A few weeks ago, my friend Tom Jordan raved to me about the awesomeness of Tom Pettys new record MOJO. So, I trust Tom musically, and so I went and got it. The sad thing is I had a hard time even staying awake through it. Then I caught the media blitz for the record SNL, Letterman, Conan, the local news, Alive at 5, and all the rest. Petty was everywhere, and still it did nothing for me.

It should have though. The single was just perfect for me. Slide guitar, defiant, maybe a little woman based anger. It was all right there in my strike zone, and it did nothing at all for me. Then, the above video happened, and it stopped not connecting.

I am a big fan of Mike Vallely (Mike V). I met him 1000 years ago, and have met him or now I can say run into him a few times in recent years. We even both attended a mutual friends bachelor party in Vegas a while back. I subscribe to Mondays with Mike V on you tube, so this video was huge surprise. And just perfect.

It created this visual counterpoint to this song that allowed me to find a way in to enjoy it. I have always thought Mike was a lot funnier, and more fun than others have thought. The image of Mike the brawler, while cool, never sort of matched up with Mike the funny guy. These Mondays with Mike V videos are just enough skating to be amazing, and enough funny to be perfect.

So, seeing his daughter digging on the record, and the attachment of visuals I like (the old school board, bank skating, and a Hello Kitty guitar), let me rediscover the song. Which now makes total sense to me. So thanks Lucy Vallely for kicking butt.

And the visual of the fists to the floor is everything rock and roll should be.

Scott Holt, thursday at Malarkeys pub…

Social Distortion…

Dear Dana,

I like combat sports. I come from boxers. So, once the UFC got stabilized, I was a huge fan. I have bought many pay per views, some merch, and a few DVDs you sell. I made my investment. I say this just so you know that I am not only watching it on spike for free. Some of the sheckles in your pockets, those come from me.

Today I listened to Sonnen on the Jim Rome show. I sort of thought Sonnen had crossed some lines, but today I realized it finally, and as such I am sorry but I have to stop supporting your brand financially.

I understand the need for a villian in the WWE sense of things. But, this has gone too far. Even Brock Lesnar, who some think takes this stuff too far, does not act out like this. What is more, this is not the typical outburst style taunt, this is a constructed line of talking points that come from someone who has run for office. If you go back and listen to Sonnens interviews in promoting this fight, clearly he has some talking points, some themes, an extended narrative that he has a desire to create.

One that involves calling Silva a liar, a fraud, and going into extended litanies on how these things are true. How YOU, DANA WHITE, want to fire Silva. How Silva can speak English, thereby calling Silva a liar. And also I might add playing into a little bit of that Republican attack the foreigner thing.

In a 45 minute interview with Yahoo Sonnen went on and on about Lance Armstrong giving himself cancer, and cheating, and all of the rest. Then on todays Rome show he denied that was him. Saying that the guy had a foreign accent (when he did not).

I would have rather he owned what he said. It would have made it LESS INTERESTING if the loudmouth just copped to it. But instead now the denial is the story. Now we must consider whether or not Yahoo was duped into a 45 minute interview with someone who is out to harm Sonnen in some way.

So now we have a man who has actively disrespected the PERSON that is Silva, he has created some sort of yahoo based conspiracy, and all of this has led me to this conclusion…I will not longer give my money, or my eyeballs to UFC events. I will not buy from the sponsor, nor will I watch it on free tv. This saddens me because I will lose the chance to see Wanderlei Silva either become a champion again, or become the trainer of champions. Wanderlei is of course my all time favorite fighter in MMA.

I will also lose seeing Ben Henderson fight. He is the new discovery, and I am a big fan.

But, I think that as this sort of Sonnen and Lesnar(Brock far less so) era begins, and the Coture and Liddel era ends, we will begin to see the downturn of the brand. We will begin to see this return to the boxing old days, of race based grudge matches, and antiforeigner sentiment.

You do not need to care Dana. I am what, 200 bucks annually for you. Thats nothing.

But, what you do need to care about is that someone who is at best, a passive viewer of your brand has noticed that your brand has changed in one fighter getting a main event. No longer is about the noble and well respect art of Mixed Martial Arts. No, clearly what Sonnen is doing has little to do with that. He has even said, it is the U F C. FIGHTING. He is a better FIGHTER than Silva.

