When Michael Bolton Attacks

Any of you fine folks happen to catch the new Fox show Celebrity Duets last night? Of course you didn't. Because you're not waiting oh-so-patiently for your DirecTV installation date while attempting to entertain yourself with the only three channels you can barely make out through the static of crappy rabbit-ear reception.

I don't want to be accused of overstating here, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that Celebrity Duets is the most horrific fucking abomination to ever appear on a television screen. I don't even know where to start with this piece of shit. Oh, wait, yes I do: Michael Fucking Bolton. Did you know Michael Bolton has a new album? Did you know that Michael Bolton's new album is -- are you sitting down for this? Do you have a stiff drink handy? Is there someone nearby you can slap right across the face? -- all covers of Frank Sinatra songs?

Let me just repeat that, in case it didn't quite sink in the first time: Michael Bolton is making an album of Frank Sinatra covers.

Michael Fucking Bolton.

That's right, the same Michael Bolton who once wooed the ladies with songs like "Take A Look at My Face," "Soul Provider," and "Time, Love and Tenderness." The same Michael Bolton whose name alone was enough to prop up an extended joke in Office Space ("I'll be honest, I am a Michael Bolton fan, I truly am. For my money, it doesn't get any better than when he sings 'When a Man Loves a Woman.'").

You see, for most schlock artists, it would be enough to completely desecrate the work of Otis Redding ("Sitting on the Dock of the Bay"), the Jackson 5 ("I'll Be There"), and Sam Cooke ("Bring It On Home to Me"). But not Michael Fucking Bolton. No, he's got to feed that Hubris Machine. Really the only way this could turn out well is if Ol' Blue Eyes himself rose from the dead, tossed back a couple of Scotches and kicked Michael Bolton square in the fucking nuts.

No such luck last night on Celebrity Duets. Instead, audiences were treated to Bolton and Lucy Lawless doing "Time, Love and Tenderness," then Bolton pairing with Lorraine McFly (Leah Thompson) to butcher Sinatra's "That's Life." Then everyone in the studio audience stuffed cotton balls into their ears to keep the blood from pooling in the aisles.

The strangest thing about the show was that they got some legitimate talents to show up -- most notably Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson. Also, Peter Frampton, which was just ... well, strange. I kept expecting him to break out the voice box thingy from Frampton Comes Alive, but no such luck. Randy Travis also made an appearance, which was kind of random, plus Michelle Williams of (apparently) Destiny's Child.

Oh, and James Ingram. I actually kinda have a soft spot for James Ingram, partly because of the last name, and partly because he really does have a good voice, even if his particular brand of super-smooth R&B lite is both schmaltzy and easy to confuse with the super-smooth R&B lite of several other similar singers. Last night he sang "Somewhere Out There," but with gymnast Carly Patterson in the Linda Ronstadt role. And I was transported back to my 7th grade cafetorium, where I stood leaning against a folded-up lunch table and wished I weren't such a wuss about asking girls to dance.

Incidentally, I think something is seriously wrong with Carly Patterson, because she managed to gain twenty pounds between her first performance last night and her second. We really need to get a team of doctors on this before she explodes.

And speaking of something wrong, Little Richard is completely insane. Which, actually, is the only reason to even consider tuning into this program. That and the promise of a guest appearance by Kenny Loggins.

DIY TV

Salon has an interesting thing up right now where they ask different people to "image their fantasy (TV) program." What's up there so far is kind of interesting, although not exactly inspired. Who knew the dude from the Mountain Goats liked boxing so much? And the zombie rights show ("Afterlife") is funny and, strangely, not such a bad idea.

But I think we can do it a little better here at Barrelhouse.

I can't think of a better group of people to pursue a project that involves a bit of random creativity, a love/hate/love relationship with television, and no responsibility to actually do anything other than throw ideas out there.

So here's my idea, and some of you may have heard this before. It is called "Porn House" and I don't think its been done yet, although I know the Playboy channel has gotten close. And here I have to say much credit goes to my friend Jake, who is equally responsible/to blame for this concept.

