Music -- How Not to Suck, Part 1

There are plenty of ways not to suck as a musician, so I figured I'd preemptively make this a multi-part post, even though I have no immediate plans for additional parts. In the very least, "Part 1" indicates that what I'm writing here isn't an exhaustive list.

So, let's start with the easiest rules to follow so as not to suck:

Rule No. 1: Don't make rap music.

If I want someone to talk to me about how rich they are and about how bitches be all up ons -- all while some annoying, repetitive beat plays in the background -- then sure, I'll go ahead and tune in to a rap station. No, your lyrics are not fresh, and no, you do not have musical talent. And there's a reason why everyone's favorite part of songs like Eminem's "Sing for the Moment" is the part sampled out of an actually good song.

Rule No. 2: Don't make country music.

Country music is in an entirely different realm than rap music -- I actually respect the musicianship of a lot of country music. These guys and gals often actually can sing, and they usually can play instruments, to boot. So, why is this a rule to prevent suckage? Because country music is annoying as fuck. Not to sound cliché, but I truly don't give even half a fuck about your pickup truck, your dog, or how your wife done left you. And unless you came to play a concert fresh off of a cattle drive, leave your dumb little cowboy hat at home -- you're not a cowboy.

Special Exception: You're allowed to be Shania Twain or Taylor Swift and not suck. Yes, I realize that publicly posting this exception causes immediate revocation of my Man Card. Truth be told, I have a feeling it was revoked years ago when I sang "That Don't Impress Me Much" at karaoke and fuckin' rocked the house. Yes, that happened.

Rule No. 3: Don't suck live.

If you suck live, it pretty much means you just suck.

In most scenarios, this means that you really just aren't very good at what you do, and it takes the magic of multiple takes over weeks or months in the studio, as well as auto-tuning and other production tricks to get you to sound halfway decent. Truly good musicians record something that sounds great, and then they practice and practice and sound just as awesome when they get on stage. Why does Ashlee Simpson have to lip-sync when performing live? Because she sucks. Why does Muse refuse ever to lip-sync or pretend to play instruments when playing live? Because they're music gods and incredible musicians.

Muse is so awesome that when they were told at the last minute by an Italian talk show that they had to lip sync, they decided to make it incredibly obvious by switching instruments and "playing" so horribly that they couldn't be taken seriously. The people hosting the show knew so little about Muse that they had no idea anything was awry. Pay particularly close attention to lead singer/guitarist Matt Bellamy as he rocks out on the drums one-handed at one point. (The drummer is "singing and playing bass," while the bassist is "playing guitar  and keyboard.")

You also can suck live simply because you have too much faith in your jamming skill and how much people give a shit about said skills. Exhibit A: The Mars Volta. They're pretty amazing on albums, and they just throw a bunch of experimental shit in there and jam out to perfection in the studio, making like 10-minute-long songs that are generally enjoyable for the most part. Then they get on stage and think, "People obviously love it when we just go apeshit and jam. Let's take that to a level that no one wants! We're awesome!!" So they randomly pluck strings, flail on drums, and grunt into the microphone in the middle of songs and it simply sounds like a cacophony. No, it isn't good when you randomly rock out and jam. Plan that shit out so my ears don't bleed. Kthanks.

Exhibit B: The Dave Matthews Band. I went to a concert and it was excellent until about 45 minutes in when a song decided that it wasn't going to end. They had about 30 minutes or so left to play, and they decided to fill that entire period up with a bunch of instrumental solos instead of playing more songs that we wanted to hear. Excellent choice, douchebags. The violin player would move to the center of the stage and rock out for 2-5 hours, and I envisioned him thinking to himself the entire time, "YEAH! Violin! Vi-oh-fucking-lin!" Then came the drummer, and he was all, "Drums! Drums! Drums! YEAH! Drums! Drums! Drums! YEEEEAH!" How about -- no. Just end your song and play another one we want to hear, idiots. Stop catering to all of the high people in your audience who aren't noticing how much time you're wasting.

(UPDATE: Duh, a large majority of DMB concert-goers are high. Catering to the majority is a good business plan. My hat's off to you, DMB.)

Note: Rule No. 3 also works in reverse. If your album isn't that great, but you put on a great show, I'll actually enjoy your album more next time I hear it.


Obviously there are plenty more rules I have in mind, but let's let these marinate for a while before I come back for part 2. These are pretty good starting points, though.

