some Grey’s Anatomy mumbo jumbo”.

Host:     Hey Ted, easy on the brats.  Didn’t you just see a doctor about your heart?

Ted:       Yeah, but I think he’s full of it.  Kept talkin’ about “murmuring” and something about getting “Kodiak arrested”, but I ain’t a sloppy drunk bear so I’m good.  Can you hand me a Coors?  Oh, make sure it’s one with a wide mouth so I can ladle some of this nacho cheese in there.  Man, FOOTBALL SEASON IS SO AWESOME!! Continue Reading

We did it!!  Go us!!  Go USA!!  Totally smoked that whole debt ceiling deal.   Am I right?  Am I right?!

No, I’m a liberal.  And no, we did not “smoke that whole debt ceiling deal.”

Rather, the entire world watched Congress stumble and trip over itself like a shitcanned Bambi at Disney on Ice.  But unlike a fumbling fawn, the scene was not a rollicking LOL moment and it did not end with Bambi mauling the hunter who shot his mom (Dick Cheney).  I’ve never seen Bambi, but I’m pretty sure this is how it ends…..right? Continue Reading

Since I’ve gone high and mighty on etiquette lately, I figured I would combine my love for consideration of others with my love of music.  A topic familiar to nearly everyone on the planet, the pros and cons of the jukebox could be argued for a lifetime.  Sure, they prevent bar owners/workers from continuously subjecting patrons to the Clear Channel Top 10 until I gouge out my eyeballs with a pool cue because I can’t take another Gaga block party, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other tunage tyrants out there.  The great irony of the jukebox is that even if a person barely has control over his own bodily functions, he can control the music for an entire establishment.  It’s a passive-aggressive wonderland that offers all the benefits of nuclear warfare. Continue Reading