We are very glad you have found your way to Dear Jerks. Recently, we decided to move to Tumblr going forward, so please visit us there at http://dearjerks.tumblr.com. We don't have much up on the new site yet, but we're pretty happy with our new We Fixed It series, where we begin with Radiohead's Hail to the Thief. Come check it out.
Because Blogger is free and all, we will be leaving this site up just as it is. We suppose it is now an archive of our last two years of remembrances, joke-y lists, and other music-related jibber jabber.
Happy Thanksgiving, and see you over on the new site,
Did you have
a son last year and name him Noah? Well, the odds are pretty good that you did,
because this past weekend the much-ballyhooed Social Security’s Top Ten Baby Names for 2013
list was released, and ‘Noah’
was numero ein for little dudes.
We’re guessing this has something to do with America's super boring paralysis
of apocalypse-fixation that has turned so many people into “doomsday preppers”
or whatnot. What name would you give the one person in the world you hope survives
the big flood? Yeah, we got it. But, c'mon, ‘Liam’ at
number two? Since when is 'Liam’ a name in America?? Compare that to the UK, where ‘Liam’ has a very long history of being a name that someone might actually use. There, last year, it was at fiftiethplace. On a side note:
in 1995, when I tried to name the new family cat 'Liam' (because I was a huge
Oasis fan, obviously), I was shot down, because back then it wasn't even something you would name a cat in the US. How the tables have
turned!
Scotland's Eternal Poet Laureate
This alarming trend reminds me of the time when I decided, like all single
twenty-year-olds do, what I would name my son if I had one. I was (and still
am) a huge fan of the band Arab Strap, and really liked the name of the singer,
Aidan Moffat. Flash forward a few years, and somehow Sex and the City absurdly managed to make 'Aidan' one of the most popular names in America, despite not one single person in the US having been given that name before
I decided that it was cool (and that’s an indisputable fact). So, naturally, I assumed that stupid
television caused this whole ‘Liam’ thing, too, but after some non-intensive
online research, the only ‘Liam’ character I can find is on the US version of Shameless, where some character is for reals named 'Liam
Gallagher,' because that show is apparently created by an Oasis fan.
Here's your #2 namesake, America!
At what point in time did this generation of American parents
all simultaneously decide that Definitely Maybe was their favorite album of
all time? And even if so, why would you name your son after the petulant singer
who spat a giant loogie on the stage at the MTV Music Awards while performing a
song un-ironically titled “Champagne Supernova,” when you could at least name your
little pride and joy after the older brother, Noel, who actually wrote all the
songs??
Here’s where
it gets into “judge not lest ye be judged” territory, though. Let the following be a
lesson that sometimes you should hold off on asking a question if you’re not ready to hear the answer…
Here it goes. Somehow, I
spent the first twenty-nine years of my life incurious as to why my
parents gave me the name they did. Then, one day in 2009, I finally started to wonder, and asked my father why they chose 'Ian.' Now, mind you, I
wasn’t expecting to be named after anyone awesome, like Ian Curtis or Ian
McCulloch, because neither Joy Division nor Echo and the Bunnymen got much
recognition in the US in early 1980 (Ian Curtis’ suicide, on May 18th
of that year, happened six weeks after I was born).
Ian Anderson, relaxing at home
What I also
wasn’t expecting, though, was that I was
indeed named after a very famous rock ’n’ roll front man from the Northwest
of England: Blackpool’s beloved son, Ian Anderson. Yep, that’s right: the flute
player in Jethro Tull, the arena-packing, costume-loving act whom legendary
music journalist Nick Kent basically chose to single out as the lamest band of
the ‘70s in his memoir of that decade, Apathy
for the Devil. Sometimes your parents are into prog rock...what are you
gonna do?
Well, you
can start by letting us here at Dear Jerks help name your baby for you! Naming
kids is tough work, so before you collapse in exhaustion and just name your
precious, precious little man after some random jar you found in the kitchen
(‘Mason’: #4 last year!), or find yourself saying “Eff it, let’s just do what
Will Smith did” (‘Jayden’: #9!), consider our awesome suggestions, which, if
nothing else, will totally prove to everyone how much you like good music.
Instead of
ranking eighty-seven possible names in listicle fashion, we’re just going
to lay a few ideas out to help get you started. Popularity contests aside
(though they totally count for everything), there is no one name that is better
on its own merits than all others. And, unless you are planning on having
dozens of children, coming up with the title of your wee bairn is not like coming up
with the title of a song: it has to be personal, and you have to make it count.
