CAMON Dave Davies You're Better Than That!!

First of all, Joey would’ve totally fucking nailed Celluloid Heroes & now I’m kinda pissed he never did it. But I also wanna take a second to dispel this knee-jerk lazy “The Ramones only ever played 3 chords” bullshit. First of all, I’d estimate about 80% of The Ramones catalog is made up of songs with more than 3 chords. If you play guitar you understand that once you learn your major chords – particularly barre chords as Johnny famously only played – it makes no difference skills wise whether you play 2 chords or 20 chords, it’s just an artistic decision re: how you want the song to be. And while it’s always been a funny shortcut to a punchline to highlight how simple The Ramones’ were conceptually, it’s a bummer that a guitar played as talented & experienced as Dave Davies would push this nonsense.

Either way, like I said now I’m just furious he never did record it; Joey Ramone had a voice of an angel that would’ve been perfect for the song.

I also can't believe that of all the covers The Ramones did, they never did a Kinks song which is a shame because they always were happy to spread the word re: their love of The Kinks and what an influence they were on them. So we'll hafta settle for Mary Ramone's post-Ramones band's cover of The Kinks stone-cold classic Better Things:

BREAKING NEWS: Broken Clock Right

Boss: Who do you read?

George Costanza: I like Mike Lupica.
Boss: Mike Lupica?
George Costanza: He's a sports writer for the Daily News. I find him very insightful...
Boss: No, no, no. I mean authors.

I've banged away at Mike Lupica for years over here in Xmastimeland, but apparently he read my post from last week saying the exact thing and has deiced to hitch himself to my star with this Tweet which, let's be honest, is the smartest thing he could've done in the situation.

Worlds Colliding.

I'm *guessing* this is the closest we'll ever come to anything resembling any sort of Paul McCartney/George Costanza connection.

The New Yorker du Jour

This is an incredibly succinct, silly but clever, just really fun joke. No notes!  🤗 🤣

It's so good it reminds me of a funny bit from Only Fools and Horses, which as you people know is the ultimate compliment from me, when we're first introduced to evil-as-a-snake police inspector Roy Slater:

Slater: Do you remember when we was kids, used to go over the pond to play at pirates? You were Dan Tempest – Trigger was Long John Silver. And what character did I play Del?
Del: You played the bloke what walked the plank.
Slater: Oh, yeah! The bloke that walked the plank! I was always the bloke that walked the plank, wasn’t I? I must of been in and out of that pond more times than a duck’s head. I always wanted to be Bluebeard!
Del: Well you should have said so.
Slater: I did say, but you’d never let me!
Del: I did – once!
Slater: Oh yeah I remember. That was the day Bluebeard had to walk the plank.

My Humble Take On a Classic.

CLASSIC HERE.

Jerry!

I few months ago I rolled my eyes at Jerry Seinfeld deciding to bitch & moan about "PC culture" blah blah blah; yesterday on Tom Papa's podcast he said:

Now, Seinfeld has a new perspective. “Does culture change, and are there things I used to say that I can’t say [because] everybody’s always moving [the gate]? Yeah, but that’s the biggest, easiest target,” he explained to Papa. “You can’t say certain words, whatever they are, about groups — so what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that, to just be a comedian.” Ultimately, he’s “officially” taking back his previous claim that “the extreme left has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy.”

I like to shit on people when they fuck up but I also like to point out when they've done good, so good for Seinfeld in this day & age of "never admit you were wrong no matter what!! always double down on terrible ideas!!" for simply saying "hey you know what, I was wrong 🤷‍♂️"; meanwhile I'll point out that the world didn't atop spinning on its axis because someone admitted they'd said something stupid.

Interesting.

Hey, here's some bullshit "not all MAGA people are racists!" bullshit, enjoy yourselves.

It’s just always super-interesting that the party of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”/”we don’t need no damn help from the government!” is the exact same one who finds it VERY IMPORTANT to makes sure that above all else the president should favor policies which specifically ensure that party’s main demographic will always be at the top of the heap. 🤔🤷‍♂️

Questions. I Have Them.

Is it just me or can everything Trump says these days be answered with “sir, this is an Arby’s”?

All Aboard! (dear god am i out of post title ideas after almost 36,000 of these things) 🤮

Twitter has mostly been a fucking dumpster fire ever since Trump Wannabe Baby Bitch Elon took over, but then you see something like this pop up & it makes it all worthwhile. Almost.

A thread of beautiful vintage British Railways posters that capture the romance of rail travel and Britain's scenic gems.

Do yourselves a favor & see them all here!

Garfield du Jour

Weirdly, Curiously Off Broadway Play Ideas. I Have Them.

A one-act one-man play of a guy on hold waiting to get on Mike and the Mad Dog; over the course of 90 minutes we watch him spiral downward as secrets are revealed & lives are upturned, leading to more & more hilarity by the minute.

LOOKING FOR INVESTORS! 💰 💰 💰 💰

Announcements. I Have Them.

Here's a short film my buddy Shep & I are using to apply to art school. WISH US LUCK!!! 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞 

So Guys...

