Paravonia

Football Fandom vs. The English Language

2010-08-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

It's early August, NFL teams are still in training camp and I'm already sick of the overbearing football coverage (thank you Brett Favre for stealing Shark Week's thunder by announcing... nothing).

Even more frustrating will be the consistent abuses of language and the lexicon of completely made up words we'll be inundated with once the games start. Here is some of my favorite creative vocabulary I've been hearing lately from the talking heads who announce the sport:

Differential=difference

Though it's actually a part of a car, or a derivative of a function, football announcers always use "differential" to mean "difference." Of course, people will say that the official definition of 'differential' now includes 'difference,' so the two words are technically synonymous, but why alter the definition of 'differential' to accommodate these folks when there's the perfectly good word 'difference' sitting right there unused?

And yes, you can point out that I'm a hypocrite because I used 'people' instead of 'persons' but that's an argument I will vigorously refudiate.

Defensed=defended

Another word falling into the technically-correct-but-annoying category is "defensed," as in "that play was well defensed." I don't know what football announcers have against the verb "defend" or why they feel "well-defended" doesn't sound as good as "well-defensed" but hearing conjugations of "defense" is to me like hearing a fork on a chalkboard.

Space=the open field, or what was once called "the flat"

Then there's the baffling use of the word 'space.' Watch any football game for a few minutes and you'll hear an announcer say something like "they need to get the ball to him in space," or "he's very dangerous out in space." These announcers were probably kids in the 70's when everything was better in space: Josey and the Pussycats in Space, Pigs in Space, etc.

But what they mean is the open field, like, the runner needs 'space' around him to execute a play (that's a great insight on the part of the announcers, by the way, saying that a player will do better when a defender [sorry, a defenser] isn't all up in his grill).

Many times this open field they're talking about is specifically the area toward the sidelines within a few yards of the line of scrimmage, an area that used to be called "the flat." I don't know what happened to "the flat" but we used to use it all the time back in the day. Short passes were called "flat routes" because when you drew them on paper they were shorter, or flatter than longer patterns. Pitches, laterals, sweeps, were all designed for "the flat." Maybe they opted for "space" over "flat" because "flat space" doesn't have enough gravity.

That's the best astrophysics pun you will read all day.

Chippy=irritable, fractious, testy

This word apparently comes from Canada and the world of ice hockey, which means it has absolutely no place in American football. It means fractious, and it's meant to describe when tempers get flared and players get more combative and start to scuffle. But it just sounds dumb, doesn't it? "They're getting a little chippy out there" or "this game is starting to get chippy" doesn't quite capture the feeling of watching 300-pound dudes about to tear each others heads off.

Now, I understand that when announcing a game that's watched by millions of teenage boys you can't really use the word "testy," and "fractious" sounds a little bookish and snooty, but there's got to be something better than a word that also means prostitute or a fish and chips shop. "Touchy"? "Ornery"? "Quarrelsome"? "Obstreperous"?

O.K. these aren't much better, so I'll make a deal: I'll give Dan Dierdorf a season's worth of saying "chippy" if he says "obstreperous" just once.

Concert Film Excitement

2010-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Tell Your Friends! Concert Film shows this past Tuesday were a ton of fun, and if you weren't able to get to Brooklyn to see it live keep an eye out for the DVD which will hopefully be available by the end of the year. Woot! Concert film!

The lineup was a true representation of people who came up in New York's alternative comedy scene, with Leo Allen, Christian Finnegan, Kristen Schall & Kurt Braunohler, Liam McEneaney, me and more. It was also great to work with our director, Victor Varnado, who's a good friend and great comedian in his own right. His previous concert film project, The Awkward Comedy Show, aired on Comedy Central and looked amazing.

Thanks to everyone that made it to the shows and I'll post any info on when and where it will hit t.v. and be available on DVD so you too can enjoy the big little show from the lower east side.

Sincerely flattered by the Boondocks?

2010-06-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

The plot of tomorrow's new episode of The Boondocks on Adult Swim has the kids doing a candy-selling fundraiser that becomes very much like the drug trade. Hmmm.... where have I heard that before?

