Video Killed the Radio Star: Double Rainbow

I saw this video on The Kilborn File a couple of weeks ago...thought I would share the craziness.



BTW, The Kilborn File has to be one of the best comedy shows on right now. I haven't missed one yet. This thing needs to be picked up.

The Last Laugh: Cheerleading isn't a sport

If I have any cheerleaders next year, I'm going to have fun with this story. Turns out that a college wanted to replace its volleyball team with a competitive cheerleading squad. What say the judge?

U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill ruled Wednesday that Quinnipiac University in New Jersey could not replace its women's volleyball team with a competitive cheering squad, saying cheerleading is "too underdeveloped and disorganized" to be treated as an official collegiate sport.

classic.

Side note - I have always felt any "sport" that is judged, isn't a sport. So that would be gymnastics, skating, cheerleading, etc. For me a sport is head to head competition...two enter, but only one leaves type deal.

Who Decides: Top 20 Lead Off Tracks

I have done lead off tracks before, with Metallica, but what about the rest of the music world? For me a lead off track is a special one. It sets the tone of the album and to make this list it had to grab me and make a lasting impression on me.

Now when I first did this list I had over 40 songs. So I imposed some rules; no EPs, the band had to have released at least 3 albums, only one song per band, and of course no intros. Since there are 20 songs I can't do a paragraph a song or the post would be a mile long, but I will try to highlight the really important ones to me. So without further ado...here we go.

20. Betrayal - Halford: Crucible; cheating a little to lead off the list because the track order was rearranged for the re-released version.





19. Splinterd Visions - Into Eternity: Buried in Oblivion; mentioned it here and here.





18. Being Nothing - Nightrage: Descent into Chaos; At The Gates-like




17. Demanufacture - Fear Factory: Demanufacture; first taste of industrial metal...and what an impression it was.





16. Arise - Sepultura: Arise; if Nightrage was At the Gates-like this is Metallica-like with harsh vocals. Nothing tribal about this song.





15. Burnt Offerings - Iced Earth: Burnt Offerings; talked about here.




14. Clenching the Fists of Dissent - Machine Head: The Blackening; an lead off track that is over 10 minutes long and you can't tell because it's so good...definitely belongs here.




13. Born - Nevermore: This Godless Endeavor; almost death metal like from Nevermore definitely a song that broke some boundaries for them.





12. This Calling - All That Remains: The Fall of Ideals; the opening scream was my ringtone for a long time.





11. Cowboys from Hell - Pantera: Cowboys from Hell; this was the first impression a lot of people had from Pantera (because they buried their glam days). That first riff is so memorable. Classic song.





10. Blinded by Fear - At the Gates: Slaughter of the Soul; not the best song on the album or on the list, but it was my first intro to At the Gates. The speed, harmonies, and vocals still get me.





9. Hate Song - The Haunted: The Haunted; fast, angry...first taste of The Haunted. Most of the guys came from At the Gates, but the music was more punk/thrash than melodic death metal.





8. Painkiller - Judas Priest: Painkiller; first song I heard of Judas Priest. Fast...I was blown away by the speed and power of the drum intro. The two solos at the end put it over the top for me.





7. D.N.R. - Testament: The Gathering; I'm not a huge fan of The Gathering, but this might be Testament's best song ever.





6. Deathrider - Anthrax: The Greater of Two Evils; another cheating I guess. From their re-recording of earlier songs with John Bush on vocals. I love John Bush with Anthrax and this song proves how great they were together.





5. More Than Feeling - Boston: Boston; this is no typo. I love Boston. Their first album to me is one of the greatest albums of all time. How can you not include Boston on this list? I got into Boston a long time ago and anytime this song is one the radio (yeah still played from the 70's) I sing along like I am at their concert.





4. Your Betrayal - Bullet for My Valentine - Fever; I have talked about it here already. And the fact it is #4 on this list and it just came out this year...says a lot.





3. Take This Life - In Flames: Come Clarity; when I started this list I thought this would be number one. It is great. The whole thing is just great; the opening, vocals, music, harmonies...it has it all. After the mess that Soundtrack to Your Escape was it was a refreshing return to melodic death metal for In Flames. This lead off track was just the song they needed to show everyone they still had it.





2. Holy Wars...The Punishment Due - Megadeth: Rust in Peace; second longest song on here. It was my first taste of thrash metal. At the time, the solos blew me away. When I listen to them now...they still do! That opening riff...classic. Any metal fan will know instantly what song they are listening to.





1. Fight Fire with Fire - Metallica: Ride the Lightening; any surprise here? It made my top Metallica lead off tracks and Metallica is my favorite band. But the opening is still memorable. Remember it's 1984 and you didn't hear that in metal bands.

Video Killed the Radio Star: Rep. Ciro Rodriguez

This was one of the drafts I had earlier. I was trying to figure out which tag to put it under. So I made a new one for videos.