Here's how the show works: you get a bunch of very horny straight men, like, eight of them, all in their early twenties, in a house. Also in the house: an equal number of porn stars (or, you know, depending on production values and budgets, hookers).

The straight men are not allowed to orgasm. Any orgasm -- self-inflicted, nighttime emission, what have you, and they are out of the game. Hence the catchphrase: "You cum, you go!"

And now the conflict: the porn stars/hookers are paid a bounty for each guy they can make orgasm. The bounty goes down incrementally every day, so there's a sense of urgency for them as well.

There will be challenges (Lesbian night! Jenna Jameson!), and there will be booze everywhere. The only decorations in the house will be pornographic, and the televisions will be playing porn nonstop, night and day. These televisions cannot be turned off. There will be a lot of fighting. I don't mean "you don't know me" or "you didn't put the toilet seat down" fighting. I mean, physical, drunken, sexually frustrated, stupid frat boy brawling.

So, the last dude in the house wins, I don't know, some money (if Paradise Hotel is any indication, and it really should be, then we don't really need to even figure out what they win until, oh, maybe one show before the finale).

My other idea is a soap opera based in the world described by the Weekly World News. We could call it "As the Weekly World Turns" and it would be populated by aliens, ghosts, serial killers, the bat boy, etc. Except it would be done completely straight -- no wink wink (ahem, "snakes on a plane") bullshit, straight up daytime, alien, bat boy love drama.

So what's your show?

Oh, and Playboy Network -- you can get in touch with me and Jake through this blog. The rights to Porn House are totally for sale.

Wing Nut of the Week: If That Ain't Country, I'll Kiss Your Ass

It ain't easy being country these days. The music scene that used to boast tough, hard-drinkin' guys like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Charlie Daniels and David Allen Coe has now been co-opted by the likes of Shania Twain (who's Canadian), the Dixie Chicks (who might as well be Canadian) and dudes who look like they should be singing in boy bands.

So what's a real country boy supposed to do to prove his mettle? Apparently Troy Gentry, of the country band Montgomery Gentry, decided the way to up his street cred was by shooting a bear -- only problem was he picked a tame, caged bear.

Gentry allegedly paid about $4,650 for the bear, named Cubby. The bear's death was videotaped, and the tape later edited so Gentry appeared to shoot the animal in a 'fair chase' hunting situation, the government alleges.

Apparently Gentry bought the bear from a "wildlife photographer and hunting guide" in Tennessee, then shot it with a bow and arrow on the guide's property. The two then tagged the bear as a wild kill. They face jail time and a $20,000 fine.

Man, what is it with tough guys and fake hunting?

This incident also reminded me of Borat's Guide to Hunting, which you should really check out if you haven't seen it.

Anyway, congratulations Mr. Gentry, on being this week's Wing Nut of the Week. You just keep on "doin' your thing":

Put me on a mountain, way back in the backwoods
Put me on a lake with a biggin' on the line
Put me 'round a campfire cookin' something I just cleaned
You do your thing, I'll do mine

I ain't tradin' in my family's safety
Just to save a little gas
And I'll pray to God any place, any time
And you can bet I'll pick up the phone if Uncle Sam calls me up
You do your thing, I'll do mine

I ain't gonna spare the rod
Cuz that ain't what my daddy did
And I sure know the difference between wrong and right
You know, to me it's all just common sense
A broken rule, a consequence
You do your thing, I'll do mine

If You Want I Can Double-Bag Them: Real Snakes on Real Planes

In honor of the release, finally, of Snakes on a Plane, Salon has an interview with biologist Jesus Rivas, an expert in the green anaconda who has actually flown with real snakes, on a real plane. 29 baby anacondas. In pillow cases. As Samuel L. Jackson might say, this motherfucker is motherfucking crazy, motherfuckers.

I'm pretty sure this interview is more entertaining than the movie will be, and all it'll cost you is a few seconds wait through an ad. Here are some highlights:

• "When I catch them in the wild they are upset, of course, and we have to wrestle."
  
  
• "I know the kind of places where they live -- usually in shallow waters with a lot of vegetation. I go shuffling through the water, feeling with my feet for them and poking with poles in the mud. Normally I find them by stepping on them....that's when the fun begins."
  
