I thought I was so blogging clever, calling this page bloggadocio. Then I decided to google it to see if I could find myself that way, and got like a hundred pages of "bloggadocio"s. I could just puke. First I had called it "blog-a-rama," and thought that was very clever as well. I googled that, and not only had it been thought of before, there was a website called that which is like a yellow pages of blogs. I'm definitely gonna be sick... Oh, and despite my distress, I decided to link to them and get myself listed... Guess somebody I know better start thinking a little harder... I might try blogolicious next...
I like Vegas,the medium, I liked Joan of Arcadia and American Dreams. Hated to see them go. NCIS is good, as is LOST, or at least it was at first. Desperate Housewives, The West Wing (RIP), Joey (RIP), Will & Grace (RIP), The Office, My Name is Earl, and I very much liked Studio 60(RIP) as a replacement for west wing. The other Saturday Nite Live takeoff show is very good too, and this one is actually funny. I think they call it Studio 30 or something. (SNL still rocks but I miss Tina's writing) There are a couple new shows that I really like. One is called "Chuck." Really cute show about a computer geek working for the "nerd herd" that gets a download into his brain from the CIA... Talk about going from zero to hero...I like scripted shows. I despise reality tv. I love Conan O'Brien. I love the modern cartoons like The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, and King of the Hill. I like to watch news and history channel/CSPAN type stuff. I also like the occasional good documentary on PBS. You know, the ones they show when they're begging for money. I think the rest of the time it mostly sucks. An extreme exception to this rule is the series by Ken Burns called "The War." Awesome... These days I'm an absolute nut for the new show HEROES on NBC. I think it's the best tv show ever! NBC is pretty much the only major network I ever watch. The FOX network occasionally does something noteworthy, such as "The Simpsons..." I'm not sure they'd be happy that that's considered their best offering...
Of course, the best show on television is Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. But cable costs too damn much so I get my Maher on the youtube...
On another morbidly serious front, I am very interested in religion, particularly the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I was brought up to believe in Jesus; I am saved, and His Holy Spirit will always live in my heart, and for that I am truly grateful. In my mind, however, I fear I shall always harbor some doubt as to whether He ever actually existed. The video below will explain some of the reasons why I have become an unwilling skeptic. I believe in the "nice Jesus". I think if he ever encountered a homosexual for instance, he would have treated them with the same compassion and mercy with which he blessed murderers, hookers, tax-collectors, and the like. In fact, he probably did, but the homophobes running the council of Nicea cut those verses out of the canon. I suspect that's actually where a lot of the New Testament was written. They also neglected to mention any major accomplishments by women, other than the virgin birth. Take a deep breath, get a beer, sit down in a very comfortable chair, and watch the videos below. If you are a Christian, prepare to have your world rocked...
Let me assure you that all of our candidates running for the presidency, both Republican and Democrat, know these things. The chances are pretty good that your rich preacher does too, particularly if he or she is of the "Prosperity Doctrine," TBN-type ilk... No matter what they say for public consumption, they are using these religious myths to continue to keep the masses under control and sending in those checks, cynically manipulating us on an unbelievable scale. George Carlin has a slightly less-reverent, yet more-funny take on the issue below...
Here's another one from Penn and Teller. It's pretty offensive if you're still on the other side of the fence. I find their referring to the Bible as the "damn Bible" as pretty painful myself, but the facts presented are pretty much unimpeachable, except for the implication that Josephus was a reliable reference to Jesus. It saddens me to no end that this seems to be true. I can't share this with my Mom, because she's a true believer if there ever was one. She is near the end of her life, and is the one that taught me to believe, as she was by her well-meaning parents. She is counting on a life after death with her glorious Savior, and I don't intend to deny her that fantasy. But I have to face the truth, because my gut tells me it IS the truth. I shall no longer be manipulated unaware.
