Hello Again, Hello...

Hello blogosphere. It's your favorite morbidly obese pop culture geek living in Kennesaw, GA. Sorry for the delay in postings. Believe it or not, I have a life apart from posting my rantings and ravings about my opinions online. Of course, it should be noted that the majority of this blogger's free time away from work consists mainly of team trivia and karaoke. You can go ahead and say it; that makes me sexy. Before I go on with my next post, which I am hoping you will enjoy, I feel I need to put some closure on just a few issues and perhaps add to others that have been discussed. I promise it will be brief, as the original blogs required enough reading. I am not saying the posts won't be as long anymore, but I will try and control myself.

Here we go...

The Tom Waits Album Review:

I had written and rewritten an unpublished album review for Tom Waits' three-disc masterpiece Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards, and I made mention of it not only here but on my MySpace page and to all my buddies out there who asked about the album. It is now nearly 8 months into 2007, and the album has been out there for quite some time. In my opinion, this would make any newly released review of the album a bit outdated. Therefore, I have dropped that post altogether, suffice it to say, the album is great and you should buy it.

Our Generation's Very Own Bob Dylan, Paris Hilton:

Every now and then, in the midst of the day-to-day toil of life, you have to look for the little things that bring a song to your heart and a kick in your step. For my money, I just can't help but cheer up at the visual image of Paris Hilton, crying for her mommy and bawling her eyes out as the authorities whisked her away. I always thought that she had the Chevy Chase catch phrase as a motto to her own silver-spoon-fed life: "I'm Paris Hilton, and you're not." With a slap of handcuffs on her risk, she was introduced to a sick and cruel concept that everybody else, well, almost everybody, is all too familiar with: reality.

You see, when you live your life like a Chevy Chase catch phrase, excluding the AWESOME verbal assault in the car from National Lampoon's Vacation when they are only 10 hours away from Wally World, you can only set yourself up for failure. We get it, you are Paris Hilton. You are rich, famous, kinda pretty, and easy like Sunday morning, albeit hungover from Saturday night. You have a TV show, you're in films (direct-to-video or otherwise), and you've written a book that remarkably didn't involve the use of crayons, water colors, glitter, or stickers. Even more impressive, you somehow (I have my theories) inked a deal with Warner Brothers Records to make what was, according to you and your entourage, the most important album of last year.

Why does this mentality fail? Just ask Chevy Chase how he feels, knowing that the last good work he did landed somewhere between National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Paul Simon's music video for "You Can Call Me Al". For the latter, all he had to do was sit there and lip sync a song. In reality, her TV show is banking off of her ignorance, the only movie she got good reviews in was a sex tape, her book was clever enough to tell us how we, in fact, couldn't be like her, and her album was a flop. And yet you wouldn't know she was this big of a failure, because she is still hanging out with the stars in Hollywood and nabbing front-page reports on all the celebrity magazines.

Imagine my enjoyment when the last front-page photo I saw her in showed her in the backseat of a cop car, red-faced, and crying. Yet, I should have known that it would only make my dilemma worse. After her release, she was on Larry King, talking about how innocent she really is and how she found God. Excuse me while I play the fiddle for her. If she truly found God, that's great; good for her. However, the fact that you come out saying you have never been the spoiled brat that we all know you have been insults my intelligence. Make a movie as good as Fletch, and then maybe I'll think otherwise.

Lastly, along with finding God, she says she also took the time to write about it in about 12 new songs. Terrific! Finally a new conversion that could outdo Dylan's 'Slow Train Coming'. Maybe she'll even do a soulful cover of "Gotta Serve Somebody". But wouldn't that require you to have a soul?

The Picture at the Top of this Post

His name is Neil Diamond. Laugh if you want, but he rocks hard. All the proof you need is on Hot August Night, a double live album recorded live at the Greek Theater in the early '70's. It is available at almost any CD retail chain. Buy it; you won't be sorry. It dwarfs such monumental '70's live albums as Frampton Comes Alive or Cheap Trick's At Budokan. Just be sure not to confuse it with Hot August Night II, its less than stellar sequel recorded at the point in the '80's when Neil was writing songs dedicated to extra terrestrials ("Heartlight") and middle-aged housewives would gladly leave their husbands for him.

'Til next time...