Where have all the Eagles gone?

This morning "Sweet Home Alabama" came on the radio after I left Home Depot with a $15 drill bit. $15 dollars for a 12" long 1/2" wide piece of steel that happens to have a groove in it. Unreal. Oh well. I used it to drill a hole into the side of my house and with luck, I might need to use it again someday before I lose it.

Anyhow, I turned the song way up and it sounded great. You can count on the Eagles for consistently great music. Maybe it's because only their better stuff gets played on the radio, because I know people would say "What about..." and name off an Eagle song they don't like.

But the music is good. The band members had talent and fun. Take songs like "Boys of Summer" or "All She Wants to Do is Dance" by Don Henley. Those are great songs. They take you back. But, if you think really hard about those songs, they were great when they first came out. It's not nostalgia that makes them great, or even the memories of where you were in life when those songs got regular radio airplay. I'm convinced that they were just great songs, hands down.

But, unfortunately, Don Henley got older and now writes crummy stuff that is too full of politics or too much about his family life. I have a family and I love them. And I have political opinions, too. But why should I pay some entertainer to go on and on about something. Fricking shut up and entertain me already. Don't sucker me by making me think I'm buying entertainment only to find out it's mindless drivel. I don't care about your opinion. Or anyone else's when it comes to politics. That's why I don't watch cable news talk shows. The songs of them that Henley sings now do not make me want to open the sunroof and turn up the stero really loudly.

So my question is this... in today's homogenized world of four gigantic media companies controlling the music catalogs and three or four giant media companies controlling all the radio stations, does good music exist anymore? There are songs here and there that I like, but are there any really good consistent artists left? I'm talking the kind of music that makes you feel good to be alive, but isn't up with people. The kind of music that celebrates a beautiful woman or women but isn't a soft-core porn come on. The kind of music that says "summer" but isn't the window rattling crap our dumbass drug dealing neighbors and their custom.. uh, friends play all day long as they drive by in their low-riders?

And does such a radio station exist that would give airtime to such music? KLOS and Arrow 93 are probably good bets, but they do more to celebrate the Eagles in their better day, with my limited time in the car, I wouldn't know if either even play anything new.

Maybe they'll just drink it...

Thieves in Canada abscond with 50,000 cans of Moosehead beer...

Bees Just Wanna Have Fun

Wow... a quarter-ton of honeycomb... kids in L.A. recently thought it would be fun to throw rocks at a 500 pound beehive in the walls of an apartment complex. The next thing anyone knew, there was a lockdown for four blocks while they waited for the 120,000 angry bees to settle down before they were all killed. But not before firefighters, news reporters, a TV camera man and others were stung. Ooops. Thanks to Lori for this funny story.

God Bless the USA

I had the opportunity tonight to wander around many of the monuments in Washington, DC. I was awestruck by the beauty and size of some of the monuments. I also felt like the rest of the country is somewhat cheated by so many monuments being concentrated in one place. While impressive, it seems like it would be kind of nice to spread them out around the country. We started by driving close to the Pentagon before stopping at the Jefferson Memorial. Then we parked close to the Washington Monument, but could only see it from the distance because it was all closed off. We walked to the WWII memorial, through the Vietnam Memorial -- which was mostly dark because they were doing "lighting improvements" to the Lincoln Memorial. Then we walked to the White House, but it was the wrong side and we were too tired to walk around to the other side. Just so I could say that I did it, I tossed a dime onto the White House lawn. As we were passing the White House in our rental car on the way back out of the city, fittingly, "God Bless the USA" came on the radio.

Sprint PCS sucks. Duh.

Kansas City, Dallas, and Atlanta.

Bears Just Wanna Have Fun

Lori sent me the above link of a bear who was found passed out after having happened on coolers of beer and consumed many beers. I think it's funny that the bear preferred one brand over another and that he was able to tell the cans apart. Apparently he preferred Ranier, a western Washington state beer whose motto is "It's the water." Or it was when I was growing up. But maybe that just means that the bear was looking for water and this particular beer tasted the most like water? Ranier was never known as a good beer... it was the kind my roommate in college would drink in the 40oz variety after he had consumed enough of the good stuff that it was now just the pursuit of relaxation.

Open letter to our nations' leaders

I don't know if either of you have had children, but my wife just recently gave birth to a beautiful little girl. When she cries, it just really tugs at me and makes me want to cry. And that's just even when she's just hungry or fussy or bored or tired or just because she feels like it. When
she cries because she's in pain, you just want to die.

It seems to me like supporting the Unborn Child Pain Awareness act is a no-brainer.