I LOVE movies. I usually go to the theater to see only the really big ones, and ones that have epic battle scenes, like starwars, saving private ryan, and stuff like that. The rest I'll wait till they come out on DVD and I usually rent three or four a week. I've seen everything. I very rarely will see one twice though, unless it comes on tv and there is nothing else to do. Which almost never happens. I loved The Green Mile, and my favorite movie of all time is Forrest Gump. If you're sensing a Tom Hanks theme here, it's purely coincidental. Or maybe not. He is the one who brought those characters to life. And these are the kind of characters who are my heros. I love any huge epic film. I loved all the starwars movies, and everything about them with the possible exception of JarJar. The Lord of the rings series was one of my main reasons for living for the few years it was being made. The Patriot, Braveheart, Pearl Harbor, and really any war flick of any kind. I love a good comedy, like 48 hours, or anything with Chris Rock or Eddie Murphy (that doesn't suck). Here is a link to the best part of one of the funniest movies I've ever seen-- Tenacious D--the pick of destiny...Not for the closed-minded or overly religious...
The Ray Charles movie was excellent, and I think Jamie Foxx is one of the most talented guys around. Dreamgirls was perhaps the best movie of 2006 and I suspect racism in the highest places kept it from being nominated for the Oscar. I also really enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine, but Best Picture? COME ON!!!! I also kind of resent not being able to see Letters from Iwo Jima before the Oscar nominations... Transformers was great! Despite horrendous critical reviews. What do those A-holes know anyway...
I was born in Seattle, but I was raised in the South, and therefore cut my teeth on Southern Rock. I was learning to play guitar at the time the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, 38 Special, The Allman Bros. Band, Marshall Tucker, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Kiss, Boston, Kansas, Aerosmith, Journey, the Police and so many others I can't possibly think of them were having their heyday. I therefore learned to play these kinds of music. It was tragic to me when Disco happened and pushed all southern rock from it's pinnacle point of coolness. Disco still sucks, and I shall never forgive it! I get into gospel music as well. I love point of grace, michael w. smith, rachel lampa, rebecca st. james, the martins, third day, kutless, switchfoot, and many others again too numerous to list. As far as the newer acts go, I dig KT Tunstall, Kings of Leon, David Mead. Speaking of David, I got to play a small part in setting him up with my old friend Brad Stine who gave him a record deal (which subsequently didn't work out well unfortunately). Here's a promo vid of the title cut of his latest, entitled "Dudes."
I used to play a writer's night along with David and a fellow with the pen-name of Matthew Ryan, another magically gifted human being...
It was in a little place by Vanderbilt University called Guido's Pizza. Those were wonderful days, at the old Mark & Martin's Tuesday night show. I remember Matthew telling me once that I was the first one there that "got" him. It wasn't long after that that he had a record deal... I also love Nickelback, NickelCreek, Allison Krauss, and Keith Urban.-- I hosted a writer's night for three years at Jack's Guitar Bar here in Nashville. I wandered in there one night when trying to get away from my psycho girlfriend of the time, and just fell in love with the place. (And Jack) I noticed the PA sounded like a cardboard box full of dirt, and bought a new system and put it in there and basically ran it every night while Jack fed me free beer. Keith Urban would come in occasionally. What an awesome musician. He played the bar regularly. It was a real little hole-in-the-wall dive of a place in a bad part of town (though fortunately located near I-440), but it was the only place Keith played in Nashville for a long time. This just shows what kind of cat he is. I think he did it to help Jack out. Keith is a truly cool human being. The place was always packed to the rafters when he played. Patty Griffin used to play my show every Wednesday night. She was simply amazing with just her and her guitar. Her label had recorded her first album with a full band, and I believe it was hearing her there at Jack's, with me mixing, that caused them to decide to re-cut it with just her playing and singing her songs. I still can't believe I got to sit ten feet away from her every week. (It was a pretty small place...) Kim Richey was the host of the writer's night for a while before me. When her first album came out it literally played the whole time in the