To The Metal

Can’t say I agree with the votes on American Idol entirely. For starters, either Ace Young or Kevin Covais could have taken the boot last night, not Gedeon McKinney. While his performance last week wasn’t oustanding, compared to the idiotic falsetto of Young it was night and day. I couldn’t help but think that the game is completely rigged after that one. Talent got voted off the show in favor of Gavin Rossdale’s haircut.

The mistake the judges made was complimenting the falsetto last week, so when he did it again this week they stuck with their idiotic decision. The guy has no talent, just a look. Put him in a boy-band and get it over with. If anyone’s destined for a freight-train to rehab it’s that guy.

I’m hoping next week Chris Daughtry picks a song that’ll highlight his strengths a bit more. It is possible to emphasize your strengths without sounding like a broken record, perhaps something from Shinedown, Crossfade, or even Alter Bridge might do the trick. I’m sure he’ll see it out to the very end, if Ace or Kevin make it past next week I’m just going to tune into Golden Girl reruns.

Last week I decided to set up an ordinary stereo at my office desk so I could listen to the radio. It was pretty cool to begin with, as the local stations are playing gobs of Avenged Sevenfold, NIN, Korn, etc…

But then every day… hearing the same songs… It made me realize that I do not want Heavy Metal to make a comeback into the popular music arena like it was in the 80s. As much as I love the music, WRRV has me on the verge of hating Korn and Avenged Sevenfold, two acts which I have always been a fan of.

Every time I interact with the legacy music industry I find something else which reinforces how antiquated and dying it is. Simply put, in an age of satellite radio for $10 a month, iPods, MP3s, streaming audio… Where exactly does radio belong? Normally in any given area there are 1 or 2 stations which cover a genre appreciated by the average listener. If those stations play the exact same songs at an offset of mere minutes, it gets downright irritating.

Listening to Bat Country by Avenged Sevenfold two dozen times over the course of a week is not going to get me to purchase the latest Avenged Sevenfold album. At this point it almost has me wanting to ignore it. The music industry has completely missed the boat here folks. The days of a single selling an album have all but passed. Every on-line outlet has the ability to preview the rest of the songs on a given album. People are spending $.99 on the song they want and not $16 on a full CD.

The CD is dead, the single CD is dead, and sooner than later the avenues which feed those sales will in turn dry up.

At this point, there are only two venues for live streaming content, talk and satellite radio. Neither one depend on the aged tactics of big-music to gain listeners. What they do depend on is dynamic original talent and marketing campaigns which identify with the 21st century digital fan.

Sadly, the folks that big music markets to simply cannot afford their bullshit anymore.

Still don’t have my car back after the 10 days promised by the bodyshop. Can’t blame them fully though, as the parts distributor they’ve been dealing with for Volkswagen parts doesn’t quite have a great reputation. They were told that the front bumper cover for my car was on backorder, my parts guy managed to find 3 OEM bumper covers within an hours drive of the shop. Hopefully they told Newton VW to piss off and got the parts elsewhere.

I’ve been driving a bit, of course my first drive was my mother’s Plymouth minivan which resulted in $125 worth of scratch damage to the drivers side when I backed through one of those driveway reflector posts. Good job.

Then drove my girlfriend’s Cavalier for a bit which was more comfortable as it was a small car like my VW. Still, the big complaint I have about the Cavalier in general (hasn’t changed in the past 10 years) is that they really lack any considerable road feel. As long as I’ve been driving I rely on feedback from the car while driving, the car may very well be able to take curves at a decent speed but the experience is knumb overall. I really hope they changed that in the Cobalt, because even the final generation Cavalier had absolutely no road feel.

Still, it is going to be awhile until I get back into my groove as far as driving my own car is concerned. I’ve hit plenty of deer but never actually lost control of a car and wrecked it before. I spun my first Intrepid at 15mph on a centimeter of snow in Harriman State Park a few years back, did a full 360 and proceeded exactly as I had been prior to the spin. I’ve also on occasion caught some of that loose gravel on the edge of the road in a curve and kicked the rear end of the car loose… Did that with both Intrepids and my Neon, and corrected on instinct. Difference this time was the decreased handling due to snow-tires. I won’t put all the blame on the tires, I did let my attention drift for a moment but every car I have ever owned has been a well-handling car. The VW by far has the best handling of any car I’ve ever owned, so an accident of this nature is an anomoly which I hope to avoid again in the future.

I’ve got a court date in late March to sort out the ticket, and won’t know the effect on my car insurance until my next policy renewal. Either way, I’ll be glad to put all of this behind me.

So this year I decided to pay attention to the whole American Idol competition, I’ll admit it is very entertaining. This coming from a guy who really cannot stand the whole ‘reality television’ movement. As far as the women on the show, all eye-candy. Even Paula Abdul has started wearing cleave-shirts which I can’t really complain. There are a few good voices on their side of the show but nothing that really stands out above and beyond for me. I’m a metalhead. My ideal female vocalists are Pat Benatar, Cristina Scabbia, and on the far end of the spectrum, Angela Gossow. In any genre they’re hard to beat.

