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December 26, 2008

Best of 2008 - #8

Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd. I'm not really an emo guy, so when I heard that the folks from that other Las Vegas band, Panic at the Disco, had lost the exclamation point and discovered the Beatles, I was suspicion.

Nevertheless, upon hearing Pretty. Odd, I was impressed. Some of the misplaced gravitas is still there, but it has mostly been replaced with a winking bombast. "We're So Starving" is the kind of silly intro you see in Sgt. Pepper and Sam's Town, but it sets the tone and works fairly well as an introduction to some of 2008's finest pop songs. I don't expect anyone to compare Panic's songwriter, guitarist Ryan Ross, to Paul McCartney - but he does a good imitation.

Posted at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)

December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas

Hello out there on the internet - it's Christmas day! What ever it is you celebrate this month, or even if you celebrate nothing, have a safe, wonderful and happy day. We all need those every now and then.

Posted at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2008

Top 10 of 2008 - #9

Okkervil River - The Stand Ins. This is Okkervil River's "sequel" to 2007's The Stage Names, and it continues the themes of love, fame, and trying to be famous. There aren't a lot of barn-burners on this CD, but frontman Will Sheff delivers his tales with an earnest voice that perfectly captures his emotions.

Posted at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2008

How to do gingerbread man violence humorously

I wrote last week about the horrible Glade commercial where the woman bites the head off a gingerbread man who was going to spill the secret about her air freshener. I've seen it several times since, and it is still highly disturbing.

In fact, there is an addition to it now, where the homicidal housewife retreats to another room. Later, when she returns, she offers a plate of gingerbread cookies to her house guests. Every single gingerbread man has had his head bitten off! What the fuck, Glade? This is pure ginger-cide... Genocide. Something. And to make it even worse, the gingerbread man sounds exactly like how I imagine Tiny Tim would have sounded. Again, great job, Glade.

This makes me thankful that at least one ad agency knows how to treat this subject. I love this AT&T/Cingular commercial, starring the voices of Steve Buscemi and Norm MacDonald.

Do you see what they did there? No decapitation. No gingerbread men were harmed. Only gingerbread houses... I've never lived in a gingerbread house, but I would wager that most gingerbread men would take losing a chunk of their house rather than losing their heads. Just a guess.

Posted at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)

Top 10 of 2008 - #10 (tie)

I couldn't really decide on how to break this tie, so I am giving co-#10 honors to Kate Nash - Made of Bricks. This goes nicely with Ida Maria's album, because Ida Maria's has yet to be released in the United States, and Kate Nash's album was out for a whole year before it was released in the United States during 2008. So really, neither should probably count as a 2008 release.

Anyhow, Kate Nash is often compared to her fellow Briton Lily Allen, in that she sings about boys with a lot of sass and bluntness, but hides her venom in pleasant-sounding melodies. That's where it ends, because Kate focuses on her piano and guitars. There's anger, vulnerability, and humor to songs. Many of her themes are universal, so although I could relate a lot better if I was once a teenage girl, I enjoyed this nevertheless. I think you will too.

Posted at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)

Top 10 of 2008 - #10 (tie)

So let's finally begin this best of 2008 countdown. #10 is Ida Maria - Fortress Round My Heart. As far as I know, this has yet to be released in the United States, but through the "magic" of the internet, anyone can get their grubby little paws on it. A native of Norway, she now lives in Sweden.

On this CD, she combines punk rock and classic rock sounds with that famed Scandinavian pop sensibility. Her songs are catchy - like, say, the Cardigans or the undisputed kings of Scandinavian pop: Abba. This is not to say she sounds like those bands, but her songs stick with you like them. That, readers, is a very good thing.

Posted at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2008

Top ten albums of 2008!

If there's one thing the end of the year is good for - other than that nagging, creeping sense of my increasing age - it's lists! We here at the ol' Squealer like to do this in the form of a top ten albums of the year. So, today, I'm going to first tell you my "honorable mentions," which could either be construed as 11-20, or simply ones I really liked but got beat out by the top ten. It was a pretty good year for music, and although my list probably will not impress many music critics, these were the albums that I enjoyed the most. So, here you go, in alphabetical order.

