Sarah Palin, turkey killer.

God bless Sarah Palin. As you might know, I had been having a hard time accepting the fact that she was no longer going to be in the public eye to the extent to which I had become accustomed, but this damn lady just will not go away, and is now making TV appearances that are approaching David Lynch levels of surreal weirdness. And I am loving every minute of it (except those minutes that involve violent, graphic, animal death.)

If you haven't seen this already, Palin appeared at a turkey farm in Alaska to perform the annual ritual of pardoning a turkey before thanksgiving, saving it from the merciless slaughter that unfortunately befalls the vast majority of its brethren around this time of year. Then once the pardoning ceremony had been completed, she proceeded to give a television interview while behind her, someone continued to slaughter turkeys in full view of the camera. If you can stomach it, then check it out:



THINGS I ENJOY ABOUT THIS VIDEO

-The turkey killer in the background who seems aware of the fact that he should not be doing what he is doing, and seems to be waiting for someone to tell him to stop. When no one does, he decides the best course of action is to continue massacring the turkeys while the one of the most famous women on the planet blathers on ten feet away from him without a care in the world.

-When Palin jokingly says that she "certainly will probably invite criticism for even doing this too, but at least this was fun," as a turkey in the background struggles against the guy cutting its fucking head off.

I mean, at this point, this has to be on purpose right? This is clearly some Machiavellian plot to remain in the public consciousness until she makes her White House run in 2012 right? She can't actually be this dumb, can she?

Hello??

I am a grown man and I listen to:

David Archuleta.



American Idol's absolute dominance in the world of television ratings has always perplexed and frustrated me. How is it that fantastic shows like Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, or Firefly are cruelly cancelled after a few measly episodes, and other shows like Battlestar Galactica or 30 Rock consistently stuggle to find an audience, while a glorified karaoke competition becomes a pop culture institution, effortlessly attracts millions of viewers for every episode and easily crushes all of its competition? My frustration at its massive popularity notwithstanding, I can no longer deny that the American Idol competition has turned out some pretty fantastic singers, a few of whom have become bigtime guilty pleasures of mine. I could write an entire novel about my enjoyment of Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daughtry, or Jordin Sparks, and the shame and embrassment that this causes me, but the most humiliating Idol star that I find myself consistently enjoying is season 7 runner up and tween-pop sensation David Archuleta.

David is one of thost artists that I really don't want to enjoy - I don't want strangers to hear his souful pop tunes blasting out of my headphones on the subway, and I would really rather not have to take to this blog to write about the reasons that I genuinely enjoy his music, but if I were to say that Crush is not an absolutely amazing song, or that I did not download David's self-titled solo album, then I would be a dirty, stinking liar, because it is, and I did.

Now, while I can't embed his video here for copyright reasons, I can embed the following video that I found on Best Week Ever, and perhaps even regain a tiny bit of my self-respect (although this is still unlikely.) For even though I can openly admit to enjoying the music of David Archuleta, the sadness of these little girls is like a ray of sunshine beaming onto my cruel, black heart:



Their misery sustains me.

i wanna be with you everywhere.

Discussion of the best Fleetwood Mac album pretty much starts and ends with their 1977 masterpiece Rumours, and with good cause - it's a pretty fucking great album. But 1987's Tango in the Night is also really really good. Although this was the last album they recorded with their most well-known lineup, they were still were one of the few bands who came of age in the 70s that managed to survive and even thrive during the following decade, and it's interesting to hear how they incorporated certain sonic elements of the period into their sound. Tell Me Lies is probably the most well known song off the record, but my favourite is definitely Christine McVie's Everywhere.



Not only is Everywhere a great song, but one of my favourite pastimes is creating alternate, dirty lyrics to popular songs, and this is a great one for that. The best is probably "I wanna pee on you everywhere," but I would also accept "I wanna pee in my underwear," or "I wanna urinate in your hair."

Also, what in God's name is going on in this video?? Who approved this? Only in the 80's would someone think that this video was a good idea. I blame cocaine.

the British are weird.

There is this strange phenomenon here in England where lots of classic films get remade for the stage. For instance, there is an adaptation of Rain Man starring Josh Hartnett. There is an Edward Scissorhands musical. A stage version of Wizard of Oz. And that's all well and good, but after a certain point it starts to get a little bizarre:

pop quiz, hotshot.

What do you do when you are awake at 4:30 in the morning, trying to acclimate yourself to a foreign timezone, and the person you are sharing a hotel room starts blasting Phil Collins' 80s hit Sussudio? So, what do you do? What do you do??

The answer is nothing, because Sussudio is fucking amazing. Even if it does bring back disturbing memories of Christian Bale's threesome scene from American Psycho.

jetlagged thoughts on 30 Rock.

So today I arrived back in the UK, where I will be spending the next several weeks on band business. The flight was pretty good - special thanks to the cool flight attendant who kept giving me bottles of wine, even as we were being served our breakfast danish and yogurt. I never knew his name, but damnit, I will never forget that man. Besides getting inappropriately drunk, I also spent a good chunk of the 6 hours it took to get here catching up on the new season of 30 Rock, and in an effort to remain relevant as a blogger despite the fact that I'm going to be pretty busy over the next little while with my real job, I thought I would weigh in with my thoughts on that.

I've mentioned before that 30 Rock is easily one of the best shows on television, and up until now, has gone largely unnoticed by the large audiences that it needs to attract in order to remain on the air. However, the show has been racking up Emmy awards, and over the summer Tina Fey became a bit of a culural sensation with her Sarah Palin impression on the resurgent SNL, so it seems like 3o Rock is poised to finally attract the huge audience numbers that it deserves. Yet its clear that this is something that is weighing heavily on Fey and the rest of the writers on the show, as it seems to me that the first few episodes have been designed to introduce the show's characters and unique brand of humour to new viewers. While I understand the need to do this, this is just a bit frustrating to people like me who have been watching and loving the show from the very beginning. This is not to say that the first few episodes haven't been solid, I just sometimes wish the show could return to the simplicity that made it so great in the first season (which if you haven't seen it, is an utter comedic masterpiece. I recently rewatched it and was consistently shocked at how often I was reduced to fits teary-eyed hysterics.) For instance, I definitely enjoyed Oprah's cameo as herself in episode 2, and Jennifer Aniston's turn as a crazy, hat designing, sexual deviant in episode 3 was also pretty great, but I feel like over the last 2 seasons the show has relied way too much on stunt casting in order to drive in ratings, while some of the weekly characters, specifically Scott Adsit's depressed producer Pete, or Lonny Ross's hilarious Josh Girard, are being criminally underused.

Anyways, I'm not claiming that 30 Rock has jumped the shark or anything, I just wish that more people watched the show so it didn't have to try so hard to get people to watch it. That being said, a flawed 30 Rock is still better than 98% of what is on television these days, and despite my trepidation, I am still really excited to see what the rest of this season has in store. So if you don't watch it already, I give this show my highest possible recommendation, please start watching it so it doesn't get cancelled and replaced with a show starring Jim Belushi whose main theme is that men = stupid. We already know that, Jim. Let's move on.

i'm down for whatever.

Well, since I've finally passed the century mark in number of posts, I figure I should finally post the song that inspired the name of this blog. The Get Up Kids are not my favourite band, but I do positively associate their music with a particular point in my adolescence which is comforting in many ways, and they did play a part in inspiring me to start playing in bands myself, which has worked out pretty well for me thus far. So here's Action and Action by The Get Up Kids: