Rancid

Speaking of misrepresentation, I submit to you the band Rancid. Though they are heralded as stalwart heroes of true, original street punk, their music is actually quite Clash-like in that it is poppy and approachable by the mainstream. One might easily be scared or otherwise turned off by their physical appearance as mohawked thugs, but they'd be missing out on some of the best music of the 90s. Specifically, no music fan's collection is ever complete without ...And Out Come the Wolves. Examples to follow.

	Rancid - Ruby Soho
	Found at skreemr.com

I also recommend this video, from the 1995 single Time Bomb.

*Disclaimer: Rancid has two singers. One, Lars Frederiksen, is a very capable singer. The other, Tim Armstrong, sounds like he may have something wrong with him. Do not be alarmed. This is all part of Rancid's allure, though your inability to stomach Armstrong's vocals is a much better anti-Rancid argument than their physical appearance.

Song 2

You've heard Song 2 before. It is arguably the most ubiquitous sports arena rocker in the United States. You hear it playing between whistles and innings everywhere you go. There's no denying its catchiness and rockability. However, I submit to you that it is perhaps the most popular song ever in America to also simultaneously and horiffically misrepresent the band playing it to an entire country. Ironically, what you might not realize about the song is that it was essentially written as mockery of Americans and their grunge music of the early to mid 90s.

	Blur - Song 2
	Found at skreemr.com

In truth, Blur's sound was not at all like Song 2.They are, instead, much poppier and in my opinion better, and the band and its leader Damon Albarn (Gorillaz,Deltron) enjoy a popularity in Britain on par with the likes of Oasis or Radiohead. Not many of their other songs will ever play in an arena in the states though. Here's a much more Blur-ish song:

	Blur - Girls & Boys
	Found at skreemr.com

With that, I humbly recommend Parklife, which spent a week as the UK's top album way back in 1994.

Buzz Aldrin

You might be wondering what Buzz Aldrin is doing sitting alongside Snoop Dogg in this friendly photograph.

Turns out, the photo was probably taken during one of the production sessions of Aldrin's new rap song called "Rocket Experience," which was produced by Snoop, Quincy Jones, and Soulja Boy. And yes, it's entirely real.

Michael and Michael Have Issues

Starting July 15th Comedy Central will start airing episodes of the new Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter sketch comedy show titled Michael and Michael Have Issues.

Far be it from me to pass judgement on the show before it even starts, but I'm just wondering how many chances Comedy Central is going to give these guys to be the main players in a show that people will watch. I certainly have to give them credit for a lot of their writing endeavors, and I'll even say that they've done good work acting in other people's work (Reno 911 for example), but I still don't buy Showalter and Black as lead guys. Original members of The State have found a lot of ways to be funny behind the scenes (Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models come to mind), but really Reno 911 is the only successful example I can think of with State members at the acting helm too. Stella was no good. Viva Variety was no good. The Showalter Showalter? Eh. I'm wishing the best of success to these guys, but let's face it, Dave Chappelle these guys ain't.

In case the show fails, I still recommend their blogs:
http://www.michaelshowalter.net/
http://michaelianblack.typepad.com/

Marco Scutaro

Baseball fans are all abuzz today after the Blue Jays' Marco Scutaro turned a walk into a steal of second base against my beloved Phillies yesterday.

I haven't seen a player do that since the Orange Team in Westbrook Park Little League "drafted" two mustacioed "12 year olds" back in 1996.

Watch it happen to professional baseball champions in high definition, HERE.

The Phillies went on to be swept by the visiting Blue Jay's who had previously not won an inter-league game all year. Just embarassing.

LyricMaster

I wrote back in January about Songbird, an open source music managing program like iTunes for both PC and Mac. I still swear by it over iTunes by a mile, but now even more so since I learned about LyricMaster.

LyricMaster is an add-on to Songbird that automatically populates your Songbird screen with the lyrics to whatever song you are listening to. In the future I assume iPods will come with this type of capability. For now, though, I prefer this method of finding lyrics over the google search if only for the speed. LyricMaster seems to find my song's lyrics before the song even begins to play. Rarely has it been unable to find a lyric to a song, and if it does it's usually to a song that's really obscure. As a result I find myself subconsciously paying much more attention to what I'm listening to.

Here's a screen shot.

Who Wrote/Sang It?

When I listen to the Beatles I can't always tell who is singing. That is to say I think my Beatles chops are developed enough to tell the differences, but I'm never confident enough to know for sure. I'm not even positive when it's Ringo singing. Similarly, when I hear a song that is particularly good I assume John wrote it; A particularly ill-fitting or strange song was most likely written by George. You get the point.

Anyway, I don't need to guess anymore, with this helpful wikipedia page.

I was shocked to find that George wrote a lot--if not most--of my least favorite Beatles songs.

Site News

You'll notice every post says "read more about [topic]" at the end of it. It's ugly, and it was only useful for that one really long post I wrote about 1 Vs 100. Don't click on it unless I instruct otherwise. Unfortunately I know of no other way to accomplish the collapsing post, so I may get rid of that. Elsewise, the site is looking a bit white, is it not? I'm working on a new template, which should take a few weeks to implement, so expect some down time in between. You'll notice I also seem to be unable to decide whether or not to embed video directly into my posts or to provide a picture and a link. Since the latter takes a bit longer, this sadly depends on how busy I am at work. But since I rather like the site I'm hoping to clean all that up one day as if I were presenting it to some Supreme Blog Critic, but really it'll just make me feel a lot better.