As a child, I remember going with my mom on two different occasions to have cats put to sleep. It was very sad, but I know that they were tranquilized in the process, so to them, it just felt like they were falling asleep. They weren't in pain and, well, being cats, probably didn't think much about whether they were going to wake up or not.

But the point being, surely if we're going to end the life of a human (or nearly-human, depending on your point of view), surely we ought to give the same option of pain relief as we give to pets.

The Best Music Video... EVER!

You have to at least watch this once in your life. It's David Hasselhoff's video for a catchy song. But the video is so bad you'll wonder what you're smoking...

Today a truck cut me off on the freeway and then stayed in front of me blocking my view of the road. I thought he was a real a-hole. When he finally did start moving over, I could see that the problem was he was on his car phone. Not his cell phone, but an actual phone the size of my shoe with a cord attached. That makes him even more of an a-hole, but I felt a little better about the situation, realizing he was out of his element being in this decade.

Now I have to be interesting?

I actually went to visit my own blog tonight to see what kind of ads were at the top, what with me mentioning caskets and costco and the like. And what do I find? The ads are gone, and in there place is this fancy "Next Blog" button that takes me to a randomly recently updated blog.

Which means others might actually now see my blog. Welcome!

Anyhow, you've probably already seen this, but if you've not, check out www.jibjab.com for a very funny political parody. I've had to watch it several times now and the song has been stuck in my head for two days. Wonderful, imaginative stuff. And the voices, well done as well.

Yeah, but they come shrinkwrapped in packs of six...

Costco begins selling caskets.

There's gotta be two or three more good jokes here... like "Available in XL, XXL and XXXXL" or "Yeah, but you gotta also purchase the Costco burial plan... you get a prime spot under the parking lot."

As always, your suggestions are welcome. (Which is seeming to prove that Kevin is my only reader.)

What Takes Away Rick James' Life?

You'll find out in this great and informative article on China View that was originally written in Chinese and then translated into English.

This dog's smarter than my dog...

This dog knows 200 words. Mine has trouble with "sit" and "down"

James Lamb, the provost

Arizona

James Lamb buys a house

I should ask them for money, having the same name and all. I bet my next house will cost that much and be smaller than this one.

What do you call...

Lori wants to know... If a person who commits a felony is a felon, what is someone who commits a misdemeanor?

A misdemeaner? A misdemon? As always, comments welcome...

Let me get this straight...

Microsoft's Windows XP isn't as secure as they thought. If you leave it connected to a high speed internet connection all the time, it's at risk for virus infection. So, Microsoft is releasing a major fix to make the computer more secure. If you want it, you have to leave your computer on and connected to the internet. Durrrrrr....

Bring on the rings...

A great editorial on what makes the games great and why many of the complaints against the Olympics are poorly presented and in the author's opinion, wrong.

Let me get this straight...

We write a constitution for Japan denouncing war and then make them sign it. And now we're encouraging them to denounce that? No wonder they're confused and annoyed with us.

Oops, they did it again....

Turns out that these RFID (Radio Frequency ID tag) have a flaw... someone's shown how it's possible to reprogram the tags so that when they're rung up by the register, they appear as an entirely different, much cheaper item. There are ways to prevent this, but it's interesting to show how quickly people will find a way around your brand new shiny technology.

Funny anti-Bush ad

While it may be a low blow to do a SNL-style parody of a President during a campaign cycle, this is still funny. And it looks like they purposefully made Will Ferrel look less like Bush than they did when he was on SNL. While you'd have to be dumb to think it was actually Bush, I also don't understand how you can be informed by the skit. But, it did make me laugh quite a bit.

Wow... blast from the past...

I cannot believe it. The Spot is back. I never really paid much attention to The Spot this first time around and now it will probably appeal to me even less, but it's just weird, because The Spot was one of the first websites out there when Netscape was first released and people could suddenly see the internet in color instead of just all texty with Linx. I mean, we're talking very very very early internet. Back when I was still in college. Wow. Welcome back, The Spot. (If only the glory days would come back and I could get back my excessively over-paid internet jobs.)

Where all the aliens at, yo?

Scientists are beginning to wonder if there really are aliens, and if so, why haven't they been able to find any proof. I did like the concept that 'an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' But, like so many have said all along, why on [planet name here] would any intelligent creature want to communicate with us? Besides, haven't the scientists seen Mars Attacks or Independence Day? It's better that the aliens are leaving us alone. (While I'm not sold on the whole idea that aliens exist, I'll keep an open mind. God never claimed to have told us everything, He could have other worlds out there.)

I did like how Men in Black played with scale, showing the really tiny solar system on a cat's collar and the really big aliens to whom our planets were the size of marbles.

