We Are Moving

That is right, PopScoff is moving to its own website now. Please update your bookmarks and keep visiting us at www.popscoff.com. The new site is fairly plain right now, but changes are coming as soon as this semester ends.

life in d(rive)

My personal blog has two references to a favourite musician of mine, Brendan Benson. Imagine my surprise when I was loading the dishwasher last night and I hear his song "cold hands, warm heart" on a commercial. I looked up to see an advertisement for a new Ford vehicle. There was also a brief snippet that said "life in d[rive]" which is very close to another song title of his "life in the d." I thought it apropos to have a local Detroit artist doing a Ford commercial. However, I felt that internal tug of war when a beloved musician's music is used in advertisements or television etc. The increased recognition could boost revenues for the struggling, lesser known artists. But then will they be lured away to create more mainstream, less creative music?

In the end I say play away! Musicians got in to the industry because of a love of music. For the most part, they wanted people to hear it, otherwise it would have only been the four walls of the garage that heard them. If they end up selling out, there are always creative, new musicians to take their place. As for Brendan, I trust him to continue making the kind of music I love. Check out the commercial. Does anyone wonder what mac had to pay to have the double ad (ipod in a car commercial)?

I took this picture of BB in Boulder, CO when I was standing within spitting distance. Good times.

Not Your Average Super Hero

Speaking of the "Super Hero", Last night I was over at these girls' house. I was not really all that familiar with any of them as we had just met a little earlier. We were out for one roommates birthday, and ended up at their house later for cake... You know.

While we were there, they start pulling out blankets cuz its winter. A few blankets are handed out to a few of the girls, they snuggle in. I am fine in my fleece, and start digging into my sliver of ice cream cake. As soon as I got my first spoonful in, I hear one of the girls in the room refer to their blank as 'Captain Midnight.' All of us were trading looks almost laughing. I made sure to ask if that is what she really called her blanket. She responded yes and that she had gotten it from this guy, and he called it captain midnight.

WHAT?!!!!

I hope she didn't think I was rude for laughing, but I wouldn't get near a blanket some guy referred to as captain midnight. Does anyone else think that such an endearing term for a blanket pretty much indicates it is off limits...

Leather Backpack

Who is the genius that invented the leather backpack? What a brilliant use of a dead cow. Nothing complements my black LA Gear hightops like the leather backpack. Here are the top 5 things I keep in my leather backpack. I choose to keep these things because they seems like the types of things that should be found in a leather backpack.

1) Yellow Sony Sports Walkman cassette tape player.
2) Mix tape my brother made for me when I went to the juvenile detention centre.
3) Kleenex - balled up and stuck in the bottom corners.
4) Cheese Strings.
5) Old leaky fruit - preferably an apple or orange.

My leather backpack isn't as big as the one pictured above. So if you want get me a bigger one and more stuff to go along with it that would be nice. I have lots more important stuff that needs to be packed around with me.

Tom Cruise is a Moron

Tom Cruise just purchased a Sonogram machine for his pregnant girlfriend Katie Holmes. In the linked story, we are told that these machines run from $15,000 to $200,000 US. I am guessing that a man like Tom who is going to buy one of these machines that will be totally useless to his girl, probably dished out for the best one.

My wife is an Ultrasound Sonographer. She went to school for 2.5 years to do this and it was an intensive study. How is someone like Katie Holmes going to make use of this machine? Even if she put in 8 hours a day for the 2.5 years, by the time she figures it out her kid is going to be running around and there will be a much easier way to tell if it is a boy or girl.

This just helps prove that celebrities are out of touch. Money can buy you many things in this world. Some of these things include friends, power and useless toys. Excluded from this list is common sense.

Sam the Ugliest Dog

The real live Ren, known as Sam the Ugliest Dog, is no longer.

RIP you nastly little thing.

Previously on PopScoff.

fashion disasters

I'm no fashionista, but there is one fashion faux pas that really drives me bonkers. I cannot stand to see women wearing nylons with sandals or open toe shoes. Seriously women, your legs may look tanned, but the seam by your toes gives it all away. If you can't part with your nylons then please, please, please wear closed shoes.

And for the men, please don't wear white socks with your black dress shoes. It's tacky.

What gets you???

Propaganda Music

"If you are going to make propaganda music, you gotta make it good!" This is probably one of the worst songs I have ever heard. I think these guys need to take some lessons from Ashley Simpson. I wonder, how old was the marketing team that thought this would persuade America's youth in their favor?

The funny thing is that they are trying to sell this crap on their website. If you really want a message spread like wildfire on the internet, give it away for free! But something this bad is like expecting someone to take home your soiled undies from a garage sale.

Curse of the Warrior Princess

In the past week I have had the fortune of attending a couple of concerts that I really enjoyed for the most part. The first was to see Cuff the Duke as he played with Hawksely Workman. As you can tell from the fact that Did not create a link for Hawksely, I wasn't that fond of his portion of the act. Cuff the Duke put on an incredible show. This past week I also had the pleasure of seeing The Most Serene Republic as they played with Broken Social Scene They both put on really cool shows. MSR, having never heard them, it was a pleasant surprise. Their sounds was almost like a ben gibbard/decemberists vocal, with a pretty diverse sound and really edgy beats. I really like it but had a hard time watching the singer march and prance around in his beatles-esque sargent peppers jacket. He was really animated to the point that it was over the top and even a bit contrived. A huge part of his act was marching around and beating the symbols while he wasn't singing, with whatever he could grab. Trombones, his hands, and he even ran off stage and brought out a prop of a mop. The best part was that it was clean... so they must actually bring the mop on tour. WOW, that's novel.

