An Open Letter to MIA

Dear MIA,
So, yeah, you know that song you did that people seem to like? They like it because it's by the Clash, asshole.

Straight to Hell is a fine little song because the Clash, and I cannot stress this enough, are a fine band. Paper Planes on the other hand is not a fine little song, and because you lifted the whole fucking song directly from Straight to Hell, I think it should be obvious to everyone where the fault lies.

I know you think you're clever, but putting your own lyrics over a Clash song doesn't make you a songwriter, it makes you a dumbass who doesn't know the words and won't shut the hell up.

Go write your own damn song.


Grumpily yours,
Deadspot



P.S. No, it was not clever when Beats International did it to Guns of Brixton.

Last Sanctuary From Self-Important Assholes Shrinks

Cell phone use now allowed on flights in European air space.

Well Done, Nissan

In less than an hour, you managed to make sure that I will never, ever buy one of your cars for as long as I live. That's like some kind of land speed record, but for assholes.

I watched the Heroes season premiere with "limited commercial interruption" last night. In this case, "limited commercial interruption" is a phrase that means "three nearly identical Nissan ads in a row at every commercial break". I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you are going to buy all of the ads during a television program, you may want to make sure that you have more than one ad to run. Unless you enjoy alienating and enraging your target audience. But, you know, whatever, I'm sure you know what you're doing.

Here's the thing about the ad that grieves me the most: it wasn't the constant repetition, it was the music. They used the Clash. Yeah, really, the Clash. And not just the Clash, but probably my favorite Clash song ever. Their cover of Pressure Drop is just a little bit sublime.

If I know one thing about the Clash, it's that they pretty much formed their band to sell midrange SUVs from a third-string Japanese car company. Wait, strike that. I meant that they pretty much didn't form their band to... you know the rest.

If I know one thing about me, and I'm one of the leading experts in the field of knowing things about me, it's that nothing pisses me off like using a song that I like to try to sell me crap that I don't want.

It's weird. I like companies that suck up to me by making special, soccer-themed advertisements to try to sell me things at half time during a soccer game (but woe betide if you should ever interrupt a game, even if you're a president, and you just fucking died. Asshole. Die on your own time. I digress...) Where was I? Soccer ads. Love 'em. If you're a beer or TV company or a bank and you come up with some lame ass way to show that you made your ad specifically to suck up to me during my soccer time, I'll at least give you a little credit for trying. But the second you try to suck up to me by co-opting a song that I like, your ass is grass. And I, as the kids say, am the lawnmower.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. I'm not actually a lawnmower per se.

So, just to recap: on the off chance that I might, someday, after some kind of head injury, decide to buy an SUV, perhaps because I've decided that I need a new way to look like an asshole; and further assuming that I have, as a complication from this head injury, decided that I should go with a company primarily known for being a foreign car company that isn't Honda, Toyota, or Mitsubishi; you can rest assured that I'll be looking for some kind of Skoda SUV before I'll consider your stupid little sports utility car and it'll be this commercial's fault.

Bite me.

Phil Collins Might Not Be Satan

I wanted to wallow, big time, deeply, and with the least amount of perspective possible.
-- Starlee Kine

I just listened to the most recent podcast from This American Life. It had a story that, in addition to having the best quote about breakups, ever, in the entire history of breakups, contained a bit where the narrator sort of serendipitously got a chance to talk to Phil Collins about how to write a breakup song.

While I listened, I realized something. While Phil Collins does write mediocre, treacley pop music, he probably isn't a horrible guy; he's just not Peter Gabriel. If he hadn't gotten a divorce at just the wrong time, he'd probably be a jazz drummer somewhere getting free drinks from aging Genesis fans, and we'd all have been spared decades of cheese. I blame his ex-wife.

The weird thing is, I actually think I dislike him less now. Don't get me wrong, his music still sucks, but I enjoyed the fact that he looks down upon the music of Michael Bolton, and I liked the way he said "ugh, nice..." in a sort of exasperated way when he heard about a jerky thing her boyfriend had done. He was a strangely realistic simulacrum of a human being when he was talking to a stranger on the phone. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that he is not actually evil.

Marketplace Is Not the News

An open letter to the folks at Marketplace:

Hi, guys. My local NPR station just swung a little farther to the right by picking up your program and I couldn't be more happy that I stopped contributing after their pathetic cheerleading in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. At least they aren't pissing away any of my money on your show. Your cheesy production values and poorly-disguised business PR fluff pieces run as legitimate news stories are a disgrace to the once proud institution of public radio.

