The Adventures of Begley

Bryan Ferry, from his album Dylanesque, doing Bob Dylan’s...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:47:00 -0800

Bryan Ferry, from his album Dylanesque, doing Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street”

Great song.

Finally, I have found a job. (via benjaminandhisblog)

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:28:10 -0800

Finally, I have found a job.

(via benjaminandhisblog)

Awesome. lickystickypickyme: Because your iPod isn’t spoiled...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:31:54 -0800

Awesome.

lickystickypickyme:

Because your iPod isn’t spoiled enough.
A little hoodie to keep it warm and hip.

ho ho ho h-over here.

I just got really excited for Thanksgiving. Here's why...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:32:54 -0800

So my Aunt Joy really loves and gets into Thanksgiving, which in turn makes everyone else love Thanksgiving because we eat like kings.

This year she got even more into it and emailed everyone who is coming to dinner a menu of what to expect.

Here is the email:

We are thankful for everyone coming over on Thanksgiving and contributing such wonderful food and talents. Here’s what we have for our menu! See you then!

Thanksgiving Day Dinner

Hopkinton, Mass.

November 26, 2009

12:30 p.m. — Appetizers

4:30 p.m. — Cup of soup and salad

5 p.m. — Turkey is presented!

6:30 — Desserts

Appetizers

Delish antipasto platter

Kids’ Favorite Chex Mix

Festive Drink: Apple Cidercar Martini

Dinner

Curried pumpkin soup

Tossed green salad with gorgonzola

Selection of warm dinner rolls and rustic breads

Herb roasted turkey with giblet gravy and Sausage stuffing

Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Vegetables:

— Bountiful Brussel Sprouts

— Autumn Butternut Squash

— Sauteed string beans with bacon bits

— Maple glazed carrots

Cranberry Relish

Desssert Table

Traditional, homestyle pie ala mode:

— Apple or Pumpkin

Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies

I hope everyone is ready.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:26:30 -0800

I hope everyone is ready.

Here’s to us fools that have no meaning… by (mikeflanagan1)

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:44:27 -0800

Very well said.

steveisthereason:

Here’s to us fools that have no meaning…

Posted by mikeflanagan1 on October 23, 2009

Sometimes I wonder if every generation just thinks the music they grew up with is the best, or if what’s popular with young teens today really does absolutely suck. It amazes me how much has changed since I first fell in love with music. I’m not even 20, but the difference between what was getting kids into music when I was 13 and the shitstorm of synth/dance/crunkcore bullshit that kids are getting into now is just baffling.

The very end of the 90’s and first few years of the new millennium saw a wave of goofy, energetic, and often heartbroken suburban kids who didn’t know how to play their instruments (and didn’t try to pretend they did) break into popular music. Kids of all ages (I was about 10 when I discovered Blink182) could relate to the fist-pumping, heart-on-your-tiny-sleeve lyrical content, or at the very least the catchy melodies and twangy guitar lines. Baggy shorts, baby-sized tees, and striped tube socks became badges that connoted membership to a movement that was always seeking new members. No elitism, no self-destructive stigmas, no bullshit. Just catchy music, positive energy, and community.

That’s all dead and nothing can ever bring it back.

Pop-punk posterboys New Found Glory, a band that I will praise until the day I die, is now the most tell-tale example of why the genre they helped thrust into the mainstream will never influence impressionable and desperate young teenagers ever again.