bar for about a year. What an unbelievably wonderful piece of work. Stacy Earle hosted for a while before that. I think she even met her husband-to-be there, Mark Stuart. What fine people (and great musicians) they are. Her brother Steve used to play there too. He had a bad drug habit at the time and used to hock his guitars up the street and Jack would loan him money to buy them back. Jack's another very cool story too. He had a "sculpture" up in the bar of a guitar being smashed over a guy's head, and the caption was "He played cover tunes..." The wonderfully talented Jen Foster used to play there as well. The first time I heard her it was a song off her first record called "What a Pretty Picture," about a kid whose father was not very interested in her. I thought it was a guy singing. When I met her, I realized that in fact it was. She is a dude in a girl's body, and one of my all-time favorite people. We used to chase women and raise hell together. She, like me, is now sober. She is also the reason I get kinda bent out of shape when I hear "christians" say evil things about homosexuals. Hillary Lindsey also used to play my writers night; this was when she was just starting out, I think she was about 18 years old and very shy. Her friends had to just about push her up to the stage, but OH MY GOD when she got up there she OWNED the place. She's the most talented person I've ever met. I wish she hadn't seen me go crazy and tear my posters down and yank my PA system out of the bar in a fit of beer-and-pot-fueled rage one night long ago...(I was feeling used) I'll never forget her plaintively saying, "Is Jack's going to close now?" I remember telling her, "No, honey, Jack's will be here forever." Jack barred me when I stumbled in to the bar a week later and saved my life. Of course he went out of business about a year later. I'm not sure if the two events are connected, but I have my suspicions... He's still one of my best friends in the world.
Check out the movie of the night my former band Hayseed-Dixie found out we had to change our name from the original "AC/Dixie" below. This was sort of a debut performance for us at the Billy Block's Western Beat show. We sold a lot of records.... What a country....
I am way into politics. I sway back and forth between the two main parties, so I guess I'm a centrist. I'm mostly a social liberal/fiscal conservative, but some of my views skew toward the libertarian agenda. For instance, and the folks at my church probably wouldn't dig this, I believe we should legalize, regulate, and tax narcotics and prostitution. We should then focus on cleaning up the messes the war on drugs has created, lay off and retrain the thousands who earn their living from it, and start spending those billions of dollars saved on awareness and prevention and counseling and treatment for addicts. I don't smoke it any more because it makes me go crazy, but why not create government-owned pot farms? Put the best growers in charge of it. We know where they are. They're all in jail. Most pot is already grown on government land anyway. It would be alot safer, there would be no need for dealers and pimps carrying guns to protect turf, and we'd pay off the national debt in six months. Of course this will never happen. One reason is that Americans don't know what's really going on, and what's more they are being kept that way, and what's even worse than that is that they don't even give a shit! I was trying to tell a friend this the other day, and she said "I don't want to know." Pretty scary stuff. And she's in the majority. Here's George Carlin putting my feelings into words most succinctly...
I also think we need to revoke all the subsidies to the unbelievably rich that Bush's regime has instituted. We can't afford them, and they don't NEED them. One of the most dangerous things we have allowed these bastards to do is change the FCC rules regarding media conglomerates only being allowed to own a certain amount of media outlets. Now a very small number of rich men control all of the ways we are able to get information. They choose what we hear and see. This is the same way Hitler got control of Germany. It is happening again. If people would bear in mind that everything they are seeing on TV and hearing on radio is probably some form of propaganda, they might very well look at it in a very different way. I hope and pray this will happen, because that is most certainly the case. Another tactic they love to employ is sensationalist non-journalism. They do 24 hour vomit-casts about Britney Spews and OJ Scumson and we tune in and tune out all of the things that are really going on in this wholly-owned-and-operated world, staring at the screen like the zombies we are...
Here's a game to play to let out your stress over this issue...
