Everybody east of the Mississippi, be sure turn your eyes to the sky tommorrow and wish J-Ho a save flight as he wings over you on his way to the land of ice and snow, of the midnight sun where the hot springs flow. J-Ho, you’ll be happy to know I just spent 20 mintues finding these lines from “Masters of the Universe,”

Teela: Don’t say goodbye. Say Good Journey.
Duncan: It is an old Eternian saying. Live the journey, for every destination is but a doorway to another.
Julie Winston: Good Journey.

Speaking of fond fairwells, let me say a few words about our dear Uncle Grambo of whatevs.org shuffling off this Midwestern Coil, bound for great things shilling for Viacom in NYC. CBGBs closing doesn’t make me sad, ’cause hey, there are a million shitty, filthy bars in the world and having a punk landmark is an effing lame contradiction. But there is only one Mark Graham, and even if she doesn’t deserve them anymore, Detroit needs more guys like him, not less.

I can only imagine more of the FOW crew will slowly leak out of town and while if you’re looking for an effing lame contradiction, a guy who left town complaining about people moving away from Detroit is a fine speciemen, but whatevs — Did you know Peabs got married? What’s next will Krengals say something smart? Will Gorilla stop talking really fast when he’s drunk? Will Retrobuzz be less surly? Will Tiz not tiz? I’ll admit I suddenly have a lot of time on my hands, but it worries me all the same.

Boy howdy! Have I ever got a treat for you! For the first time in Barber College history, we have a guest blogger in the house! And not just any guest blogger, but our esteemed friend A. from Apophasis Now! While I was busy watching one of the most exciting weekends in Michigan sports history, A. took one for the team and ventured into MySpaceland to find some of the hottest hotties ever. All I have to add is this: A.: 1, Skillet: 0. I’ll let A. take it from here.

Oh, hello. We didn’t see you there.

First of all, in case any of you fuckers think I don’t have better things to do than trawl around MySpace all weekend (or ever), let me assure you that I do. I don’t have an account there nor on any other trendy meeting place for trendy young people. I am not trendy.

That being said, I found this week’s hotties — the extremely hardcore Christian metal band, Skillet — through a New York Times article about conservative Christians and their fear that they are losing teenagers to sin and debauchery. On the front lines of the battle to win them back, apparently, are Skillet. Here is what the critics are saying:

They have grown from strength to strength over the 10 years of our relationship. They renew again and again with new approaches and new presentations. Yeah!!!11 Jesus RAWKS!!!!!1!!1!!

Skillet has over the years been able to maintain an energy to their music that is there regardless of whether its source is from [sic] a keyboard, guitar, or a typical Cooper scream. A band with energy and unnecessary prepositions! It’s about time.

This record is everything but a letdown. Oh, boy.

Where to start.

Just look at them! I try not to criticize other people’s fashion choices, but I have seen mullets more dignified than that long-haired-rodent-looking thing on top of the frontman’s head. Nonetheless, they do have an impressive (?) 51,456 “friends” at the time of this writing, the first ten of which appear to be religious-themed music groups, only one of which has a goofier name: DECYFER DOWN, a name so goofy I will not even bother to speculate how many seconds that group would remain standing in a rawk-off with actual metal band, Slayer. Less than eight, though, for sure.

I will give the commentors toward the bottom of the page the benefit of the doubt and assume none is over the age of eleven (but I will suggest for their own good that they learn to read and write before puberty).

And we haven’t even started on the music yet. Oh, yes. The music. It loads without your permission and if you want to stop it, you have to scan the page frantically until you spot the “pause” button on the little music player. I am neither a musician nor a music critic, so I will not attempt to explain exactly what makes the streaming audio on Skillet’s MySpace profile sound like what would happen if you took the worst radio station I listened to in high school and then made it about 68 percent worse and then added a precious air of moral superiority. I will say only that it does.

More than that, it feels phony in a way that goes beyond the phoniness of the average crappy mainstream music act. Sin-free metal is like sugar-free cake. It simply should not be. If you say it’s as good or better than the real stuff, you are a liar.

Which brings us to the final insult: Skillet members think they are doing God’s work.

People are douchey for all kinds of reasons. Musicians doubly so. But when they claim to have the full support, endorsement, and inspiration of a higher power and the best they can do is produce a crappy imitation of already crappy mainstream metal music, well, that is just offensive. If St. Peter is playing this shit at the pearly gates, I reserve the right to hop a southbound train in search of soul choirs, old men with banjos, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Tom Waits, all of whom have had fascinating things to say about God over the years and have done so with style, class, and raw songwriting talent.

In sum, Skillet will surely leave you shouting Jesus’s name to the skies, but it won’t be for the reason they think.

First of all, your goddamn MySpace Hottie of the Week is coming sooner or later. You have to remember that I’m using the loosest possible definition of the phrase “of the week,” and, in this case, it means “occurring almost once a week, but not quite - pretty much whenever I feel like doing it, actually.” Trust me when I tell you that writing a Hottie episode is much more difficult and time-consuming than it appears. I’m kind of like Jesus when I write them. Dig?

