My 5 Favorite Stolen Pop Culture Phrases

I tend to talk a lot, and my vernacular is littered with (what I think is) clever wit, regional slang and decades old in-jokes that make myself laugh. However, along with those are phrases that I’ve stolen from various pop culture, here’s my favorites that I say far to often.

“Bunch of savages in this town.” This of course is used whenever there’s litter strewn about, dog deposits left next to the sidewalk by inconsiderate dog walkers/owners, really a mess of any kind or when the neighborhood homeless get loud.

“It’s a mystery to be discovered.” If someone ever says that they “wonder why” about something, this is my go to “answer.” It says it all, by saying nothing.

“You’re a big tub of no fun.” I say this constantly. For a long time I forgot that I had stolen it because I’d just said it so much for so long. I should’ve know that deep down, I’d never come up with that on my own.

“You don’t know dick about shit” or alternately “I don’t know dick about shit” is also fairly obvious in its usefulness. I find that when this is said it takes out any tension that was present when either I or the other party doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

The question “What time is it?” will always always ALWAYS be answered with “Four Thirty” much to the dismay and confusion of my very patient girlfriend. She doesn’t actually think it is 4:30 when I say that, she just can’t understand why that’s ALWAYS my answer.

for those playing at home, these phrases are stolen from:
1. Clerks
2. FatChicksInPartyHats.com
3. Scud: the Disposable Assassin
4. Mr. Show
5. the Spin Doctors

ask rad jose : the return

So next week is the somewhat triumphant return of the much anticipated “Ask Rad Jose” segment of my blog. So, in the tradition of Dr. Science, Dan Kennedy and Dylan Wissing I present to you “Ask Rad Jose”! Seriously you may ask me anything (not math) and I will attempt to answer it. For it is true: I have no shame! And I’m super smart, just ask my cats. Just pose a question in the comments section and I will answer them to the best of my ability in my next week “Ask Rad Jose” entry, I’ll do one a week until people stop asking me. Come on, all the cool kids are doing it!

23min of Ska : Commencement

It’s the 23rd, that means it is time for 23min of ska! Yay!

The first of what I hope will be many more podcasts. As I continue I hope to get more in depth with the bands and music used than on this first episode, but this should give you a good idea of the direction of the type of music I will be using as time goes on. I’ll admit I played it a little safe and unoriginal here, but it was while listening to these songs that I got the idea for this show. Once a month, 23 minutes of ska, nothing more, nothing less.

Download it now!

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My 5 Favorite Pictures from PassiveAgressiveNotes.com

Passive Aggressive Notes does what it says on the tin: they post passive aggressive notes, and other humorous notes on their website. I’ve been a fan for a while and here’s my five favorites.

Not Make Friends Ep 89

Just posted the most resent episode of I’m Not Here to Make Friends : a Reality Show Podcast, a podcast I do with my girlfriend about reality television. Episode 89 : Therefore Television is Reality contains references to Hepcat, Mike Viola, Richard Cheese and more geeky-ness from me and features music from Man or Astro-Man?, Less Than Jake, the Jam and bis as we cover Frank the Entertainer in a Basement Affair, Last Restaurant Standing and Project Runway. We’ve changed formats slightly to talk more about what’s going on and all the craziness and less of a full recap, it lends to a shorter and hopefully more entertaining show. And it needs to be that way with us actually covering 6 hours of television this episode! We’re a little off our game after a month break, but it’s still a fun listen.

5 2009 Albums That Renewed My Fan-Boy Faith

I have a problem, I buy too much music. It is a bad habit I’m trying to curb. Part of the problem is, is that I like to own a physical piece of what I’m listening to. As much as I could download for free or cheap, I just can’t bring myself to do it if I have even a little bit of respect for the band. Which brings us to these 5 albums released last year. It might be too much to say that all of these bands were one more bad or unimpressive album away from me calling it a day with them but that thought was in the back of my head. Each of these bands are or were at one time top 10 favorites and part of my fan-boy collector nerdness has a tougher time letting go, so I’m giving it up for 5 bands that made it worth my while this year!

