Happy Birthday Carin And A Bunch Of Other Crap

Last Updated on: 21st December 2021, 09:02 am

So how’s everybody? Are you enjoying this weather? If your answer is yes and you live anywhere near me, you’re an idiot, plain and simple. I don’t like winter at the best of times, but things are really getting out of hand this year. One thing I’ve noticed though is that there’s a definite lack of global warming coverage in the media these days, likely because anybody who dares speak those words knows that he will promptly be beaten unconscious, wrapped in Styrofoam and jammed head first into one of our fine area snow banks.

Before I go any further, I want to wish Carin a happy birthday….actually I want to let anybody from
Q107
who might be reading this know that they’re playing 2 songs at once and it’s getting on my fucking nerves…wow, you read my mind, good job. Jesus that was irritating.

Ok, where were we? Ahh yes, the elderly. Happy birthday Carin. Love you lots and I hope you enjoy your gift, your day and your year, even if you do have to spend those last 2 with me.

Not a whole lot has been up in my world since the last time I got the urge to sit down and crank out one of these random life posts, but that never stops anybody else even though in 99% of cases it should, so I’ll try to come up with something.

This weekend I went to a pizza party to celebrate my Grandma’s birthday. What’s strange about this is that neither she or my Grandpa even like pizza. If you think about that for a second, you should perhaps get some insight into why I’m such a big irony fan, and maybe even into why I’m so odd.

And while we’re on the subject of irony, does that Alanis Morissette song annoy you as much as it does me? The only thing ironic about it is that she’s got the definition of irony wrong. Rain on your wedding day isn’t ironic unless you’re a weather man. A free ride when you’ve already paid isn’t free. Actually it’s next to impossible because when you get on there’s nobody to take your money. And what the fuck do 10000 spoons have to do with anything? I could go on, but anybody with any sense has likely already thought this through a million times. One thing I would like to know though is why nobody has ever asked her about this? It seems like such an obvious question. Maybe they’re just afraid of getting the obvious answer, that calling the song Jimminy Fuck Life Is Shitcrap And I Can’t Even Afford A Dictionary would make it hard to get it played on the radio.

Speaking of radio, any and all new rock stations can feel free to stop playing Thrash Unreal by Against Me! any day now. If your goal is to make me hate a decent band then carry on, but otherwise, for the love of God knock that shit off!

What the hell was I even talking about here? Oh yeah, the family.

I had a good time wrestling with the ball magnets AKA the cousins. I haven’t got a clue when it became tradition, but it is now an inevitability that at some point during any get-together I will be punched, kicked, slapped, elbowed, stomped, headbutted or otherwise struck in the testicles. Not sure what it says about me that I keep going back for more, but hey, at least they’re having a good time. One of these days I should show them what it feels like, but I don’t have the heart just yet.

I also got to go see
Tom Cochrane
and
John Mellencamp
at the
JLC.
Actually no I didn’t…yes I did…no I didn’t…yes I did…That won’t make any sense to most of you, but a couple people are amused, just trust me here.

The show was great, and if it comes to your town, go! I don’t think it trumps
Aerosmith
for best concert ever, but it’s definitely up there.

Even though Tom Cochrane failed to convert me into a
Life Is A Highway
fan, I still have no complaints. He was great, particularly when he played Good Times, which has always been my favourite song of his. I love it when somebody can totally take control of an arena full of people, quiet them down and put them in a trance with something mellow when what they really came to do was rock out. That was Good Times save for the part where he was getting the crowd to sing the chorus in sections, something that I’m also a sucker for.

Mellencamp was friggin awesome, that’s the best description I can come up with. I’ve had a strange sort of love hate relationship with his music over the years because of radio doing what it does best, but since Tuesday, I’m a huge fan. The guy’s great, there’s really no other way to put it. You’d never know he was pushing 60, that’s for sure. Everything that was supposed to be loud and energetic definitely was, in particular the Authority Song, which as luck would have it is far and away the best John Mellencamp song there has ever been. There was also a really nice mini acoustic set where he played Small Town and some tracks that will be on his new record. What I said about taking control of thousands of people earlier, multiply that by 10. I have no words for how cool that was.

He was a great talker too. Interesting, smart, funny, political and most of all unafraid to say what he thought without worrying about the reaction it might get. The stuff about racism and Jena, Louisiana in particular was some of the best audience talking I’ve ever heard. I’m paraphrasing here, but it was still great. “I like people. I want to know about them. I especially want to know about people different from me. I don’t care if a person is red or green or blue, I want to know about them, not me. I know enough motherfuckers like me. But some people just don’t get that. I wrote a song about the stuff going on in Jena. They’re hanging nooses in trees there. Jesus Christ! So I wrote this song and put it on my website and thought nothing more about it. Then the Mayor of Jena comes on and says ‘John Mellencamp is writing songs about us, enough is enough!’ Enough is enough? All I did was write a fucking song! That’s not enough is enough. Enough is enough is when you treat people with such disrespect that you’re letting folks run around hanging nooses in a fucking tree!” It was nice to hear a celebrity speak up for once and not have it seem like he was just doing the cool thing. Writing it down doesn’t do it justice, but watching him say it you could tell he meant every word. By the way, if you haven’t heard the song that caused all the fuss, there’s a video of it
here.

And to end the concert review on a lighter note, I’m sure that getting people to call their friends during Jack & Diane so we could all sing to them is a gimmick that he uses all the time, but I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’m not sure how it would have sounded to the people on the other end, but being there live made for a great moment.

Before I go, I need to rant about TNA for a second. Come on, what would one of these things be without wrestling talk? Ok, which one of you said more interesting? You can just quiet down, read on and try to remember who’s goddamn website this is. Mouthy prick.

So yeah…TNA. I’m about 3 weeks behind on watching it, partly because it’s hockey season and the Leafs generally play on Thursdays [though that’s long past the point of being a good reason] and partly because that show is just so damn hard to watch anymore. Seriously, anybody who watches Impact or TNA in general and actually enjoys the booking, please explain to me how. Stone Cold Shark Boy? does anybody in this company have a clu…forget it, I’m not even going to finish asking that question. But one I am going to ask is how is Impact breaking audience records? Surely I’m not that out of touch…am I? Is watching a fish drink clam juice while talking and wrestling like Steve Austin who doesn’t even work for your company I might add really what sells tickets nowadays? Or having a black guy pretending to be the Macho Man? Or any number of other guys talking about how awesome they were when they worked for the competition? Is that the best idea these people have? I guess I should have expected this would happen with good old Vince Russo on the case. He did the same shit in WCW and we know how well it worked out then. So I hope TNA enjoys these ratings while they can, because they aren’t going to last forever. The fact that they’ve managed to hit the 1.2 mark in the first place astounds me. Vince Russo has only ever had about 3 ideas, and none of them are any good. They were no good in 1999, and they’re still no good now. Everybody is either pretending to be somebody else who meant far more to this business than he ever will, a stupid comedy character or fighting with their manager/tag partner from the first day they hook up. Anybody who knows that has either given up or like me is watching for the good moments because the wrestlers aren’t to blame for the clusterfuck that is this company, and anybody who hasn’t learned it yet will figure it out soon and will join us in the giving up hope camp. And where does that leave the company? Right where they are, having accomplished nothing while not making any money.

That’s all for now, I’m getting hungry and this post is getting long. But until we talk again I’ll leave you with a question. what is the difference between Heath Ledger and jokes about Heath Ledger? The jokes will eventually get old. I’m sure you know where to send the hatemail, and no matter what she might say, Carin is looking forward to reading every bit of it, hahaha.