In related news, I went to Wendy's the other day. I know the old lady is lone since passed away and even Dave Thomas himself is RIP, but seriously (or ironically), where's the beef?!?!?!

TroubleClick or DoubleIck

When we were at Warner Bros., we used a program called Netgravity to serve all of our ads. Then DoubleClick bought it. We never oculd figure out which way we preferred to refer to them. We had dealt with them previously and they were always difficult to work with. Anyhow, recently hackers attacked DoubleClick and because so many sites use DoubleClick, it made a lot of sites inaccessible. Ha!

Ruining my good name

James Lamb, the lawyer

Starbucks called...

...they wanted to know if they could place a location in my living room and another in my dining room.

I know, old joke that I made up that probably only amuses me.

But I stopped at Target this morning (wardrobe malfunction) and noticed that it now has a Starbucks. But the Starbucks didn't have any customers and the whole two cashiers that they had in the Target part had lines so they made the Starbucks barista go work a Target register. That's when I noticed that she had the same Target nametag. So I guess it must be some sort of franchise arrangement, like how when you go to the McDonalds at Disneyland they have Disneyland nametags.

Rape or Love II - Don't Involve Cousins

Advertising Irony

So Mary Kay isn't the only one who likes them young. Of course, Debra Beasley Lafave doesn't just like the young 'uns but has questionable taste in the choice of magazines she poses for.

The article also says that at one point, the boy's 15-year-old cousin drove her SUV around while she and the boy were having sex in the back. What assurances did she have that the 15-year-old wouldn't rat them out? Did she do the cousin any favors or give cash or gifts?

I probably wouldn't have even mentioned this story on here if not for the unfortunate choice of advertising banners NBC's slapped up top the photo gallery. (Still nothing tops Breckin Meyer, hands clasped behind his head with a phrase like "Life is good" stuck to the top of every page on MSNBC.com on 9/11/01 for several hours.)

Rape or Love - Get a Room

I've been following the Mary Kay Letourneau story (she had an affair with a 12-year old, went to jail, got out of jail, got caught having sex with him again and then went back to jail, just got out today) with amusement over the years because I went to Jr. High in Silverdale, Wash. and had teacher named Kathy Letourneau and have always wondered if they were sisters.

I was always amused, too, that they got caught the second time... in her car! I mean, ok, so he was young, but she was old enough to know to... oh, I don't know... get a room? Find a more secluded location?

The kid is now 21 and his mom is raising his two daughters and he's working on his GED and is unemployed. You'd think with her locked up behind bars that maybe he'd have a chance to focus on his studies.

I was also amused at the boys outside the correctional center holding signs saying "I'm 18. Take me home!" when she was released. Now there's either something wrong with them, or way to go all the way for a joke.

What Not to Say: Traffic Stop

I imagine that if you were pulled over for speeding and the officer asked "Where's the fire?" it would probably not be a good idea to say

1. In my pants!
2. Do I look like a freakin' firefighter?
3. In the bushes about a mile back.
4. Woah! Nice mustache! If I were a firefighter, all we'd need to find was a construction worker and an indian.

Ok, some decent, some not so good. What might you wish you could say? Post a comment.

Terrorists and Money

I was going to post earlier about the lightest terrorist threats against Citibank, Prudential, the New York Stock Exchange, etc., but hadn't had time. And then this article came along, which I think is pretty interesting.

Targeting a company like Citibank, Prudential, etc., would be a tragedy, in that people would be killed. To those who would lose loved ones, or to those permanently disabled, it's a big, awful, sad deal. I don't mean to diminish or downplay that by what I have to say. I want to be respectful.

But in every other regard, I think any such attack would do so little to affect us financially. While there is inherent value in the employees of a company like Citibank, a lot of its value is in its ability to conduct business, make deals, move money, etc. All computerized. One of the last non-computer steps is checks, but by late October, even that will be computerized. In the event that Citibank's headquarters were attacked, redundant systems elsewhere would immediately kick in and within hours (or minutes) the internal machine would be back to business as usual.

The NYSE's announcement that they intend to start letting computerized trades function in the same way as traders on the trade floor echoes that same trend. I'm pretty sure if the NYSE were attacked, a new trading floor could be up and running within 48 hours.

I think we would treat it just like any other attack. We'd get ticked off, vote the candidate who had the more aggresive pro-war campaign [back] into office and give the terrorists more ammunition for their recruiting package. Personally, I believe that ultimately a war on terrorism could be won, but it would be a very bloody battle for both sides, with lots of blood shed here in the US.

(P.S. For you conspiracy theorists out there, it's rumored that Citibank has a warehouse full of blue money standing by should anything happen to the US green money.)