New Found Glory

Ten years ago yesterday (10/20), NFG released their debut full-length Nothing Gold Can Stay on Drive-Thru records, a label that played a huge role in shaping my early music taste but has since gone to shit trying to adhere to the ever-changing (in the worst possible way) “underground” rock scene. NGCS is raw, unpolished, and downright immature, but in a way that foreshadowed an immense amount of maturity-via-immaturity to come from this promising group of five dudes from Coral Springs, FL. Alternative Press named it one of 1999’s influential albums. AP writer Brendan Manley writes foreshowingly, “Like it’s title implies, Nothing Gold Can Stay is the sonic transcript of a glorious, fleeting time for NFG – and for pop-punk. But just as gold never loses its luster, it’s only fitting that 10 years later, Nothing Gold Can Stay still shines.” NFG released their self-titled album in 2000 and Sticks and Stones in 2002. Both became landmark albums in the pop-punk scene. To this day, I can put on Sticks and Stones in my car at any given time and be able to belt out the words to “My Friends Over You” with absolutely anyone who happens to be sitting shotgun at the time.

In 2004, NFG released Catalyst, an angrier, more explorational follow-up to Sticks and Stones. The album saw the band fidgeting and veering slightly off the pop-punk path. It seemed as though, if only for a brief moment, they were tired of wearing the pop-punk tag and shed their old skin. This was the same year that Blink182 released their dramatically polarizing, relatively experimental untitled album. The fact that the album was fantastic and just what maturing Blink fans needed (whether they let themselves know it or not) is beside the point; 2004 watched two of pop-punk’s most monumental figureheads slide away from their signature sounds that propelled a movement. This wouldn’t have been a bad thing had the music scene remembered to take its ADD meds. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

The band rediscovered and even embellished its sunny energy on the tragically underrated Coming Home in 2006. The album was decidedly happy and carried nothing but uplifting messages throughout. NFG’s guitarist and de-facto leader Chad Gilbert said the songs came out that way because he and lead singer Jordan Pundik were both engaged and everyone in the band was comfortable and happy, for the most part. The album didn’t sell as well as expected. By 2006, kids were just not interested.

The bands that were influenced by bands like NFG were marketing a new kind of “underground” pop music (oxymoron) that twisted and mutated any aspect of pop-punk that could be sold as a gimmick. Personally (anyone who knows me knows this might stem from a personal vendetta), I blame Fall Out Boy bassist/frontman (not lead singer) Pete Wentz for getting that ball of dung rolling. In all fairness, Fall Out Boy started as a pop-punk band with decent intentions. Singer Patrick Stumps melodies are solid and catchy and Wentz’s lyrics, though they may be empty, are occasionally clever in a way that one might be able to squeeze out a few drops of meaning. But once Fall Out Boy landed heavy rotation on MTV (or at least MTV’s distant cousin who lives up in the high-200 channels and still plays music videos), Wentz began to market his face and sell his image. The music isn’t as terrible as I sometimes like to let on, but I have an awfully hard time extracting any sense of honesty from it. Wentz has a knack for knowing what’s going to be popular with early highschoolers a second or two before it happens, and he uses it to his full advantage. Pop-punk bands in the late 90’s/early 2000’s lacked this foresight, and didn’t give a fuck. They just made energetic, therapeutic music for themselves in which others happened to find similar meaning. I have trouble taking a band seriously whose least talented member is placed smack-dab in the middle of t-shirts and promo shots simply because he is the best looking.

Furthermore, the sense of innocence and revered youth is gone from pop-punk entirely. Popular motifs like sex, drugs, and alcohol replaced heartbreak, (reasonable) teenage rebellion, and fuck you ex-girlfriend. Some examples of song titles from one of the most popular pop-punk bands of today are “Damned if I Do Ya (Damned if I Don’t)” and “Holly (Would You Turn Me On?).” Both songs are by All Time Low, whose name came from the NFG song “Head On Collision” off Sticks and Stones. I don’t want to sound like a dad and say today’s music is the devil, and I’m not trying to hold All Time Low responsible for bastardizing the genre (not single-handedly, anyway). In fact, they started out with the best of intentions too. But growing popularity can do awful things to a band’s integrity. If they tried to tell me they weren’t marketing toward a very specific demographic (one that happens to dictate the charts), I would call bullshit right in their faces and fight them.