The Boondocks:

Find more videos like this on The Spill Movie Community

Me doing Pushing Band Candy:

I just lost over 3,000 fans!

2010-04-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

Well, the lunkheads at facebook changed their site again and now instead of people being a "fan" of the official Rob Paravonian page they now simply "like" the Rob Paravonian page. And the people and things I was once a "fan" of I now, according to facebook, merely like. How lame is that?

Being a fan of something is more than hitting the like button, it's actually being involved in it. If I'm a fan of a band I don't just like them, I'm going to try to see them when they're in town, I'm going to check out their new video when it's posted online, I want to know when their new album is coming out. I don't just like them, I like like them.

So now, instead of having a group of fans that I think may be interested when I post a new video or something, facebook tells me that a bunch of people "like" me, in the same way they "like" someone's status update or a picture of a lol cat.

So thanks, facebook. I was once a comedian who felt like he had people interested in his work and now I'm a f#$%ing Lol Cat. I can haz audience?

To the many folks that were once my facebook fans, I miss you!

Lol Cats are freakin' funny, though.

My previous CD now available online!

2010-04-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the online re-release of Living it Down, the CD I released in 2001, here's a link to one of the CD's more popular tracks--Particle Board--from my performance on Comedy Central's Premium Blend of that same year.

The CD is now available at CD Baby, in physical and digital form, and soon it will be up at iTunes, Amazon, and various other digital outlets. Check it out, and enjoy the video with me not only in a suit but sporting a bit more hair than usual. And a sparkly guitar! Oooh, sparkle...

Jokes.com

Rob Paravonian - Particle Board Song

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Dang, first weather cancellation in years

2010-02-26T09:58:00.000-08:00

Last night, when I had to cancel my show at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, I realized it was my first weather-related cancellation in almost 15 years. I guess my luck had to run out eventually. Two years ago I had dozens of shows in the northern plains and was able to out-maneuver storms or just plain get lucky that they hit on non-travel days. I drove to Dennison, Ohio, a day early to beat an ice storm, and I even made it safely through a blizzard in Wisconsin to play at a school that had canceled classes.

I was beginning to think I was invincible weather-wise! Which is why this storm has been especially humbling. Lehigh is only 90-some-odd miles away from Brooklyn so I should have been able to borrow a snowmobile (snow machine for my Canadian friends) to get there, or retro-fit my Civic with some skis or something. But no, 14" of snow in central New Jersey has ruined my 15-year streak of making it to my shows.

And I don't even have a good stuck-in-a-blizzard storm. I'm just sitting here in my apartment cooking up frozen pizzas and waiting for it to stop snowing (over a foot here in Brooklyn). At least the last time I couldn't make a show I was stuck in my car for 14 hours underneath a freeway overpass in central South Dakota...

...there's the view from my windshield. It even made the cover of my first full CD which I entitled "Don't Crowd The Plow" in honor of the event. I don't think I'll get a cool title out of this storm. "Unplanned Frozen Pizza Party?" "Brooklyn Igloo Pizzafest" I got nothin'!!

Children's Video off to a fast start!

2010-02-06T14:46:00.000-08:00

I just posted a new video for the album version of the Children's Song and in just a couple of days it's gotten over 15,000 views! That's the fastest start of any video I've posted, even the Pachelbel Rant, which took a couple of weeks to get its first 10,000 views. So thanks to everyone who's watched it and passed it along to their friends!

It's always interesting to find out where these things end up. My sister sent me a link to the website of the local CW station in Dallas/Fort Worth because they had posted the video there! Pretty cool.

And mad thanks to Jennifer Spragg who played the frazzled and overworked mom in the video. She's a hilarious actor and writer I know from working with the New York sketch group Spurn.

And for extra fun, check out the comments section for a discussion of my lousy accent. In the live version of the song I tell people I'm going to be doing a bad British accent, but without the disclaimer in the new video people have taken it upon themselves to discuss the topic at length. You just never know what people are going to fixate on.

Happy February and such!

Headlining Nashville with a special deal for my peeps!

2010-01-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

Nashville, Tennessee, ladies and gentlemen!

I'm really excited to be able to perform in such a great music town, and my friends at Zanies have set up a great deal for my mailing list and Rob P. website fans: only $5 for tickets if you use the discount code "RobPRocks Discount" and buy in advance through the box office.

Spread the word and bring your friends! That's a lot of enterainment. For just five dollars. Here are the details:

Rob Paravonian Headlines!
Wednesday, Feb 3
7:30 pm (doors open at 6:30)
Zanies
2025 8th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37204
615-269-0221

Here's the facebook event page.

The fine print on the ticket deal:
The "RobPRocks Discount" is NOT VALID for online ticket purchase. Advanced Ticket Purchase is REQUIRED, call 615.269.0221! MENTION the "RobPRocks Discount" to receive the appropriate PROMOTION. Offer is valid ONLY on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 for up to FOUR(4) tickets, cannot be combined with any other offer and is not valid for SOLD OUT shows. Zanies Comedy Club requirements: Minimum age of 18 or older with valid photo ID and TWO item minimum per person purchase inside the club.

From A Bears Fan In Brooklyn

2009-12-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

I watched last night's Bears-Vikings game at a local sports bar here in Brooklyn, thinking some of my fellow Chicago fans would be there, but as it turned out I was alone in rooting for the men in dark blue. And there's something about being the only person in a bar rooting for a team that brings out the primal urge in others to disparage the outsider, like I was an A.V. club nerd trying to sit at the cool kids table. A primal urge to be That Guy, the one who instead of cheering one team prefers to disparage the other.

The prime offender of That Guy-ism last night was Puffy Coat, a guy in a puffy winter coat and a Yankees cap. Yes, I said "Yankees cap." I don't know why he was rooting for the Vikings, but he came in during halftime, saw my Bears jersey, looked at the score to see that Chicago was up 16-0 and yelled at me "The Bears ain't gonna win, YOU CAN'T KEEP FAVRE DOWN!"

Thanks for that. Who knew a guy from Louisiana and who played most of his career in the upper Midwest had such a passionate following in the 5 boroughs?

The Vikings get the ball to open the half and march down the field. Puffy Coat gets in my face and yells "see!? BRETT FAVRE!" as if my Bears jersey actually said "Brett Favre sucks." I looked down to check. Nope, it's just a Bears jersey.

"Yeah, he's a great quarterback," I said. The Bears have had to play against #4 twice a season for as long as I can remember. I know he's good and I've never said otherwise, I just want my team to win is all. I'm kind of a silly fan that way.

The Bears are flagged for pass interference in the endzone to set the Vikings up at the goal line.

"WHAT'D I SAY?!"

I didn't respond as I assumed the question rhetorical.

Adrian Petersen runs the ball in for a Vikings touchdown.

"THERE YOU GO! A.P.!! YOU CAN'T STOP HIM" he yells as he walks over to me.

"Why are you yelling at me?" I asked.

"I ain't yelling at you!" he said loudly about a foot from my face. "It's sports, you know, you come to a bar, have a drink, represent for your team and you gotta talk a little trash."

"Why do we have to talk trash?" I asked. As we discussed the merits of talking trash we missed the missed extra point. A vital part of the game as it would turn out.

On the ensuing kickoff the Bears manage a great return and are able to score. I was happy. I jumped out of my seat. But I didn't yell. I was the only Chicago fan and there was no one to yell to. Except for Puffy Coat, but he had conveniently gone to the bathroom.

The Vikings get the ball and begin to march down the field and Puffy Coat returns.

"BRETT FAVRE!!"

"He's good," I admit.

"That's why the Bears ain't gonna win!"

"Look, in the first half when the Bears were doing well I wasn't being an a-hole about it," I said.

"Hey, it's nothing personal. You know, it's your team, it's my team. It ain't about you." He seemed genuinely hurt that I didn't enjoy his antics. And it's not like I really thought his behavior was personal, it was just incredibly annoying. I didn't think Puffy Coat had it in for me, but that didn't change the fact that there was a dude yelling at me every few minutes.

By now Brett Favre mania is sweeping through the bar, and the once indifferent bargoers are all starting to cheer the Vikings comeback. The Vikings score on a throw to Visanthe Shiancoe and there are cheers from everyone in the joint except me. I'm living a nightmare. I don't mind the three Minnesota fans at the bar--they've been rooting for the Vikings since the beginning--I just can't take the bandwagoneers piling on.

The Vikings tie it up at 23 and I think the game is just about over for the Bears, but they have another great kickoff return and score quickly. Too quickly, I know from experience watching #4 in these situations. He has 4+ minutes and all of his timeouts. He's going to score.

But something's missing. Where's Puffy Coat? Why isn't he in my face every second? I think that he might have finally realized that I'm not the trash talking type, but the truth is he's been distracted by two single women at the bar, and being that libido always trumps bravado, he's been working his game on them rather than torturing me.

The Vikings score. It's 30-30 and we're going to overtime.

Puffy Coat walks down the bar toward me and I steel myself for a gut-wrenching overtime full of pain and suffering and taunts from Brett Favre's biggest fan in Brooklyn. He stops in front of me, then throws his hand up for a handshake/man-hug good-bye.

"You're not staying for overtime?" I ask, surprised that such a ardent supporter would leave during the tensest part of the game."

"Nah, I can't do overtime," he said. "You know it's all good."

I said that it was, indeed, all good.

It was probably better that he wasn't there to see the Bears win the toss and quickly get into range for a winning field goal, or there to see Robbie Gould miss said field goal. Or to see BRETT FAVRE get sacked on consecutive plays on the next drive, Or to see the Bears go nowhere after getting the ensuing punt.

And it was definitely better that he wasn't there to see Adrian Peterson fumble, the Bears recover and score a touchdown on the following play, because if he had, all of my pent up frustration from the trash talking might have exploded with me screaming "BRETT FAVRE!!! YOU CAN'T WIN THE GAME WHEN YOU'RE ON THE SIDELINES, MOTHER SCRATCHER!!"

Because that would have been bad. I would have let anger and hatred lead me to the Dark Side. I would have been That Guy.

Climbing the Charts!! (a small chart, but still...)

2009-12-05T10:30:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,

My new CD is 2nd most popular album in the "Comedy Rock" genre on CD Baby! Check out the listing here.

Thanks to all who've purchased the CD, and if you haven't yet, pick it up at CD Baby and help it go to #1 (in the Comedy Rock genre). You can also buy downloads of the album or individual tracks there too.

Or you can get it at iTunes. So many options. It makes a great stocking stuffer, or a gift for one of those middle days of Hanukkah when you don't know what to get people.

Thanks again, everyone. You all rock!

It's a little blurry but...

2009-11-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

...it's still one of my favorite pictures. That's me and Lily Tomlin in the iconic chair she uses for the Edith Ann character.

The shows at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas were incredibly fun, and it was a huge thrill to work with such a legendary performer. I was impressed and amazed with her energy and talent, and working with her and her crew was a delight. I count myself very lucky to have had the chance to meet her and perform on the same bill.

Tow-tally awesome

2009-10-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

So, I guess the tow truck was parked illegally?

I saw this lovely little scene on the way to my show last night at Arcadia University. Needless to say I didn't worry about parking in a tow zone that night.

I wonder if the first tow truck driver ran up to the second and tried to explain that he was just there for a second, he had his flashers on and was going to be right back.

With the fear of parking retribution far from my mind, and a great crowd in attendance despite the fact that the Phillies had a playoff game and we were only about 20 miles from the City of Loving Brothers, we had a lovely show and a great time. Thanks Beaver Coll... I mean, Arcadia University!

Special CD Price Extended Through Monday!

2009-10-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

The introductory price promotion for my new CD was so successful, CD Baby ran out of copies in just a couple of days! Which means that for most of the promotional period the CD was listed as "out of stock."

So I've decided to leave the lower price in place until this Monday, October 19th, in case anyone tried to buy the CD and was denied.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the launch of the CD a success, and if you haven't picked up your copy of Songs From The Second Floor yet, head on over to CD Baby by Monday and you can get the CD for only $9.15!

The special price for the digital download has been extended too, so it will be $7.99 through Monday. It saves you a bit of dough and the upside is they never run out of the digital version over there.

Have a great weekend and look for a new video from the CD to be posted when the album becomes available on iTunes (still don't have a date on that, iTunes is notoriously slow to post).

Special price on new CD for 10 more days!

2009-09-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

My new CD, Songs From The Second Floor, is finally available on CD Baby! And for the next ten days you can buy the physical CD for only $9.15 in honor of the date the CD was supposed to be ready (Sep 15)!

And if you're a downloading type person and just want the digital version, you can buy the digital album for a special price of $7.99! You can even pick and choose tracks for $0.99 each, if you're so inclined.

Be the first to review the CD on CD Baby! Release your inner Lester Bangs and write a review of the new CD to tell others how incredibly awesome (or totally lame) it is!

The special prices will be in effect until October 10th, so order now. Regular prices are $12.97 for the CD and $9.99 for the album download.

Stay tuned, the album will be posted on iTunes soon!

It's a live (link)!!! It's a live (link)!!!

2009-09-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

My new CD, Songs from the Second Floor, officially goes on sale today!

The big CD release partay is in beautiful, sunny, and no-longer-on-fire Southern California at Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles tonight at 8, but you can buy a digital copy right now at Digstation.com!

If you want to buy the actual, physical, non-virtual but still digital CD, it will be available at CD Baby later this week, and soon after that iTunes, Amazon.com and more!

Now, my marketing team told me maybe September 15th wasn't the best day to release the new CD because it will be hard to compete with Dan Brown's DaVinci Code sequel Paranoid Symbol Interpretation or whatever it's called, but I think my real competition is the self-help book The Werewolf's Guide To Life, a how-to guide for those suffering with lycanthropy, written by my friends Ritch Duncan and Bob Powers.

But I say there's room on the 15th for all of us. Stop by digstation and preview some tracks if you like, and I'll post when the album becomes available elsewhere.

New CD Promotional Campaign #2: Alternative Comedy Makeover

2009-09-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

With less than a week to go before the release of my new CD, it's time to make sure my styling sends the right message. If I'm going to be out there promoting and getting photographed, I have to ensure that those photographs portray me as the kind of person the people at the extensive marketing team at my label want me to be.

The look we've settled on is "alternative comedy." You know, the cool comedians, the kind of comedian indie music hipsters rally around; because if you get the pretentious and ironically stylish to follow you, Hollywood will fall in line. Have you ever wondered why you see the same ten comedians in every comedy film that's been released in the past 5 years? It's because they have been anointed as "cool." I need me some of that anointment.

Let me take you through the plan:

Picture 1: Before

This is absolutely no good. First of all, the smirk makes me look like I have confidence in what I'm doing, and confidence in what I'm doing would indicate that I've planned and rehearsed what I'm going to do on stage. Alternative comedians want you to think that they've neither planned nor rehearsed anything. If something ends up being funny it's simply because they're geniuses. Remember, effort is not cool.

Secondly, that shirt. No way. A collared shirt? That makes me look like I have a job. Nothing kills the alt. comedy aura faster than looking employed.

Picture 2: new shirt, new expression.

Much better. Note the ambiguous expression, could be confusion (I don't understand the world, here's my take), it might be a slightly plaintive plea to the audience (please have empathy for my skewed worldview), or it could be a blank stare (I'm so deep, my genius mind is elsewhere).

Also please note the shirt change. Instead of the collared dress shirt we now have a t-shirt with a preciously humorous but not really trying to be funny motto.

Picture 3: new do

That short hair wasn't working at all (see above re: employment). What I need is something kind of artsy, wistful, something that looks effortless.

Of course, to look effortless I'll need to hit a salon that will probably charge $60 for the do, and I'll need tons of styling product and a lot of time to get it just right. With the short hair I needed nothing but a $12 haircut every four weeks so one could argue that the short hair was truly the way to go effortless, but this makeover is about looking the part, not being the part, so a mop top it is.

Picture 4: facial hair

And finally, nothing says alt. comedy like a big, nasty beard. The bushy beard says "yeah, I know I'm in Hollywood trying to sell a script but I could just as easily be fly fishing in Bozeman, Montana." You want to give the impression that you spend too much time thinking deeply and uncovering the secret one-liners of the universe, you can't be bothered to worry about your appearance. You only set foot outside of your hermitage to do sets at the most influential of trendy comedy shows.

I think we're in good shape now. Look for me and my new look out there on the comedy scene plugging the hit alt. comedy/indie music album Songs From The Second Floor.

Available Sep. 15 at Digstation, CD Baby (hopefully, if they get their asses in gear with their site redesign), and eventually iTunes, Amazon and more.

Catch the West Coast CD Release Party on Sep 15th in L.A.!

Songs From The Second Floor CD Release Party
Tuesday, Sep. 15
seating at 7:45, show at 8:00
Genghis Cohen 740 N. Fairfax
Los Angeles, CA 90036
310.578.5591 for more info on the club/show
only $7!!

New CD Promotional Campaign #1: A Rob P. Signature Scent

2009-08-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

In order to roll with the big dogs in the music industry, you know--the Puffys, Jay-Zs, J-Los, Britney Spearses, the Luciano Pavarottis--I decided that I too needed a signature scent. I mean, just because I'm releasing my CD independently doesn't mean I can't employ some of the same mass market strategies of the major label artists, does it?

Actually, as it turns out, it does. Signature scents are a bit harder to put together in the DIY world than I thought. I don't have access to the animal testing, the custom glassware and the maquiladoras that the pros use.

But I still want to get this done, so I've decided that instead of selling the actual fragrance (yes, it's neither a 'cologne' nor a 'perfume' because I want it to be non gender-specific like CK Be or Pee Wee Herman) I'll be releasing the secret formula for my fragrance so you can mix up your own batch at home.

Ingredient 1: 40% Deep Woods Off

My scent is about being adventurous while also being responsible. Deep Woods Off brings to mind those long days and nights of summer camp, when you escaped the authoritarian rules of your parents and struck out on your own. You were ready to experience all that this world had to offer, but on your terms. The mosquitoes were kept at bay and people who could smell the slightly acrid industrial notes of repellent on you knew that you weren't one to get pushed around by nature.

Ingredient 2: 25% Vanilla Extract

Just a hint of vanilla in my signature scent will take people back to a time when cookie batter was mixed in a bowl, not cut from a tube. You take the time to carefully craft things, not choke down mass-produced corporate confections, and people will smell the air of refined taste in your presence.

Ingredient 4: 35% Old Spice.

Smells of Our Fathers could be a great memoir, but you won't have to read anything to know that Old Spice will circumvent any rational thoughts and go straight to those daddy issues we all have, good or bad. For the man, a little Old Spice will attract the woman who may not have gotten enough paternal attention and will therefore have lower self-esteem and a higher need for attention from you. For the woman a dash of the Spice will allow you to break down gender barriers and become your own authority figure. The resulting confidence will be the ultimate allure.

I hope to smell you all at a show soon!

"...and returning him safely to earth."

2009-07-24T09:18:00.001-07:00

I missed the big 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing while kickin' it in the Caribbean for a few days, but I'm back stateside to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the very important safe return of Apollo 11, which took place on July 24th, 1969, an anniversary that always calls to my mind a curious part of Kennedy's famous "moon" speech.

Kennedy: "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

"and returning him safely to earth"? I always found it odd that he felt it necessary to specify that if we shot a man up to the moon, we'd have to get him back. It makes me think that if he hadn't specifically made a return trip part of the space program's goal it wouldn't have come up in any of the planning meetings.

Would he have gone to NASA and say "Hey, can we put a man on the moon?" and they would say, "sure, no problem. We could do that tomorrow."

"Could we bring him back?"

"Oh crap. That's going to take some work."

If Kennedy never said "and returning him safely to earth" maybe the moon landing, instead of being a worldwide inspirational achievement would have been the most horrible, t.v. disaster ever broadcast as people watched Neil and Buzz say to Houston, "o.k., we're ready to come home."

Silence.

"Houston? We're ready for the return trip."

"Um, give us a minute Eagle." Dammit! No one said we'd have to bring them back!?!

Perhaps that's the old legislator in Kennedy coming out, making sure you spell everything out exactly so no one tries to cut corners on you. It's like starting a new schoolyard game and you're working out the rules, "I call that if we send a man to the moon we have to bring him back. You have to, I called it!"

To Bch Or Not To Bch?

2009-07-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

As I'm finishing up work on my new CD (which will hopefully "drop," as the kids say, the first week of September) I've stumbled upon a quandary. A dilemma, a veritable pickle. I'm trying to figure out whether or not to bleep out a certain word on a certain song, and more to the point I'm trying to determine whether my CD will have to be labeled "Explicit Lyrics" if said certain word is not bleeped out.

In other songs I've bleeped out the F-word and the S-word but I've left in words like "damn" and "ass" figuring if they're in the Bible, Tipper Gore can't storm my house and start slapping labels on me. And I actually think bleeping is can be funnier than actually hearing the word, like South Park on T.V., it's kind of hilarious that 9-year-olds need to be censored.

But in the song in question, I use the B-word 25 times, and 25 bleeps in one song might be a little much. Adding to the problem is the fact that the B-word can be a touchy subject. On the side of not bleeping is the argument that of the 25 times I use the word in the song, 24 times the word is used as a verb, meaning "to complain." The one time it's used as a noun it's said that someone is "going to be a b**ch" not that someone is a b**ch. And in this instance I think it's basically the female version of "a-hole," a word which appears elsewhere on the album in the abbreviated "a-hole" form.

There aren't good guidelines to what should be labeled explicit and what gets a pass. Meredith Brooks has an album from which the biggest hit was a song named "B**ch" and on iTunes there's no explicit language tag. On Goat's Head Soup The Rolling Stones have a song innocuously named "Star Star," the chorus of which uses the work "f***er" 12 times, and with three choruses in the song the f-word count is at least 36. That's way more profanity and sexual content than Green Day, which is always labeled "explicit."

So I'm leaning towards letting it go and not telling iTunes to label it and then dealing with any angry parents who may be upset that their kids heard language on my CD that they can hear pretty much all day on T.V.

But then there's the inherent hilarity of the bleep.

Such are the decisions in a D.I.Y. record project. I tell ya, it's a real bitch.

Buy This Book!

2009-07-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine, Bob Powers, who's a hilarious (an hilarious?) author has a new book out this week, The Horrible Temp-to-Perm Debacle, the latest in his Just Make a Choice series in which you get to make the decisions for an indecisive slacker, this time an alcoholic temp framed for murder.

Will you end up in jail? On the run? Working full time for the man? It's all up to you and each choice will lead to eff-in funny consequences.

Bob's last book, You Are a Miserable Excuse For a Hero, was a big hit and his first book, Happy Cruelty Day, based on his Girls Are Pretty blog, is a must have for the coffee table or guest bathroom.

So if you want some good hearty laughs this summer, buy this book!

The excesses of a Rock and Roll Lifestyle--TWO Tambourines!!

2009-07-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

Last week I was working on my new CD (coming this fall! new tunes! available on line!) and it came time to lay down the all-important tambourine track. I was pretty sure I had a tambourine somewhere but in the many cleanups and rearrangements of stuff in my (recording) studio apartment I just lost track of it.

I simply had no luck finding an existing tambourine in my apartment, and the track had to be recorded--you can't not have tambourine in a pop song--so I went out and got the spiffy new round maple tambourine seen above on the left.

As you can probably guess, as soon as I got home with the new tambourine I had one last idea of where a previous tambourine might be stashed--with some P.A. equipment I hadn't thought about since an unpleasant, non-tambourine-related gig down at Princeton. Sure enough, within minutes of returning home with a new tambourine I found the old one. Now I had two.

Of course, I could return the new one but that would be sensible, practical, pragmatic even. So not rock and roll. I should have twelve tambourines! I should have a lead and rhythm tambourine! I should have alto, tenor, and barritone tambourines in an entire tambourine section!

And besides, I like the sound of the new, old-style tambourine better. It's got a tighter jingle with a less ringy finish. It's Motown by way of the Carpenters which makes it pretty perfect for a goofball like me. Listen for it on the new CD! (out in early September, stay tuned!)

Hey, Todd Palin...

2009-06-11T09:50:00.001-07:00

don't you think Letterman's joke about one of your daughters getting knocked up was probably about Bristol, one of your daughters who was actually knocked up and is now an unwed, teenage mother?

And to go from a joke that talks about being knocked up to using the word 'rape' is a little extreme, don't you think? You do realize that conception can happen during consensual sex too, don't you?

In short, take it easy, grandpa.

If they don't know then who knows?

2009-06-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

Watching the tube tonight I saw a commercial for the anti-depression drug Prestiq. Now we all know that those side-effect warnings on prescription drug commercials can get pretty ridiculous, but this commerical gets ridiculous long before they even get to the side effects.

About 27 seconds in, right after they say that it's been proven effective in treating depression, the voice-over slips in this little gem:

Prestiq is thought to work by affecting the levels of two chemicals in the brain...

Thought to work? Are you seriously trying to sell me a drug and you don't even know how it works?

I don't care how you think it works, if you don't know how it works maybe I should hold off on putting it in my body until you do.

Hell, I think bourbon works by activating the Debonair receptors of my brain thus making me look and act like Don Draper, but if I were trying to sell bourbon I think I would keep that theory to myself.

If you want to sell something and you don't know exactly what it does or why, just hire the Sham-Wow guy.

I'm on Keith and the Girl live Friday night!

2009-05-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

I'm going to be a guest on the very popular Keith and the Girl podcast tomorrow night! You can listen live anywhere in the world, or download the episode to listen at a less-in-the-middle-of-the-night hour.

You can also watch the video feed live and interact with the show via their message boards, IM, twitter, and even the magical telephone!

It's Friday night at midnight New York City time,
9 pm Friday on the West Coast of the U.S.
4am Saturday GMT,
5am British Summer Time,
and 2pm Saturday afternoon on the east coast of Australia (I think).

Check it out, it's a fun show!

Keith and the Girl

Sometimes it's better not to headline...

2009-04-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

With headlining goes the glory of the show. You're name is on the marquee and you're the one people are there to see. On the flipside of that is that if the show isn't a success the blames falls on you, whether it's deserved or not.

I pondered this tonight while waiting for my dish to arrive at the restaurant here in Durham, NH before my show tonight at UNH, where I'm opening for Adam Ferrara. I did a google search on my name and the the school's name to see if they had done any promo and this article from The New Hampshire, the UNH student newspaper, came up.

Here's a gem of a sentence buried about 7 paragraphs in:

However, most students had never heard of him [Adam Ferrara], and said they don't plan on attending Saturday night's festivities.

Nice. I'm glad the writer didn't ask the student about me.

"What do you think of the Pachelbel comic guy who's opening the show?" "The Pachelbel dude? F. that guy."

Besides the great buzz this article is sure to generate, it's 80-some degrees and sunny today so I don't know how many people are going to be in the mood for a comedy show. All across campus and in town people are out and about, and a general giddiness is in the air thanks to the early preview of summer weather.

But I'm still psyched to be doing the show. It's a beautiful day to be in New England, I'm opening for a big name, and after my set I can sit back and enjoy the show because I get the night off from headlining. Cool.