I also don't think we should be in Iraq. I'm pretty firmly convinced we are only over there to protect the oil supply and to make Bush, Cheney, and their cigar-chomping cronies a boatload of money. (refer to graphic courtesy of "America is Brainwashed")
Kind of like Viet Nam, a war that isn't meant to be won, only maintained at all costs. And guess who's bearing the costs? I agree we would have had to deal with Saddam sooner or later and it was good to do it while he was still weakened. Also something like 5,000 children a month were dying under the sanction regime that was in place as Saddam was keeping all the oil-for-food money for himself. This was of course an intolerable situation which had to come to an end. I just wish we'd sent in a seal team to take him out and make it look like an accident. Meanwhile, the very real fact of the matter is that we are there now. And while I believe this is indeed acting as an "asshole magnet," thereby perhaps keeping the Islamic Nutjobs from attacking us here, it seems to be a bit too powerful... It has become Al-Quaeda's biggest single recruiting tool. Fortunately, the "surge" seems to be working. We aren't hearing about hundreds of people being killed in one day anymore. It's just a shame about the thousands who have already been killed. But I guess they didn't really matter. (not Rich, not White) I'm not even sure that we are not behind some of the attacks designed to foment sectarian violence. Do you remember hearing about British commandos being captured apparently attempting a terrorist-type bombing while costumed in the local garb? The British then sent in troops to bulldoze the jail where they were being held before the authorities could get any information out of them. Doesn't this make anyone else's ears perk up? The REALLY scary thing is that now that Iraq seems to be basically pacified, the Neocon machine needs someplace else to operate to keep the rapidly-devaluating dollars coming in, so its next step is to attack Iran. They've been carefully warming the population up to the idea for several years now via their various propaganda outlets. (the Murdoch empire) I know I have been trained to hate them. How about you? Even the networks and other major news outlets seem to be carrying the Kool-aid. Iran's population is two-and-a-half times that of Iraq, and they are much better-organized and several times crazier. The Machine should be able to draw this one out for decades. I do realize that our entire economy revolves around the internal combustion engine, and the stability of the oil supply in the near term must be protected. This is the real reason we are there. (Just ask Alan Greenspan.) I also believe that this dependence on petroleum products must come to an end, and the sooner the better. The only problem is with the rich maggots whose pockets George Bush lives in that are making an obscene fortune from the oil industry. Also, electric cars don't require any maintenance. The "big three" are therefore in no hurry to break us of our dependence on black gold either, even though it is apparently destroying the planet. But Mr. Murdoch's all-seeing, all-knowing, all-distorting media machine drums out the message hour after hour, day after day, that this isn't true. I suspect that the real reason for this is that if we ever own up to the fact that global warming is the result of vehicle emissions, we shall be exposing ourselves (the USA) to an unbelievable torrent of lawsuits, because we in fact have done the dragon's share of the polluting over the last century. Here's a video you might find interesting called "Who killed the electric car..."
I'm a musician with a tiny bit of success under my belt. I was in a band called Hayseed-Dixie when they started out, I'm on the first album--I'm the fat guy...lol We did bluegrass covers of AC/DC music basically as a joke, and the next thing we knew we were on every morning radio show in America. After I toured with that gig for a year and a half, I spent three years going to school and then working for a year learning how to fix computers, and discovered it's the most frustrating, stress-packed job in the world, very nearly went batshit, and quit. Then I struck out on my own for a while, doing computer tutoring and repair on a one-off basis, and setting up a limited number of clients. I can usually fix a computer over the internet if you can still get online. Go to crossloop.com, install the software, and give me a call at 615-403-2005.I also went back to school at MTSU to at long last finish my BS in BS, and finished up in '08. I also record songs at my home studio, The Man Cave, here in Beautiful Hendersonville TN, and am accepting clients. Feel free to email me here or give me a jingle between 9a.m. and 10p.m. Just leave a message, maybe I'll call. --Joe Walsh Here's a short clip recorded backstage with the original lineup of Hayseed Dixie on one of our first gigs...