Pop-punk bands used to crack the eggshell of innocence from the inside just enough to interest young teens who were starting to develop a sense of independence and identity. The bands today are outside trying to smash it with a hammer.
In all seriousness though, with the shift in subject matter comes a certain stigma. Bands like Metro Station, Brokencyde, 30h3, etc. are all riding the wave of every 15-year-old girl’s fantasy (and, subsequently, every 13-year-old boy’s): jealousy, pettiness, sexual implications (that most of them don’t fully understand), dancing, drinking, ect. Instead of writing songs about what high school kids actually go through, they write about what high school kids wantto go through. And what kid in high school doesn’t want to seem older? What kid in high school isn’t curious about drinking or drugs and wouldn’t jump at the chance to indulge in them to look cooler? The scene has evolved in such a way that style, all-too-often style in which cigarettes and cheap vodka are accessories, is much more important than the music. People used to look up to the kids who got their shit together, learned how to play instruments (to some extent), wrote songs, and played shows at local VFW’s and church basements. Now all you have to do is look like you do.

It could be that true pop-punk as we knew it in 2002 has simply not existed since then. There have been bands that tried to revive it or showed some glimmer of hope; bands like Hit The Lights, who are essentially the poor man’s NFG, and Cartel, who completely blew it with their follow-up to their fantastic debut, Chroma. But even these bands are bringing to the table a different kind of pop rock, even if their intentions are similar. In reality, pop-punk is geared toward a very specific demographic and always has been. Someone who was 20 when Sticks and Stones came out probably wouldn’t have been interested. But today’s age group that would have eaten up Sticks and Stones wants nothing to do with that kind of scene. There’s no place for real pop-punk in the world today.

Case in point: New Found Glory’s most recent release, Not Without A Fight. The record sees the band return to their original aggressive, electric, pure pop-punk form, singing about breakups, rebounds, and listening to your friends when they tell you she had bad intentions. Not Without A Fight is no Sticks and Stones, but it would have sold like hotcakes had it been released six or seven years ago. In the opening track from which the album gets its title, Pundik sings “You can’t get rid of me that easy. No, not without a fight.” The song is about a relationship, but the undertones are just too obvious and too timely too ignore.New Found Glory has consistently written great music (perhaps giving Catalyst the benefit of the doubt) and treated their dedicated fans with nothing but the most astoundingly genuine respect and appreciation. Three days ago they played a show in Coral Springs for 100 fans in their practice space. The setlist included almost entirely old favorites, all per request from the audience. Drummer Cyrus Balooki even generously lent his drumset to a fan while he and the band played 2001 single “Dressed to Kill” and Cyrus went outside for a few minutes to cool off. In 2007, they released their second cover album, From the Screen to Your Stereo II, because they knew the fans had been asking for it for years. NFG constantly goes out of their way to make their fans happy, perhaps because they know they have one of the last remaining legions of true fans who listen to music for the right reasons.

At the end of their latest video for Not Without a Fight’s second track “Don’t Let Her Pull You Down,” a frame pops up real quick to show blood splattered on a wall spelling out “Pop-punk’s not dead.” It lives in the few bands like New Found Glory that are still making music for their dedicated 20-something fans. But sadly, once NFG’s illustrious and influential career is over, pop-punk will, in fact, be dead.

New Travis Barker remix. This time he does Drake...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:29:21 -0800

New Travis Barker remix. This time he does Drake “Forever” and absolutely kills it.

I feel like the shows on FX as far as content goes are like a...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:02:19 -0800

I feel like the shows on FX as far as content goes are like a good medium salsa. Mild being the networks (ABC, FOX, CBS, NBC) and Hot being the premium channels (HBO, Showtime). With a good Medium (FX) salsa you have just enough of the mild that it’s not overwhelming with enough of the Hot put in there to make it tasty as hell.

So do yourself a favor and grab a bag of tortilla chips with a jar of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and The League. Always Sunny is great this season as always and The League is brand new, only 2 episodes in and I’m hooked. Hilarious.

