4.12.2008

Y is for "WHYYYYY?!?!?"

So I was looking through my latest issue of Rolling Stone, you know, the one with Jack White and those two skeletons on the cover. And I'm flipping through to see the "Spring Album Preview", which is sort of exciting stuff. It's like the JC Penney's catalog for music nreds.

So I'm looking through: That new My Morning Jacket album sounds sort of good. New Death Cab album (guess who got tickets to see them and Rogue Wave in June?), which I may or may not have already heard. Jakob Dylan's doing a solo album? Were there other people in the Wallflowers? Another Weezer album? Oh man, that's just sad. Dr. Dog has a new one. Their last album We All Belong was pretty good. Have to check this new one out. The Hold Steady and the Walkmen in July and August, respectively. Love's Forever Changes is getting re-released. Again. And Pacific Ocean Blue, which, yeah, I'm pretty excited about is finally getting pressed to CD.

Oh yeah, and Coldplay's got a new one. Man, those guys are like wallpaper, aren't they? They're just sort of there, y'know? Not that great, not horrible. We'll see if this new one blows my mind. If nothing else, it'll be decent.

Anyway, so I'm feeling pretty good about spring/summer music-wise and then I see this:

Which caused me to yell at the universe, "KHAAAAN!"-style, "WHY!?!?!?" Seriously, who is going to buy this and why are we allowing them to roam free? These guys are not cool, their music is not good. They're disgusting, decrepit old punch lines in search of a joke that turns out to not be funny so much as abysmally depressing. They're just horrible people who make horrible music and they must be stopped.

Have I explained my Behind the Music Paradox to you yet? No? Well, the BTMParadox states that any band, no matter if you like their music or not, benefits from a variable exponent (which we will refer to as "x") of repect when the episode is finished. So if you went into the No Doubt BTM with a negative opinion (which we will designate as "n") of the band, once you watch the BTM, [ (x)(n) = (r), with "r" designating some modicum of respect ... don't ask, it's math ] you will leave the episode with a slight amount of respect for a band you thought dumb or whose music you found loathsome before viewing.

The Crüe holds the distinction - along fellow hair metal band, Poison - of being the only band whose Behind the Music episode actually made me actively hate them. And I sat through the Vanilla Ice one. But the Crüe? No way, man. I went in neutral, like Switzerland and emerged the roiling pit of rage that stands before you. Like North Korea.

And then, to add insult to injury, I saw this gem:

Johnny Freaking Cougar will you please die already. "All I can do is keep on writing songs" ... that sell cars. Whatevs, you big fat phony. Just shut up and retire or something, okay? Thanks.

Anyway, what albums are you looking forward to? What albums have rocked your world lately? Anybody going to any shows?

6 comments:

Jason Quinones said...

don't hold back tell us how you really feel!!

i take it you're not watching rock of love 2 with brett michaels then?

also, been checkin out your flickr page. got some great stuff there too. especially diggin (pun!) your "trash" pics.

you know i started a foto blog right? just wondering if you ever check it out

Dylan Todd said...

Jason, thanks for the Flickr love. I didn't know about your photo blog, though I just added it to my Google Reader feed. Thanks for the tip. Looks like you have some pretty rad stuff in there. Yay for art!

- said...

bigredrobot,

In your mathematical statement, you derived an erroneous equation. The reason being is that it would only hold if someone has an amount of respect that is greater than zero. If it were zero then after watching BTM the respect would remain unchanged, and if it were a negative value of respect, the respect would actually go in the negative direction! Also, you explained that respect is altered by a variable exponent. You are not giving an exponential equation, rather a linear one. I hope you'll take that into consideration as I propose two equations where your theory will hold up given the two possibilities.

First, some definitions:

Post-BTM respect = r (new)
Pre-BTM respect = r(old)
BTM = x

Now, for any amount of positive respect, the equation will be:

r(new) = r(old) * x
(which is your original equation; it holds up in this case)

For your No Doubt example, where r(old) is a negative number, the equation will be as follows:

r(new)= -r(old) * x * (1/4)

We see that you now have a positive number for new respect, however, it is 1/4 of the amount of respect that a positive initial respect would produce.

For 0 respect, we assume a positive value of:

r(old) = .1

and use the positive r equation, thereby avoiding an unchanging amount of respect.

As with any mathematical law, it can be broken, as in your Motley Crüe example. Were it not for these irregularities, the world itself would be turned on its axis and inverted; allowing for mirror-matter moons to be created and for Axl Rose to release Chinese Democracy.

/uh wait...

Dylan Todd said...

Ben, uh, yeah, what you said.

chanel said...

loved your cold turkey post- mostly b/c I can relate, not so much to the coke, but as to the chubby, 30 year old metabolisms SUCK!

Bride said...

ok this might sound dumb. BUT i went to see yellowcard last week and i have a new found respect for this band. first-it was acoustic which can sometimes get sappy and yes emo. but they also had a freakin cello as well as the violin (duh) and it was so hardcore and awesome! and they all seemed really humbled and down to earth since oh the lead singer APOLOGIZED to the audience for getting carried away with fame after the much poppy album ocean avenue sky rocketed. im a fan of their old stuff and some of their new but man really good show. left quite satisfied.