Anyway, the real downer of the evening was my imposed companions for the evening. Not the people I came with, they were great. It was the women that seemed to work their way right next to my eardrum. During the Hawksley Workman set, she was actaully screaming to have his babies. I didn't think people really said that. I thought it was the age old joke, but I sensed some sincerity. My favorite by far was during the Broken Social Scene set (which was absolutely phenomenal). This girl wedged her way right in front of me, so close that I had a really hard time keeping the stubble on my face from grabbing her hair. Above and beyond that though, I was privy to her true character. She was the one, and only... XENA-Warrior Princess. As their songs came to a close all I was hearing was this screaching warrior cry right in my ear. I don't know if I could even phonetically spell out the war cry. Sort of a AI-AI-AI-AI- AAAIIIIIIhhhhhhh. I don't know, watch one episode and you will have it down I am sure.

Opressing the Stash

The following is a comment I posted on Me Vs. the World. It is a blog with only one posting, which happens to be on a topic I hold close to my heart. I thought I would share my comments and views with everyone, so you know where I stand on this sensitive topic.



I have found that a properly groomed and developed moustache will not damage my wife's upper lip as the longer it gets, the softer it gets.

Did you know that the current cultural view of men with moustaches is really just a backlash from negative association with the hate-monger likes of Stalin, Hitler and Reynolds. After any great and terrible regime, there is an over-compensation that occurs which is unfair. Take a look at extreme feminism. These feminist actual put on a machismo attitude that results in the hatred and oppression of men. Yes, this means they have become the very thing they fought against.

It is the same with the moustache. The anti moustache coalition was formed in the mid 20th Century as a means for fighting hatred which was then represented in a moustache. In doing so, the moustache has be left hanging in the realm of molesters and bad cops.

The disturbing thing is that the coalition has lost sight of their initial vision and started hating the moustache, not the evil it represented.

As we have entered a new millennium the evil that a moustache represented has become obscured and ultimately lost to an irrelevant one. We need to fight for the self-respect of moustache wearing men. It is our duty, as those who have been entrusted as guardians of facial hair to bring it out of oppression.

Finally, something to play in my hummer!!!

"Back then they call me K-fed, but you can call me "daddy" instead". No Federline I think I'll continue to refer to you as 'king-dudu head of stinky pants lane"...but for those of you who havn't passed judgement yet, heres a link to download a clip of his dope track which leaked it's way onto the net (like feces through a soggy diaper!!!) ENJOY!! It's like Brian Austin Green is happening all over again! except this time I hope to make it through without all the image bearing posters, t-shirts and speedo's (one and I hardly ever wear it).

Awkward Part II

Just so Eyun doesn't feel alone in awkward interaction on a Friday night, I'll add on to this. I ventured out to a party with relative strangers last night. I'm getting acquainted with the group that I was meeting up with, when a completely random stranger comes up and begins a conversation with us. I have to give the guy credit for trying but his opening line was "Can I ask you a question?" He then proceeds to tell us his friend's fiancee wants him to throw out all his pictures of ex-girlfriends... and what our opinions are of this... should he do it, not do it etc. However, he tries to drag this out for at least twenty minutes, not picking up on our social cues that we are done with that particular discussion. He even gets offended when one member of the group asks "is this really a friend or is it you?" He turns to me and says "Why is she attacking me?" I retort "She's not... but you really are asking the wrong people about this because we don't really have a need to keep pictures of ex's." Questioning then ensues about whether we really are free of ANY ex-boyfriend pictures. I'm getting the third degree from a guy wearing white socks with black dress shoes. We try in vain to start up other conversations as politely as possible, but he continues to stare at us intently and interrupt in a lame attempt to steer us back to the photo conversation. The awkwardness was piled on when another fellow introduces himself, sits down, stares at us but doesn't say a word. I felt like I had entered the social awkwardness party of the year. The guy eventually leaves only to reappear ten minutes later with yet another "question" for us. At that point we decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to just leave the party.

Awkward

Last night when I was out for dinner in Banff, I went in to use the restroom before leaving. When I got in there, I saw I guy standing at the middle Urinal. I thought to myself, "Why does he have to pee in the middle? Doesn't everyone enjoy a bit of a buffer between them and the guy peeing next to him?" As I got closer, I noticed that the first urinal was out of order, so his position was fully justified, but this didn't erase the fact that there was no buffer between us.

As I started taking care of business, doing the usual stare straight forward and pretend you are alone, I heard an INXS song start playing on the radio;

Don't ask me
What you know is true
Don'’t have to tell you
I love your precious heart
I
I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
And they could never tear us apart

Please, no! Why does there need to be love songs played in the male restroom? Here we were, two strangers whose worlds collided in a restroom and INXS has to make the experience a little bit creepy. What is one supposed to do in a situation such as this? Slightly uncomfortable becomes very uncomfortable as it becomes painfully obvious that we are staring straight forward to keep our worlds from colliding any closer. Bathroom manners needs to be addressed, both to bathroom patrons and managers.

If you ever get the chance to see Yoorinal, it is a pretty goodhumorousus look at this type of thing.

Anyway, here is a live version of the song. I am not sure if it is even INXS or not, but the song is the same.

...I am thinking... uh... blonde... maybe blue eyes..

This little number is over the top. I stumbled onto a link to Prussian Blue today. The perfect little blonde haired blue eyed child musicians, singing the praises of white culture, and fallen heroes from better times long gone. Nothing like a friendly cover to promote your multicultural loathing rants. Read through the lyrics page, I am almost willing to bet mom and dad must be helping out (with the help of other song writers as most of the songs are covers). Down with liberals... they are just trying to filter away your white culture. I found one blog devoted to the band, in which they had to sadly do away with thier comments section because of hate mail. Imagine being "ruthlessly attacked" in the comment section of your very own white supremacist weblog. Tragic...