Oh, wait, there's one more really easy one:

Rule No. 4: Don't be Nickelback.

That's the entire rule, really. Kinda speaks for itself.

But you know what? Here are some examples of why, anyway:

1) Listen to this MP3 with headphones. The two first Nickelback singles played one out of each headphone. They're the exact same length and have the exact same song composition. Pretty sad.

2) Here's Nickelback having rocks thrown at them at a concert for sucking too badly:

-- SPG

My Rap Song -- I'll Die When I'm Famous

Update: The MP3 shared with Google Docs stripped the .mp3 extension for some reason. If you downloaded that, simply rename the file with .mp3 and it should work. But I've uploaded it on a new site just to make sure. Re-download it here and it should be functional.

I went through a phase during college when I had got some royalty-free samples and music-creation software and just kinda went apeshit. Most of the songs were complete shit, but one of them, in particular, likely will become the one thing that I am remembered for -- for all time.

It was a rap song titled "I'll Die When I'm Famous."

It was almost exactly five years ago. I wrote and recorded it in one day. Inspiration hit me like a giant, gold, diamond-encrusted dollar-sign pendant, and creativity spattered from my fingers onto the computer screen like a fucking Jackson Pollock painting. I could tell I had something huge here -- massive. I threw together dozens of samples to compose a song that probably could cure AIDS if it were a biological compound. It came out more quickly and naturally than walking.

From there, I went on to listen to the backing music hundreds of times as I wrote accompanying lyrics. The lyrics tell the tale of a young, fledgling rapper who at first doesn't believe in himself, but he aspires to make a name for himself and prove his family wrong. (Like fools, they did not appreciate his genius.) The story ends in a hopeful tone -- indeed, one of the final lyrics, "I'll be livin' to the max," beautifully brings the listener to the realization that this optimistic fellow will not give up on his dreams. He will not die ... until he is famous.

I probably could expand the story in this song into a full-length novel/feature movie, but I need to let the song itself get legs first and make the journey it needs to make.

But at this point, you're surely curious to hear the final product. Well, I'll do you one better. I'll give you an MP3 of the final song so you can take a listen, and after you're done, you can listen again while reading the accompanying  lyrics, which have author notes in the margins for certain parts of the song. (Not hand-written notes, of course, because that's so 1980s. They're MS Word notes.) It is not often you have the chance to catch a glimpse of genius in progress.

Enjoy.

I'll Die When I'm Famous (MP3)

I'll Die When I'm Famous (Lyrics, JPG so all can read them with notes)

- SPG

Sorry For Being Creepy ... But It's Your Fault For Stretching

All right, so it’s no secret that men are creepy in the gym. To be fair, it’s hard for us. Take all of those stretches you girls do, for instance. You come to the gym in incredibly short shorts and a sports bra (only) and proceed to contort yourself into as many sexual positions as possible in an area of the gym surrounded by mirrors. And I’m pretty sure half of those stretches you girls do don’t actually stretch anything relevant and only serve to convert otherwise innocent men into creepy-as-fuck voyeurs.

Technically speaking, every machine in the gym is sexually infused if a gorgeous girl is using it (except for maybe when a girl is bench pressing more weight than I could -- which sadly encompasses pretty much any woman on a bench-press machine). And then there are devices like the Shake Weight, which is simply unfair to men:

What’s more, there’s a row of weight machines that I’m convinced were conceived by some perverted guy in his basement. An example of a machine in this row can be seen at Exhibit A, at right. With that machine, you basically face everyone in the gym while you slowly open and close your sweaty thighs. Uh huh. Not sexual at all, right? Have you ever seen a man on one of those machines? Wait, I should clarify: Have you ever seen a man on one of those machines who didn’t look lost and confused? No, of course not, because it’s called the Vagina Machine.

The sexuality of women who use that machine grows exponentially with each observed rep. If a merely OK girl sat down and did 10 reps as some guy watched, his opinion would slowly transform from “Meh,” to “Ya know, I think I'd like to have sex with that girl.” If a stunningly attractive girl sat down and did 40 reps, an observing guy is liable to sell his mother into slavery to buy the girl a lifetime membership to that gym.