The Fiery Furnaces – I’m Going Away
Fiery Furnaces albums always take a while to grow on me, it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve fallen hard for Bitter Tea. Despite that, I just don’t think I’ll ever fall for their more recent Widow City. Of all of these bands Fiery Furnaces had the most strikes against them. I wasn’t a fan of the previously mentioned Widow City, the “live” album Remember just left me cold and Mathew Friedburger’s solo Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School was a double disc of impenetrableness. This coming from me, who’s favorite Furnaces album is Rehearsing My Choir. Imagine my surprise on how much I not only liked, but absolutely loved I’m Going Away! It reminded me a lot of their first album actually, and that was a welcome sound back when I got it. It was a return to that early style but with all the tricks and experience they’ve picked up along the way. Not only that, but they had the audacity to follow it up 6 months later with Take Me Round Again an album of each of the Friedburger siblings doing solo versions of the songs from I’m Going Away and having it be just as awesome!

Weezer – Raditude
Red was almost the end point for me and Weezer, I’d be happy to listen to my old CDs over and over again and not worry about where they were now if not for 5 songs. The first four were the bonus 4 songs on the Red deluxe version. Those songs are boss! I think the second half of Red was disastrous, dull, most of all, not fun. They shoulda skipped those and put the 4 bonus tracks on the regular version instead. The 5th song that made me want to get Raditude was the lead single “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To”. It was fun and exciting! It also gave Butch Walker another plus in my “Is Butch Walker Awesome or the Cancer That’s Ruining Music” list I have going. Was Raditude the Weezer of yore? Not so much, but it was fun power pop, and that’s mostly what I expect and want from Weezer, so it made me happy and kept me bouncing around with a smile on my face.

Reel Big Fish – Fame, Fortune & Fornication
I still consider We’re Not Happy ‘Til You’re Not Happy to be one of the worst albums I own and Monkeys for Nothin’ and the Chimps for Free to be one of the more worthless releases put out. Not to mention ska-punk covers of 80′s songs were played out by Less Than Jake a decade ago and Regatta 69 already did the best cover of “Talk Dirty to Me” known to modern man. So who knows why I picked this up, but I’m glad I did! It reminds me of what I liked about this band back in ’96. Besides, they did a cover of “Veronica Sawyer”! I can’t hate on that, more to the point, I propose if RBF ever does another cover album that they just rescue nearly forgotten songs from their former contemporaries.

the Mighty Mighty Bosstones – Pin Points and Gin Joints
Not that I didn’t like Medium Rare but we were promised a B-Side/Unreleased tracks compilation with a few new songs, the b-sides that were included were mostly not all that hard to find, and the previously unreleased tracks were only OK. The 3 new songs were totally awesome, especially “Don’t Worry Desmond Dekker”, which only made me long for a full record of new Bosstones’ originals all the more. So on the whole Medium Rare came up lacking. Pin Points and Gin Joints makes up for it and then some. It picks up where Jackknife to a Swan left the listeners and keeps kicking ass until the end. It’s a more grown up Bosstones record, sure, but are the kids still listening to them anyway? It would be a disservice to their writing ability if they tried to stay in their 20′s forever.

Big D & the Kids Table – Fluent in Stroll
This is my favorite album of 2009, and deep down, I can say that before it came out I was more that a little worried that it was going to be terrible. Strictly Rude had some really great songs, but it also has some pretty mediocre ones, and some that went on too long. Also before it came out we were told that it will be featuring Big D’s new sound: a mix of double-dutch, ska, reggae, and soul. It doesn’t fill one with hope. I was so wrong to worry, oh so wrong! This works, it works so well! It’s not ska, but if Big D & the Kids Table aren’t going to be playing ska then I want them playing this!

