Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor

Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.

Obama is a Boy Band


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The week I started this blog, way way back in the foggy memory that is 2004, two very important things happened to be in Boston. Me and the Democratic National Convention. As I lived in the North End – which is a hop, skip and a flip-flop away from the Boston Garden – our neighborhood was abuzz and I remember paying particularly close attention to the goings on. The way I remember it, there were three big questions on everyone’s mind:

  1. Why is Ben Affleck speaking at the DNC?
  2. Will Ben Affleck nail either or both of John Kerry’s daughters?
  3. Who the hell is this Barack Obama guy?

It is astounding to think that in the 4 years since that painful week (you try traversing 14 different protests a morning on your walk to work,) Barack has become the figurehead of the Democratic party – nay, the hopes and dreams of the free world – and he didn’t really have to do… anything.

I recently took part in a demo for a proposed pop culture radio show I have been asked to participate in up here. It will/would be on the Canadian CBC network (which I love and listen to in my car everyday) and I was contacted as a result of a producer finding this very blog. As I have become such a fan in the year since I moved up North I was flattered and completely up for it. My rampant narcissism didn’t hold me back either. After some back and forth we decided the topic for the show would be the help/hindrance of celebrity endorsement on both sides of the fence as the Paris Hilton video response to McCain’s ad had just popped up and was all the rage.

Long story short, as I have a daunting mountain of real work to get through this week, the host at one point asked me – “Don’t you want to see the candidate with the most support voted into the White House?” To which I replied something along the lines of absolutely not! Do I want my new President to be elected because an untalented hack from Fall Out Boy was photographed at a club wearing his face on a T-shirt? Shall I ignore my concerns about Obama’s national defense intentions and experience fall by the way side because videos of a large-breasted siren singing his praises have gone viral on YouTube?

The man has support, all right. Staggering support. But it’s been whipped up in all the wrong ways by all the wrong people. I would like to (and have been in person) challenging people to tell me a few – Jesus, any – reasons they support or plan to vote for Barack Obama. And none of them can. That frightens me, and it doesn’t have anything to do with age, race, smoking or number of Sennett terms. “I think we need a change” is not going to cut it with me, and if these scribblings give one mindlessly (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) pro-Obama person pause for thought, I’ll be happy.

A person should be elected for President based on who he/she is, and not who he/she isn’t. This is no time in human history to propel an individual into the Presidency because they’re a fad. I’d sooner a hula hoop or a Pet Rock got elected. Feel free to hammer me for my shocking thoughts on Mr. Obama, and I hope you do. It needs to be discussed.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: Je M’Appelle Michael Keaton


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Appetizer: When was the last time you had your hair cut/trimmed?
There is a woman who lives about 5 minutes down the road named Maureen who has a salon in a room of her home and has been cutting my parent’s hair for several years. Whenever they go, I tend to go and the last time we went was about 3 weeks ago. If you’re still awake after reading that riveting expose, I have had the same haircut for over 20 years, it’s easy, fast and requires little more than a #2 clipper and that the barber/ette be reasonably sober.

Soup: Name one thing you miss about being a child.
Not much, because as anyone who knows me will tell you I am the quintessential man-boy. Peter Pan is my main man. I like to think I’m able to walk the line, however, between becoming a stiff, boring adult and refusing to ever leave the side of my mint condition still-in-the-package 1977 Han Solo figure in the basement nerdery.

Salad: Pick one: butter, margarine, olive oil.
There’s an English show I love to watch download called Dragon’s Den. There is now an American version so you probably know that it involves inventors and entrepreneurs pitching rich “dragons” and hoping they’ll both invest in their idea and also help guide them with their oceans of experience. Last night, one poor chap wanted to start an olive oil club. The dragons didn’t like the model or the margins and none of them invested. But they all absolutely loved the olive oil samples they were given, to the extent that I’m now very curious as to what exactly “fresh” olive oil tastes like. Yet another reason for my next big trip to be to Greece. Or to fill a bathtub with cheap domestic olive oil and roll around in it in the meantime. Shoot, we don’t have any bathtubs here.