Thus, what better way to make it count than by naming your child after a song?!
The logic is flawless…
'Jeane': If you are having a daughter,
there is perhaps no better name you can pick to show off what a devout fan of
the Smiths you are. It’s an early B-side (snob cred!) to their classic breakout
single, “This Charming Man” (timeless!). If that wasn't enough, the song also contains perhaps the most vivid eight
words Morrissey ever strung together, “there’s ice on the sink where we bathe,”
a flash fiction lyric on par with the Hemmingway-attributed “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
'Seymour': I mean, where do we begin with
this obvious top choice? First, there is Seymour Stein the person, the man
behind Sire Records. Then there is “Seymour Stein” the song, which Belle &
Sebastian wrote about him. Even closer to Dear Jerks’ hearts, there’s
the early single by Swell Maps, “Read About Seymour.” Also, Blur were
originally named Seymour (possibly inspired by Swell Maps??). Speaking of…
Name Your Kid After One of Blur's 'Character' Songs: Not since the age of the Kinks and early Pink Floyd did a band make
so many damn songs that were quirky fictional English caricature sketches. The
possibilities here are plentiful: “Colin Zeal,” “Tracy
Jacks,” “Ernold Same,” or even Bill Barrett
from “Magic America.” Yes, you have to use the full name from the song as a first name, otherwise it doesn't count. "But Dear Jerks, Damon Albarn's new solo album, lovely as it can be, strikes me as a bit, well, 'adult contemporary'..." We agree, but at least 80% of Blur’s catalog is ageless!
The Kim Gordon and Kim Deal of their era
'Berlin': With ‘Paris’ long played out
and ‘Brooklyn’ past its prime, a new hip and artsy city needs to step up and become a
name for a human being, and these days cities don’t get much more hip and artsy
than Berlin. Plus, it has an impeccable ‘70s rock legacy: Lou Reed named an
album after the place, and bosom buddies David Bowie and Iggy Pop made some of
their best music there. Sure, the band Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” is an
awful song, but no one’s going to assume that’s why you chose the name, unless
all of your turtlenecks have shoulder pads.
"When will the Dandy Warhols write a song about you, Kim?"
'Kim': Name your daughter after Kim Deal or
Kim Gordon. Or both. Did it ever get cooler than these two? No, it did not. That is why the Dandy Warhols wrote a song called "Cool as Kim Deal," and not "Cooler than Kim Deal," because being any cooler would be technically impossible. They were pretty much the David Bowie and Iggy Pop of their generation, save for, like, one or two minor differences. Seriously though, take back the name 'Kim' from the land of bad Eminem songs and
Kardashians, or whatever.
'Malkmus': A fantastic unisex name! History and sales figures be
damned, the general consensus among people now who spend way too much time writing about their opinions of other people's art on the Internet (hello!) is that Pavement were the
greatest band during the time when Pavement were the greatest band. But it
would be hard to show your popular-but-somehow-still-unique love for Pavement
by going with any of their first names, which consisted of two Steve’s, Bob, Mark, and Scott. You could also go with ‘Westy,’ or
even ‘Ibold,’ but calling your kid ‘Spiral Stairs’ would be taking it too far.
"It's the vision that sets in
motion whatever the powers are in the Universe that helps us create what we
want"
-Pete Carroll, head coach of the
Seattle Seahawks, quoted in the book Hero
by Rhonda Byrne (author of The Secret)
The Universe: friend of football. Why would the Universe want to help one little ol' NFL team? Because the Universe loves to watch athletes perform at the peaks of human ability, it loves the thrill of competition, and it loves to choose sides. The Universe is always choosing sides. It chose Burr over Hamilton, Edison over
Tesla, Oasis over Blur (at least at the time). The Super Bowl is, year in and year out, a reliable way to find
out whose side the Universe is really on. A look at the teams that have
returned to the big game decade after decade reveals, for example, the Universe’s
preference for working class toilers (the Steelers, the Packers), capitalist
gold hoarders (the 49ers), and, of course, cowboys. (On the Wild West note,
it’s also worth considering that the Universe spent some serious time in the
90’s relentlessly taunting Buffalo.) The Universe sure does love it some
America, that’s for true.