I think Silva probably put you over a barrel with the last fight, but if you go back and watch it, you will see that at no point was Silva in jeopardy. It literally was like an adult play wrestling with a 5 year old. There was no point to it.

Now, if Silva loses, you will be saddled with the mouth and ideas of Sonnen for a while. No more will the work of someone like BJ Penn or Frankie Edgar or GSP be relevant. With Sonnen, those brave warriors will have to become WWE style heels. Cutting promos, and shooting on the mic.

I am sorry Dana. I think you seem like a good dude. You shook my hand in Vegas once, and I have been a fan since, but this Sonnen fellow has moved you away from being a great sport, and back to being a stupid Vince McMahon style product.

Plenty of Spoilers I assume

I do not think I have seen a movie, and then thought about writing about it immediately after arriving home. Tonight I went and saw INCEPTION (for what will be only the first time) at Cedar Creek Cinema. I absolutely loved it. I am giving it a 9.85 out of ten. A must see movie.

First off, without getting into the whole reality this, dream that, I want to compliment director Christoper Nolen for getting the performances he got out of these actors.  And for getting Mike Gaston in the movie, love that man.

It was amazing to see Ellen Page play her age, and not a 16 year old charicature of a Indie or Emo or Punk girl.  God was that amazing.  She is one of those actresses that you just hope for to work out.  I remember seeing ‘Hard Candy’ and hoping beyond hope that she chooses the Ed Norton path, and not the Drew Barrymore path.  Maybe this experience will keep her out of the next Diablo Cody nightmare.

And Leonardo DiCaprio.  Took some time off, aged, but never lost a step.  There are some movies here that might not be all that great, Body of Lies comes to mind, but this is truly an amazing tour de force performance.  Brilliance.  Amazing discipline, and craftsmanship.

Cillian Murphy, super star.

The guy who played the Forger, super cool.

Ken Watanabe, duuuudde.

So, lets get into the movie.  It seems to be a passible thriller.  An action movie.  But, that is a bullshit analysis, like those who say The Dark Knight is a superhero movie.  Nolan spends entire movies posing questions.  In the Dark Knight it is, Will you Kill me to stop me from killing?  The Joker is on an unbreakable curve, no amount of anything will stop the murder.  So, the Batman character is given the option to kill him, or to allow him to slaughter more.  He kills him.  And becomes an outlaw, forever.  Doing the one thing that he never wanted to do.  The Joker paints him into that corner.

Like Batman, Leo is given an impossible choice, destroy the memory of his most beloved in order to resolve his life and find his way back to his children.  So, he destroys his wife in his mind, and then is enabled to find his way back home.  He must kill that which holds him.  He does not have to simply let her go, he must in fact destroy her.  Which he does, in a conversation he has in the second dream state.

He is faced with this dilema earlier in the movie.  She makes it for him.  She cannot process the idea of limbo versus the real world, and paints him into an impossible situation by killing herself, and painting him to be a killer.  Thereby forcing him at the time into committing suicide, which he does not choose, instead he chooses exile.

I found the plot to be amazing.  The amount of skill it took for a film maker to put these lines together, to have essentially 4 stories moving along in fully realized universes, with each story interacting consistently and openly with the other story lines, is amazing.

For example, the idea that the speed of the van falling is long, then the anti gravity section is longer giving more narrative to occur, versus the hospital on the winter hill to have even more time, finally the length that Ellen Page and Leo have in their private exploration of his limbo section.  To do this, and have the pieces interact effectively is amazing.

This is an amazing bit of film making.  The concept of dream within a dream, not new.  The idea of what is reality, that is all not new.  The Matrix comparison is fine, but failure riddle.  It is like comparing the Major League movie to The Natural.  I mean they are both baseball movies, I suppose.

The other thing that is over looked in most of the discussion is the brilliance of the performances.  Each of these actors has to act in 4 stories.  DiCaprio has to deny, and deny his motives throughout.  In these stories, with exposed subconscious, you expect to have all of that bared open, but he has managed to keep a secret.  Even the revelation of this secret, amazing, yet moved right past it.

Can an idea be planted, and be left to grow organically?  Sure it can.  Will it cost you something, in the case of Leo it cost him everything.

