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Things We Can All Do Without, Part 2: The Plain White T’s
Dear Plain White T’s,
My son has very cool tastes in music. He’s five years old and he likes Johnny Cash, Weezer, The Avett Brothers, The Pixies and other hardly-ever-on-the-charts bands. He doesn’t like girl singers, just boy singers, but the boy singers he likes by and large are pretty awesome and I’m proud to say that, yes, my son knows the words to Cash’s “Sea of Heartbreak” and The Avett Brothers “Die Die Die”.
My wife on the other hand does not always listen to cool music. She gravitates towards the ‘mix’ stations, and that’s where our trouble starts.
If you ever listen to any of these ‘mix’ stations you’ll realize that they are pretty much easy listening for 30 year olds. Songs you used to shake your fist in the air to, like Bon Jovi, or piano ballads from Elton John, or the official band of the ‘mix’ station, The Fray. These songs were once cool, long ago, and now are not, but these ‘mix’ stations continue to pump out these songs every hour so people listening in office buildings can hum along to something and hopefully, god willing, get them through the day.
Several months ago one of the big songs on these ‘mix’ stations was “Hey There Delilah”, a sappy syrupy love song written, I guess, to the singer’s girlfriend. The song is pretty lame, but for some reason my son, who has very cool tastes in music, loves it.
Damn you, Plain White T’s.
Where did you emo wannabe’s come from? Will you ever leave us? Probably not, now that you have some other crappy song called “1, 2, 3, 4″ on the radio, on that ‘mix’ station that my wife listens to and my son hears as my wife drives him around Dallas. Why can’t my wife listen to something awesome like Hüsker Dü or Wilco or Grandaddy or something like that? Isn’t there a law against music like this? Aren’t we closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay because of people like The Plain White T’s?
Maybe we should waterboard The Plain White T’s. That would be satisfying.
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I’m Having a Hard Time Not Saying “Frak” Anymore
When the new Battlestar Galactica came on the air several years ago one of the fun fanboy things to say was “frak“, which was the Colonial’s way of saying The F Word. You could say it and it was like an in-joke and also it didn’t really mean anything, so you could say it in front of your kids (like I did) or other in-the-know nerds.
And now that show is over. Completely over. And I can’t stop saying “frak”.
I’ll say it in the car when the kids are around. I'll say it in front of Kim,» my parents, people I don’t even know, and I can’t stop saying it. I am a junkie for “frak”.
Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer, and, for frak’s sake, help me stop saying “frak”. Pretty please?
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Things We Can All Do Without, Part 1 : Cute Colorful Expensive Rain Boots
Dear Cute Colorful Expensive Rain Boots,
Why are you a fashion trend? Who thought that taking a pair of $2 rubber rain boots and adding colorful paint was a good idea? Whoever it was has made a hell of a lot of money off of all of the moms at my oldest’s school. Doing the minimal amount of research for this post, I saw that Neiman Marcus sells a pair of rain boots for $225.00. They’re the Burberry Check Rain Boot, and I’m sure that Mr. Burberry will be laughing the whole way to the bank as some silly woman drops down her AmEx Titanium card for a pair of them.
I once bought a pair of utilitarian, black rubber ones for walking around the muddy lot that my house was being built on after destroying a pair of tennis shoes. I got them from Wal-Mart and they were worth every penny of the $8 that I spent on them 3 years ago. I still have them. Maybe I’ll wear them to school sometime to try to fit in with the trendy ladies. Then again, I’m not a lady, so they might take it as a slight or an insult that I’m wearing rain boots minus colorful painting emblazened on them.
Do we really need things like these? And why do people feel that they have to spend tons of money on something like this? It’s a free country, I know, but come on, people.
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A Post About How ‘Lost’ Does This Stupid Repetitive Dialogue Cliche
I love ‘Lost’. This current season is so great I would marry it if I wasn’t already married.
But I’ve noticed that ‘Lost’, which is probably one of the best shows currently on television, keeps doing this stupid stupid dialogue convention over and over and over until you could make a drinking game out of it. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but that’s my job, to notice the mundane and pointless.
It goes like this – two people are going somewhere on the island, doesn’t matter where, but they are alone, walking, or eating something, or listening to a record, and one of them will suddenly say a seeming non sequitor, the other will be confused, reply, “What?” or something like that, and the other person will explain. In an episode a couple of weeks ago they did it not once but three times in one episode. Like I said, you could have a drinking game.
So this is the way I would write it if I were writing the show -
Locke and Sawyer are trudging through the jungle, not a care in the world about Others or Smokey or Christian popping out or anything, just trudging through the jungle. They haven’t spoken in some time.
LOCKE – “Five.”
SAWYER – Looks around confused, focusing on LOCKE. “What’d you say?”
LOCKE – “Five. I said five, James.”
SAWYER – Still confused. “…Five what?”
LOCKE – Now confused too. “…Uh…you know, about what you said earlier. There are five. Five.”
SAWYER – Now looking peeved. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
LOCKE – Spreading his hands, ever the teacher. “About…2 hours ago we were talking about…you know, that thing we were talking…about.”
SAWYER – “John, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what “five” means.”
LOCKE – Now very confused. “You don’t?”
SAWYER – “…No.”
There is a long silence as Locke looks at Sawyer. He is very confused now, to say the least, and trying to figure out what “five” refers to.
LOCKE – “Hmm…I don’t know what “five” means either.”
Sawyer smirks. “Nice one.” He begins trudging again.
Locke stands in the jungle, then follows Sawyer. “I’ll think of what it means in a minute!”
SAWYER – “Sure you will, Sherlock.”He heads off into the jungle. Locke quizzically follows.
It would be funny. And then maybe the ‘Lost’ writers wouldn’t do it anymore.
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Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 7: Pete Delkus
So there we were, Kim and I, having a nice evening together, going to our favorite Tex-Mex haunt, Mattito’s, and it’s pretty crowded, but the weather outside is nice, not too warm, not too cool, and so Kim asks if there is any immediate seating outside, and there was, so we were led out to our table, and who is sitting at a table for 6 across from us but WFAA weather man Pete Delkus.
I have a strange history with members of the WFAA news team. Way back, when I was about 17 or so there was a guy on WFAA that did the news named Quin Mathews. One day I saw him at a CD shop, so, being the curious sort, I followed him around and would casually try to see what he was going to buy. I think it was jazz. Then I would see him at Blockbuster with a female. They both picked a video, his pick lost that night.
Then Gary Cogill and I exchanged some emails about film criticism and we even saw each other at a press screening for a Kevin Kline film that was pretty terrible. And I saw Troy Dungan in college at a Parent’s Weekend function at Baylor. But it had been a loooooooooong time since I’d seen any current WFAA team players…until Friday evening.
White shirt, pink tie. Hair looking perfect, as usual. Looked like an iced tea in a beer mug. In fact, the whole family had drinks in mugs. Three kids, two other women. The strange thing? There wasn’t a lot of talking at the table for so many people being there. Seemed kind of strange for a party of six.
The other thing that I noticed almost immediately is that the waiter that everyone else on the patio had was not attending to Delkus, party of six. They had Martin, who is one of the old timers there. He’s good. He paid attention to the Delkus party while we were waiting for refills, Delkus, party of six had refills immediately, thanks to Martin.
I guess it pays to be weather royalty in this town. Now if only us little people could get our refills in a timely manner, too.
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