On a recent trip to San Francisco, I passed my sick time by watching some TV. Flipping through the channels, I came across the movie selections. Adult movies was one of the catagories, so I decided to see what was available (you know, just looking at titles and movie plots); however, selecting the adult movies option yielded nothing. All adult movies were banned. Now, I didn’t call the front desk to see if I needed to request access to the adult movies, because I really didn’t care about watching them. Still, the idea of taking away that freedom of choice started to work itself under my skin.

A recent article on HotelChatter tackles the increasing practice of not offering adult movies in private hotel rooms.

I, for one, am deciding not to stay in Omni Hotels in the future, because of their decision to ban adult movies.

How do you, readers, feel about this topic?

Look! People actually dancing at a rock concert. Granted, this was in 1981, before music snobbery overtook the minds of indie-rock fans.

(Thanks to Unfair Park.)

Today’s issue of Quick featured a questionable spread on pages 10-11.

On page 10, there’s a story about the funerals of the Amish girls who were recently killed. Directly across from it on page 11 is an ad for Amish Furniture Showcase, featuring “quality, Amish-made solid wood furniture.”

I’m not sure if Amish Furniture Showcase always advertises in Quick. Maybe they do, and the newspaper purposely (or ignorantly) placed the ad next to the story, or maybe they’ve starting advertising more to get in on all the recent Amish attention.

Probably no one else noticed the story and ad placement, because readers were probably entranced by the huge, phallic corny dog ad under the gay marriage story on the same page.

Take this you freaking indie metal hipsters*.

*Okay, I don’t even know what an indie metal hipster really is, but from reading music blogs, I’ve learned it’s fun to make up new names for movements and then make fun of said movement, all the in the same breath.

but I’m never too busy for Bollywood.

My lack of posting is the result of 2/3 parts sick and 1/3 laziness. Usually, it’s 100 percent laziness, but not this time. I actually have something to blame.

In the meantime, I did plenty of blog reading.

• I Guess I’m Floating made me aware of the hot music blog news that My Old Kentucky Blog plagarized the Wikipedia Radiohead entry. Apparently, Idolator and Gerard vs. Bear called the author out on it and the music blog hype machine world gasped. I find it kind of funny that there are such huge music nerds out there that they know when Radiohead copy has been plagarized. I guess some people have memorized everything written about that band. Nerds.
• We Shot JR has a well-written article about the Dallas music scene and some exciting new activity brewing under the radar (by the way, I just plagarized that line). The story is as long as most New Yorker pieces, so you might want to print it out and read it while waiting in the doctor’s office.

  Stonedranger says in the article, “Simply put, getting any kind of attention for doing anything new, different or even just quality is going to be a challenge around here for quite a while.” This begs me to ask the question: To what level of attention do you think is warranted?

  Let’s take a band that We Shot JR likes as an example. Notes from the Underground is a good band, and sure, they warrant the attention given them so far, but if soccer moms starting driving down from Plano to see them because the Dallas Observer/Dallas Morning News/Fort Worth Star Telegram decided to write about them every week and praise their glories, how long do you think it would take for the people into the “underground” scene to stop coming to their shows? Probably a nano-second. Then some of those fans would start a new band, a new scene, and a new complaint that no one is paying any attention to them. I am in no way wise, but this is pretty elementary to see: That what isn’t popular now, will be popular in a few months, just to be overtaken by something new over and over and over again.

  In the end, it’s a good article. Go read it. Please.

• And there’s a new blog on the block: Wizard/Ninja/Robot. Check it out. Yo.

1) I may or may not have been infected with Salmonella bacteria in the last week. If it wasn’t that, then it was some other bacterial infection that made me want to really get to know my toilet personally for five days.

2) At the risk of sounding like Seinfeld, I have to ask this: What is up with elderly people and their toenails? When they get older, do they lose the desire to trim them? Or are their nails so strong and their muscle strength so weak that they’re unable to cut them?

.. width=”425″ height=”350″>..>

Dear Person Using My Check Card Illegally,

No longer will you be able to buy gas in such places as Brooklyn, Staten Island, Philadelphia, Hartford or Jamaica, N.Y., on my dime. I hope you had as much fun stealing almost $300 from me as I had filling out several sheets of paperwork to get it back.

Sincerely,
pimplomat

The Dallas Observer‘s Robert Wilsonky reports on George Gimarc‘s latest radio idea: Radio SASS.

Here’s a teaser to the article:

“The SASS stands for ‘Short Attention Span System,’ because no song in Gimarc’s new format will last longer than two minutes–no, not even ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Imagine your favorite song reduced to verse-chorus-verse-adios. No dickin’-around guitar solos. No wankin’-off drum solos. No nothing except the meat of the song, shorn of the gristle. In and out. Wham and bam.”

As a fan of short songs, I’m curious if this idea would work. As a musician, though, I’m also concerned about the manipulation of my “art.”

Still, listening to it, the format sounds fantastic.

The Criterion Collection recently released Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming on DVD.

For years, I’ve heard from friends and critics that this movie is great, outstanding, excellent (and several other hype words). Eric received the movie via Netflix last week, and I decided to finally watch what was supposed to be one of the best movies ever made.

Apparently, I didn’t see it. What I saw was a whiny and pretentious film with four highly unlikeable main characters. On top of that was stilted writing and technical film making mistakes.

The story revolves around four recent U.S. East Coast college graduates trying to figure out what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives. Maybe if I watched it right out of college, I may have enjoyed and identified with it more. However, a great film shouldn’t relate to only a small cross section of society. It should appeal to everyone, no matter age, income or race.

If others that read this blog have seen this movie and have a different opinion, I’d love to read them. But in the meantime, I guess this is just another example of hype overlapping quality.

Stonedranger over at We Shot JR nicely summed up how I’ve been feeling recently about music.

“I’ve lately developed a bad habit: I tend to discount many of the things I see on MP3 blogs simply because they are, um, on MP3 blogs. At first I thought that it was just because rock music has been sucking lately, but then I realized that it is logical to feel a bit skeptical when you’re dealing with a thousand mini NMEs telling you about the next band to ‘save rock,’ only to find out that, um, they aren’t going to.”

I think my problem with music lately is that I’m tired of visiting Web sites and opening up magazines and reading about the same bands over and over again. I’m sick and tired of hearing how so-and-so band is great and everyone should listen to them. I’m frustrated with listening to new bands and discovering that they’re really nothing new. It’s gotten to the point where I almost long for the days of pre-Internet, when radio executives chose what was good for the masses to hear–some kind of filter to separate the good from the bad.

Truthfully, though, I don’t want some suit telling me what to listen to; still, I feel our society–when it comes to music–relies more on emotional criticism than intellectual criticism, that there is no longer any filter. If you look at the state of music criticism today, especially when it comes to Internet magazines and blogs, you’ll notice that most every band is good (if not great) and that you should really be listening to them.

For true aesthetic appreciation there should be a balance. The best art affects your intellect and your emotions. However, bring that up to music lovers and you get pie thrown back in your face, because they claim music should be all about how it makes one feel. While the way someone feels about music is valid, it can only go so far in a true test of its lasting impression on generations of music buffs.

Okay, I’m stepping into territory that could take more hours and words than I have available right now, so I’ll just end with this personal observation.

All this frustration with hype and over saturation of some bands has even leaked into my creative life. Lately, I don’t feel like writing music, playing music or even going to concerts. The proliferation of music available online and around me has taken all the fun out of it.

I realize this is a phase I’m going through, but I’m having a hard time shaking it off. I’m having trouble finding the excitement of music again, and that scares me.