Please pass these notes along to your "correspondents" regarding this morning's broadcast:

Hey, Elizabeth Wynne Johnson, on nationally-syndicated radio this morning, you used the phrase "Cloak of Inflammability" to describe the application of fire retardant to the homes of the ultra wealthy in fire-threatened areas...

a) That word doesn't mean what you think it means.

b) I know you love Harry Potter, but wizard please...

c) The real story here isn't that the insurance companies are protecting the homes of the ultra wealthy, but that if you aren't ultra wealthy, they're perfectly willing to let your stuff burn. Because they hate you.

d) You're not very smart.

Hey, Jeremy Hobson, the middle class is not shrinking because they are all getting richer, dumbass. Somebody kick him in the balls for me.

Maybe Helen Palmer could do it, since she did a story on how middle class Americans have to fly to Cuba to afford health care... if the story hadn't been a thinly-veiled scare piece threatening them with fines and jail time if they try to evade the clutches of Big Medicine. I hope you enjoyed that check from the HMO industry. Don't spend it all in one place. You may need it if something was to... 'appen to you.

And finally, can you jackasses stop talking about the sub-prime lending crisis as if it is a bad thing? Look, they were lending money that they didn't have, for less than it cost them to borrow, to people that couldn't pay them back. The only way they could make money off this deal is by bankrupting the poor bastards that took their loans and seizing their assets. These lenders deserve to lose money in a big way. And for all of the assholes who tried to make a quick buck off these predators, and the banks that supported them and benefited from these Shylocks? Caveat emptor, caniculae.

Steriphene II: A Review

We have a new air freshener in the restrooms here at work and someone used it before I went in. It's a little bit like baby powder and death in much the same way that Country Time is a little bit like real lemonade; it's more chemical-y, and you would really prefer the real thing if you were given the choice. It makes the air taste even worse than it smells.

I accidentally inhaled. Now my lungs burn and I'm suppressing my desire to pull out my own tongue.

Seriously? I'd rather smell your poo. There is nothing you can do in there that is worse than the spray, and that includes the horror that caused us to flee the Hotel Azteca in Matamoros.

IMDB Can Just Go To Hell

I was following Vikki's link to Brick when IMDB decided that what I really wanted to see was a full page flash ad for Disturbia.

Wrong.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" and smack them on the nose with a newspaper like a dog that just peed on the rug, if that was the kind of thing one could do to a website. (Note to self: Invent remote, web-enabled, newspaper-smacking computer peripheral. Deliver smacking. Make millions.)

I mean, thanks for the glimpse into a freakish horrible parallel universe where Rear Window was made by talentless hacks, but no thanks. I have my own freakish horrible parallel universe flashbacks to deal with. I don't need your help.

What I want from you when I click on a link to information about a movie is, in point of fact, information about that movie, not information about some completely different movie. If I want information about random shit, I will click on a random shit link. Until then, make with the info and make it snappy, Sunshine.

Note to Self:

As an image hosting service, tinypic sucks.

I don't care if it is free. Suck is as suck does.

OK, enough with the whining. I logged in this morning to find that tinypic screwed up my new layout (which, now that I've seen it on a decent monitor, is a little more "tomato soup" and a little less "curry spicy hot" than I was looking for. I believe tweaks are in order...) I spent the morning fixing broken stuff, breaking unbroken stuff, and adding technorati to my sidebar, which is as far down the blogwhore road as I am willing to go at this point.

I may have real content later, but I have to coach this evening, so I may be preparing for our game instead of blogging. In lieu of actual entertainment, I offer up this not-entirely hypothetical question:

Say you're from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and you somehow stumble across this blog. What the hell do you make of it?

Because I'm an accomodating guy, here is a little Belo Horizonte content for my unknown chum from Brazil, just in case he comes back. Better late than never...

Did you know that when the United States beat England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte during the 1950 World Cup, many newspapers in England assumed the scoreline was a mistake? Many papers reported it as a 1-0 win for England, while others (assuming a typo in the wire feed), reported it as United States-1, England-10. Ha! Silly British persons! Joe Gaetjens owns Stanley Matthews.

Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais. It turns out that Minas Gerais is neither that guy from The Office nor the capital of Gondor, but is actually a state in Brazil.

Now you know... and Knowledge is Power!

"But what grieves me the most..."

Have you seen the ads for The Astronaut Farmer? It's about a farmer. He builds his own space rocket, as farmers often do, and hijinks ensue. But here's the thing... not only is he a farmer, he's named Farmer.

God, I hate that shit.

I can just see them pitching this to the movie studio. "But, get this, not only is he an astronaut farmer, he's an astronaut Farmer, eh? eh? get it? 'Cause his name is Charlie Farmer."

Yeah. And you're Mark and Michael Dumbass.

Look, if you're an aspring writer, and you're thinking about sticking the name of your character in the title of your show that way, stop. It's not clever. It wasn't clever the first time, it's still not clever. It will never be clever. It just cheapens us all.