Who
does the Universe love more: the Seahawks or the Broncos? Well, for one, as of
this Friday, per the Chinese calendar, 2014 becomes the friggin’ Year of the
Horse. But, as the good people at Field Gulls have
already pointed out, that might not be the harbinger of
Hawk-doom it seems to be. Perhaps the better question is: who should the Universe love more? And really, we’re
not just talking about the teams themselves here -- those poor dudes have already been the
subject of endless stat-chats and irritating speculation and we can’t be
bothered with that any more. (Though we will say this to the Denver defense: don't play crooked like New Orleans, have mercy on Percy!)
The bigger picture here is a tale of two cities. One of them has
bestowed upon the world high quality airplanes, computer stuff, and coffee. The other has
served up a half-decent omelet and an evil, evil airport.
Musically speaking (as we are typically inclined to be speaking), Seattle is the birthplace of Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones,
Sir Mix-a-Lot, that whole flannel rock thing that happened, and now, in an odd denouement of sorts,
Macklemore. Denver, on the other hand, gave us Christie Front Drive. Six of one…
Not
that Seattle and Denver aren’t similar in some ways. We’re mostly talking about
how psyched the citizens of both towns are to get all potted up on legal weed now, but they are also
both, for the most part, cool and open-minded cities surrounded by mountains,
New Age weirdos, and gun-hugging white trash. But the one thing that Seattle and
its brutal, beautiful blue and green (blue to keep it cool, green to get that
money!) Seahawks have that no other city or team in the world has is the Win Forever Pyramid. If you don’t yet know what we are talking about, behold!
Pete
Carroll invented this glorious non-food pyramid to harness the powers of the
Universe to help the Seahawks win. Forever. If you want to win not just today,
not just tomorrow, but until the end of time and beyond, you better remember your ABC’s: Always Be
Carroll-ing. In that spirit, we have come up with a corresponding motivational
soundtrack to help inspire the Seattle Seahawks to ultimate victory over Peyton
the Prize Pony and his Pack of Rocky Mountain Oysters. Behold again!
The Win
Forever Playlist
The Mountain Goats – “High Hawk Season”
It’s not “Eye of the Tiger,” but there
aren’t a lot of motivational “hawk” songs out there, and sometimes it’s nice to
start things off quietly…
Radiohead – “Pyramid Song”
Yeah, we know, another downbeat tune,
but we’re getting a theme going, dammit!
Chicago – “Another Rainy Day in New
York City”
Though it may not technically be raining in New York this Sunday, and technically the stadium is across the river in New Jersey, wherever Seattle's heart goes, so goes the rain...
Bear in Heaven – “Deafening Love”
This one is in honor of our famous 12th
Man’s deafening love at home in the CLink…
Clinic – “The Second Line”
And this one is in honor of the
Seahawks Secondary, which is (wait for it) second to (wait for it some more) none…
The Verve – “Lucky Man”
No one but Russell Wilson could begin the biggest game of his young career by giving up a fumble-ception (maybe the ball was "fire in [his] hands" and simply too hot to hold) on the very first play and still come away with a ticket to the Super Bowl at the end of it...
The Jesus Lizard – “Mouth Breather”
Don’t get us wrong, Peyton Manning is a
nice guy, we like him just fine…but he’s a mouth breather. (And all he can
think about is when he can get a Bud Light in that
mouth.)
Fugazi – “Turnover”
Because Seattle is gonna make Denver have so many turnovers!
Maserati – “Who Can Find the Beast?”
Who can find the Beast Mode? Not
Denver! Suck it. We're not done yet!...
Smog – “I Break Horses”
Some poignant reflection
will perhaps be in order after all that potential butt kicking, before triumphantly
capping it all of with...
Oasis – “Live Forever”
…the Universe’s aforementioned favorite
band. You can’t beat the logic: if you’re going to win forever, first you gotta
live forever. And what better guide to
help you slide away into eternal life than Noel Gallagher getting his Slash on with
that Win Forever Guitar Solo?!
In our previous post, Kyle made the excellent point that a number of albums released in 2013 by prominent electronic artists had near-entirely or predominantly black cover art. Then he illustrated that point with a sweet four-square collage. Then we finished the chat. It was good times. Then, after those good times were gone, we started to remember some other album covers we had somehow forgotten about, and we realized the good times weren't quite over yet...dig it:
Then we remembered that there were a number of other examples from recording artists in other genres...
