Rightfully So

SFGate: Daily Dish : Spears Fansite Closes:

Ruben Garay, who has hosted WorldOfBritney.com since October 2000, yesterday announced the site will no longer exist after January 31 because the singer is “losing her identity and credibility with fans and industry people.”

And it’s only taken him 6 years to realize this.

As a favor to the rest of humanity, I’ve decided to list the New Years resolution that you should be taking to make life more bearable for others. I’ve got a lot of problems with you people.

• Learn to say no.
• Along with saying no, say no to the super-sized fast food meals! Ordering a diet soda does not negate a triple Whopper with cheese.
• Use a turn signal.
• Learn to walk. Vulturing for a parking space at the local Sprawl Mart just to save you 20 feet of walking is not doing anyone any good.
• Stop worrying about what others are doing, and take responsibility for your own life. The petty back talking and gossiping only makes you look and feel bad.
• If you are going to post on the Internet, please learn some basic grammar. At the very least, a sentence should be spelled correctly, the first word should be capitalized, and the sentence should end with some sort of punctuation.
• Stop being lazy.
• You children will mimic what you do. If you act like an idiot, your children will also act like idiots.
• Trust your child’s teacher. If your kid was acting up, discipline the child not the teacher.
• Go to bed and remember 3 great things that happened that day. If three great things didn’t happen, make sure three great things happen the next day.

Yes, it’s that most wonderful time of the year again… the time where conspicuous consumption and consumerism combine to create the Christmas celebration that lets your neighbors and co-workers know just how well-off you are…

After all, the more things a person has, the better he or she is. And, in the case of men, one’s quantity of things can also be used to determine who has the biggest penis. This is the reason for brisk holiday sales of enormous televisions.

And, if you’re like many Gen-Xers, you’ve managed to avoid killing yourself, found a person that can tolerate you, and, in some cases, actually reproduced. What better gift to give your child than toys featuring officially-licensed television characters?

Therefore, we present the first installment of the Rightfully So Holiday Shopping Guide.

Today’s item is the Dora the Explorer Aquapet.

Order your’s today from Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000IM15QI/

Rollover Presley just doesn’t have the same ring to it as rollover Beethoven, but Ludwig hasn’t been bringing in the bank like Elvis. And now Elvis, who has dominated the dead celebrity lists for earning the most has been dethroned by Kurt Cobain, the former lead singer of Nirvana.

Mr. Cobain brought in $50 million from October 2005-October 2006. And here I am picking up any penny I see on the street.

Just goes to show you that those liberals in Hollywood still have some down to earth values:

“Hollywood’s most high-profile engaged couple have finally set a wedding date.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes will marry in Italy on November 18, Cruise’s representative, Arnold Robinson, confirmed to news organizations on Tuesday.”

It must be because Mission Impossible III is coming out on DVD on Monday, October 30. I don’t know why they aren’t releasing it on the 31st, maybe it’s a Scientologist holiday?

Ahh… the music biz. For the past several years, the music industry and its consumers have seen unprecedented upheaval, technologically, politically, and culturally: ClearChannel-style homogenized FM radio broadcasts, darknet-style MP3 sharing, shotgun-style RIAA lawsuits… the list goes on and on. Nobody is satisfied with the status quo, yet there don’t appear to be any imminent solutions. How all of this plays out over the next decade will be truly remarkable to witness.

I want to focus on a tiny aspect of a tiny sliver of the debate: the “album.” The “album” is a collection of songs packaged as a unit. Often there is a unifying theme, a concept, or a message the artists are exploring, but, just as often, the “album” is just a bunch of songs that the artists happened to make at the same time.

À la carte music sales, one-hit wonders, and 45-RPM records all threaten to destroy the “album”, much to the chagrin of those who would be chagrined by the destruction of the album, and, with the destruction of the album, say the chagrined, so too go the financial rewards and incentives and modern civilization and other grandiose mumbo-jumbo whatever. You know the arguments: a single sells for x, an album sells for 10x, so, therefore albums are better. Or, they’re better if you’re selling; if you’re buying, singles are better.

