The Real Pat Blair

…why you’ll probably never hear The Lone Strangers on the radio?

…why liberals and conservatives alike are starting to think that Supreme Court term limits are a good idea?

It’s always a big event (generally a riot) when Ames makes the national news, and this time, I was there.

Let me be the first to share that I have heard rumblings of U2 making a stop in Des Moines at some point late this year or early next. May or may not be true, I just figured I’d throw it out there.
Let me also be the first to say that I am much more excited about this: a Weezer/Foo Fighters co-headlining tour. Time to start planning a roadtrip to either Chicago or Minneapolis, because this one will be pretty sweet.

A coffee house without coffee – there’s one business plan I will not be following. Watch, they’ll get rich, too.

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Brilliant quote of the day
“I’m not a guy who thinks my baby needs my genes because I have such great DNA. All you have to do is take a look at my family and myself to see that rolling the dice may be better.”
Tom Arnold on the prospects of adoption.

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Cooter says to skip the Dukes movie because it is trash – proving that I am, once again, ahead of the curve.

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Speaking of terrible movie adaptations, there’s a new live-action Transformers movie in the works. Scheduled for a July 4, 2007 release, it will be directed by Michael Bay and executive produced by Steven Spielberg and others. Yikes.

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Billy Corgan, formerly (and futurely?) of the Smashing Pumpkins, is keeping a blog. It is sometimes weird, often depressing, and always interesting. One entry, which I found highly amusing (as well as relieving, from a songwriters perspective) describes how the band wrote one of the best rock-and-roll intros ever.

One last, almost finished idea that has been sitting fairly untouched for a long while is a song simply called “today”…the song is given this name not for any existential reason, but rather out of my laziness, because the first line of the song starts with the word “today”, and calling it that makes it easily recognizable to all (laziness also dictates the title is never changed)…I suggest trying to come up with an interesting intro, and all agree that the blunt start (with the band just blasting in at the top) is boring and obvious…as is often the case of a good intellectual concept, musical silence ensues, shoes are stared at, and all I get in response to my suggestion is the buzz of the amps…frustrated, I look down at my guitar, and without hesitation, place my left hand on the 11th fret, high up on the top two strings…the first thing I feel immediately clicks, a dumb schoolhouse take on “la-dee-dah, la-dee-dah”…I look up, and no one says much, but then again, no one says no…without comment, I play it again, and at the appointed moment, the band kicks in full power…problem solved in 60 seconds…”next!”…

Ah, yes… the science of art.

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What’s the only thing harder than writing the perfect rock-and-roll intro? Writing the perfect rock-and-roll set. What, you thought we just picked songs randomly as we went? Well, maybe on occasion. At least we have never played our songs alphabetically, like the Pixies.

(Click the picture to see the whole thing – taken from comics.com)

A new, large-scale study has shown that type 1 diabetics can safely replace pre-meal shots with a new form of insulin that, instead of injecting, they inhale. FDA approval (or denial) is supposed come by the end of this year.
This is pretty cool, but, as I’ve said before, I’m going to be running around for years thinking that I forgot to do my shots. I might have to get a saline solution and slowly wean myself off of injections.