drinking buddy

Is M. Ward Famous or Does No One Buy Albums Anymore?

by That Guy on February 20, 2009

m-ward

I awoke this morning at 5:26am to the feeling of my left testicle being tangled up in my underpants. Has this ever happened to you? Sweet Jebus, what a scare. I apparently did some sort of scissor-kick in my sleep that made my boxers form a tourniquet around my left nut. It hurt like heck and scared the living daylights out of me. I sprung from my bed about .0000000002 seconds after the scissor-kick and went into the bathroom to inspect any potential damage and let that puppy work itself out. Through the miracle of the human body being flipping awesome, all was fine. But it was so frightening that I was unable to fall back asleep, so I went into the den to surf the internets before work.

That’s when I opened the iTunes store and saw that M. Ward’s fantastic new album, Hold Time, is the #5 best-selling album on iTunes. How can that be? Is M. Ward famous now or has everyone completely given up on buying full albums?

I did some quick research, and found that 16 times more songs were purchased online than albums. Not surprising, but pretty amazing. Here are the actual numbers from my research:

1.07 billion digital tracks were purchased in the US in 2008
65.8 million digital albums were purchased in the US in 2008
Somewhere around 4% of males have but one testicle

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My Favorite People at Karaoke Night

by That Guy on February 13, 2009

karaoke

I had the pleasure of taking in some karaoke the other weekend here in Chicago and, as usual, it tickled my fancy. While I’ve never personally performed a song, I did once sign up for “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake, but chickened out. The best performance I ever saw was a rendition of “Chocolate Salty Balls” by Chef.

So I’ll spend this post ribbing some of the karaoke people, but it’s primarily because I don’t have the nuts to sing in front of a crowd. Here are 3 of my favorite people at karaoke night:

The Group of Girls Who Think They’re Funny
The only thing less funny than a group of girls teaming up to sing karaoke is finding out you’ve just contracted genital warts from one of them. 99% of the time they’ll pick “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and think they’re the first group of girls to think of that idea. They’ll spend the entire song nervously looking at each other, giggling uncontrollably, and thinking to themselves, “We’re so zany!”

The Amateur Singer That Takes Karaoke Way Too Seriously
This person usually thinks highly enough of themselves to sing at least 5-6 songs per night. The karaoke host has to restrain them with some sort of scheduled rotation so they don’t get overzealous and kung-fu grip the microphone for every song. This person typically gets the Whitney Houston microphone tap thing going if they feel like they’re really nailing a song, but they’re usually good for a big voice crack at some point during the night. Odds are they’re currently taking voice lessons from a neighbor. They daydream that tonight could be the night Randy Jackson is in the audience.

The Karaoke Host
The karaoke host’s days are typically spent playing Madden 2007 in the finished basement-turned-bedroom of their parents place. They drive a souped up Honda or Toyota, with more money spent on the speakers than the car itself. Their bedroom has a ton of stereo equipment and like a thousand woofers. And they have one of those CD towers with a zillion CDs stacked halfway up the wall. You’ll typically find the work of SWV, Color Me Badd, and Keith Sweat in their CD collection. The karaoke host dreams of someday being called up to the Asian big-leagues. This is the same guy that showed you the old “switch the cables for free porn” trick in junior high.

Got anymore to add?

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The Most Strangely Attractive Women in Rock ‘n Roll – Part II

by oz on January 3, 2009

Here’s part II of the women in rock who are much hotter for the simple reason that they have musical talent. Those of you passersby who are ready to shoot me a comment that says something along the lines of, “Who are you to talk, why don’t you take a look at yourself in the mirror,” please spare me. I’ve heard it before and you’ll only encourage me.