...I've been waiting years & years for someone else to mention that Ron Darling sounds exactly like Keith Hernandez but I'm starting to think it's just not going to happen.

#XOTD2009: A Compendium

Here's my favorite things WITHOUT COMMENT! from posts of mine throughout September 10, 2009 October 15, 2009 AND YES YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!!

Listening to a woman from Germany use the word "schlepping."

And so far from what I can tell, I am a young, somehow-unemployed-yet-with-enough-money-to-go-out-every-night guy with a hot new super-cool girlfriend who inexplicably loves sports, beer and video games and an ex-girlfriend who is balls-hot and can't seem to go a few hours with breaking into my room and acting like a complete Victoria's Secret model slut, and my days are filled by aimlessly walking around without being able to go thirty seconds without having an outrageously hot stranger dressed like a whore with humongous titties beg me to fuck her.

Also, I think this will be the subject of my first rap hit. I ain’t written it yet, but I’m sure that one of the verses will end with “..and even Olden Polynice.”

I would advise Ms. McCain (Meghan, if you're(a) nasty) (whore like she is) to not panic; a well-placed "leaked" sex tape can solve a lot of problems. How do you think I graduated high school?

I'm sure the list of "rejected NFL ownership applications" is a lot longer today than "one," and I've never heard another potential buyer spend what I'm sure will be months bitching about it to millions of people every day.

Say the Word I'm Thinking Of

One of the many incredible tings we got from The Beatles' GET BACK documentary was how seriously they took writing the lyrics as they were learning the songs; in all my years of writing songs and teaching them to my bandmates not once did anybody bother to ask what the words were unless it was five minutes before a show and they suddenly became super-concerned about what the actual backups they'd been pretending to sing at practice were. Meanwhile, The Beatles were constantly stopping whatever they were playing to carefully walk through the lyrics with each other and writing down draft after draft. Do all bands do this? This shit was news to me; I guess that's just the super-thin line of success that separated me & The Beatles.

Learning the Hard (heh heh heh) Way

Living in a building with mirrors across from the elevators means you quickly learn to not be checking out women as they're walking out of the elevator in front of you.

I'll Say This.

I never have and probably never will be convinced to try truffles but if you name your product TRUFF then I must admit you've moved me a little closer to trying truffles.

When Shep Just Can't Stomach Another High School Football Story

 

OH OH

I don’t really know or care what this shithead blathering away about...

but I do know someone who will NOT be pleased:

IN Trump's Defense...

...to be fair, who amongst us doesn't remember Lincoln hawking Gatling Guns during his stump speeches while he was running for prez?

It's Gonna Get Worse Before it Gets Worse

Based on how every single day Trump seems to somehow be getting even more revolting as a human being and there's absolutely no signs of anyone asking him to pump the brakes a bit, this seems truer now than back in July when I wrote it:

...it seems as if for tens of millions of Republicans, electing a black man president somehow "broke the seal" on demanding our candidates be somewhat "decent" and "normal"; in their eyes electing someone who's black somehow gave them license to say "fuck it, we can just push the most repulsive fucker we can find to carry out our most disgusting shit against people", since in their eyes being black was an even bigger crime.

 

And I'll bet good money it's even truer a week from today, you can bet $$$$ on that shit.

Thank God for Jeff Barry

I've posted the full interview clip of Jeff Barry talking about working with Phil Spector a few times over the years, and I've always been in love with this impromptu run-through of Da-Doo Ron Ron he does while explaining how he'd written it with his wife/songwriting parter Ellie Greenwich. So it turns out that besides writing such stone-cold classics such as Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Da Doo Ron Ron, Then He Kissed Me, Be My Baby, and River Deep - Mountain High, Barry just sitting there running thru a DIFFERENT version of one those massive hits is still a better song that 99% of songs ever made! Incredible; I would sprint to the record store tomorrow and pay whatever $ for a full-on version of this!!!! 🤗🥲

CAN ONE OF YOU RICH PEOPLE FUCKING PONY UP SOME $$CASH$$ AND GET JEFF BARRY TO RECORD A FULL VERSION OF THIS VERY SOON PLEASE?!?!?! (he's 86!).

 

Life Can Be Long

As a human being, your best hope is to eventually die in a world you wouldn’t recognize as a child. - XMASTIME, just 3 weeks ago.

Now I see this; this woman was born 3 years after the Civil War & she literally may have heard Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, which is bananas.😲 🤯

“Nothing is the same, everything is changed.” Florence Pannel, born in 1868, interviewed in 1977. What an incredible accent. pic.twitter.com/fkqBenD4LC

— Bobbie (@bo66ie29) October 12, 2024

Speaking of Martin Scorcese

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who's been screaming for decades how weird it is that Casino is so similar to Goodfellas.

Xmastime So Sayeth, So Sayeth Xmastime

The brain trust at Seinfeld didn't make too missteps throughout its 9-year run but they wildly overestimated how much we'd ever give a shit about anything having to do with Crazy Joe Davola. 😴😴😴😴