Welcome to my Blog-erhood

So, I’ll just say it. I don’t really like U2. My relationship U2 is purely superficial though. I don’t own any of their albums, though I do have the Reality Bites soundtrack. I like some of their songs, but I find Bono to be sooo irritating, that its hard for me to like the band, completely. Gawker’s U2 rant really summed up my feelings.

Last night, Pavla posted a speech that U2’s manager gave a few days ago about the state of the Music Industry. Totally promising, right? Until he spent the entire 9 page speech railing on Internet Sharing sites.

I work for a research firm that does research for most major automotive companies, including the Detroit Three. These companies are huuuuurting, because instead of innovating like the Toyotas and Hondas of the industry, they spent millions of dollars fighing fuel emission standards and shoving the “Build Ford Tough” down the consumer’s throats. And where did that get them? They certainly aren’t running on Toyota’s surplus. When I read an article like Paul McGuinness’ where she goes off on a rant about how the consumers who download are theives and need to be reprimanded, I can’t help by see parallels. The music industry needs to work WITH the new technology, not against it. Did we learn nothing from the Metallica/Napster debaucle? They might have shut down Napster, but from its ashes rose countless other music sharing sites. I’ll admit, I totally download music! But I also buy the music of artists that I believe in, that aren’t signed to Warner and haven’t sold 150 million copies of the albums in their careers.

Here is my favorite excert from the laughably ridiculous speech:

“This goes back some decades. Does anyone remember Abbie Hoffman? He was one of the “Chicago 7,” the ‘Yippies” of the Youth International Party who tried to disrupt the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and got beaten up and put on trial by Mayor Daley’s police. He put out a book with the title “Steal this Book”. I think he has a lot to answer for.”

Are we really blaming the 1960s counterculture icon for illegal music downloads? I’m pretty sure he was fighting against more important evils, like Nixon, Vietnam maybe?

The below post is in honor of the great job Pavs did DJing at the 90s fratterson party last night. Aside from her inability to fade between songs, she played some JAMS!

Highlights of the night:
Crazytown dance/sing off to Ace of Base’s The Sign with Jake H.
Discussing how amazing La Bouche’s Another Night Another Dream is at dinner, only to hear it as a surprise of Pavla’s playlist.
Dancing to The Faint with boys who DO NOT wear tight pants.
Forcing Cohen to dance to Smells Like Teen Spirit with me.

I’ve gone to Coachella practically every year since I was 18, as I lived in California. The lineup was announced yesterday and the headliner for the last night is Roger Waters. Now, in order to be the headliner, they have to be the most famous/popular person on the bill, right? Then why was Roger Waters the only performer for the entire three day festival that required an explanation next to his name:

Roger Waters (“Dark Side of the Moon”)

But Marc Ronson is totally well known enough to not need (Dude who produced the Amy Winehouse album)? 

The woman that I sit next to at work is awesome. She’s usually very friendly, but when she’s sitting at her desk, she usually looks like she’s deep in concentration, which is not terribly inviting. But still, there are a few guys in my office who choose to talk to her while she’s in the middle of editing presentations. Here are some of the inappropriate things they’ve said:

1. (while pointing to a cookie on her desk) Thats a bad idea.

2. (she had her hair in a half ponytail) You look like Pebbles today. (This was followed by a dude trying to touch her hair).

My cousin makes lots of popular videos online, he thusly has many facebook stalkers. After a conversation about one such underage stalker, I decided to see what some of the hot guys I had classes with in college, and subsequently facebook stalked are now up to… but they’re not in my network anymore… today is a very sad day.