A Partial List of Artists in My iTunes Library That I Cannot Decide How to Properly Name

• Joan Jett and the Blackhearts or Jett, Joan and the Blackhearts?
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers or Petty, Tom and the Heartbreakers?
• Rilo Kiley or Kiley, Rilo?
• Ted Leo & the Pharmacists or Leo, Ted & the Pharmacists?
• Biz Markie or Markie, Biz?
• John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band or Cafferty, John & The Beaver Brown Band?
• Camper Van Beethoven or Van Beethoven, Camper?
• Lynyrd Skynyrd or Skynyrd, Lynyrd?
• Rob Zombie or Zombie, Rob?

GatorDVG: I didn’t know Elton John was gay until like 2002.
a.friend: well, i can see that. I mean in the ’70s (when I was listening to him) he was considered cool rock and roll
a.friend: still kinda is, just the gay thing never came up
GatorDVG: I just thought the Donald Duck costume was him being kooky.
a.friend: so did everyone else…sort of like David Bowie
GatorDVG: wait
GatorDVG: David Bowie is gay?
GatorDVG: are you serious??
a.friend: u said that like you were a kid who just found out about the Easter Bunny
GatorDVG: dude
GatorDVG: come on
GatorDVG: really?
a.friend: really

One of my favorite songs is “Radio”, by Alkaline Trio. (mp3, lyrics) My sister got me to start listening to this group a few years ago and I’ve since collected everything they’ve recorded. What’s really funny is that for the longest time I thought it was a beautiful love song. Part of the chorus is — I thought:

I wish you
Would take my radio to bed with you
Plugged in and ready to fall

“What a romantic line,” I always imagined. The rest of the song is so sad, and sounds so angry. But with that one line he’s saying that he wants her to listen to him singing to her as she falls asleep. I thought this for many, many months … until I actually read the lyrics one day. I was so wrong. He’s really singing:

I wish you
Would take my radio to bathe with you
Plugged in and ready to fall

He’s no longer in love with her at all. He wants her to get electrocuted! So. Yeah. Totally changed the song for me. Still a great song, don’t get me wrong. But completely different. Talk about misheard lyrics!

It’s been ages since I posted an mp3 for you. Here’s a great one for today »
Song of the Moment

Yes, I know not always. But some days it would just be nice if you felt like every now and then you could.

Bryan has posted an elaborate examination of the “Play Count” metric used by iTunes. I, too, use the “Play Count” metric as a component of many of my Smart Playlists, so I was interested in his research. I agree with one of the comments on his post, though, and think that iTunes really simply considers a song as “played” and increments the “Play Count” about ten seconds prior to the end of the song. (It would be interesting to know if the “Cross Fade” option affects this. Maybe Bryan can investigate …)

In most of my smart playlists, the “Last Skipped” metric is more important than the “Play Count”. I have a “base” smart playlist which I include in almost all my other smart playlists. It contains all the tracks which I do not want to include. If a track is a music video, or holiday music, or from an audiobook or podcast, for example, I don’t want it to play while I’m jogging along Olympic Boulevard or doing the laundry. Consider this my Exclusion list.

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This weekend I finished reading Busting Vegas by Ben Mezrich, the same guy that wrote Bringing Down the House. It’s pretty much the same story: M.I.T. math geeks take on the gambling industry. David and Goliath, etc. It’s a good, quick read. I’d definitely grab Bringing Down the House first, though. It was much more in-depth and — although both are allegedly true stories — it felt much less like a fictionalized account. “Busting Vegas” tends to focus more on the relationships and touchy-feely parts of the story; there are chapters written by the author in the first person and there’s a smallish love-story sub-plot. Either way I should warn you that the chances of learning any magic Blackjack skills and winning big are slim. But it’s still a fun book and perfect for reading while you’re on the beach this summer baking in the sun.

Last night I finished reading When the Mob Ran Vegas, a great book that I grabbed at the McCarran Airport on my last trip to Sin City. At times the book suffers from some pretty poor grammar and editing, but the stories are so fascinating that you can forgive the author’s quirky, personal style. Plus, I mean, the guy has got to have a contract on his head; there are dozens of personal anecdotes involving organized crime and its perpetrators, and he really lays the lumber to Sinatra a few times. My mom’s side of the family is 100% Italian — the old school Rhode Island kind <wink wink> — so I recognized pretty much all the characters. (Tales of “the Family” were frequent dinner conversation at my house when I was a kid.) I really enjoyed reading about all the connections to Hollywood and the movie industry, too. If you order a copy from the author’s website, he’ll send you an autographed copy.

“All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away.” — Charles Schultz on Peanuts

from Caterina

My friend Andy loaned me the latest Michael Lewis book, The Blind Side, last week. (I seem to remember reading an excerpt from it in Sports Illustrated earlier this year.) It’s a great look at the high school / college football recruiting process in the SEC. The author does an excellent job of jumping between the histories of ‘legacy’ players in the NFL, the evolution of the left tackle position, and the story of Michael Oher, a freakishly large kid who wants to play ‘in the league’. If you’re a football fan you’ll definitely enjoy this one. And now I’ll have to start paying attention to Ole Miss to see how this kid performs this year.

Let’s get serious here. What’s better than Kermit the Frog singing the Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime“? I can’t think of anything.

One of my wife’s friends died a few weeks ago. He was only 41, a manager in the music industry, and he had battled cancer for a long time. His wife held a memorial service — a Catholic mass — on Saturday night, and hundreds of people attended. The mass was held at a smallish Church in Westwood, just a few blocks from our house. It was in all respects a traditional Catholic mass, with one notable exception: Instead of a choir, the Polyphonic Spree performed all the music. Before the service started they played John Lennon’s Imagine, and, after the eulogies at the end, they played a few more songs, including their hit, Light & Day. It was incredibly moving.

So apparently there’s a whole series of these parodies, but I think “Hitler: Bloodthirsty Dictator, Die-hard Cowboys Fan” is the best. Sure, it’s no Planet Unicorn, but it’s definitely the funniest YouTubery I’ve seen this year.
<hat tip to Andy>

Again I’ll say it: Best line ever in any rock n’ roll song:

And dropping a barbell
He points to the sky, saying
“The sun’s not yellow.
it’s chicken.”

Last night Tricia and I went to see Tamar at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. She played a great set and we had a good time. We didn’t get home until after 11, and I couldn’t get to sleep.

I was up until 1:30am reading Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. What a crazy story! Can you imagine seeing a 50′ tall wave of molasses barreling towards you at 35mph? And the ten-year legal battle that followed was one of the country’s first major class-action lawsuits. Truly a fascinating tale.

Tonight is our big engagement party at the Viper Room. We’ve got the club reserved for the night, which is pretty flipping cool. (Give me a ring if you want to get on the guest list.) Our good friends Von Cotton play at 9pm and our other good friends becky start their set at 11pm. It should be a pretty wild time.

A perfect t-shirt for the cool kids in the music industry …