But I did say that a girl’s sexuality grows exponentially, and this holds true even for horribly ugly women with repulsive (negative) sexuality. What happens when you multiply negatives, though? It’s still fucking negative -- just incredibly more so. If you accidentally catch a glimpse of the sweaty hams of Orca Woman as she tortures this beloved machine (seen at left), it is entirely possible that your whole family could die in the safety of your home miles away simply due to the sheer force of the negative energy being emitted from your brain as it tries to collapse upon itself to prevent your eyes from functioning any longer. In the very least, you’ll be all kinds of sad that you saw it.

One last point is that you girls usually have a special ladies-only gym within the gym if you don’t want to be ogled. Not that you should have to “resort” to that, but if you want to spend all day in skimpy clothing while wrapping your legs around your neck or arching your back to push your breasts out or doing 10,000 reps on each machine in Sex Row -- and you want to do all of that without attracting the attention of men -- use your special room. Whenever I pass by the women-only room, I usually see between zero and two women in there, and they’re almost always horribly ugly.

Ugly women do not need this room; they’re wasting it.

- SPG

FML ... Mozart Wins.

I have a weird perspective on growing older. For me, the tragedy is not that I'm continuously getting closer to death, the real sorrow lies in the fact that every year that passes by is another year in which I can no longer one-up some asshole genius' accomplishments.

Take Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for instance. By the age of five, he was already a composer. That's right, young asshat Mozart (shown at left looking like a five-year-old douche) was concocting symphonies at five years old. When I was five years old, I still wet the bed.

(No, I'm not kidding. Yes, I wish I were. My parents actually had to buy me an electric blanket to get me to stop wetting the bed. Not your normal electric blanket, but literally a blanket filled with electricity that'd fuckin' zap the shit out of me if it got wet. The thought of being electrocuted in my sleep tightened my bladder up right quick.)

So, to recap:

Five-Year-Old Mozart = Symphonies
Five-Year-Old SPG = Diapers

So how is Mozart a role model? Role models are people you're supposed to aspire to be like. Great, I'll look up to Mozart and aspire to be a composer by the age of five.

Oh, wait, I'm 26. Fuck my life -- Mozart wins.

Who cares if I compose a symphony at 26? Other people have done it by age five. Now I have no desire to do it. Meh. Thanks for being a role model Mozart -- you prick.

One area in which I can best Mozart, and in which he may serve as a role model for me, is not dying by the age of 35. Captain Fancypants got sick and died like a bitch in his mid-30s. When I'm 36, instead of a birthday party, I'm going to wear a powdered wig all day and celebrate "How's It Feel to be a Genius Now, Cockbag?" Day.

In a further attempt to make me feel like an unaccomplished, useless human being, Fox had a show called Our Little Genius that they planned to release in mid-January. The show featured six- to 12-year-olds answering Ph.D level questions versus people who actually have doctorates. From the sounds of it, though, a little bit of a scandal broke out regarding the show involving the little tykes having privileged "information" (the studio claims "information" does not mean answers) before the shows. So, they scrapped it for now and are deciding whether to re-shoot it or can it entirely.

(On a side-note, does that sounds like the movie Quiz Show to anyone else?)

If that show ever comes out (and the little fuckers actually are that smart and aren't memorizing answers), I'm going to stop trying to accomplish anything ever again -- what's the point?

When I was in high school -- and this is no joke -- I told myself that I needed to publish a novel before I turned 18. Why? Well, if I didn't, I'd just be some adult who published a book. Whoop-dee-fuckin-doo. At least if I got a published book under my belt before I was 18, I could say that I had done so when I was a kid. As soon as 18 came and went, I'd lost all drive to hurry and write a book. What was the rush now?

In conclusion, geniuses are anti-role models. They give us reasons not to feel good about ourselves.

-- SPG

The Abridged, Reworded Story of Jesus

I felt like it was just about time for another more serious blog post in my "For Seriously" series. For those of you who get upset and/or offended when people question The Bible or attempt to look at Christianity from a logical perspective -- I'd pass on this entry. However, if you're non-religious or an open-minded religious person who relishes defending against attempted challenges to your faith, I invite you to read on and add support to or contest any points herein.

On a side-note: I have definitely tried very hard over the past few years to research religion and know what I was talking about before being able to call myself an atheist with a straight face. However, I would hope that, as an atheist, I don't know The Bible as well as some of you Christians out there, so I appreciate any corrections you guys can make.