  
• "So when it was my turn I decided I better tell the security guy that I have some snakes here because I didn't want him to just open my bag of baby anacondas. He jumped and said, You can't travel with snakes on this plane, man! ... I told him not to worry. "They're not venomous. And they're nicely contained in a brand-new pillow case. There's no reason they're going to escape. If you want, I could double-bag them."
  
  
• "Once I took some mature female anacondas to the gynecologist."

Those are the best, crazy-ass parts. Here's the whole thing. Enjoy, motherfuckers.

Yacht Rock

If you've got five minutes to spare, you really owe it to yourself to watch this informative documentary about the roots of Yacht Rock, that super-smooth sound pioneered by such luminaries as Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins. I especially enjoyed the appearance of shit-talking tough guys Hall and Oates.

Wingnut of the Week: Baby Fever!

It seems to me there are lots of reasons a person might want to have a baby. Maybe even many, many babies. But I'm particularly fond of the reasons given by Nancy Campbell, proprietess of the web site Above Rubies. They're such a compelling mix of the practical, spiritual, and borderline creepy:

• I'll have more people to love.
• I'll have more hands to help.
• My children think I'm beautiful no matter how I look.
• The more children we have, the more they entertain one another.
• It's an honor for the Lord to use my womb again.
• My children help me surrender the selfish desires of my flesh.
• Jesus said that when we welcome a little child into our home and family we are actually welcoming Him. I don't want to spurn Jesus.
• We still have an empty seat in our van, and we'd like to fill it!
• There will be more people to pay for the aged's social security benefits.
• It sure is nice to kiss and smell a little one again. Their scent is so sweet.
• Babies are future dish washers!
• Babies are a lot more entertaining than TV.
• So I can buy cute baby and children's clothes, even if it's at a yard sale.
• My body was created for this purpose.

Unfortunately, not everyone's on board with the baby fever. As Nancy notes on her web site, "the womb is under attack." Mostly from the usual suspects -- abortion, contraception, tubal ligations and hysterectomies. But also from -- are you ready for this, people? -- curses.

The sins of the parents from past generations can bring a curse upon the womb. It can also come upon us through our own sin or negative confession. We should be careful not to speak negatively about any of our reproductive organs. Guard how you speak about menstruation. When you call it 'the curse' or other negative names, you give an opportunity for the curse of barrenness or other disorders to come to your womb. A curse on the womb can be a failure to menstruate, painful or irregular menstruation, cramps, cysts, tumors, continual miscarriage and inability to conceive - in fact, anything that affects your reproductive organs.

Let that be a warning to you, ladies: speak nice about your hoo-hoo or God may smite it.

Nancy also provides some inspirational stories to give women hope. Like the story of Kelly Belanger, whose husband Mike, after their third child and a stint in rehab ("he did so much cocaine he said his heart felt like it was going to explode"), decided to have a vasectomy.

As you might have already guessed, what came after that wasn't so hot. Kelly, who had recently found Jesus, worried that she and Mike were "withholding children from the Lord." And Mike couldn't find any friends:

Mike was looking for a close personal relationship with a friend, but he felt he could never connect with anybody in AA or NA or with the friends we had left over from us changing our life style. Unknown to us there was an elderly couple in the trailer park where we were living, who were Christians. They had been praying for a Christian family to come in to our trailer park to live.

Kelly and Mike started going to church and then, a couple months later:

...Mike told me he wanted to talk to me. He had been listening to some tapes on the value of a child and how a lot of great Christian men and women were the seventh, eighth and ninth child in their families. It got him thinking. What child had he prevented that could have been used to further the Kingdom of God?

Praise be!