I happened to catch this on KFI's website and really don't have much to add to it, expect that It appears that Rep. Rodriguez might need some anger management classes. He gets a little upset when someone challenges him on the cost of Obamacare.



I love this. The thing has passed and yet the democrats are still running around trying to drum up support for it.

Free Speech for the Dumb: Shirley Sherrod

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that the NAACP is going after the Tea Party full force about the racist tendencies within the movement. They talk about signs that show up, yet no one can produce pictures of them. Sometimes it feels that if you are black or a minority then you can't be racist. Enter Shirley Sherrod.

Sherrod is was the Agricultural Department's Georgia director of Rural Development. Well seems that she didn't help out the white farmers enough;

"He had to come to me for help. What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him," she said. "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land -- so I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough."

Better yet... to show how good of a job she did;

"I figured if I took him to one of them his own kind, [they] would take care of him,"

The sad part is that she works for the government. People need to realize that racism doesn't exist. What you have is rich people screwing over poor people. Greed is color blind.

Right Now: It's My World

So it's been a couple of days since my last post. I wanted to do a post a day and as you can tell I'm a little off. I thought I would do more since it's summer, but alas I find myself relaxing after work instead of blogging. Funny thing is that I have a bunch of drafts I started, but never finished.

So the plan is to get the drafts published (they might be old) and get back on track to a post a day. So hopefully tonight I will have another post on something done.

Other than that...nothing much.

Free Speech for the Dumb: Rev. Jesse Jackson

So I think unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Lebron James basically held the basketball world hostage for a week as he contemplated where he would play next year. He then decided to have a one hour live special to announce where he would play.

Spoiler alert...it wasn't in Cleveland. So Cavs owner Dan Gilbert was upset. I think in part that they were kept out of the dark as to what he wanted to do. He felt hurt because Lebron did a lot for his team and vice versa. Then all of a sudden Lebron just left without saying anything to the owner. So you can see his frustrations.

After the announcement, Gilbert put out a pretty intense letter. Some highlights;

"This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment."

"You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal."

"This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown "chosen one" sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And "who" we would want them to grow-up to become.

But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called "curse" on Cleveland, Ohio.

The self-declared former "King" will be taking the "curse" with him down south. And until he does "right" by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma."

For an owner to say these things...pretty shocking. But as I read it, he seemed pissed at the way Lebron treated the fans and the team. Well, not according to Jesse Jackson. He sees it a bit differently;

"He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers," the reverend said in a release from his Chicago-based civil rights group, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. "His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship -- between business partners -- and LeBron honored his contract."

Of course Dan Gilbert has a slave master mentality. That explains it all. How about the fact that the "runaway slave" didn't have the common courtesy to tell the team ahead of time he was leaving instead of turning it into a spectacle? Why does everything have to be about race? And show me where Gilbert says Lebron had no right to leave. I think he had a problem with the way he did it.

Venting the Anger: Wonder Woman's new costume

Well it's been awhile since the news hit of Wonder Woman's new look and new origin (which I won't even touch here) and I thought I might as well give my thoughts on it.

First off, WW's costume is iconic, whether you like it or not. It ranks up there with Superman, Spiderman, and even Captain America (which I hit earlier) as costumes that are perfect. Here are most of the variations of WW's look through the years and they all look good...well almost
Minus the 60's WW on the far left and the 90's version when she lost her title as WW on the far right, they all are pretty much the same. There is a common theme going on there. Red top, blue shorts with stars, and red boots. Simple enough right?

Apparently not because here is the "new" Wonder WomanOk ummm red top kinda. It's got the really tiny WW logo. Red boots...no, I'm not even sure if she has boots on or if they are booties. Stars on the blue shorts...impossible because she isn't wearing shorts!!! And where is the blue anywhere? Oh wait it's on the cool looking 90's jacket that brings back memories of her look in the 90's...see the first picture again!

The whole look sucks. The new origin sucks. This all just wreaks of a sales ploy. It's not as bad as the Electric Superman, but its not good by a long shot. But it's not as good as when Spiderman gave up his title to his clone...for another time.

I am sure when Diana corrects the timeline we will see the old costume return, but I said the same thing about Captain America and well Steve Rogers is back among the living, but he isn't back to being Cap yet. There have been a ton of costume redesigns that have been brought in for a quick gain in sales and I know it won't last forever, but still it bothers me.

The Clone: At the Gates

So a new tag that should be kind of fun for everyone, The Clone. Basically, I will be finding shows, bands, or whatever that remind me of some other band, show, or whatever. So today we will look at some other bands that remind me of the classic melodic death metal band At the Gates.