In lieu of that, I’m providing a link to one of the greatest blogs on the Interthingies, Fire Joe Morgan. I’ve been a big fan of FJM for some time now, but I’ve held off on linking to it, because it’s targeted at a rather specific audience - baseball nerds, to be exact. Not just people who like baseball, but people who enjoy baseball statistics. The premise of the site is simple: professional baseball commentators are very bad at commenting on baseball. While most baseball journalists out there are at least competent at stringin’ words into sentences, when it comes to content, they haven’t a clue. That’s where FJM comes in. Combining impeccable grammar and spelling, wry senses of humor, and a whole lot of baseball nerdspeak, the cats at FJM routinely dismantle the arguments of some of the nation’s worst writers and TV personalities, of whom ESPN’s Joe Morgan is undoubtedly the most egregious offender. Quite often it’s a fish-in-a-barrel situation involving a barely literate former player like John Kruk, who somehow gets paid to talk about baseball, but if shooting fish in barrels were as entertaining as this site, I’d watch that, too. It’s high time you visit FJM.

Since a lot of the dorky stuff on baseball statistics probably won’t mean much to most of you, try and acquaint yourself with, at the very least, Moneyball and Bill James before visiting FJM. If all else fails, remember that Barry Bonds is really good at baseball, and David Eckstein is really not good at baseball.

Oh, and here’s just a taste of what FJM has to offer (from yesterday’s post): “The day after a sports team loses in the playoffs, people suddenly have a lot of (typically intangible) insights as to why that team was always destined to fail in the first place. It’s a combination of hindsight and psychology that I am deciding to call hindpsychology, because I am a fan of sports portmanteaus (or as I call them, sportmanteaus).”

No, they’re not just baseball nerds; they’re also word nerds. That second sentence might be one of the best sentences in the history of the English language. If I were in the business of assigning points for such things, they’d get 50 billion for that meta-portmanteau.

Go Tigers.

Sorry this week’s Hottie is running late, but I spent my entire day off sleeping and catching up on sleep. I swear it’ll be up quicker’n you can catch a greased rooster on a hot tin roof, as Gramps used to say. (Gramps’s metaphors often did not make logical sense, but, strangely, they were impactful on us youngsters. Maybe it had something to do with the way his glass eye glistened in the hot Arkansas sun when he told his stories. All that’s beside the point, however.) I know you’re all waiting for the new episode with bated breath, but your breath will just have to remain bated until I get around to writing it.

In the meantime, enjoy a new feature I’m introducing. It’s called Hey, Wha’ Happened?, and it will soon sweep the nation. Here’s how it works: I’ll describe a real-life situation in which something happened, and it’s your job to dream up what happened! In the comments section, of course. Responses can be from a sentence or two to a few paragraphs. It’s all up to you! So get your creative writing caps on (mine is a khaki fedora with a purple ribbon), and get writing! (Please make this work, or else I’ll be forced to retire this AND the MySpace Hottie of the Week!)

—–

I was driving through my old neighborhood sometime in August, and I passed this filthy music store where my brother used to take drum lessons and where I would go occasionally to look at the guitars. One thing you should know about the store: It’s filthy, but not in a cool, grungy, hey-we’re-so-cool-we-don’t-care-what-this-place-looks-like kind of way. It’s filthy in an eww-we’re-disgusting-and-slovenly-people kind of way. In short, it’s just not rock-n-roll there. So anyway, I was driving by in August, and the sign out front said, “MEMORIAL CONCERT FOR 9/11 HERE.” I’m assuming “HERE” meant the large abandoned lot next to the store, because the store itself was rather small. I didn’t think much of it at the time. It was a nice idea, I guess. But then I drove past the same store a few days ago (this is early October, remember), and the sign had been changed to “9/11 CONCERT CANCELLED.” Clearly the sign had been up for an entire month, and the store was still in business. So why was the concert cancelled? Or, in other words, hey, wha’ happened?

1) Dutch people love a good sale.

2) It’s cold in Michigan in October. I need to leave. (I’m leaving soon!)

3) Tigers!

4) Getting hit in the head with those little chalk cubes you use when you’re playing pool really hurts.

5) Is there anything better/worse than an MTV reality show?

6) I gotta work all weekend. This week’s Hottie episode will have to wait until Monday.

7) I have this FM transmitter thing for my iPod that I use when I’m in my car. Occasionally, when someone or something nearby is broadcasting on the same frequency, it’ll overpower my iPod. When I passed Johnny Law on the way home tonight, I briefly heard the B-Boys’ “Sabotage.” Was 5-0 listening to that song, or was I imagining things?

8) UM-MSU just isn’t that interesting this year, considering the Tigers can eliminate the Yanks the same afternoon. That and MSU’s team isn’t very good.

9) [Insert your own observation!]

As always, if you happen across some hot hotties on MySpace, send me a link! I’m off to bed.

A’ight, ev’rybody. I took a week off to regroup, and now I’m back in bidness. I’ll admit that the last episode I wrote wasn’t quite up to snuff, but I swear this week’s will kick some serious fuckin’ ass. This one is so good that I’ll stop writing right now and dive right in. But first, many thanks to Jon for finding this hottie for me.