5 Things You May Not Know About 1209towanda

1209towanda was a band that I was in from about 1999 until 2006, which I considered over when I moved to Los Angeles. To tell the truth 1209towanda is actually a life sentence that no one has any escape from. Now, in honor of posting the first 1209towanda EP on the Musics Page I wanted to do something related to the band. There’s so much people already know, well the fans or friends or anyone who’s heard the same stories over and over again, so I had to go with something different. No one wants to hear how the band was named, how we got our stage names or came up with songs again, that’s boring and old news! The people want to know Five Things They May Not Know About 1209towanda!

The flag in the lower left hand corner of the original art work for the Import Single was supposed to be a German flag but we put the colors in the wrong order, basically making it a Belgium flag on it’s side and stretched oddly. Porkchop Jimmy noticed this months after it had been out.

Porkchop Jimmy’s “thank you” section in the Sugar Packet Solution was not intended by him to be in the actual liner notes of the CD as he didn’t realize what I was asking him for. I just thought it was funny and used it anyway.

The song “Neo-Maxi-Zoom-Dweebie (21)” is usually referred only to as “21″ by the band. The original intent was to introduce this song with a different name every time we played it. The only other name this song ever got called was “I Got Whistled at by a Dutch Whore.” This song also has lyrics that have never been sung publicly.

In the original art work for the 1209towanda shirt there was a monkey jumping out of the way of the big 1209 robot. I just couldn’t draw a decent monkey at the time and scrapped it. I still miss that monkey.

Speaking of the shirt, rumor has it that Direct Factory Outlet Dave has one that was given to him as a gift hanging up in his office. When I heard that it made my day!

Dr. Manette – Dew Unto Others…

Dr. Manette was a ska-punk band from Champagne-Urbana IL who later changed their name doctormanette and put out a record on Chicago’s JUMP UP! label. The first time I saw them is when this 7″ came out. It was at an all day ska show in the Summer of 1996 at a skate park in Rockford IL. It started at noon and went until 10pm. About half way through the show I started to get sleepy and almost took a nap on a skate ramp, but then these guys came on a blew me away! It turns out my friend Mike had had a few classes with one of them, before he went to talk to him after the set he asked me “Hey, you liked them right?” I responded that I did and 15min later Mike turned back up and handed me this record. I asked him how much and he said it was a gift, then later told me that they’d just gave him one because he knew them and that he didn’t have a record player. The 3rd song was on Moon Records’ “Skarmageddon 3: A New Beginning” so it may be familiar.

Side A
Weekend at Bill and Hillarys
Saturday

Side B
Orange Juice
Nothing at All

Artwork
Front Cover, Back Cover, Insert & the Record

5 Restaurants I Miss in Peoria (Not so Much for the Food)

Lou’s Drive-In
The food is your standard drive in fare. Good tenderloins, good fries, nothing to write about, but then comes the root beer. They make their own astounding, awesome, delicious brew with a recipe stolen by some soda Prometheus from the root beer gods themselves. They only open in the the summer so it’s a long wait each year. The best part is that at the end of the season they start selling it by the half gallon so that you can stock up so it won’t be so long of a wait.

The Burger Barge
It is such a goofy place, what with their constant Jimmy Buffett music.The burgers don’t suck, there are plenty of places to get a burger like that in the area, but you’re going for the ambiance and for the chips. Oh yes, those chips are fantastic!

One World Coffee & Cargo
It’s not the food I miss here, but much like the Burger Barge it’s the decor. I saw it change a lot over the years that I lived there and always dug it. It also was a place where one could go to and run into a lot of rad people and make friends. At least that’s how it always was for me. Lots of fond memories.

Richard’s On Main
Ok, it has the same run into rad people as One World, but it has the added bonus of having the best burgers in Peoria (at least the last time I checked). Also they’ll serve you a drink that’s half Guinness Draught and half Framboise Lambic. That my friends is heaven in a glass.

The Peoria Pizza Works
Food, great, I’ve never had a bad meal there. The bar, well stocked and cheap, I’ve gotten good and wasted there when I was basically broke more than a few times. Why did I spend so much time there? Someone convinced the owner to let local bands play there, and that lead to many a good time in the back rooms of this place. Last time I was in Peoria I ended up spending a good chunk of my time there. It’s just awesome!