Boy, for a couple of teetotaling vegetarians, CarrieNation and Dabysan throw one hell of a party. I mean, I knew it was going to be a good time, but yesterday went above and beyond my highest expectations. I'm so unbelievably happy for the both of them, and even though it's been said plenty, I'd like to offer them my public congratulations one last time. I am deeply honored that two people I care about so much asked me to be a part of their special day. I'm just thankful that I only flubbed my toast in small ways that nobody seemed to notice. I was so sure I was going to screw it up.
]]>I have other stuff I should be doing right now. But I made the mistake of turning on my computer when I got home. Then I re-read Dabysan's excellent post about getting married this weekend. Then I started thinking about my toast, which I thought I had completed last night. Then I started going back through some - okay, most - of our posts about Karaoke to the Death. Then I started listening to the audio from past years. Then I started thinking about how great all my friends are, and how much I'm looking forward to this fantastic celebration on Saturday - despite the fact that I have to give a toast, which I definitely don't want to do.
I have other stuff I should be doing right now, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me I wasted my evening.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Suck it, Phillies.
PS. Jerry Hairston, Jr. got into the game last night. Is that why the Yanks won? I'm saying yes. Thanks, M-----l. Jerry is good luck.
Jeez, I'm only one day into this "no pictures, no video" thing and I'm already being tested. The discovery on Youtube of the infomercial for the Weezer Snuggie is not helping. Must.... not.... link....
]]>A couple of days ago, we glanced over to the left there and noticed that we're on pace for 2009 to be our most prolific year as a blogger. That surprised the hell out of us. It had seemed to us that the month that just ended was a microcosm of our output this year as a whole. But about the same time we decided we were being a little too self-critical, we remembered that late January and early February saw a flurry of "posts" from Tampa which inflate the overall number. All told, we have literally phoned in nearly forty posts so far this year, and all but a handful of them are just a photo with no explanation. There's no denying it - 2009 has been the laziest year in the short history of hotrod.vox.com.
So in an effort to rectify this, for the entire month of November we're going to focus on quality over quantity. We won't be posting any photos or videos. We're going to rely solely on our words. (Frankly, this strikes us as a more appropriate way of commemorating National Blog Posting Month than posting daily, for what it's worth.) And no, we don't have any idea of how this is going to play out. We hope that we might find something to say in the next four weeks (besides this introductory post) that doesn't require a visual crutch. Lord knows, we've still got stories to tell. Maybe we'll even get to the tale of how we got our nickname....
My heart wasn't in it - not for one single minute. But even though I slacked through most of the month, I'm not about to shirk on the obligatory encore. Rocktober doesn't end until the Old 97's take the stage. Which means that today - finally - our long national nightmare is over.
And so another Rocktober limps to a sad close. Sure, we were mostly disinterested this time around, but it could have been worse. Way worse. We didn't post any shitty songs and our posts didn't require an interpreter to make sense of them. It's comforting to know that no matter how badly we phone it in, Cappy will be there setting the bar low enough that our apathy doesn't matter. So until next year.... Or whatever.
We've been wondering for the past few days what is the protocol on the off chance one of the copycats happens to post a song we had on our agenda. Because that happened. We ultimately decided to go ahead and stick with our original setlist because A) we started Rocktober and B) Cappy is an idiot. His blog isn't even written in English. We're not sure what it is (our best guess is some bizarre variation of whatever language Sarah Palin speaks), but it sure as shit ain't English. We've often wondered what his many followers are thinking when they comment, because there's no way they can possibly understand what the fuck he's supposed to be talking about. They're probably just nodding along because they know better than to upset the crazy person. Anyway, we've kind of gotten off-topic here. Let's just get to the rock....
I learned a couple of months ago that AC/DC's Back in Black has sold more copies worldwide than any record except Thriller. That surprised me for about four seconds until I actually thought about it. Eventually, every teenage boy is going to hear "You Shook Me All Night Long" during his adolescence and buy a copy. Back in Black is like the Monopoly game of rock albums.
I promised myself I wasn't going to phone it in tonight. But I only just now got home from work. I had a mostly shitty day. I'm way behind on a drawing I promised Daby and CarrieNation. And my favorite baseball team - the New York Yankees - are playing game one of the World Series. So here we are.
Chuck Klosterman calls this song "the emo 'Rock Around the Clock.'" Is he right? I don't know. Nobody knows. What's the point of debating, anyway? Who cares?