Michael

I'll admit, I've been experimenting with Google Plus since it started. That's where I've been posting my quick thoughts and sharing little videos and such. It's also easier to do from my mobile phone. You can try looking at my posts at this link.

Here's my last post thanks to that paragon of radio journalism, Ray Taliaferro.

Okay, so I didn't sleep well last night, and was subjected to the strangest phone call on the Ray Taliaferro program on KGO. Here's the audio archive, it begins at 33:45 and starts to get weird at 41:00. It involves racism and hot potatoes. Yeah.

This video led me down a rabbit hole. Deep down into it. I started clicking and watching almost all this guy's videos.



My other favorites:
Metallica-Enter Sandman (Smooth Jazz Version)
Motorhead-Ace of Spades (Broadway Musical Version)
Britney Spears-Toxic (Metal Country Version)
Iron Maiden-The Trooper (Bossa Nova Version)

There are more hilarious ones. I love finding things like this. Isn't the internet fabulous?

So Popjustice posted this terrible, awful, no good, very bad music video today, which I link for you but will not embed because it's just bad and you'll have to be responsible for going over and actually watching it.

Summary:
Taio Cruz rings the doorbell of some fancy Miami-looking mansion with a group of hos, an older guy answers the door, he asks if they can use his pool, and then the song starts accompanied by a pool party/orgy. Lots of making out, lesbian making out, licking of singers' faces, posing by sports cars, more hot lesbian action, etc. The end.

It's pretty bad. The song itself is kind of average, whatever. But the older guy who apparently owns the house is someone named Nightcrawlers. My curiosity about the presence of this middle-aged house music singer led me to his Wikipedia page which contained this information about John Reid (his real name).

Reid is a successful songwriter in his own right, having co-written a UK chart-topping single for Westlife ("Unbreakable"), and also songs for Tina Turner and Rod Stewart. He is a friend of Simon Cowell, and he co-wrote the Kelly Clarkson and Leona Lewis hit "A Moment Like This". He has worked as a songwriter for the Spanish singer Mónica Naranjo, with songs including "No Voy A Llorar", "If You Leave Me Now" and " Hotline"

This freaky, sad, older-man interloping at a young twenty-something orgy full of strangers being held in his own backyard is actually somewhat well represented in my iTunes library (as a songwriter). Sort of random.

Also, the house in the video appears to be where the Lady Gaga Poker Face video took place, as well.

I discovered today that, yes, the final book in the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, will be made into a movie. Normally I wouldn't care, and neither should you, except for this article that was shared with my by a co-worker over a year ago. Read it. I promise you won't regret it.

And if you have to have the answers to questions such as "Vampires and pregnancy: when did that idea occur to you? How does that work?" then head over to the Breaking Dawn FAQ on Stephenie Meyer's website. Knowing absolutely nothing about the story, reading that makes me question the sanity of all parties.

So, I'm going to go ahead and declare that the most over-used word of 2011 is the word "fundamental." It's the new "literally."

Not surprisingly, the worst offenders tend to be politicians. Go figure.

So, I've figured out why the pool of Republican candidates for president is so awful and pathetic. At least, I have an idea why. I'm watching a video at work about wars of ideology and stuff put on by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, (and in my opinion these people are kind of fanatics). The moderator says at the end of a speech extolling the victories of the Cold War, "I do wonder, can you imagine a Romney or a Pawlenty standing up and telling the truth the way Reagan did? This I'm not sure about." This is no surprise, I'm sure, but Republicans still haven't gotten over Ronald Reagan. I mean, he's been out of office for 22 years and dead for, how many, six? I really think they're all holding out for the second coming of Reagan. In the meantime you get these milquetoast Republicans who try to talk a good Reagan game, but are far from having the real presidential stuff. They have to say the right things, hold the right views, prove they're as close to a carbon copy as you can get. But that's just not possible. And probably not even what this country needs now, anyway.

Because Republicans can't get over their Reagan fetish, they are stuck with these weak imitations along with crazy fringe radicals who, while taking the Reagan model to its farthest extreme, attempt to portray it as their equally bold vision. Maybe it's time for them to stop looking to the past for their models of leadership. I'm not sure forcing "radical Islamism" into the communist mold so we can have another cold war-style conflict for the neo-Reagan to triumph is doing anybody any favors. Maybe it's time they just looked at reality and, with the lessons learned from the past, examined the context of the present to plot a course for the unknowable future.

First Listen: Cast Recording, 'The Book Of Mormon'

I'm posting this just for the beginning of the first story. It takes a minute to get there, but it's worth the wait.


No wonder Nancy Grace seems so evil.

You don't even know you're jealous of me, but you are.

That's because whatever you ate for dinner tonight pales in comparison to what I made. I embarked on a little culinary experiment of sorts. What, you ask, was the deliciousness I hoarded all to myself? It was oxtail stoup. (Stewp? I don't know, it wasn't exactly a soup, but it wasn't thick enough for a stew either.) Naturally, I cooked it in the crock pot. And let me tell you, after twelve hours in there, that meat was hella good. It came out mighty tasty, as long as you're not afraid to eat a few spoonfuls of fat here and there. Which I'm not. Because it tastes good. When I bought those oxtails, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but when I came home tonight I pulled them out of the pot, the meat basically fell off the bones, then I popped it back in the pot just to warm through and reduce a little. I'm looking forward to eating it for the next three or four nights. [Served with some ghetto spanish rice (rice cooked with salsa) and ghetto chinese broccoli (broccoli cooked with soy sauce) so it was a weird yet satisfying meal.]

On a completely unrelated but somewhat creepy topic, I think there's a woman crying across the street. Or maybe laughing? It's hard to tell. No, I think that's sobbing. Maybe. Why would you do that on the sidewalk late at night? She doesn't sound in distress, but very sad. I can't go to the window to look and see. I'm an asshole.

Okay, she stopped.

So, what's better than dressing up like a red hat lady in Las Vegas with your friends?


Finding out later that you are wearing the same dress as First Lady Barbara Bush, that's what!!