Yeah, ish
Category: Humour
Knowing that someone would have wanted it this way makes me angry
Back in the before-times when Lindsay was recovering from her shattered ankle, I used to play her the Chicago song “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day”…well, every day, during her long road to recovering from surgery and walking again. I’d hear the song a hundred times growing up, but only then did I notice something I’d missed as a kid…and now I can’t hear the song without noticing it.
The drumming at the end of the song is terrible.
I’ll jump right to where it gets bad, at the 2:40 mark where the song shifts into the fast-paced chug:
It’s a mess. Clumsy fills, flubbed strokes, missed timing. Part of me cringes every time I hear it now.
And it’s not like Danny Seraphine (pretty sure he was the drummer in Chicago back then) didn’t know what he was doing — he was an accomplished drummer. Like, here you can see him play the same song perfectly well:
Also, please note in that live version the snare drum does NOT sound like someone has wrapped it in a duvet for the song’s first half. Like, Russ Kunkel thinks that snare drum sounds too muted. (Sorry, drummer joke.)
I don’t get it. It’s like someone heard a version with no Peter Cetera mess-ups, but the worst possible drum track, and just said…yup, sounds good, press it. Like, how could this became the primary artefact of the song? It even kept surviving the multiple remasters that were released over the years. What, someone couldn’t have gotten back in there and touched some shit up?
Accurate
I'm either a terrible christian or an excellent atheist
Look at it.
What a brootiful day in the neighbourhood. First I slept in (a little, anyway), then my brother sent me one of the funniest pictures I’ve ever seen and I laughed myself stupid. Then Nellie and I went out (I wore my new shirt) to procure meat, veggies and cheese from St. Lawrence Market for tonight.
Then off to Andrew Richard Designs where we bought a small bench for the balcony before discovering an awesome new place in which to get full & silly: Betty’s. I’m not sure how we’ve missed it in the two years we’ve been living down here: it has a pretty good beer list (e.g., Hacker-Pschorr, Blanche de Chambly, Mill Street Tank House), decent food and a nice big back patio. We’ll be going back. We might actually go back tomorrow.
OK, guests have arrived, I’m off.
The gamut of opinions
Dumb. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Disgusting. Stealing someone’s mail carries a stiffer punishment.
Want. Doublewant. Want for Nellie (’cause she does that).
Funny. But only if you’ve seen the original.
"It feels like I'm shitting a knife!"
Our aspirational target this weekend was profound laziness. While we didn’t quite hit that (damn stretch goals) we did manage to watch two movies:
Baby Mama (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off badly — not that the jokes weren’t funny, it’s just that we’d seen them all in the trailer — but got funnier as it went on. This post’s title, a line from the film, made me laugh out loud. I’m still giggling just typing it. Let’s face it, though, Tina Fey could do the New York Times crossword on camera for 90 minutes and I’d still pay to see it.
I think we waited too long to see Tropic Thunder (imdb | rotten tomatoes) ’cause I just didn’t like it. I liked how it skewered movie-making in general, and action movies in particular, but I’m not sure I really laughed at single line not uttered by Danny McBride. And Tom Cruise’s tiny part, the one that’s earned him a fricking Golden Globe nomination? Not so much with the funny.
Here, I’ll give you an example of funny, and it just happens to involve Tina Fey. It’s from last Thursday’s episode of 30 Rock:
Liz: “Jack, do you know the Postmaster General?”
Jack: “I do, but we had a falling out over the Jerry Garcia stamp. If I wanted to lick a hippie I’d just return Joan Baez’s phone calls.”
Bam.
Bookmark me, kids, I'm a reference!
I’ve noticed incoming traffic on my blog from Wikipedia, of all places. This blog post from 4½ years ago is referenced in the English Wikipedia entry for ‘Movie theater’. Presumably they’re linking to me because, scofflaw that I am, I included the full content of the now-archived Globe and Mail article in my post.
Hey, if I’m the presumptive authority on the death of cheap Tuesday, then I’m ready to lead. Can someone grab their general a Tribute magazine on the way in please? Thanks.
.:.
In other news, this is the funniest thing I saw all day. Courtesy of John Moltz, by way of Joey DeVilla.
Things I've learned in the past 24 hours
- I’m getting sick. Not enough to make me feel like I need to stay in bed, but enough to drain me of all energy and motivation to, you know, move.
- The Rob Zombie remake of Halloween (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off better than I expected, in that it gave us a Michael Myers preview, but the remake part was just standard slasher fare. The only thing I liked better about it than the original was that Myers moved like a normal guy…fast sometimes, normal speed the rest of the time, instead of at a slow zombie pace.
- Sometimes our cats will sleep quietly through the night. Other times they will stage a Bob Fosse revival on our bed at 3AM. Last night was the latter.
- We need a new coffee table and over-sized (but not too over-sized) chair, but aren’t having much luck finding them. Lo and behold, I read this in Thursday’s issue of Now, and figure we should give it a try.
- Even when the Canadiens are down 4-1 going into the third period, I should still finish watching the game, especially when it’s against a soft team like the Islanders. The Habs scored 4 goals in the third period and won. They’re playing .850 hockey so far this season, the best of any team in the NHL.
- The Raptors look pretty good, having won their third in a row to remain perfect in this young season. Bosh looks better with O’Neal there to take the pressure off, Bargnani looks better coming off the bench than he does starting, Calderon looks better without the T.J. Ford of Damocles hanging over his head, and Kapono just looks better. But the defense is what seemed different last night…not all the time, but a lot of the time. Players like Michael Redd and Richard Jefferson have carved through the Raptors like butter in recent years, but last night, the Raps seemed to challenge more. Anyway, we’ll see how they fare against real competition like the Celtics or Lakers.
- John McCain isn’t funny.
British + economist + financial crisis = funny! No, really!
This post in the Economist’s blog today made me smile. For the record, I rarely smile at The Economist, especially of late, but today the sarcasm would be dripping if it weren’t so devastatingly dry.
The latter, notably, published a book in 2004 called Bullish On Bush: How George Bush’s Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger. As best I can tell, it was not written as parody.
Zing! Then later:
I have to tip my hat to Mr Laffer. I’m not sure I could author something this wonderfully, artistically wrong, were I to labour at the effort for months. Bravo.
No, no. Bravo to you, sir.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 