I have read some blog posts about the film tonight, and many of them are smart as hell.  But, they all fail to address the amazing act of discipline that this movie is.  It is unquestioned the best paced movie I have ever seen.  The narrative is a musical stream, and Nolan has control of it, and its many melodies, and is able to stop and start them at will.

The performances are stellar.

This movie took ten years to make.  When you think of the narrative discipline, it is clear why it did.  This is not small feat of story telling, in fact this is about as brave as it gets.

To quote the movie, it is a leap of faith.

To say that Joan Jett is an important figure in my life is an understatement. I was in 11th grade, at a party in Tomahawk with a girl I had no business hanging out with, it was some sort of biker or other festival, and we were there. Standing around a keg of beer in some sort of field, near a stage, and Joan Jett walked up and hung out. I nearly lost my mind. This was before, or right around, the I LOVE ROCK AND ROLL time. The Runaways were over, and she was just sort of grinding it out. The night was amazing, and since that moment I was a Joan Jett fan, and a bit of a historian.

So, last year when they announced the Runaways movie, I was pumped. The idea of Dakota Fanning and Kristin Stewart playing these women was horrid to me though. Fanning was the child actor, Stewart was the Twillight person. I really did not want to see some major studio WRECK rock and roll even further for me. I had suffered through the RAY and Cash movies, and this sort of serialization of music, and god knows I did not want that.

I was hoping for Velvet Goldmine, with Ewan McGregor as my true north Iggy Pop. I sort of got it, but not quite.

The Runaways excels in a lot of ways, but falls horridly short in many. I had to realize that I could not take ownership of the film, and hope it would be made just to what I was interested in. A tale of how Joan Jett discovered the guitar sound, and all the rest. It needed to appeal to the audience, and I think it did.

The movie is set in LA, when Rodney had a club and played a ton of Bowie. Bowie literally ruled the world, and everyone was learning a new way. Boys were dressing like girls, and girls were all kept in boxes until they became housewives.

The Runaways broke that. Cherie Curie was overtly sexual, and underage. The best part of sexuality is the young, raw, unfocused sexuality, and Curie was that. Fanning falls far short of what Curie was. Fanning is tight and cerebral where Curie was physical, and action based. Curie was a young girl, 15 when it started, who had no idea what or who was happening to her, and it literally tore her apart. She was called the bastard child of Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Fanning played her as far too powerless and sympathetic for my taste.

Stewart, who I have only ever liked in ‘The Cake Eaters’ and ‘Adventureland’ and her singing in ‘Into the Wild’, delivered on the awkwardness that she displays everywhere else. She plays a young Joan Jett in a way that seems right. She takes on Jett’s sexuality with great openess. The director seeks to create this love thing with Curie and Jett, but I think that is a weakness. Rather I think this was the 70s, and everyone was high and young, and I tend to think they fell into bed with everyone. At least that is my hope.

The great loss was the one sided portrayal of Lita Ford. Ford and her later career never did it for me, but her guitar playing is amazing. She was a real powerhouse even as a young woman.

I believe that rock can burn down the world. I want to see that passion more than anything. MOvies like this remind me that I eat a steady diet of mayo and white bread. And sometimes, someplace, someone is going to take a chance and aspire to greatness. That they will, like Poney, write a whole album based on a poem, instead of telling me that they can play a solid shuffle now.

The Runaways reminds us that rock is important, and life changing. It reminds me that it is important to lift your head up above the floor and try to shake off this mortal coil.

A lot has changed for me this summer already. Some good, some bad, some pretty traumatic, some personal mistakes, all of that. But, tonight I thought about something. The world does not need me, or wait for me, or really even know who I am. In fact, the world will exist just fine without me.

But, heres the thing. The world has more than enough treasure, and happiness for all of us. The world will gladly allow, encourage, and facilitate all the happiness I can swallow. I just have to accept it.

I just have to take one step forward. We all just have to open our mouths, and let the light, the joy, the blessings flow in.

I have the hardest time remembering this. I have the hardest time enjoying the world around me, the people around me, and the amazing sunshine that fills us up each and everyday. I have ground on people until they just left me, I have pushed people until they just left, and I have lashed out at people when I felt slighted.

Here is what I learned. None of that matters. None of it serves me, none of it helps me. None of it helps them. It is a curse.

The world will bless us all with everything that is in our future to behold. It is full and rich and we are blessed to be in it.

