Why doesn’t this have a million views yet? How can you not love a totally shredding metal version of Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance?
Her’s the original, in case you need a refresher:
And finally, if you want to teach your kids to headbang, here’s the guy’s wonderful metallized cover of Let It Go from Frozen:
A number of my friends are going through some challenging times. I know what that’s like, and for their benefit, I’d like to share this “bummed out” playlist that got me through the end of 2010 and start of 2011, when I was going through what I call “The Great Reset”.
Every “bummed out” playlist needs at least one song with this message. The Sufi poets were the first to come up with this gem, and it’s been used time and time again, by Solomon, Edward Fitzgerald, Abraham Lincoln, and alt-rock band OK Go. Their song was so nice, they made a video for it twice — once with a Rube Goldberg machine…
…and once as a marching band with a brass section in Ghillie suits:
If the Bloodhound Gang decided to write more serious songs, they might end up sounding like this. For some perverse reason, I like the verse with these two lines, one after the other: “I’ve got courage in my heart / Love is a feeling like warm black leather”.
“‘Cause they know and so do I / The high road is hard to find…”
The chorus is a promise I made to myself when I was in the hospital.
I added some tunes that I used to have on my “bummed out” playlist from early 1991, because there’s comfort in the familiar. My problems then seem so minor compared to early 2011.
Yeah, it’s three-chord rock and roll, but it’s great three-chord rock and roll.
Ozzy was a real mess at this point, and this song was him letting it all out.
One of their best tracks. Did anyone see them when they played that roller rink in Mississauga in ’90? Now that was a show.
A great track off a great and underappreciated album, Hell with the Lid Off. They played at Alfie’s Pub at Crazy Go Nuts University, and DJ Jerome even let DJ Zero do a session after the show, which was stunning.
During my time as a DJ at Clark Hall Pub, this industrial dance single became a sort of pub anthem. Here’s a version they did live in 2004…
And here’s the studio version.
You want angry? You got angry.
I like the rawness of this demo version — next to it, the version on Pretty Hate Machine feels overproduced.
After all that angst, something a little more chill.
You’re playing a new game, with new rules. Hence this song:
And while times may be rough, that’s no reason not to take the high road. Since I’ve already got a song called “The High Road” on this list, here’s an equally fitting tune:
This was gaining momentum on the charts at the time, and if it weren’t for the lyrics about being broke (I was working at Microsoft at the time, and my bank account was super-flush), it would fit perfectly. I’m going with the full-on F-word version, not that “Eff You” or “Forget You” nonsense.
My personal anthem whenever I didn’t feel like getting out of bed at the time. “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog,” as they say.
And once I got out of bed, this musical biscuit from a German electronic duo in conjunction with the lyrics guy from The Strokes got me to full speed:
Don’t do it, officer!
Faced with their growing unpopularity, Canadian Prime Minister, Control Freak in Chief, and seller-out of Canada’s sovereignty to Chinese oil interests Stephen Harper and his party, the Conservatives, are pinning their re-election hopes on a “give cash back to voters” strategy.
The bad news is that it’ll work, for the same reasons as those observed by Rick Mercer about Rob Ford’s fan base:
“We would rather have a guy on crack than a mayor who will raise our taxes. We don’t care if he drives his Escalade drunk through the city; we care that he wants to privatize garbage collection. We will vote for a gerbil if we get a dollar back.”
In case you missed it, here’s the Rick’s Rant on Ford Nation:
He should be happy that he doesn’t work at Hobby Lobby.
How much damage did Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes do to his parents’ house and possessions over the comic strip’s ten-year span? According to this recent paper published in the Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science (PNIS), just under $16,000 in repair and replacement costs, based on present-day prices. The accumulated costs are displayed in the graph below, where you can see that most of them were incurred in the strip’s first year:
Click the graph to see it at full size.
If the paper’s writing style or the acronym of the publication — PNIS — got your “science senses” tingling, give yourself a pat on the back. PNIS is a humor publication in the guise of a scientific journal in the same way The Onion takes on the form of a newspaper. According to their About & FAQ page, PNIS articles fall into one of three categories:
My inner 14-year-old was pleased to see this graph charting the projected readerships for HARD PNIS and SOFD PNIS in their introductory editorial:
Click the photo to see the source.
To celebrate the first Halloween in my new home, I can’t think of a more appropriate costume than the one pictured above. In case you don’t get the reference, it’s from the Simpsons episode where Marge, deep in the throes of a gambling addiction, forgets to make a costume for Lisa’s state pageant where she’s supposed to be Florida. Homer ends up making the costume pictured above, and when Lisa tries it on, she says “I’m not a state; I’m a monster!“.
Here’s another example:
Click the photo to see the source.
Where in Tampa can I get this kind of foam?