Honorable Mentions
Be Your Own Pet - Get Awkward
Dengue Fever - Venus On Earth
Duffy - Rockferry
The Dutchess and the Duke - She's The Dutchess, He's The Duke
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons - Inside The Human Body
Janelle Monae (pictured) - Metropolis: The Chase Suite
Katy Perry - One of the Boys
Little Joy - self-titled
Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances
Vampire Weekend - self-titled

Posted at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)

About time

A front page story on Yahoo today tells us that the National Academy of Sciences has created a "blue ribbon panel" to study ways to avoid asteroids that might have our lonely island of life in their crosshairs. More specifically, the asteroid Apophis might have a date with the Earth in 2036:

Observers said that the asteroid — a massive boulder left over from the birth of the solar system — is about 1,000 feet wide and weighs at least 50 million tons.

After further observations, astronomers reported that the asteroid would skim by Earth harmlessly in 2029, but it has a one in 44,000 probability of slamming into our planet on Easter Sunday , April 13, 2036

...

The [panel's] second task is to review various methods that have been proposed to deflect or destroy an incoming asteroid and recommend the best options. They include a nuclear bomb, conventional explosives or a spacecraft that would push or pull the asteroid off its course.

Offbeat ideas are painting the surface of the asteroid so that the sun's rays would heat it differently and alter its direction, and a ``gravity tractor, ''a satellite that would fly close to the asteroid, gently nudging it aside.

They only created this panel NOW? Where were they ten years ago? Armageddon and Deep Impact both came out in 1998, and nevermind that there are hundreds of impact craters all over the Earth. Yet this is the first time the scientists have felt compelled to discuss the issue? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, scientists. Bruce Willis was on this a long time ago.

By the way, I truly believe the best way to avoid an asteroid threat is to send a rag-tag group of deep-core drillers, along with several apple-pie astronauts. Then they can land their spacecraft on the asteroid, drill a hole in it, and blow it up. Seems reasonable to me.

Posted at 10:08 AM | Comments (1)

December 15, 2008

Worst commercial ever

This Glade gingerbread man commercial is awful. It seems to be a thinly disguised directive not to squeal. You're a gingerbread man who knows the true source of that nice aroma? Better not snitch, or this uppity housewife will bite your head off. Yowza.

And what the hell is a boutique candle?

Posted at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)

Executive ass?

I was perusing Craigslist for jobs today - anyone need a lawyer, by the way? And I saw this interesting listing. I can only assume the person who made this posting does not have a complete grasp of abbreviations.

It got me thinking though. Who's truly an executive ass? Those guys at the banks and the Big Three automakers? Rod Blagojevich, the "chief executive" of Illinois? Or maybe Executive Ass is just a name for a really class prostitution ring. The possibilities are, frankly, endless!

Posted at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

What? Noooo!

Apparently they are making a movie out of the best-selling book, Marley & Me. I haven't read the book, but I suppose it is a tale of a dog, the people who love him, and the lessons the simple creature teaches them. Sadly, in the end, the dog dies.

As you can see, one particular website has the big spoiler alert going on.

However, is this really even a spoiler? Any movie about an animal must eventually conclude with the pet dying, and the owner outliving the beloved animal. It's a fact of life, unless you are Leona Helmsley or your pet is a Galapagos tortoise.

It's unfortunate, but we outlive our pets. I've done it, billions of families have done it. It will continue to happen. So I don't really consider it a spoiler if we find out that ol' Marley passes away in the end. It would be a spoiler, however, if it turns out that Marley dies an unnatural death, as in this movie.

That doesn't mean I won't weep profusely if I see this movie, of course. Knowing the ending that is coming doesn't make it any easier when it does come.

Posted at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2008

Enough with the gates

Every political scandal seems to get a name. I don't know when creativity died, but I can only assume it occurred at about the time some clever newspaper editor appended -gate onto something, and that became the new name for the scandal. The King Kong of scandals was Watergate, and now every scandal doesn't become a scandal until it gets gated. I mean, look at this list of "gate" scandals. It's huge!

But I refuse to call this Blagojevich thing "Blagogate," "Senategate" or some other asinine gate name. There has to be a few billion people on the internet. Unfortunately, only three or four of them read this site, but we should be able to put our collective brains together to come up with something.

Do I have any ideas right now? No. My brain hurts.

Update: Zorn is on top of this, and my favorite of his suggestions is "Teapot Dumb," but now the only contenders are "gBay," "Corruptapalooza" and the aforementioned "Blagogate." Whatever, dude.

Having thought for a bit, my first suggestion is "Public Official A-Hole," after Blago's not-so-subtle nickname in federal documents. Though, I don't know if I could see how elementary school students can learn about the "Public Official A-Hole" scandal in school without getting their mouths washed out with soap. Does anyone even do that nowadays?

Posted at 10:54 PM | Comments (0)

In non-Blago news...

Is there no decency left in the world? Apparently there is none in Geneva, Illinois. Why, a family can't even put out simple Christmas decorations without somebody making a sick joke out of it.

A Geneva family reported that someone keeps entering its back yard to rearrange its animated lighted reindeer into graphic positions.

The latest incident at the East Mallory Drive residence took place about 9 p.m. Saturday, and now the reindeer will no longer operate. It was the third such incident.

Way to go, pranksters. You killed Christmas.

Speaking of killing Christmas, I almost did it one year. Hallmark came out with this commemorative Starship Enterprise ornament, and it lit up if you plugged it into a Christmas light socket on the tree.

We had those old lights that had bigger bulbs and sockets than the ones they sell now, but I tried to plug the ornament into the tree anyway. Not understanding simple electronics at that point, I shorted out the tree. It scared the hell out of the dog, and ruined that strand of Christmas lights. My little brother claims I ruined Christmas because of this, but I will assume that was mere puffery.

Posted at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2008

Rod's a tool

As much as I want to talk about something, I can't really get away from the part where the Governor got arrested. I think my new term for him is Blago the Jag-O. [See #10.]

Now, it's no secret that politics in Illinois is corrupt. As an FBI agent said, it's probably the most corrupt state in the union. And the thing I don't get is that voters stand for it. The voters reelect crooks, idiots and the children of crooks and idiots. It never ends.

Elected officials in Cook County and Chicago are running the place into the ground. Mayor Daley says he barely has enough money to plow and salt the roads. Todd Stroger, the guy in charge of Cook County, thinks the County needs to borrow a few hundred million even though he managed to get our sales tax raised to over 10%, the highest in the nation. Will it change? I highly doubt it. The crap that Blago pulls goes on everywhere in Illinois.

The New York Times, however, has a nice article about the guy with the best chance to straighten things up in the Prarie State: US Attorney Pat Fitzgerald:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald on Tuesday unveiled the indictment of his second Illinois governor in five years, the latest in a streak of prosecutions that have made him a folk hero in a state beleaguered by official crime.

“He’s a relentless investigator,” said Joel R. Levin, a Chicago lawyer who worked for Mr. Fitzgerald as a federal prosecutor until earlier this year. “He leaves no stone unturned.”

Still boyish at 47, Mr. Fitzgerald became a familiar face nationally last year when he won the conviction of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury in the exposing of a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer.

But in Chicago, Mr. Fitzgerald has become a prominent figure as he has taken on the dark, cynical world of local government, where abuse of power appears to have become a way of life. It has become a cliché to compare him to Eliot Ness, the Chicago Prohibition agent whom television and movies made into a symbol of incorruptible law enforcement.

Here's hoping that the next president keeps him on the job. We in Illinois need it.

Posted at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2008

Hahahaha!

Hahahahahaha!

Posted at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2008

The man behind the license plate

I wrote a few months ago about the guy I saw driving around town with the OBAMA license plate. The Sun-Times tracked him down, and he surprisingly is not related to the president-elect. But he is a big fan:

Wicker Park resident Bill Slater, 53, got Illinois license plates bearing the letters "OBAMA" back in 2006. Now, whenever he drives anywhere, he says, "People are fighting to get alongside of me and look at me. They're giving me the thumbs-up."