But first Kelly and Mike had to convince their other kids, who apparently wanted a pool instead:

What could we have expected? All their lives they’d heard that two or three children are enough for most families. We were in a dilemma! Buy a pool or have a baby? My heart said, "A baby." Mike's heart said, "A baby and pool!" The only money we had for Mike's operation was going to be from the sale of a camper that we owned. We were still not convinced about what to do, so we had the pool man come out and survey our yard. He sprayed a giant, bright orange ring on our lawn to let us know how well the pool would fit in our yard. While we were contemplating our decision, we had to stare at a bright orange circle day after day. Our camper was not selling either. One day I asked Mike, 'Do you think the reason we’re not selling the camper, is because were not following the Lord?' When our hearts became right before the Lord, we sold the camper!

Hallelujah!

But if you think women are meant to be just baby machines, you've got another thing coming. They're also meant to be their husbands "helpers," according to Nancy.

• We help him by caring for the children and making our home a place of joy and sweetness.
• We help him by having an aroma-filled nutritional meal ready for him when he returns to home at the end of the day. This is one task of our great motherhood career on which we cannot slip! It is more important than we realize!
• We help him by having the home ready for him when he arrives--toys and mess cleaned up and thrown out of sight!
• We help him by being excited to see him when he arrives--even if we have had a lousy day! It is a strong woman who can put aside her self-pitying spirit and by faith put on a smiling face. Greet your husband with joy and talk about the troubles later on--after the evening meal and time with the children.
• We help him by being his counter-part--the part that he hasn't got that he needs!

So there you go, ladies. Take your part -- you know, that part you have that men need -- and put it to use! Be fruitful and multiply!

As for you, Nancy -- congratulations on being named the Barrelhouse Wing-Nut of the Week. Your free tee shirt, plus a couple "Baby On Board" car magnets, are on the way.

My use of simile sucks as bad as the river tide

Not that The Onion is washed up or anything (and maybe I just like to think I'm pressed for time), but I stopped reading the articles a year or two ago. Laughing at the titles was good enough, like enjoying an SNL skit but hating the resulting 3 hour movie that stretched the concept as thin as a wagon wheel.

With this article, however, I insist that you peel away the "title" layer, for the knee-slapping, tear-inducing "onion-ness" underneath, IF you know what I mean.

Nothing in the World

I usually post about music or TV or, definitely coming soon, that crazy ass "Head On" commercial ("Head On! Apply directly to forehead! Head On..." -- completely brilliant, by the way), but since its lit Thursday and I've been sticking to the script lately, thought I'd post quickly about a great little book I just finished, "Nothing in the World," by Roy Kesey.

It's a lovely, strange, kinda haunting little book. And I do mean little. The book, which I guess is technically a novella, is tiny, a little smaller than a CD jewel case, the perfect size to tuck into your pocket. It was the winner of Bullfight Media Little Book Contest (Bullfight is also the publisher, or former publisher, or maybe even-more-occasional-than-Barrelhouse publisher of the Bullfight Review, which is a great little lit mag), for novels or novellas or whatever that are less than 100 pages long.

No less an authority than George Saunders calls Nothing in the World "a beautiful, powerful book: mythic, vivid, heart-rending." Not bad. And he's right. The book follows Josko, a troubled teenager in Croatia, just as the war breaks out with Serbia. Josko enlists in the Army, becomes a talented sniper, shoots down some planes, and then goes wandering AWOL across the countryside in an increasingly dreamlike, hallucinatory, desperate, violent voyage. It's a war novel, there's no doubt about that, but it's also a very touching and, as Saunders said, mythic book (I couldn't help but think that perhaps Josko's wanderings were based on some myth that I was too stupid and poorly read to place).

The book seems to be picking up some steam, with a lot of juice on the blogosphere (or, maybe, in keeping with our policy of always being a day late to the party, I should say there was a lot of buzz about it, maybe about a month or so ago). It's a nice success story for Kesey and also for Bullfight, a little publisher made good if there ever was one.

If you've made it this far in this blog post, you should probably buy Nothing in the World right now.

Long Shadows

In honor of music wednesday here, just wanted to post quickly about two albums currently in high rotation in my mp3 player, Johnny Cash's American V: A Hundred Highways, and Joe Strummer's Streetcore. In a lot of ways, these are like dead rebel rocker bookends. Cash went quietly -- he knew he was dying, and had even probably accepted that fact after the death of his wife June. Strummer died suddenly, too early, at the age of 50, right in the middle of a career resurrection that saw him embracing his earlier work with the Clash and mixing it up with new sounds and a new band, the Mescaleros.