Fine, that last one maybe wasn't released last year. However, this big bunch of bananas doesn't even include albums with quite-black cover art by Night Beds, Jon Hopkins, Danny Brown, DJ Rashad, Midlake, Mazzy Star, Au Revoir Simone, King Krule, and Kidz Bop favorite, Lorde. Amongst surely dozens of others that we are now simply too bored of this exercise to dig up.
So: what's going to be the big album cover color of 2014? Think pink, y'all. Diarrhea Planet are already ahead of the game...
Seasonal Greetings, Readers! Thank you for joining us in our peek back
at 2013, which is neither Top Stuff Listicle nor Chronological Recapathon, but
is a jumble-y assemblage of wistful remembrances of thoughts that happened
in our brains or events that happened to our persons that for
one reason or another were tied to music. Witness below a written conversation
that we hope will keep you entertained for a few minutes, and possibly
encourage you to have a spoken or written or other kind of conversation with a
loved one, stranger, or pet.
KYLE: So it's the end of the year, which
means we're supposed to reflect on... things. Things that happened this year.
Where, oh were should we start? It was a strange year for me personally.
Getting married took up a bunch of my attention away from other things (like
record shopping), but it was a great year for musicians I love putting out new
stuff. I mean, Eluvium, My Bloody Valentine(!!), Tim Hecker, Fuck Buttons, Four
Tet, Oneohtrix Point Never, Boards of Canada, Mogwai, The National,
Deerhunter, and so on and so forth.
Plus, there was the unexpected but welcome
(to me at least) rebirth of emocore, the all consuming release of Random Access
Memories, crossover metal catching on in 'mainstream indie' circles, the whole
fox thing, and YOU SIR releasing your own fine collection of songs. Personally,
and I think this goes for both of us, I'll also remember this as the year that
I stopped caring about Arcade Fire. it was a little bittersweet to realize that
I'm just not that into them anymore right as they cement their position as the
'biggest indie band in the world'. Is it Death Cab for Cutie all over again?
IAN: You know, I was in DCFC's camp since
mail ordering the cassette of You Can Play These Songs with Chords,
and then thought they lost it with Transatlanticism, while the
general consensus decided it was their best album. (Subsequently, I think there
were some great songs on the two albums that followed, though I can't think of
one from their last album.) Similarly, this past ten years has not
been the decade I expected to have with Arcade Fire. Like pretty much every
other one of our peers, Funeral was the sound of
the fall and winter of 2004. Given that I was simultaneously catching up with
Broken Social Scene's 2002/2003 breakthrough You Forgot it in People (which,
of course, you put in my hands) after coming back from
spending half of the year in London, it seemed at the time that 2004 was something
like The Year Canuck Broke. The timing was such that Arcade Fire also seemed to
naturally fill the empty space left by Godspeed You! Black Emperor going on
hiatus in 2003: a Montreal band with a lot of members making
dramatic-yet-uplifting BIG music with a predilection for occasionally playing
shows in churches.
When Neon Bible came out,
the reviews seemed to fault it mostly for sounding too big, or
at least for trying to sound too big, which felt like the first schism between
what I heard when I listened to Arcade Fire and what most everyone else did.
The only song that really sounded "huge" to me was the one they
carried over from their debut EP. That said, shouting the "whoa-oh"
verse in "Keep the Car Running" along with 25,000 other people at
their Randall's Island show later that October (what a line-up that was, eh?:
LCD Soundsystem, Les Savy Fav, Blonde Redhead...) was one of the more ecstatic
communal experiences I've ever had at a concert -- along with doing an encore
of the "whoo-ooh"s from "Headlights Look Like Diamonds"
with dozens, if not hundreds, of most-likely-also-drunk people while walking
across the bridge back to Harlem after the show.
When it was finally time for The
Suburbs, I was bummed to realize how little I had listened to Arcade Fire
in the interim. Where Neon Bible had felt to me a little
oddly stunted (I still don't quite get what they were trying to do with
"Black Wave/Bad Vibrations"), The Suburbs, like TV on the
Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain and the Stills' With
Feathers, started with two different songs that sounded definitively
like "opening" tracks, giving the momentum a feeling of being
immediately rebooted. It also had five songs too many. Beyond that, clearly
gone was the interest in a sense of intimacy with the listener like the one
they had once established with more gentle, intricate songs like "Une
annee sans lumiere." Everything was now spacious chords and choruses. It
was clear the follow-up to Funeral I had always wanted was not
likely to ever materialize. Reflektor is now their second
overstuffed album in a row. It seems I'm not hearing the same record as the
folks who are giving it rave reviews are. I don't think it's bad, I don't think
it's great, I'm just...indifferent, which, thinking back on Funeral,
is not a feeling I expected I would ever have about their music.