As far as male vocalists go on the show, from the first episode I had my ear on Chris Daughtry. Skip the whole shaved head metal look, the guy has a set of a pipes that’d make David Draiman blush. Still, I found myself agreeing with Simon Cowell that while he could nail the notes there was something missing.

He definitely found his core this week, as he nailed a version of Hemmorage by Fuel… The guy belted out the notes but also had enough emotion in it to grab the attention of anybody in earshot. I’d call it the same feeling I got when I heard my first Disturbed or Queensryche album. They said it right, he could be on the radio now, and I’m sure regardless of the outcome of American Idol the guy has the attention of metal acts, record producers (God save him), and metalheads like me who’ll put up with the pop crap to hear some real vocals.

The best part was when the cameras panned over the other male contestants after Chris sang… They all had the same “Oh crap…we’re dead” look on their face that you see on a 5 year old who just put a sandwich in Dad’s new VCR.

One man stands alone on ‘Idol’

What was I thinking. Chuck Photo-Op Schumer? Heck with that. Union leadership always support Libs, thus the response. Tack on some fear-mongering, a tactic long enjoyed by the American Left, and immediately it’s not an issue of unions and votes, it’s an issue of patriotism and putting evil Arabs in control.

Still, would be nice to get some perks on the fuel cost out of this.

Yea I changed my mind, people do that.

I won’t lie here, folks. I’m not for the idea of signing off our ports to the UAE with no oversight and a nod from the Bush Administration. I’ve heard the argument “Well you had no problem when the British ran it, saying no to the UAE is discrimination.”

Show me the law or text in the Constitution where we can’t say no to a foreign government entity. Go ahead, show me.

Saying no to an Arab who is a US Citizen because they’re Arab is discrimination. Saying no to the UAE when it comes to who controls our ports is common sense.

It’s bad enough we depend on UAE members for oil (a quick thank you to the American Liberals for ensuring that’ll continue indefinitely) but now we’re handing them the ports?

Any time Liberals come off stronger on National Security than GW should be a big red flag to those of us who don’t drink the Kool-Aid that something is seriously out of whack.

Now I don’t believe I would buy this story if I hadn’t seen the proof with my own eyes, but in a shining example of just how fucked up our border security is…

Friend of mine got a letter in the mail from the Department of Homeland Security reporting that his vehicle had been sighted crossing the border from Canada without stopping… Attached to the letter is a fine for $5,000.00.

Dead serious. First we believed it was a scam, the telephone number for Homeland Security was retrieved on-line, they were contacted, and sure enough the exact vehicle that was sitting in his driveway last month was allegedly sighted at 2am crossing the border into the US.

Of course, unless there is an exact replica of the car floating around the state, someone made a grievous mistake.

My first question, why a fine? If a vehicle ran the border, why wasn’t it chased down and stopped? Where’s the proof? Any photographic evidence? Hhow come agents aren’t banging on the door of the offenders home? Right now some individual or group thereof is tooling around the US of A in a mistakenly identified vehicle because some idiot in the border patrol screwed up.

The worse part is that the burden of proof is apparently the responsibility of the accused.

Could it be a scam by some crooked agent of Homeland Security or the US Border Patrol? Possibly. More likely did some nitwit wake up in time to catch a glimpse of a vehicle, run a partial, and then accuse all the owners in this great state of NY who drive similar vehicles with fines to cover their ass?

Well if it works in Sussex County…

Looks like lawyers may get involved, and definitely newspapers. This is likely one situation where the Liberal media could come in handy…

You saw it here first, folks.

The tires are 185/65-15 Blizzak WS-50’s. The rims will fit any VW Golf, probably plenty of different cars. Bought them off Tire Rack for $500, put approximately 2K on them, $350 + any associated shipping and they’re yours. Still in new condition. Drop me a line if you’re interested.

Never quite felt this way… I’ve had car accidents before, but I don’t think any were quite as violent as this one. I’ve spent far too much replaying in my head what happened. Every time, the car swerves left, the car swerves right, the car belts the pole and 180 degrees later I’m at a dead stop.

The Trooper had it right… Had someone else been in the oncoming lane, I could have killed them.

I consider myself a safe driver, but this time I failed. I failed so bad it’ll cost at least $6500 now, increased rates, and a possible fine to remind me. On top of that though, the one thing which in addition to my sore aching back has kept me out of work the past three days… has been the fear.

I’m afraid. I went out to lunch with a friend on Thursday, they drove of course, and I was terrified. I made up a story about an overwhelming urge to go to the bathroom just so I could get out of the car and be back in my house.

I haven’t left the house since, and I don’t know if I will for the balance of the weekend.

I know I’ll have to go to work next week, no more injuries to keep me down. Still, getting into another car is going to scare the shit out of me. 2 weeks from now I’ll likely have the VW back, and even then I’m not quite certain I’ll want to drive it.

I’d like to think I have control over my life. Do things my way, and no other… After this it seems everything else is just shaky as Hell.

I HATE IT WHEN I’M FUCKING RIGHT.

One hell of a week so far.