A lot has been said about the Cash album, and it's all right on, so I won't take too much time on that one. It's a lovely album, world weary and heartfelt, accepting and wise and all that stuff you've read before. Somehow, Cash's croak of a voice sounds absolutely perfect for this suite of songs that, taken in context, almost all seem to be about death in some way. It's amazing how a train song or a relationship song, sung by somebody looking so clearly and fearlessly at his impending death, all seem to be about, well, death.

Rick Rubin, who produced the entire American series, and Cash had a fascinating relationship (they "took communion" together, on the phone, every day for the last few years of Cash's life), and the man in black couldn't have asked for a better executor of his musical estate. Although these songs weren't finished when Cash died, they're always tasteful and understated, a perfectly appropriate final note, kind of like Johnny Cash's eulogy for himself.

If the Cash album is exactly what you might hope for, the Strummer album is, for me, more than that. I had held off on buying it because I'd read that these songs were unfinished, that (like the songs on American V) they had been completed after his unexpected death. The whole thing sounded a little Tupac-y for my taste. But Streetcore turns out to the best solo album of Strummer's career, maybe the best album he'd been associated with since London Calling.

While the previous solo album, Global a Go Go, was perhaps a little too infatuated with world music, Streetcore is a more straight ahead rock album, the kind of thing you might have expected Strummer to make coming out of the post-Clash gate. The album includes a few rockers that would not be out of place on London Calling, namely "Coma Girl," "Get Down Moses," and "All in a Day." There's even a bookend to the seminal Clash song "London Burning," a mid-tempo reggae-tinged rocker called "Burnin' Streets" that includes the familiar chorus "London is burning..." (here, sung soft and slow).

These are balanced by several slower numbers that showcase Strummer's voice, including a cover of "Redemption Song" and of Bobby Charles' "Before I Grow Too Old," here retitled "Silver and Gold." This song is a revelation -- lovely and wise and tuneful. And I'm pretty confident in saying that absolutely nobody but Joe Strummer could make this ballad introduction sound totally cool: "one...two...one, two, three KICK..."

Like the train songs on American V, the lyrics sound a little different when delivered posthumously:

I'm gonna go out dancin' every night
I'm gonna see all your city lights
I'm gonna do everything silver and gold
And I got to hurry up before I grow too old

Since the whole point of this post is to jibber-jabber about how these two albums are fitting, if incredibly sad, tributes to these rock legends, and how, I hate to say it, but here goes -- even in death, they can show us a little about how to live (man, that sounds cheesy, like a Very Special Episode or something, but what can I say, listen to them and try to not take something like that away...) -- I'll let Strummer get the last word in, with a song he actually wrote for Johnny Cash, "Long Shadow."

Well I'll tell you one thing that I know
You don't face your demons down
You gotta grapple 'em Jack and pin 'em to the ground
The devil may care, maybe god he won't
You better make sure you check on the do's and the don'ts

Crawl up a moutain
To reach where the eagles fly
To show you can glimpse from the mountian top
where the soul of the muse might ride

And if you put it all together
You won't have to look around
You know you cast a long shadow on the ground

...And I hear punks talk of anarchy
I hear hobo's on the railroads
I hear mutterings on the chain gangs
It was those men who built the roads

And if you put it all together
You didn't even once relent
You cast a long shadow
And that is your testament

Somewhere in my soul
There's always rock and roll
Yeaaaah!"

No Beer and No TV Make Mike Something Something

According to this New York Times article, pretty soon no one will even sell TVs with picture tubes in them anymore -- it'll all be plasma and LCD and projection. And I guess I'll officially become Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, with my old-fashioned television set that may as well be in a heavy wooden cabinet.

Actually, I'm already well on my way. I haven't signed up for cable or satellite yet since moving to Philly, so I'm rocking the rabbit ears. Sometimes, when the picture goes fuzzy, I toss my half-empty can of PBR in the direction of the antenna and curse. Someday, I'll probably fly into a fit of rage and shoot out the screen.