Thanks for reading.

Norm Macdonald

Because I'm surprised there isn't a website devoted to his appearances on talk shows yet, here's Norm on Conan last Thursday.

You'll agree he's especially funny when he's got nothing to promote.

Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions

If you didn't watch the MTV Movie awards, it's okay. As part of this blog's descent into becoming an Andy Samberg fan-site, I've got you covered. Look, we even have a "Samberg" tag, in case you ever want to search this blog just by posts about Andy!

The video (click above picture) was one of the highlights of the show which otherwise wasn't very good, if only because Will Ferrell digs up the old awful Neil Diamond impersonation and because finally someone acknowledges that awful film cliche' of walking away from explosions.

Phillies Uni-Watch

On Saturday I finally realized my dream of having my writing published on someone else's blog that nobody I know reads when I became the unofficial uniform tracker of the Philadelphia Phillies. Click THIS LINK and scroll down until you see the Phillies logo to get a better understanding.

The website is Uniwatchblog.com, which we linked to back on April 29th.

The Offspring Vs. P!ATD

....and along the same lines as yesterday's post, the Offspring were at it again with the 2008 track You're Gonna Go Far, Kid. To me it sounds like a knock off of Panic! At the Disco's 2006 Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Off Her Clothes. Yep, that's the whole, pretentious title.

Check it out for yourself. You only have to listen to the first 30 seconds or so of each song to get the idea.

	Panic! At the Disco - Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Ta
	Found at skreemr.com

	The Offspring - You're Gonna Go Far, Kid
	Found at skreemr.com

A lot of people started to credit Panic at the Disco with the demise of the "scene" with their dance-punk beats and synth setup, so I wouldn't be surprised if this Offspring song was a direct attack on them, but luckily Panic saved themselves with a fantastic sophomore release free of the synth crap you just heard. They even stopped dressing like that picture you see up top.

The Offspring Vs. The Beatles

I have long felt that the 1999 single Why Don't You Get a Job? by punk rock stalwarts The Offspring sounded like a rip off of The Beatles Ob-la-di Ob-la-da.

I'm just glad to see that others agree with me, but I'll let you decide:

	The Offspring - Why Don't You Get A Job
	Found at skreemr.com

	The Beatles - Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
	Found at skreemr.com

Fun fact: Many people believe the Offspring's frontman Dexter Holland to be a doctor of molecular biology. Not true, Dexter has only his masters'. He was, however, the valedictorian of his high school class. Not bad for a punk rocker.

Beatles Rock Band Trailer

Since I've spent so much time talking about and anticipating this game, I feel inclined to share the game's first trailer.

So far there are 10 confirmed (by this trailer) tracks, but the game will include 45 total with an additional option to purchase the entirety of Abbey Road. Those well versed in Rock Band will notice something new going on here; The first vocal harmonizing in the game series so far is prominent. Does that mean I need to buy more microphones for my band? Sure does, if Paul and Ringo have anything to say about.

1 Vs. 100

Last night myself, 3 friends, and about 50,000 total strangers from across the country participated in the beta (trial) of an Xbox Live version of the game show 1 Vs. 100 (pictured above). The live television version of the show was hosted by Bob Saget, and I'm not sure if the show was success or not, but it seems to be a translated well into a massive multiplayer trivia video game since everyone gets to play.


The online game is simple enough. You join a lobby of people (50,000+) and a "The One" (main player) is chosen at random, and so too is a "Mob" of 100 players for "The One" to play against. Everyone else joins "The Crowd." Multiple choice trivia questions are then asked, and points are awarded to the crowd based on correct answers, speed of answer, and streak of correctly answered questions. The One, meanwhile, is in a trivia battle versus all 100 members of the mob. The goal for the one is to one of two things: A.He can outlast/outanswer every member of the mob and win a prize, or he can try to dwindle the mob down to just a few people and choose to split the prize between himself and the mob. The prize, in this case, is microsoft points which are used to, for example, buy new Rock Band songs or additional downloadable content for other games. It's actually a pretty good prize considering 1 Vs. 100 is (going to be) free to play.

The whole process happens in real time and even has a live in-game host(Chris Cashman) because, so far, the beta of the game is not the kind that can be played at your leisure but instead only at certain times. For example, the next "show" isn't until Saturday the 13th, and each session lasts for 2 hours. This is unique, for sure. An xbox-live game that can only be played against other real players.

At first thought, it might seem that unless you're randomly selected to be The One or part of the Mob (read: you're in the crowd) that the game wouldn't have much point to it, but I disagree. First of all, you have to be in the crowd to be considered for the mob at any point. Second, the online version of the games move quickly enough that in a 2 hour span you'll have 10+ chances to be part of the Mob. Also, since all 50,000+ players are answering the same questions, being in the crowd still gives you a chance to see how you stack up against everyone (it includes a detailed statistics screen explaining how well you're doing)and you can also have competition against your friends who are online at the same time. Finally, the three highest scoring members of the crowd also receive prizes at the end of each game, so there's monetary incentive for that too.

The game in its current state fills a much needed multiplayer trivia void that up until now you could get only through bars and restaurants that host NTN trivia contests and Dave & Busters which has an 8-player trivia game with a ticket incentive. Of course, those options are both much more expensive and involve leaving your house.