Without further ado, here are things that never made sense to me about the story of Jesus Christ:

1. God is Jesus, and Jesus is God. God is omnipotent and cannot die. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice of death by crucifixion to absolve humanity of its sins. If someone is all-powerful and eternal, can “dying” be considered a sacrifice? It seems very hollow, especially when Jesus knew that he wasn't truly dying, but rather being inconvenienced for a few nights.
2. God is omniscient. God’s plan with Jesus was to use him as a tool to absolve humanity of its sins through an eventual death by crucifixion. Judas played an integral role in God’s plan by indicating Jesus to the Romans who sought to capture him. This was considered a betrayal, and Christians revile Judas. However, God of course knew that Judas was going to do this, and Judas’ actions were, in fact, integral to God’s plan succeeding. In other words, without Judas doing what God knew he would do, God’s desires would not have been met, and humanity would still be with sin and would be without a martyred savior. How, then, is Judas not considered a Christian hero?
3. Nowhere in The Bible does it explain why the sacrifice is truly necessary. God (pictured at right, in Morgan Freeman form) is omnipotent, benevolent, merciful, and omniscient. If He cared for His creations and was truly omnipotent, why not simply absolve us of our sins? Why go through all of the pointless pageantry of Jesus’ life?

Here’s a step-by-step, abridged rewording of the story of Jesus’ sacrifice:

1. An all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, un-killable God exists.
2. God -- who, again, is all-loving -- has been purposefully sending many of His creations to live in eternal torment.
3. God decided that He wasn’t entirely OK with sending so many of His creations to live in eternal torment.
4. This being the case, God sent another version of Himself -- Jesus, His only son -- as a sacrifice, knowing that Jesus would eventually be killed. On a related note, Jesus can’t technically be killed, because he’s God, and God can’t die.
5. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up a little bit of something that he had an infinite amount of -- his life. (As with any good sacrifice, the ultimate ones are the ones that you don’t have to sacrifice anything to make.)
6. After His only son successfully completed the suicide mission he'd been sent on, God had successfully saved us from Himself. The all-powerful God never again had to unwillingly send His creation to a place He didn’t really want to send them (because He’s all-loving). And so He never did again -- unless you count the times that He still does, and those times make Him really sad.
7. ?????
8. Profit.

Also, Venn diagrams are always funny.


Here's some recommended reading for those of you with skeptical, inquisitive minds:

And, of course, I personally think The Bible presents the best case against itself if read with an unbiased, critical eye, cover to cover. That isn't meant as a low blow, I truly mean that.

-- SPG
(Inspiration for this post, in part, came from a hilarious list of 25 Retarded Bible Verses. Most of the images were found at lolBlog.)

Fuck Me and My Terrorist Toothpaste

As I stood there with my pants around my ankles and some random fat man’s hands probing my body, I was reminded why I hate terrorism so very much. Yep, fuck me and my 3.5 oz terrorist toothpaste. That’s what the eyes of the burly TSA security woman said to me as she confiscated my hateful tube of Crest and directed me to the touchy feely fat man behind the “privacy” screen.

So, some Nigerian Muslim guy just tried (and failed) to blow up a plane a few days ago, as most of the TV-viewing public already knows. Our response was to put into place a few more knee-jerk reactions that will do absolutely nothing (or as close to nothing as you can get) to prevent future attacks. What the reactions will do is give officials and politicians an answer to the question, “What are you doing to prevent future attacks?”

The answer is, apparently, “We’re going to make people shit their pants.” That’s right, potential terrorists, you’d better be prepared to wear a diaper on your suicide mission, because passengers on international flights can no longer move around the cabin during the final hour of a flight. You’re going to look incredibly dumb when your Huggies are being stripped from your charred, martyred remains. Good luck with those 72 virgins when they hear about that.

However, the truth is that everyone on international flights had better hope they don’t have any sudden diarrhea attacks or possess small bladders. If you make any sudden movements, you’re likely to be dogpiled by flight attendants. (And good luck holding it in at that point.)

The point of terrorism is to instigate fear. So, what’s the best way to react? Well, according to the governments of the world (including that of the U.S.), the answer is to act more fearful. In essence, the proffered answer is to “let the terrorists win,” as good ol’ George W. had often advised us against doing (even as he continued to promote being fearful, letting terrorists know that they’d definitely won).

The media doesn’t get a pass, though. They’re just as responsible, if not moreso, than the governments for keeping the public fearful.