Luckily, the picture comes in great for Fox and NBC, so I can still watch The Simpsons, The Office and America's Got Talent. CBS is pretty fuzzy, which, surprisingly, doesn't make the protagonist of How I Met Your Mother any less annoying. The worst thing about not having cable, though, is trying to break my HBO Original Programming habit. Every Sunday night around 9:00 I start getting the shakes. And now I'm like that guy who tapes the big game and then goes around holding his hands over his ears in the hopes of not learning its outcome before he can get back to his house to watch it, only I have to do that for however many months it takes for the current season of Entourage to come out on DVD. And it doesn't help that Entertainment Weekly is doing its best to thwart my mission. Whenever I see Jeremy Piven's face in the mag, I start singing "You're a Grand Old Flag" at the top of my lungs and flip several pages until it's safe again.

Eventually I'll break down and get cable. Or, actually, DirecTV. Which leads me to my question of the day: how do the cable companies even stay in business? Here in Philly, the most basic digital cable package Comcast offers is $80.95. That's without any movie channels or other premiums. Meanwhile, the basic DirecTV package -- which includes more channels -- is less than $50. Are people just creatures of habit and that's why they stick with cable? Do the cable ads -- the ones that misleadingly imply your satellite service will constantly go out every time it rains -- actually work? I'm very confused about this.

It's Always Ridiculously Hot or Raining in Philadelphia

I've been absent from the blog lately as I've been in the process of relocating from beautiful, bucolic Iowa City to Murder City, USA (TM). Apparently Philly just hit the 238 mark for year-to-date murders, which I learned via a helpful USA Today-style graphic on the front page of the Sunday Inquirer. I'm not sure what's more disturbing -- that there have been 238 murders so far this year, or that the mayor's solution, delivered via live television address, was for people to "take a deep breath and count to ten" when they get angry. On the plus side, I hear if we hit 250, everyone in town gets an ice cream party.

Anyway, since it's Movie Monday, can we talk about how Entertainment Weekly's movie reviews have completely gone off the rails? It used to be you could count on EW to be soft on pretty much everything. In fact, they even ran a little chart that showed their ratings of popular movies next to other news outlets, which generally made EW look like the friendly, grade-inflating TA Who Really Just Wants to Be Your Friend, especially when compared with the New York Times' Grumpy Old Professor Who Thinks All The Kids These Days Are Damn Near Retarded From Their Stupid Videogames And Crystal Meth And Don't Even Deserve To Be In College In The First Place.

In the good old days, if a movie got anything below a B- in EW, you knew it stunk. Police Academy 4 was probably a C+ movie in the old system; Weekend at Bernie's 2 would get a B and the review would probably use the word "romp." There was a certain utility to this inflated rating scale. Since EW gave out so few bad grades, if a movie got a C or -- God forbid -- a D, you knew enough to avoid it. The only movie I can remember ever getting an F was that horror flick with Paris Hilton in it.

Now, though, something's changed. Maybe the EW reviewers have just gotten something up their collective butt. Maybe other mags have been calling and taunting them about their grade inflation. Whatever the reason, the old standard has gone out the window. Trouble is, I can't make heads or tails out of the new one. A couple months back, an EW review slammed The Break-Up, which, admittedly, wasn't Fellini, but which was a pretty decent movie for what it was trying to be. Better than most romantic comedies, anyway. The review kept harping on how unlikeable Vince Vaughn's character was, to the point where it became obvious that the reviewer had some personal baggage he or she was bringing to the table, baggage that had nothing at all to do with the actual movie.

Then, in the Aug. 4 issue, Little Miss Sunshine got a C (and a scathing review from Owen Gleiberman), which was almost enough for me to not see the movie. But then I did, and I thought it was great (the dying grandpa was a little too Vacation, but I certainly didn't find the end to be "smarmy" or the characters to be made up of "screenwriter index-card data").

