All posts in Things We Can All Do Without

Dear Hair Metal Bands,

I’ve been notic­ing that, for some crazy-ass rea­son, you’re mak­ing a come­back on that radio sta­tion that I hate to lis­ten to but have to hear when I’m in the car with my wife and kids. You know who you are, you Def Leop­ards and you Whites­nakes and you Poi­sons. I’d even throw in Twisted Sis­ter, since I keep hear­ing “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on that sta­tion and even on com­mer­cials. What’s up with this trend?

It’s prob­a­bly some “our core demo­graphic was in junior high or high school when these songs were orig­i­nally pop­u­lar, so to make them feel young again and increase rev­enue through adver­tis­ing, let’s give them the songs that were cool when they were kids” thing. Like that whole Bea­t­les Rock Band game and the “Oh God, Patrick Kennedy is quit­ting the House! What will we do with­out a Kennedy in gov­ern­ment?” thing.

But man, I hate this music. Its corny fac­tor, the lame “Eight­ies kids” being a demo­graphic of buy­ers of this crap. Hair metal was silly in 1985, why would it be any dif­fer­ent now? When you look at some of these bands’ web­sites you see that they’re just a bunch of old guys try­ing to hang on to what­ever they had 20 years ago. They prob­a­bly want the same things they got 20 years ago too: teenage girls and booze, which, if they were 20 years younger, wouldn’t seem so creepy and gross. Of course now they’re like Bad Blake from Crazy Heart, sleep­ing with mid­dle age to early AARP aged women that used to be the teenage girls they slept with back in 1985 and play­ing in venues that 20 years ago they wouldn’t want to be any­where near.

So all of you hair metal guys still try­ing to hang on (I’m also look­ing at you, Enuff Z’nuff). Man, get new lives. Rein­vent your­selves. No one would fault you. Even David Lee Roth and Dee Snider tried radio gigs. There are oth­ere things in this world besides your hit record on pop radio 20 years ago. Give it a shot, it could work.

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.

Plain White T’s! Grum­ble grum­ble grumble.

Where did you emo wannabe’s come from? Will you ever leave us? Prob­a­bly not, now that you have some other crummy 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.

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 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.