I must accept the gifts, and blessings. I must get out of my own way.

Thank you all.

I love Last.fm. I really do. I thought rdio was super cool, but did not want to pay for it. I tend to not want music at my desk at work, and I control it at the car and in the gym. But, what I love about Last.fm is reading the playlists of my friends and contacts. It is a cool little thing to see where they were at.

So, I was thinking about the recent movies I have watched. And what they say. So, here is the list, what do you think?

1. The Book of Eli
2. Million Dollar Baby
3. Spartan
4. Redbelt
5. There Will Be Blood
6. The September Issue

That seems to say something. What do you think it says?

One of the greatest Emcee’s that I have ever seen is DMX.  I have all his albums, and have been a giant fan since he first came to me.  It was 1999 at Woodstock when I truly found him.

I had the good fortune of spending a great amount of time at the Woodstock event that year, and was even luckier to be stage right for DMX set.  I have been to a lot of musical events in my time, but nothing ever has compared to what DMX did on that stage.

First off, he is alone.  Utterly alone.  There is a DJ, but he is way in the back and no one could really see him.  So, all the people had on that stage was a short, built for war, African American guy, shirtless.  the show was amazing.  He pressed so much energy into the crowd, that it shot back at everyone on that stage.

Few folks have the chance to stand on a stage in front of 300 thousand people, but that size crowd is its own organic thing.  It smells, it presses forward and back, and you feel it.  And DMX felt it, was open to it, and it lifted him.

The greatest moment I have ever seen from any performer EVER was when he stopped, and did The Prayer.  Silent.  No beat, no track.  No dancer or hype man.  And he stood onstage, and prayed.  And everyone in the crowd STOPPED, and listened, and was silent.  He brought all the energy into him, in that prayer, and he gave it all back.  It was amazing.

I watched him walk off stage, and literally fall into the arms of someone.  And then in seconds he was up, and seemingly refreshed.  It was the greatest single musical performance I have ever seen.

And about the Behind The Music, it was the worst Behind The Music I have ever seen.  So superficial, so much a waste of time.  Did not focus on his childhood, or his present.  Instead it focused on nothing.

DMX is a great talent, and people should listen.

I think I have to be honest in this review, and sort of shoot from the hip. I bought this book on the advice of my friend Scott Holt a few years back. He and I were going book for book while he was out on the road, and he knew I loved Cormac McCarthy, and I had not read this one. So, he suggested it. The book was so amazing, and so in my wheelhouse. I literally cried just about every moment I read it. I just sat and read, and cried and read and cried. I had lost my father just before this, and it was about that. It just shook me forever.

(In an interesting aside, the next book Scott suggested was THE LAST LECTURE. Another book that I just sat and cried and cried through. When the very next book was THE SHACK, I informed Scott that he was not allowed to suggest anymore books to me.)

The book made an impact on me.  I came away from the stark tale of a father and son, in a post apocalypse world acting out of faith and love and survival.  That touched me.  I think that Cormac is a once in a lifetime talent.  Simply willing to write books that pose giant philosophical questions, not simply happy to tell a story.  I put him in the same class as Hemingway and Henry Miller, and William Faulkner.  He makes you the reader address a question you have.  And his language is so sparing, but not spartan.  I like that.

The movie stars Viggo Mortensen as the Father, and Charlize Theron as the mother.  Though I am 100% not sure that a mother appears in the book, or in the case of the movie that a mother was even needed.  I suppose that is just my being cynical, but I thought it was a waste and a diversion to look back at long loving shots of Theron laying in the grass.  The narrative is not about the past, but rather about the moment, and the choices that the father and son have to make for each other.

The setting is the bleak outsides of walking through America.  A sort of a nightmarish love poem to this country.  By contrast, by seeing what we have when we lose everything, we see how pretty we have it.  When we see the bleak, we by nature see the glowing.  I guess that is part of the need for the flashbacks, but I think that is sort of an insult to the intelligence of the viewer.  I think we would know that this is the case.

I loved the father and son stuff.  I truly did.  In the fear and paranoia of the world, the father loses his humanity in each sort of act of protection of the boy.  And the boy is left as his reminded of just what humanity should be.  The reconnection with the ‘good guys’ and the like.  The looking for others, and hoping that they will not be cannibals.