Main Course: If you could learn another language, which – and why?
I took French in school for years but was an awfully inattentive, pain in the ass as a student. Regardless of how very hard I tried, I managed to retain a base vocabulary and have been using it a lot since my move to Canada. I plan to either take an adult-ed course in French up here over the winter or maybe download invest in a copy of Rosetta Stone. If Gooch comes through with his promise to store his skidoos up here this snowy season, all bets are off. Unless we take the trails all the way to Quebec.

Dessert: Finish this sentence: In 5 years I expect to be…
mr-momMarried with children and working from a home office. In this day and age, there’s no reason Mr. Mom can’t have an actual income in addition to a fanny pack. Laptops have gotten small enough to fit comfotably on changing tables. Conference calls can be scheduled around naptime. Business lunches can be held at Chuck E. Cheese. I’ll make it work.

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Boisterous B-Boy Boat Boogie


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Life’s been a bit of a clusterfrig up here lately, but I’m bound and determined to get the blog’s technical issues fixed and find the time to write more frequently again. I love PITF, love amusing the people who read it regularly and it also saves me hundreds of thousands a year on therapy. So fear not.

Until the day comes when this blog is once again a font of humor and pop culture silliness, I give you one of the highlights from our own Detroit Velvet Smooth’s recent visit to Canada…

As we sailed to a local watering hole Kardinal Officiall came on the old iPod and we were inspired to perform a nautical n’er do well of a dance for my sister – who was luckier to capture it on tape than yesterday’s Bigfoot guy or Zapruder.

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Wednesday Wadio: Sing a Song of Shep


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When I play my guitar for the dogs, they go a little bit silly. I have my own basement office fanclub, it would seem. If they had thumbs there’d be lighters blazing. I thought I might take it a step further and learn a specific song for each of them, if only to amuse myself and make Janet laugh. I didn’t think very long or hard about it, and one evening set about looking up the chords and lyrics for both Ruby Tuesday and Old Shep . A song for Rhuby and Shepherd, respectively.

Obviously Ruby Tuesday is a famous Stones song that has absolutely nothing to do with a canine, unless of course the song writing team of Richards/Jones had a particularly sexually deviant phase some time in the early 70s – which is, you must admit, entirely possible.

Don’t question why she needs to be so free
She’ll tell you it’s the only way to be
She just can’t be chained to a
Life where nothing’s gained and nothing’s lost at such a cost
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on you?
When you change…

She can’t be chained to a life? She sure could be chained to a post in the backyard with a regulation choker. Who could hang a name on you? How about your owner, right next to your license and vaccination tags. See where I’m going with this? Lots of drugs in hotel rooms on the road. It gets lonely. “Here, Ruby. Give Uncle Keithy a slurp.”

Old Shep, on the other hand, is undoubtedly a song about a dog. I originally chose Shepherd’s name because of it’s absolutely brilliant and hilarious effect when coupled with my last name, but I had doubts as to whether it was the best choice. Then I remembered the old Walter Brennan song which was eventually covered by Elvis and it seemed like destiny. And it starts off so cheerily.

When I was a lad and Old Shep was a pup
O’er hills and meadows we’d stray
Just a boy and his dog, we were both full of fun
We grew up together that way

The song goes on to get all kinds of Old Yeller-ish, and by the end the protagonist has been told by the vet to put Shep out of his misery. Back in those days, pet euthenasia involved little more than a shotgun, and every kid apparently had access to one.

With a hand that was trembling I picked up my gun
I aimed it at Shep’s faithful head
I just couldn’t do it, I wanted to run
And I wished that they’d shoot me instead

I still love the name, but perhaps I shouldn’t keep singing the song to him. I can see how it could be a little depressing for the wee guy. What shall I replace it with? There aren’t to many songs about shepherds, unless you count bible hymns. Any ideas? Puppy needs a theme song!

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