What is it for you?
KYLE: Indifferent was exactly my reaction
to both The Suburbs and (especially) Reflektor.
The thing is, I think I always expected my relationship with Arcade Fire to end
up that way, given how different (i.e. earnest and emotive) Funeral was
from anything I was listening to at the time. Maybe it was a bit of a self
fulfilling prophecy, but regardless the end result was that I was much more
attached to Funeral than I was to Arcade Fire the recording
group, making Neon Bible easier to swallow, and the resulting
slow drift apart much easier to accept.
I should note, just to be clear, that I
make the 'recording group' clarification because I'm sure they continue to put
on an amazing live show, albeit one that I am unlikely to see again on my own
dime given my distaste for paying NFL suite prices for rock shows... but that's
a whole other conversation.
Speaking of sporting events and segues and
things that happened this year, I'm eager to get your full report on the
Rangers (hockey version) game you attended a few weeks back. You mentioned that
the house music in the arena was... of questionable merit. It's often a bit
awkward when sports stadiums and music collide, but from what you mentioned it
sounded like the trouble went well beyond simple bad taste?
IAN: Okay, so first off: enter
Twitter contests. For reals. We got the tickets to the Rangers vs. Canucks
game because our friend won them from some watch company via a Twitter contest,
and they were the most amazing seats I've ever had to anything, no joke. They
were technically fourth row, right behind one of those corner circles
where they do face offs. Because of the way it was set up, there was no one in
front of us, barring the people who get to sit in folding chairs right behind
the boards below us. I could hear the puck hit the goalie's leg pads, and see
the players' facial expressions. They tickets would have been, I think,
maybe $300 each, and our friend won four of them. From
a freaking watch company, via a freaking Twitter contest. Who
freaking knew?
But, yes, here's the thing. From 1992 to
1994, I was a rabid hockey fan and went to dozens of Seattle Thunderbirds
games, back in that old no-frills '50s era arena at the Seattle Center,
now gone, where I also later saw Oasis and The Verve, and where my high school
graduation ceremony took place. (The only thing I remember about that ceremony,
by the way, was that my friend Samson Kwong quoted that "hope you had
the time of your life" song by Green Day in his valedictorian
speech. At length. I probably would have quoted Iggy Pop
if I had been invited to speak, but to each his own.) During those years,
Metallica's "Enter Sandman" was the Thunderbirds' "take to the
ice" music, they played Gary Glitter's "Rock'n'Roll Part 2"
every time they scored a goal, and for some reason the sound guy couldn't
get enough of blasting that opening low note of Rush' "Tom
Sawyer." To this day, when I hear that song, I get visions
of minor league hockey players skating around the ice in that arena.
Granted, that was Seattle in the early
'90s, and the Rangers play in the New York of the '10s, but the commercial pop
music they kept blaring over the PA at the game we went to was
shameful. Does Lady Gaga really get a hockey crowd going in 2013? Mainstream
rock has been a garbage dump since Limp Bizkit was allowed to happen,
and it wouldn't be any more manly to play some of
Imagine Dragons' awful Coldplay-ripping Butt Rock or whatnot...but
all the same, I felt embarassed for everyone there who wasn't a child or
disinterested wife/girlfriend. In fact, the only two times they played a rock
song were when fights broke out. After the first fight, they even played a
snatch of "Master of Puppets," which I thought I
was hallucinating at first. The game is the same, but the music done
changed.
Speaking of dark times, maybe now it is
time to explore my favorite album-cover-related hypothesis of 2013? That
is: your album-cover-related hypothesis of 2013.
KYLE: You must be referring to the great
colorless album cover conspiracy! Well you see, it all started when I picked
up Cupid's Head, the latest full length from The Field, and noted
that the 'white text on black background' album cover was quite a departure
from his usual 'color-y words on off-white background' theme. Departure is a
definitely a relative term in this case. For an artist who works exclusively in
the '10 minute long microhouse tracks built out of slowly shifting loops'
genre, any sudden jump feels bigger than it would
otherwise.