When I started getting into some harder music I kept hearing about this band, At the Gates and their album Slaughter of the Soul. I finally picked it up and was blown away. It was thrash metal with some great vocals by Tomas Lindberg, who made my top 10 metal vocalists. It was great. Listening to this thing from start to finish was amazing. No filler on it at all...just great. It's no shock that it made my top 5 Must Own metal albums. So if you picked it up, then you were probably disappointed, like me, to learn they broke up after this album.

So I searched high and low to find bands that sounded similar and really brought back that same style. I have a ton of melodic death metal albums and here are the ones that really remind me of At the Gates;

1. Nightrage - Descent into Chaos: this is a no brainer. I mean, their first two albums had Tomas on vocals. Descent into Chaos is my favorite from these guys and it really has that At the Gates feel to it. It is probably a bit more thrash than At the Gates had, but it works. The guitar harmonies are there and of course with Tomas on vocals you are getting the same style from At the Gates. All of Nightrage's albums are great, even A New Disease is Born (my second favorite), but if you loved Slaughter of the Soul start with this one.


2. Within Y - Extended Mental Dimensions: If Nightrage has the vocals, then this album by Within Y has the music down. Heck, even the vocals are similar. When I heard Lost in Solitude the first time, I thought it was At the Gates. The same screaming opening...classic. If you Google a review of this album, you will find almost everyone comparing it to At the Gates. The guitar tone, drumming, and vocals make this a clone of At the Gates. Some might knock it for not being original, but when you have songs that are this memorable, who cares? It's interesting to see how their sound has evolved as well. They sound more like The Haunted now than At the Gates and that's ok too.


3. Arsis - A Celebration of Guilt: before I heard Within Y, this was my fix for At the Gates. Think of this album as a more technical version of At the Gates. Vocals are dead on to Tomas. But musically, like I said, it is more technical. The tone is the same, but the guitarists go to town on showing off what they know. Oh did I say guitarists? I meant guitarist as in one. What really blew me away is when I found out that this entire album was recorded by two people! The writing on this album is actually better than Within Y's too.


4. The Absence - Riders of the Plague: This was their second album and they really stepped it up a notch. Riders of the Plague has that same death/thrash blend that At the Gates helped create. The album starts off with a scream into that Tomas perfected in At the Gates as well. The vocalist is a little deeper than Tomas, but still works. Musically is where this album really shines. The solos are great. Each one is not rushed and written hastily.


So there are 4 bands that you can go check out if you were/are a fan of At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul.

The Sun Always Shines on T.V.: The Kilborn File

Most of you have probably heard of The Daily Show, but what some of you probably don't know is that Jon Stewart was not the original host. That honor belongs to Craig Kilborn. My senior year in high school I was addicted to Sportscenter. Watching it as I went to bed with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann and waking up to Craig Kilborn and Stewart Scott. Those four anchors made ESPN what it is today.

Craig eventually left ESPN for cable TV, specifically Comedy Central. He would go onto host The Daily Show for 3 years before getting a bigger job as the Late, Late Show host following Letterman. The Daily Show was great during Kilborn's time. It wasn't political like it is now. It was like SNL's Weekend Update. The segments were great and the interviews were memorable. I still remember Keith Olbermann coming on the show doing an interview (where he bad-mouthed ESPN) and then getting suspended for a week because of it. The best part of his interviews was 5 questions. It was just that, 5 trivia type questions for the celebrities.

After he left, I actually watched some of Jon Stewart's version. I remember his first week when he did his interviews he started with 5 questions and everyday would take one question away, until they were all gone after one week. I rarely watched it after that first week.

I'm not one to stay up late to watch Leno or Letterman, so staying up after that to watch Kilborn wasn't an option...until TIVO. The Late, Late Show was pretty similar to The Daily Show except that the news segments were gone. The headlines and 5 questions were still there, but the missing news segments kind of ruined it. The show was an hour which was nice, but sometimes it dragged on. Besides by then I was recording Jimmie Kimmel's show which was better (sorry Craig).

It had to be like a month after I got TIVO that Kilborn announced he was leaving tv again. I was pissed to say the least. Kilborn has a sharp sense of humor and is very sarcastic. He plays this arrogant person and plays it up well.

So I was shocked and happy to hear about his new show, The Kilborn File. It has a 6 week test period to see if it will go national and continue on. It is more like his Late, Late Show than The Daily Show. In fact, the set looks almost identical to his LLS set. But it is only 30 minutes, so it has that Daily Show feel to it. I have enjoyed watching Kilborn again and hope that this thing continues on. The timeslot might not be the best (6:30 PM here in CA), but my fingers are crossed.

So some pros and cons;
Pros:

• headlines are still there
• 5 questions as well
• new segments like Power Panel and Speed News
• 30 minutes

Cons

• side-kick in Christine Lakin
• no dance, dance Friday (hopefully this will change)
• no news segments (though the show flows very well without them)

Like I said, this show needs to make it. Watch some clips HERE.