Right now I do not recall the actual ending of the novel, but the ending of the movie was interesting.  The bringing of Guy Pearce to such a small part was always something I thought would be shocking.  The image of the FAMILY is an amazing way to end the movie.

I loved the movie, and I cried and cried.

Local FM morning guy Dave Kallaway made a blog post about his love for Nickelback recently. Then tweeted about it. What I think is interesting was the lack of any discussion about the music of Nickelback. What was embraced was their ability to play in the rain at a gig that they were getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to play at.

I responded on Twitter that I think that they suck. His cohost sent me some lame tweet, but then again I have little respect for her since she blathered on about Bono and his comment about American listening habits and the death of the album…literally one of my favorite Glenn Beck meets music criticism moments of all time.

So, I am soon to board a plan for exotic locales, but I thought I would sit and write a bit about the lameness of Nickelback.

First off, let me say that I have seen them five times in concert. I paid for three of these tickets, and all five times I got to go backstage and hang out with the band and crew AFTER the meet and greet. I do not say that as a bragging item, but simply because I have given this band roughly 200 bucks of my money.

I have listened to all of their albums, in completion. I also watched their VH1 special or whatever documentary that was I saw. I have read interviews with the guys, and all the rest. I put in my time.

Secondly, anyone who picks up a musical instrument to make a living gets my immediate respect. Roughly 95% of my friends are floundering musicians, so I think that putting the cool vibrations of music forth into the universe is a noble pursuit.

That being said, the music of Nickelback sucks. The music of guitar driven rock and roll comes with a great lineage. Amazing stuff. Do not get me wrong, I am not some purist. I am pop lover, a fan of arena rock, and a giant fan of rock and roll done in all its facets. But, sometimes you just are not any good in my opinion. They have made like 5 or 6 records, and all of them are exactly the same. EXACTLY.

There will be the serious song…about spousal abuse, or drug addiction, or death of someones grandma. This will have an anthemic I WILL SURVIVE style bridge and chorus, and end with a young person invariably overcoming the hardship.

Then there will be a song like ROCKSTAR, in which Chad gets to sing funny lyrics, making a little bit of fun of the band, and himself. Without question an acoustic guitar and a tmbourine will show up, and that will be followed by a celebrity filled video. And be reminded, all the famous faces in those videos, they get paid to be there.

Then there will be a nostalgic song about growing up, the band as a gang of survivors of the old days on the road living in a van. THis will turn into a love poem to the fans of band following the bridge.

There, I just wrote half of a Nickelback record. I also can see how those moments will transcend into the live show, where we will get a chance to see an acoustic guitar, a 6 minute drum solo, two shirt changes for Chad and the rest of the guys, and god knows what else.

I do not need every band to be Nick Cave. But, Nickelback is like a man campaigning for public office. They do not make any missteps, and they do not say anything personal, and you never get a sense that they are actually sharing anything with you that is of them. Instead they are telling us stories for dramatic effect, and narrative. This is totally okay, if you are Liza Minelli.

If you are someone who wants that, that is fine. I applaud the guys in Nickelback for inspiring a generation of young men to play guitars, and sing songs. I just hope that at some point the young men and women who are buying the Nickelback records, and are drowning in FM radio garbage, will buy a Bad Religion record, or a Hold Steady record.

For me, Nickelback is like camping gear at Target. Sure, it will work. And yes, by all accounts the tent at Target is a tent. But the tent at Target is vastly different and inferior to the tent that the guys take to climb Mount Everest.

I appreciate Target. It is a fine place to get cheap stuff.

But, I also appreciate Buddy Guy and Nick Cave.

Rock and Roll is a large place. A spectrum if you will. At one end, for me are people like Prince and Bad Religion, and The Black Keys, and Pink, and Mandy Moore…at the other end is Nickelback. And that end of the spectrum, for me, sucks.

So while I appreciate the witty banter from the likes of Stacy Cole on twitter, I think that Nickelback can do a lot better. Maybe they are not interested in joining with Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard or Chuck Berry. They are kicking ass as the Target of ROCK.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic reviewed Dark Horse, claiming that “Nickelback are a gnarled, vulgar band reveling in their ignorance of the very notion of taste, lacking either the smarts or savvy to wallow in bad taste so they just get ugly, knocking out knuckle-dragging riffs that seem rarefied in comparison to their thick, boneheaded words.”