At any rate, around the same time
Tim Hecker's excellent Virgins was
released, and right away I thought it was interesting that his music
had taken a dark turn from his recent work and the album cover, while it does
feature a color photograph predominantly on a black background, reads overall
as black to me.
Not long after that is when I noticed that
Fuck Buttons had made it a trifecta* with Slow Focus. I think
I joked to you that all the ambient experimental guys must have gotten together
and made a black album cover pact. In fact, just looking at album cover, 2013
seems like the year of 'thingy on black background' albums, with bands from
Deerhunter to Daft Punk using the technique.
*I so want to include Oneohtrix Point
Never in this group , but R Plus Seven has too many damn colors on
it. Still, musically it takes a subtly darker turn.
However, maybe there's more going on here
than that? In the experimental world at least, the change in color palate
seemed to apply to the music as much as the art. Could there be some external
forces at work here pushing things this direction? I'd be inclined to think it
was the growing influence of metal if it weren't for the fact that the great
crossover metal record of the year, Deafheaven's Sunbather,
features a pink cover. Also, it is called Sunbather.
I'll toss the ball back over you you at
this point. Do you think we are seeing the product of a long wartime recession,
a purely musical trend, complete coincidence, or something I'm not thinking of?
The full four-fecta
IAN: Oh, it is a four-fecta when you add
in Baths' Obsidian, and that Darkside record can go in the
"electronic album with thing-on-black-background cover" category.
Those Burial EP's count, too, yes? You definitely weren't just seeing things,
this was an unspoken 2013 visual art trend. As for why the music itself would
take a dark turn...probably different reasons? In the case of Baths
specifically, it was documented that Will Wiesenfeld was understandably
influenced by recent issues with his health. Maybe all of these artists went
through trying times, and these are the creative results? Personally, I think
it would be fun to speculate that the world of electronic music was also at
least partially reacting to whatever is left of populist guitar-based music,
which has somehow made a tired cliche out of white people shouting
"hey!" en masse in the middle of rousing anthems about hero trials to
listen to on Apple products while driving hybrids. Or maybe all of these guys
randomly got into the Cure's goth trilogy together last year.
If they have now got it all out of their
system, do you think more artists will be following in Deafheaven's footsteps,
releasing brightly colored albums in 2014? Are there there any trends that you
suspect are coming, or would like to see? My partial 2014 Music Wish List would
be for:
A) Dr. Luke & Co. to retire, so every
song they play at my gym would stop sounding 100% exactly the same. That kind
of commerce approach to "song" writing is bad for the body and mind,
like eating McDonald's every day.
B) Actually, if I could get "A,"
that would be more than enough. But a new Lotus Plaza album wouldn't hurt
either, if that's even a possibility.
KYLE: It'd be interesting to see what the
most common colors are in album art over time. You could take the average color
of each album, group them by year, etc. I'm curious to see if there's much
difference, and if there's any sort of trend... but man that'd take FOREVER so
perhaps one of our fine readers will take up the challenge?
I'm kicking myself for forgetting about Obsidian
by the way... ah well. As far as 2014 trends to go, I think that's
something to keep an eye on. Are we in for more blackness, or was 2013 just
an anomaly?
In terms of predictions, I'd say we should
be on the look-out for genre zombies. As with emocore this year, in 2014 I'm
going to guess that we'll see more of the same, with young bands
showing renewed interest in every single remaining '90s sub-genre we loved
and/or hated. This trend will accelerate through 2015 and beyond, until all
music is a nostalgic nod to the music of the previous month.
As for a wish list, I'd like to see:
A) Some new material from James Murphy. A
west coast tour to support it wouldn't be so bad either... probably not in the
cards, but a girl can dream.
B) More realistically, can we say goodbye
to some of these talent competition shows? I have accepted that reality TV is
here to stay, but enough of the competitive singing already. It's bad enough
that they're constantly on the 3 times a week I try to watch live television,
but these shows are DESIGNED to give gigantic recording contracts to singers
who appeal primarily to, I don't know, 12 year old girls? Soon, pre-teens
will be curating the very world the rest of us have to live in, at least
until the adults revolt resulting in the demographic wars of 2020-2023.
Anyway!
I think that's my last rant of 2013 unless the Seahawks manage to lose this
weekend, and so with that, I think it's time to say goodbye. Say goodbye Ian.