(This is the obligatory “sic” disclaimer.)

Okay, here he is. Meet $trickly Buizne$$, quite possibly the most ridiculous human being in the history of the universe. Scratch that - probably the most ridiculous grouping of matter and energy in the history of the universe. And that includes Pluto! God broke the mold after he made $B. Scratch that - there couldn’t have possibly been a mold in use. $B is a work of art. He’s so ridiculous that he can’t even incorrectly spell his name correctly. The following would have been acceptable: $trickly Bizne$$, $trickly Buzine$$, and $trickly Bidne$$. By spelling the word as “Buizne$$,” $B immediately loses all of his street cred.

Where do I go from there? Well, just look at this picture (I’ve left the pics full-size to preserve their impact):

$B captions the photo thusly: “we tote dem thangz in da 813.” Da 813, in case you don’t know, is Tampa, Fla. I really don’t know much about guns, but I must admit that pistol thingie is pretty bad-ass (If you know what it’s called, lemme know in the comments (I think it’s a 9 mm, but I dunno what that thing on the barrel is)). But the sniper rifle? What kinda gangsta carries a sniper rifle? I’ve seen both Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and I don’t remember Doughboy or O-Dog carryin’ no sniper rifles. Where do you conceal somethin’ like that when 5-0 rolls up?

Moving on:

Seriously? How many people do you think these guys have killed? Vegas set the over-under at one, and I recommend taking the under.

And then:

The caption? “HOZ DAT BAD AZZ WHITEBOI??” I try so hard not to make fun of poor spelling, and I know $B is trying to ghetto-fy his language, but when you only spell 7.8% of the words you write correctly, you have a problem on your hands. Oh, and why does it look like he has a vagina on his chin?

Jesus, I haven’t even gotten to his “About me” section yet and this is already the longest Hottie in history. Anyway… Well, let’s just reproduce the thing in its entirety right here:

Yah wut up dis be yo boi $trickly Buizne$$ aka Joey. All u’ll need 2 kno iz dat imma hu$$la n i luv money,carz, n women. I enjoy hittin da clubz n wilin’ out wit da homeboiz. It ain no secret dat imma flirtatiouz type a guy. I luv all da girlz but I prefer da blak girlz cuz dey gotz it goin’ on. I gotz 2 shout out 2 all muh ppl reppin’ dat 813 n 727 keep it crunk mufuckaZ! I am a producer/rapper, when eva i geta chance i’m makin new beatz n writin’ wordz to dem. I have been producin’ for a while now, i have recently started to record my muzik. I really gotta luv for producin’/writin’ musik that I neva really knew I had. I will also be goin’ to school for Buizne$$ Administration, I would eventually like to be a financial advisor,sale mortgages,and/or do real estate. So to sum it all up I got big planz for my future n dat iz makin’ $$$ cuz round here itz all $trickly Buizne$$ cuuuuz.<

I’m not about to parse all that shit, but if you’d like to, you’ll win some respect from me. Aside from the unique lexicon, there’s nothing too interesting until you get to the bit about him being a producer/rapper. When I read this, I was all, “Holy shit! It can’t be! It is!” That’s because I scrolled over to the embedded music player and saw that the music featured on his profile was, in fact, his own. Worst. Rapper. Ever. He sounds like Pete Nice, if Pete Nice were mentally retarded and rapped with a heaping spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth. I sure hope that real estate career pans out, because you sure as hell ain’t go’ make it as a rapper, cuuuuz.

I usually skip over my hotties’ responses to that stupid survey thing you’ll find on 80% of MySpace profiles, but I won’t in this case. My favorite responses (with my notes in parentheses):

Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year:Make mo money den u foolz can count (I assure you I can count to 12,000.)

Thoughts First Waking Up: Time 2 get on sum femalez (Question for my female readers: Are you in the mood 2 b gotten on first thing in the morning?)

Your Most Missed Memory: chillin’ wit muh dog josiah bak in da dayz RIP CUUUZ (I’ll assume Josiah was his schoolyard chum in Boca who died of leukemia at a young age.)

Pepsi or Coke: soda not good for yah so i drink krystale (Wonderful health advice. Take it to heart, you rich fatties.)

Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: muh grandmaz tea (Now that’s how you be gangsta!)

Do you Sing: nah, i rap (Too easy)

Do you think you are Attractive: hell yah, imma bad azz whiteboi (Even easier)

In the past month have you gone to a Mall: oh yah had 2 cop dem Js (Come again? Do you mean, like, jeans?)

In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: i ate sum but notta box (Hellz yah mufucka! I be eatin Oreos all da time but only in moderation!)

Short or Long Hair (on a girl): eitha az long az da chik izza dime (Couldn’t agree more.)

Weight (on a girl): well proportiond 2 fit dey height (Fatties and beanpoles need not apply.)

All I have to add at this point is “WOW.” In the words of one of the greatest gangsters of all time, “English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?”

I realize that $trickly Buizne$$ will probably kill me for writing about him in this fashion, but it was worth it. You’ll all come to my defense, right?

Right?