10. Paz Suay from Josh Rouse

She’s foreign and a musician – double whammy. Take both of those away and she’d receive a pedestrian 6.1 on HotOrNot.com.

paz

9. LeAnn Rimes

Resembles Tina Yothers from Family Ties. Country music fans find her ridiculously hot and the rest of us don’t know why.

leann

8. Janis Joplin

God rest her soul, but she wasn’t the most attractive woman in the world. Yet the self-proclaimed ‘ladies man’ Leonard Cohen thought it was a good idea to get a hummer from her at the Chelsea Hotel and even wrote a song about it.

janis

7. Pink

She has the body of a male swimmer, yet there’s something about her that keeps everyone coming back for more. Snap out of it, America.

pink

6. Taylor Swift

I said it once and I’ll say it again: I don’t understand the appeal of Taylor Swift. She looks like a flesh-colored poodle.

taylor

5. Regine Chassagne from Arcade Fire

Win Butler could have any indie hipster chick in all of Canada, and he’s married to this banshee. Somebody needs to chuck some shoes at him.

regine-chassagne

4. Beth Orton

Rumor has it Ryan Adams’ “English Girls Approximately” is about her. I’m sure there are plenty of stacked 24 year old babes out there that Ryan could take down, but it was Beth Orton that drove him to write a song like that. And now he’s singing to stuffed animals in his bedroom.

beth-orton

3. Meg White

Pale and homely. But put her behind a drum kit and Jack White starts thinking to himself, “Even if she were my sister, I’d still probably go for some Saturday night beaver.”

meg-white

2. Loretta Lynn

Another questionable Jack White crush. This woman is no less than 100 years old, but she is still strangely attractive.

loretta

1. Bruce Springsteen’s Wife Patti

You’re telling me he couldn’t do better than her?!!! Apparently even The Boss isn’t immune to Deceptive Musical Hotness.

bruce

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The Most Strangely Attractive Women in Rock ‘n Roll – Part I

by That Guy on January 2, 2009

There are a few things I’ve stopped trying to figure out in life. 1) What ultimately happens to severely soiled paper products when I throw them in the recycling bin, 2) Why “Temptation Island” was ever taken off the air, and 3) How musical talent can make someone so much more attractive. A woman who is able to sing or play guitar is right up there on the Deceptive Hotness scale with wearing knee-high boots, having a twin, being foreign, wearing a skirt in the winter, and bartending in a low-cut top with two to three padded bras on.

So, with that, on to my list of the Most Strangely Attractive Women in Rock ‘n Roll – girls who wouldn’t be nearly as hot if they didn’t have musical talent. We’ll be counting up from 20:

20. Rachael Yamagata

Doesn’t need an instrument to make her hot, but it sure doesn’t hurt.

rachael yamagata

19. Liz Phair

All things being equal, she’s like a 7 out of 10. With a guitar she immediately jumps to a 9. On the cover of her self-titled album she skyrockets to an 11.

liz-phair

18. Alanis Morissette

Admit it. When you saw that spastic video for “You Oughta Know” where you couldn’t quite see Alanis’s's’s face and she was singing about unmentionable acts in the theater, it excited you.

alanis

17. The Lazy-Eyed Girl from the Dixie Chicks

I’m totally willing to overlook her lazy eye since she can pluck the banjo like it’s nobody’s business.

dixie

16. Sarah McLachlan

Not terrible to look at, but if you came across her profile on Facebook you wouldn’t even stop to look at her oblong face. The piano playing adds at least a cup size to her bra.

sarah-mc

15. Sade

When I found out you pronounce her name “Shah-day” it made her 15-20% hotter. Her music, by the by, is unlistenable – it makes me feel like I’m at a bad nightclub in Boca Raton.

sade

14. The Girl who co-starred in “Once” with Glen Hansard

She really wasn’t much to write home about, but Hansard’s character became obsessed after he heard her sing. What a waste of time – he would have been better off smashing that vacuum cleaner into a million pieces.

once-2

13. K.T. Tunstall

Not ugly, but certainly not overly attractive. The raspy voice takes her to a new level.

kt-tunstall-20060302-112596

12. Natalie Merchant

The oatmeal of women; painfully bland. But when she sang “Birds and Ships” on Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue album, her hotness increased sevenfold for me.

natalie

11. Jewel

It’s no secret she’s very attractive, but she’s the type of girl you’d be apprehensive to take to your office holiday party due to her snaggletooth. You’d cringe every time she introduced herself with a smile. But the fact that she can yodel better than the little mountain climber guy on the Price is Right does more for her snaggletooth than severe cosmetic dentistry ever could.

jewel

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