Show is so unbelievably great. This was the best ending of the...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:06:50 -0800

Show is so unbelievably great. This was the best ending of the season so far.

thelos:

“I’m Batman… or am I… Yes I am…”

Community Halloween Eps

Saving Jeremiah was the best thing the internet never even knew...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:31:00 -0700

Saving Jeremiah was the best thing the internet never even knew it had. Feel free to use that as a quote on the DVD case.

paulgulyas:

I’ve upped the first two episodes of a little web series called “Saving Jeremiah”, starring myself, Patrick Beck, Jorge Gonzalez III, and directed/edited by Joe Sabia. It’s the completely ridiculous tale of three men who will stop at nothing to save their friend who has suddenly been stricken with typhoid. It’s a comedy.

The first two episodes were shot back in the fall of 2005. I gotta say, the second episode is what will really hook you and was always a fan favorite (guest starring the brilliant Matt Pollock as the Typhoidologist) so if you think the first one sucks, just keep watching. I’ll be posting a new episode every week.

Episode 2: The Typhoidologist is here and in my post to follow this one.

6od: Daisy - Brand New If the sky opened up and started...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:20:51 -0700

6od:

Daisy - Brand New

If the sky opened up and started pouring rain
Like he knew it was time to start things over again
It’d be all right, it’s all right, it’d be easier that way

If I were a stripper, I’d find a way to strip to this song.

This song (and album) is so great.

I would watch that strip tease. Although, the part in the middle of the song where the little kid is talking would be a little awkward I feel.

Liked it a lot. Makes you wish you had the imagination of a kid...

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:51:00 -0700

Liked it a lot.

Makes you wish you had the imagination of a kid more often.

HA! soupsoup: (via catbird)

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:56:11 -0700

HA!

soupsoup:

(via catbird)

Believers Never Die

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:18:43 -0700

Heres the Tracklisting for Fall Out Boy’s new Greatest Hits album “Believers Never Die”

Out November 16th & 17th worldwide.

1. Dead On Arrival
2. Grand Theft Autumn
3. Saturday
4. Sugar, Were Goin Down
5. Dance, Dance
6. A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’
7. This Aint A Scene, Its An Arms Race
8. Thnks fr th Mmrs
9. The Take Over, The Breaks Over
10. Im Like A Lawyer With The Way Im Always Trying To Get You Off (Me & You)
11. Beat It
12. I Dont Care
13. Americas Suitehearts
14. What A Catch, Donnie
15. Alpha Dog

BONUS Tracks

“From Now On We Are Enemies”
Yule Shoot Your Eyes Out
Growing Up

One of the best Docs you’ll ever see. So...

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:40:32 -0700

One of the best Docs you’ll ever see.

So great.

robhuebel:

I’ve mentioned this before, but you seriously have to see this movie, you jerk.

This is the first single from Vampire Weekend’s new album,...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:57:00 -0700

This is the first single from Vampire Weekend’s new album, “Contra” which drops January 12th 2010. Will be interesting to see how it stacks up to how huge their debut album was.

allow: ardenashley: alanfm78: HOLY SHIT! Black Eyed Peas, not...

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:32:27 -0700

allow:

ardenashley:

alanfm78:

HOLY SHIT! Black Eyed Peas, not sure how you did it, but this is the among some of the coolest shit I’ve ever seen. Performing “I gotta feeling” in Chicago…with a little help from a few friends. Awesome. Truly.

This is RAD!

This made me cry! Happy tears! I’m such a sap.

As much as Oprah is kind of a tool. This is pretty great.

Get ready for the Social Media Revolution. Insane.

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:32:31 -0700

Get ready for the Social Media Revolution.

Insane.

U2 is even louder tonight. YEAH!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:34:07 -0700

U2 is even louder tonight. YEAH!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:33:24 -0700

U2 is even louder tonight. YEAH!