Here were the two potential spins the news media had the option of taking on the recent incident:

1. “There was an attempted bombing on a plane, but it failed. Homeland security is looking into correcting the errors that led to it even being possible. In other news … ”
2. “A terrorist got on a plane and would have killed us all if not for his bomb malfunctioning! The heroic pilot landed the plane despite the commotion in the cabin behind him, which wasn’t likely to affect him anyway since he was safely separated from it by a secure door. We’ll be interviewing every passenger at least twice over the next few days to find out what things sounded like from every seat in the plane, and we’ll ask each of them if they ever feared for their lives when they saw the crazy terrorist on fire in the airplane cabin. We’ll emphasize irrelevant details -- like the fact that two of the entirely alive passengers are newlyweds, and two other passengers were returning to America with their newly adopted daughters -- so that you can get a feel for how incredibly tragic the situation could have been (but wasn’t). We’ll also interview our panel of expert talking heads about whether they think the possibility of every single plane exploding via terrorist attack (if we aren’t vigilant) is now closer to 95% or closer to 100%.”
   

The media chose option No. 2, as you can tell by the fact that I bothered to write it all out.

On a final note, it seems like we’re truly going overboard with all of the security measures when they still allow me to carry on my cell phone, with which I could (apparently) scramble all of the plane’s instruments and crash it straight into the statue of liberty -- simply by turning it on mid-flight.

There’s an app for that.




-- SPG

What Daffodils Have To Do With Rectal Bleeding

Living in American society (and likely the society of any first-world country), I can't help but feel overwhelmed by the countless number of prescription drugs available to people out there. It seems like if you have a relatively harmless problem, they have a horribly named drug to remedy the situation.

Do you have a restless leg? Try Tramadol to chill that fucker out. Penis feelin' a bit down? Cheer that dickhead up with a dose of Cialis. Have you felt a bit depressed, lately? Cry me a river; you live in a first-world country. Call me after you've visited a poor African village and witnessed things that people can reasonably feel depressed about. (Or try Prozac, if you think that'd be easier.)

What's noticeably missing from that list? How about cancer? Or AIDS? Or Parkinson's disease? Why are drug companies and scientific research firms spending so much money making sure old guys can get boners and Hummer owners don't get sad when there are still plenty of killy ailments left on the to-do list? I mean, seriously, we cured having short eyelashes before we cured cancer ...

No, don't keep reading yet, reread that last sentence and let that sink in. (And then watch this depressant commercial.)

Granted, maybe it's simply harder to cure those deadly diseases, but another possibility is that maybe it's simply easier to make money off of the more mundane cures. Otherwise, wouldn't it have struck the penis-pill guy, "Whoa, whoa, whoa ... whoa. Do you guys wanna divert our resources to researching a cure for cancer? Hey, Phil, give those restless-leg guys a call and have them come over. We can discuss leukemia with all of the time we're saving not having sex with our wives because our dicks don't work and we can't control our lower appendages."

And seriously, what's with the horrific drug names? The late-night ad wizards are coming up with names like ShamWow, Snuggie, and Ab DOer, while the best you assholes can come up with is Lipitor, Paxil, and Zyrtec? Really?

How about instead of Prozac, call it SureSmyle? Or instead of Levitra, why don't you just name it PeppyPeePee? There are much better (and more inherently descriptive) names for your drugs. I wouldn't have to Google your product's name if it were called iLash eLonger.

But then, I guess you guys are trying to fix the problem of having fucking dumb names for your drugs by showing us 20 commercials a day preaching your products to create brand awareness. However, I don't understand how anyone could watch one of your commercials and come away thinking, "You know what I need some of? Whatever that was. Gotta get me some of that!" You know why we don't think that? Because two-thirds of your commercials are comprised of a list of side-effects.

Sure, the side-effects are all juxtaposed against images of clear blue skies, throwing Frisbees to dogs, and running through fields of flowers, but that doesn't fool me. I'm still fully capable of both seeing those images and hearing some fast-talking guy try to tell me as quickly as possible that I might go permanently blind and/or die a painful death as a result of taking your drug. The commercials try to make me think happy thoughts during the list of side-effects, but the only thing they've achieved is that now whenever I see a flowery meadow, I think of blood leaking from my anus.

And that's what Daffodils have to do with rectal bleeding.

Oh, and by the way, Latisse (the eyelash-growing drug) can 1) give you dark eyelids, 2) change your eye color (and not in a super-cool way, like brown to blue), and 3) make you grow hair in non-eyelashy places. So, you know ... good luck with that. (Source)

- SPG



PS. Here's one more funny drug commercial: