SO, I HAVE THIS BLOG...

How could I forget?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:35:00 +0000

It's been ages since I posted anything here. I sort of ran of out of cool, weird internet things. Not to mention, I started to realize that I was a miserable, cynical person incapable of feeling compassion for anyone at all. After mocking everything from Canadian television to Juggalos to Kanye West, I figured it was time to take a break from the world of blogging. My 15 followers were extremely pissed.

My 2000+ Twitter followers however were not, since I continue to post every day, ridiculous minutiae that no one in their right mind should care about. And, on those off days when I'm feeling extra spicy, I have to field tons of @ replies from morons I have never met who feel the need to tell me that an opinion can be wrong. Your complaints have fallen on my hearing impaired, too-old-to-give-a-shit ears. Your replies may end up being the basis for a series of "can you believe these idiots?" posts. Like everything else in my life - I'm working on it.

Well... every time I take a little break from my globe trotting I find time to get back onto this thing and give it another go 'round for a few months. Expect a few updates really soon.

To answer a question I did get a long time ago : No, I will never have a Tumblr. Old Man Diaz likes Blogspot. You kids and your fancy Tumblrs are for the birds.

Kanye West x Patrick Swayze x Michael Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:23:00 +0000

I want this preserved on the internet for years to come. The best 4 hours of internet wildfire comedy I have experienced in a while. The best part is that this joke won't even make sense in a couple of months without having to go, "Oh yeah....because Taylor Swift... and Kanye.. and then Swayze died." Man, Swayze died... R.I.P. Dalton. Pain don't hurt.

Jesus hates roadies

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:35:00 +0000

I don't see one on here for guitar techs so basically Jesus is all, "FUCK YOU GUITAR TECHS. YOUR WORK IS WITH SATAN!"

Jesus...With You Always!

Punk, punk, and more punk!!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:22:00 +0000

Please find out what TV show this is. Also, find me a believable British accent for this guy. This is what I think of "punk" kids today, what with their fancy hot tubs, wet bars, and fireman's poles...

(via Street Boners and TV Carnage)

Williamsburg bathroom scene

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:21:00 +0000

I'm pretty sure I saw this go down in a bar in Brooklyn this weekend...

(via Everything Is Terrible)

Lil' Wayne can't "fuck every girl in the world"

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Multi-platinum selling hip-hop artist Lil' Wayne has expressed his carnal desire to "fuck every girl in the world" on his track 'Every Girl'. While this is truly a noble goal often sought after but never really achieved before, Lil' Wayne has been known to surprise us time after time. Maybe it's true. Maybe he can fulfill his desire to have sex with every known female on planet Earth. After all, we're not the same as him. He has expressed before that he is a Martian, and his face tattoo does tell us that he IS music.

Here's the song if you don't know what I'm talking about ...

After some calculation it was decided that this task was completely impossible. Assuming that Wayne lives to be 72 (a generous estimate considering the amount of weed he smokes and cough syrup/alcohol concoctions he drinks), and that he is able to maintain his sexual stamina until the minute of his death, also not accounting for births, deaths, and other mitigating factors surrounding all the females on Earth, he would have to have intercourse with a staggering number of women.

Lil' Wayne, age 27, would have to have sex with 243,531 girls a DAY starting pretty much right now to reach his goal of having sex with the planet's roughly 3 billion women.

I'm sorry Weezy. I wanted to believe, but numbers are numbers. It just can't be done.

Should have done this years ago

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:26:00 +0000

Why I hate living in the present

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:19:00 +0000

The other day, at my job, I had some friends who wanted to go watch an opening band on our tour. I thought it would be fun, since I don't often spend time in the crowd, to watch the band from front of house and watch the crowd have fun watching them and just get lost in the moment. This is when I noticed that most of the crowd was holding up cameras and cell phones attempting to capture video and photos of the show. Immediately this brought sadness to me as it made me realize one of the very things I held dear about attending a rock concert had been completely lost forever. That's the art of memory. Being able to recount an experience without the use of photographs, or videos, or blogs, or Twitter, is 100 percent a dead art.

I fought with myself about this after I witnessed this display. Is this just something that the youth of today are doing? Is it completely impossible for them to enjoy something and take the home the experience without there being 100 grainy blurry photos for them to peruse? Then I opened up my Twitter client on my phone and was inundated with messages about a show featuring a band that had just gotten back together for the first time in 4 years. Which a) 4 years? not that big a deal.. give me like 10 years and I'm all ears. b) these are grown men "tweeting" this, not excitable teenagers. They come from where I come from. Same ethical and socio-cultural background.

Why is the world in a constant pursuit of validation from their peers and their collection of anonymous followers? Social networking has created this unreal world of people who's worth is measured by followers, friends, and contacts. Now when an event happens in someone's world it automatically becomes public domain. This is what pains me. I can no longer experience anything without someone automatically asking if I "twittered" it or if I have pictures or if blogged about it. It sucks.

30+ years ago when Paul Simonon* smashed his bass onstage at a Clash show in NYC there was ONE camera there to capture it. ONE. You didn't hear about people going home to post on the (then non existent) internet, "OMG DID YOU SEE JOE STRUMMER* BREAK HIS GUTAR ON STAGE AT TEH CLASH SHOOOOOW LOOOOOLZ". 15+ years ago I personally witnessed Nirvana play one of their most legendary shows in NYC at Roseland and one of the most defining moments of the show is a SINGLE photograph that MANY people have seen probably at this point. That one moment, that single part of a very infamous show, that famous black and red sweater, was all captured for all times sake not by a million cameras and phones being waved in the air. It was an historic moment very specifically captured by a photographer there to document the unknown. These days it seems, in large part due to technology, that everyone is a documentarian, and everyone is a critic and a photographer, and a videographer. No one can leave a show without there being some physical proof that it happened then and there, and even worse yet, now with the ability to let everyone who knows you (or not) exactly how it all went down as its going down.

For once in your lives take home a memory and cherish it. Let something that you saw or heard affect you in some way instead of making it some sort of point of validation. Yes, you saw a celebrity. WOOOO. I see celebrities every day of my life. I work for some. My life isn't any more validated than yours when you see the EXACT SAME PEOPLE. It's okay. They're all made of the same cells and blood and hair and skin as you.

Eventually there is going to be no such thing as personal memory. It will all be collective memory based on Flickr photo pools and Twitter posts and blogs. No one will want to listen to an account of how something went down without a digital picture album to follow it up and 300 comments from ABSOLUTE strangers about every second of what you JUST experienced.

Everything is up for review at all times. Every time you open yourself up for validation you open yourself up for judgment. Openness to the world is choking creativity and more importantly stunting creative and emotional growth. Stop letting the world know what you're doing at every second. Leave the crowd wanting more. Blah blah blah blah... the old guy said what? Dude.. TOTALLY twitter that..

* - contrary to collective popular belief/mistake Joe Strummer is NOT the person on the cover of London Calling by the Clash. It's Paul Simonon, and I figured this would be easy enough to figure out since the instrument being smashed is a BASS and not a fucking guitar, but I guess we're all too stupid to think about anything for a second. I give humans way too much credit.

Poetry (and karate) in motion

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:41:00 +0000

When I think grace, agility, stealth, flexibility, and strength I don't think of ninjas or olympians. I think of awkwardly skinny, pock marked 20-something year old Russians tooling about in the woods in denim jackets and white mid-tops.

Please observe as Pasha shows you exactly HOW he can and WILL kick your ass.

Running out of chicken

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:22:00 +0000

There's nothing even vaguely racist about how this was presented...

Also, Happy 60th birthday Dad.

Business cards

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:41:00 +0000

Relax dude, it's still just a business card.

A Great Urban Mystery Solved!!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:06:00 +0000

After much careful research and consideration I have uncovered what many of us have already thought to be true. Fred Durst was the leprechaun in the tree in Crichton, Alabama!!

Amateur sketch of leprechaun :

Fred Durst's profile photo from Twitter :

Batman Drunk Dialing

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:08:00 +0000

This is painfully stupid and awesome. This marks my second posting of a youtube video featuring Batman.

Tweeting, etc.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:25:00 +0000

Last summer I signed up for this thing called Twitter. At the time, me and my 5 or so followers shared random snippets of our day in little blasts, 140 characters at a time. Slowly I started picking up random followers who I didn't know. Then I quit, because letting random strangers in on the minutiae of your daily life is not something I wanted to do at the time.

This winter I had a change of heart. Maybe it was the snow, maybe it was boredom. Most likely it was the really cool looking twitterific app for the iPhone that re-sold me on Twitter. To be honest though, I couldn't give you a good reason why anyone tweets (as they call it). If something is going on in my life and I know you, chances are you don't need to read my tweets to find out.

Anyway, I sometimes feel like Jon Stewart in this clip when I try to figure out technology. So says the guy with the blog that runs his twitter feed in a column.

Jada Pinkett's band

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:16:00 +0000

I've known for a while that Jada Pinkett-Smith had this heavy band, and that she played Ozzfest and all this crazy shit, but I had never seen it with my own 2 eyes.

Well.... here it is ladies and gentlemen. Like it or not (I don't really)..... Wicked Wisdom live on Letterman. I'm so sick right now I thought this was a hallucination.

Master Of Denim

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:09:00 +0000

The reading non-smoking rainbow

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:15:00 +0000

So I sent out a tweet about me quitting smoking. Within 24 hours I had received a reply from Reading Rainbow's own LeVar Burton!! I can't make this shit up people...

The Grown Ass Man Show #1

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:01:00 +0000

After watching this I think I'm going to lay off food completely. WHY DIDN'T YOU GUYS TELL ME I WAS THIS FAT!?!? Seriously.. diet. Starts today.

Fall Out Boy - Japan Update 2 - Believers Never Die Part Deux from clandestine on Vimeo.

I really love penguins

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:14:00 +0000

I love penguins even if they're not real...

Also, my little sister is having a kid. I'm going to be Uncle Brian soon.

G'Day from Australia mates. Take care and brush your hair.

Dentist kid X Christian Bale (NSFW)

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:44:00 +0000

Take 2!!!

Blogging from the other side of the world is hard

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:13:00 +0000

I don't sleep much in Japan. I'm 16 hours ahead of where I call home in a completely different day most of the time. I stay up at all hours drinking sake and smoking cigarettes in front of my computer screen in my hotel room, organizing photos I took in the last 8 days of some of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Unfortunately, most of the time I don't have internet because it costs about a bazillion Yen for 24 hours, and I don't make that much in a week. The economy sucks even in the future.

I promise I will post pictures of this amazing trip on my Flickr account as soon as I have internet for long enough to do so. In the meantime enjoy this assortment of ridiculous signs, ads, and random stuff I have come across in this country I love so much...

Kid goes to the dentist

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:03:00 +0000

I should preface this by saying this kid just came back from the dentist and is still feeling the effects of the anesthesia. If you'd like, you can forget that and pretend that he's being kidnapped and drugged by a pedophile who is filming his exploits for YouTube. Whatever makes you happy.

Arigato

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:47:00 +0000

The posts will be a little more sporadic now that I'm overseas. Japan to be exact. I went to my favorite bar on planet Earth last night - Rock Rock in Shinsaibashi, Osaka, Japan. After a full night of drunken drinking I stumbled into a Family Mart looking for some after drinking food and wouldn't you know it they had something ready made for me! It even had a little picture of beer on the package. There's nothing in the package because I ate it already...

The boss

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:37:00 +0000

So yesterday the guy on the left....

...my boss, decided to post a photo and little story about me on his blog. So, I've decided to return the favor. Yes, we do make up the illustrious team "Stage Left", and yes I do dance (sometimes on tables or couches) when "Hey Ya" comes on. But, I would like to say that I don't purposely try to ruin movies and The Office for him. I just assume we're on the same page. If it wasn't for this guy I would probably be homeless right now. Or maybe just working for a different band. We're probably going to own and operate a Pepper Lunch one day soon.

One time in 2003 when my old band and his current extremely successful band were on tour together we used to play this game where we would pull increasingly more brutal pranks on each other. This one time they stole our merch guy Rich's clothes and he had to run around for an hour or so completely naked. I actually don't remember why his clothes were off to begin with. In retaliation we smeared our guitar tech Ron's diarrhea on their van window. In return someone pissed in bottled and informed us "it's somewhere in your van". I can't remember what it led to next, but I will always remember what came after. Probably the most classic story of all time. Forever known as the night I almost killed Fall Out Boy. Well, not really, but pretty fucking close. This video should explain it. Thanks for everything P.W.

OK, OK, I promise, this is the last one...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Diaz) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:06:00 +0000

I know. I'm obsessed with this Microsoft Songsmith mashup thing, but this one is REALLY good. Unlike the abysmal movie about his life. God, seriously... Why did these guys play Big, Puffy, and 2Pac?!? (Real life guys on the right)

Anyway... here's Biggie's "Dead Wrong" as rendered through Songsmith. Thanks Best Week Ever!