Back before Obama's presidential star power, Slater says, that might happen three or four times a week. "Now, it's four or five times a day."

So Slater likes the idea of a special Obama plate. Besides giving people the chance to celebrate his favorite politician, maybe it would also help keep the "OBAMA" plates on his black Ford Taurus from being stolen.

"There's places I will not go and park my car because I'm scared somebody might steal 'em," he says.

Posted at 10:29 PM | Comments (1)

December 05, 2008

Wow

In trying to find a picture of some police for the last entry about the hotel room, I came across this gem. How absolutely, unbelievably great is that picture? It's from 1976, and if you click on the link there are dozens of similar pictures on Flickr. I recommend checking it out if you're bored. If you're reading this site, you probably are bored. So get to it.

Posted at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

How not to get a free hotel room

Some guys really have massive huevos. Consider Chicago police officer Victor Brown, who was stripped of his police powers in March. I'm not sure what he did in March to lose his authority, but he didn't help his cause this past week, when he was nabbed for impersonating a police officer. He might have gotten away with it, if not for an unusual request:

Rosemont detectives arrested Brown after he went to a hotel and asked for a free room to conduct an undercover vice investigation, authorities said. Hotel employees called police after he asked for lotion and on-demand movies, authorities said.

Come on, Officer Brown! Either he's really lazy, or chose a terrible hotel to defraud. Most every hotel I've been in has lotion right in the bathroom, and On-Demand movies, are available with the remote control!

Officer Brown, if you're reading, I'd really like to know about this lotion thing. Did they really have no lotion available?

Posted at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2008

Is beauty timeless?

Any number of my female friends will tell me how hot firemen are. Looking at the beefcakey man on that calendar, I see they have a point. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to point out something: lots of middle-aged firemen seem to be portlier, hairier, and uglier. So, suppose you marry the guy in the calendar. Twenty-five years from now, you roll over in bed and this fellow is sleeping next to you.

Of course, by no means do I want to disparage firefighters. They're brave, selfless individuals. Heroic even. Women want to jump all over them; they get to drive cool trucks.

I say, grow that mustache, my friend. It'll make my life a little easier!

Posted at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2008

Likely story

Let's say you're estranged from your wife. You've been convicted of beating her in the past, and she currently has an order of protection against you. When you accidentally shoot her, what's your excuse? Your honor, we was just makin' whoopie!

A Tri-State woman is in critical condition Wednesday after police say her husband shot her while they were having sex.

Timothy Havens, 38, told Springfield police he was reaching for something on the nightstand when the pistol went off, hitting his estranged wife Carolyn in the upper chest.

Posted at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2008

Have some dignity

Instead of going to bed last night, I watched The Untouchables on AMC. Two things struck me about the movie: first, the improbable outcome that Capone gets put in jail when his own lawyer pleads guilty for him against his will; second, the movie had way too many commercial breaks. They seemed to happen every five minutes!

Anyway, most of the commercials were for products aimed at, shall we say, distinguished gentlemen. There were those people who will buy your unwanted gold. There were creams and pumps that will improve sexual performance.

But then there was this thing:

That, my friends, is the Loud N' Clear hearing aid. It's a sound amplification device disguised as a bluetooth ear clip.

The idea is nobody will know the wearer has a hearing aid, because it looks like a headset for a cell phone. One scene in the ad showed a man in his 30's using the device to overhear two women at a party talk about how cute he is. As if! This commercial overlooks a fatal flaw: it is a universal truth that people who walk around with bluetooth headsets are douchebags.

So, it seems to me, nobody should buy this product. It's hard enough being deaf - now you have to look like a tool, too? If you're also buying the enlargement cream they were advertising, well, I think it's time to give up. Something is not right.

Posted at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

Coolest picture ever

That's Sara the Walrus. Her special talent? Playing the saxophone, though in reality it appears she can only play one note. Then again, I'm a human being and I can play nothing on the saxophone.

I'm not going to expound on the amazing things animals can do, though. All I really wanted to do was post that incredible picture of a walrus playing the saxophone. What a world!

Posted at 01:38 PM | Comments (0)