These bad reviews would be fine if I could believe we'd switched to the NYT model, where nearly everything is mockable for its badness, and where I can feel free to assume anything remotely resembling a passing grade means the movie's worth a look. But I've heard only bad things about Superman Returns (which got a B), I thought The Devil Wears Prada was competely clunky and predictable except for Meryl Streep (another B), and I have trouble believing The Descent -- the women-go-spellunking horror flick -- is worthy of its A-.

So, is Quinceanera, a movie that looked pretty good in the trailer, worthy of a viewing? It got a C. Is Barnyard (C+) better? What about Miami Vice (B)? Who knows?

Actually, an even better question is asked in the Aug. 4 EW by reader Lee Lodyga of Clermont, Fla.

If Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is such a terrible film [it got a D], why does it warrant the cover and a six-page story?

A question I might ask of the Aug. 11 issue, too, the cover of which features the smiling stars of C-worthy Little Miss Sunshine.

I Want My MTV

To follow up on Dave's idea, not only should we wax nostalgic about our favorite videos, but I think we should endeavor to remember what was great about MTV when it first went on the air.

At some point during 1982, a kid moved on to my street whose father was a bigwig with a cable television company that had just gotten the franchise for Fairfax County, VA. My reward soon followed-8 Betamax tapes filled with this newfangled MTV, including some of the first videos I'd ever seen by such classic bands as Haircut 100, Aztec Camera (I know Housley will now tell me that he loves Aztec Camera--they did the acoustic version of Van Halen's Jump that Weasel used to always play on WHFS, when there was a WHFS and it didn't suck)--and even The Fixx (who incidentally just played for free at a club up the street from my house and couldn't even sell that out.

But Dave's first post made me nostalgic for the days when I could actually learn something about music from MTV.

Oh, and I'll throw in another favorite video vote: David Lee Roth's YANKEE ROSE. Like watching a car wreck, with guitar.

MTV is 25

So its been 25 big ones since MTV debuted with the Buggles prophetic and goddam catchy "Video Killed the Radio Star" in 1981. The AP has a nice list, available on Yahoo, of MTV's 25 Most Memorable Moments.

I could add a few:

• One of the first contests ever was, I think, and somebody please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, to have Quiet Riot play at your house. I think this was for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Like, you'd wake up Thanksgiving/Christmas Day and have Quiet Riot playing at your house. Which would pretty much be the worst day that you, your family, or anybody who lived within maybe one mile of your house would ever have. The winner was some dude named Dru Rigny. He used umlots on the "u" in the first name, which can only accurately be described awesome.
  
  Umlots are underrated, and poised to make a comeback, by the way.
  
  
• Remote Control was the first MTV game show. I used to think this was a pretty good show, but that was probably just because, in contrast to Jeopardy, Remote Control dealt with issues that concerned me at the time, like Poison and Van Halen. Ken Ober was the host, with Colin Quinn as the gravelly voiced announcer guy, and Adam Sandler came on every now and then as this "Stickpin" character that I'm pretty sure is just the Stock Adam Sander Character, dressed up in a leather coat and do-rag. The co-host, or the hot chick, or whatever, was "The Lovely Marisol" for season one, and then Kari Wuhrer for season two, and then a couple of other chicks after that.
  
  
• When the Real World came on, it was taken pretty seriously by a certain segment of the population. Namely, those people who were about the same age as the people on the show and who were actually trying to live in the real real world. This is before that show devolved into the current edition of stock characters and standard plot lines and this kind of "meta" feel that the people on the show know exactly which stock character they've been hired to play, and how to play out the dramas that that character is likely to engage in. Anyway, the New York one was pretty interesting, then it kind of went downhill from there.
  
  
• And now that's a job. Like, a real job. You can be a Real World or Road Rules contestant and that's just what you do. I wonder, for Coral's benefit primarily, what kind of retirement plan they offer at the Real World Road Rules Challenge.
  

Oh, and there used to be music. Not all of it terrible. So....my question to the Barrelhouse peoples out there: what's your favorite video of all time?

I have to go with a couple of Spike Jonze videos: Sabotage by the Beasties, closely followed by Fatboy Slim's Praise You. And just to put one out there that's not by Spike Jonze, Biz Markie's Just a Friend. Can't beat the Biz at the piano.

You?