But, I like albums. I like listening to songs I would not have otherwise heard, had I cherry-picked my songs individually. Some of my favorite songs would never ever have been played on the radio, because they were never “hits.” I heard them only because they came packaged in an album with another song I was wanting.

In my vast collection of music, there are very, very few “Greatest Hits” compilations. I don’t buy them. I hate them. I want albums.

So, to demonstrate my point, I have made a list of albums where the popular hit songs are, in fact, the worst songs on the album. If a “hit” is a “hit” because it is popular, and it is popular because people like it, and if the “hit” is in fact the worst song on the album, what does that say about the rest of the album? What does that say about the “album” concept in general?

Here’s my list. Please add yours in the comments section.

¹How exquisitely awesome must this album be if these are the worst songs?

Celebrated industrialist, electricity magnate and fop C. Montgomery Burns was recently seen in Miami, Florida, where he received the coveted Second Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

When questioned about the propriety of an award being bestowed upon the award’s namesake, Mr. Burns’ only reply was “Excellent!” while drumming the tips of his fingers together.

Mr. Burns (left), aged 132, received, among other prizes, a lifetime supply of Grecian Formula for coloring his gray hair, as well a two gallons of Acme-brand Liver-Spots-B-Gone topical scalp-rejuvinating treatment. Not pictured are one gross of ivory back-scratchers.

If you were one of the dozens of people watching the Super Bowl Sunday night you probably saw this commercial. A clydesdale pony wants to pull the Budweiser wagon just like the grown ups. When it can’t move the wagon a couple of the other clydsdales get behind and push. This seems like an innocent commercial but there are some people that think there is a much more sinister subliminal message here. They argue what Bud is really trying to say is that it is ok for underage minors to drink. In fact, if a minor has trouble getting alcohol (pulling the wagon), we as adults should buy it for them. This commercial sent shockwaves through the “people who who like to be outraged over minor things” community. One such man, Larry Crankypants is rallying people together for an immediate boycott of Budweiser. “If TV can’t be trusted to raise our kids, who can?” The activist has a laundry list of complaints with Budweiser including animal nudity and the worship of magical appliances. The boycott is expected to last about a week and a half and have no effect on Budweiser whatsoever.

“Memoirs of a Geisha” is stirring up controversy among some Japanese groups because Chinese actors were hired to portray Japanese characters. Now, I just want to warn everyone who may not know better not to listen to these cries. It was proven long ago that there is in fact no difference whatsoever between the Japanese and the Chinese. This is a myth that was started hundreds of years ago by a group of people who wanted to take credit for bombing Pearl Harbor, and aren’t they sorry now they did.

These “Japanese” apparently resent the fact that we (Westerners) think all Asians look alike and are thereford interchangeable when it comes to portraying them in films. And they’re right. They all look alike and for our purposes (e.g. buying fireworks, cooking with rice) are exactly the same. This is not a bad thing. Don’t you think Americans all look alike to people from other countries? Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been asked “Hey, are you Candaian/a hillbilly/gonna eat all that or what?” Literally billions. And do I take offense? No, I do not. I spit my tobacco juice in their mouth and proceed on my way (not out of offense at their question, but because that’s how we do things down south where I’m from).

This “Geisha” controversy isn’t the first time a group got upset about actors of a different ethnicity portraying them on screen. Remember when the elves caused a ruckus because Will Ferrell was hired to play the lead in “Elf” instead of a real elf? Now I know what you’re saying: the whole point of that movie was that he was a human raised as an elf. Well try telling that to the goddamn elves. They don’t want to hear it.

What we all need to realize is that when it comes to cinema, national pride means nothing (unless you’re a Jew, because they’ve gotten a raw deal for a long time. Jews on screen must by law be portrayed by someone from Jewistan, and I have no problem with that). Otherwise, if you want Japanese actors in your movie, then get a Japanese company to fund the film and hire a Japanese director. Even the book the film was based on was written by an American, so why shouldn’t we make the film however we want? Either start taking things into your own hands or quit telling us how to make our movies and get back to playing hockey, you stupid Canucks.