The Big Lug

I thought I’d blog about my recent obsession with what I’d consider the best show on television at the moment: VH1’s Rock of Love. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a follow up to the successful Flavor Of Love where chicks competed to get into FlavaFlav’s pants. Who are these women you ask? Well they’re similar to, though not exactly the same as, the chicks who are now on Rock of Love trying to get to be Brett Michael’s girlfriend. Truly, it is television at its best. What could be better than chicks competing to get into the pants of a washed-up has-been 80’s hairband frontman? I dare you to find something more entertaining.

Who are these women?
What drives them?
What is going on under Brett Michael’s hat?
These are questions that keep me up at night.
That and the prednisone/amoxicillin cocktail I am on. I’ve had a very strange week health-wise. I’d sum it up as my body eating itself. Or “when your skin attacks.” I had an infection in my ankle and an outbreak of some kind of crazy cracked-out eczema on my hands. It’s all under pharmaceutical control now, and I’m feeling better. The prednisone makes me feel a little bit like the incredible hulk – but other than that, I’m doing fine.

Mr. Lug and I were watching TV the other day and noticed that the Violent Femmes’ Blister in the Sun was used in a commercial and I declared that songs should be allowed to retire. I mean really. There are certain songs that I think should hang up their hats and go to Florida to wrinkle and burn like, well like a blister in the sun really. So here’s my list of songs I could go without hearing again for the rest of my life. Please forgive me if any of these are your favorite or your wedding song or something.

• Jane Says by Jane’s Addiction. Please, please, please can I never hear this godforsaken song again? I loved this song in high school and apparently so did everyone else and people, we need to let it go. It’s not healthy to dwell in the past. Let’s put it away with the old yearbooks and pressed prom corsages.
• Evenflow by Pearljam. Radio in the Philadelphia area thinks that this song is still cool. Now, it was cool. I did like it. But that was approximately 12 years ago or more. And the radio stations in this area have continued to play it since then – as if it was a new song. Please put it out of it’s misery and let it cut it’s hair and get an RV and see the rest of the country.
• American Pie by Don McLean. I can’t even comment on this song, my dislike for it runs so deep. This song makes my ass twitch.
• December, 1963 by the Four Seasons and Crocodile Rock by Elton John. Ugh. When these come on at weddings I go hang out with the smokers outside.
• Any Dido song that didn’t come out in the current year. Yes. They are catchy. I like them when they first come out – but by one year later, they are spoiled. Like moldy cheese. Ditto for Dave Matthews Band Songs – which should probably all be retired by now.
• The End of the Innocence by Don Henley, Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton, and Fields of Gold by Sting – these fall into the same category for me. They were popular at a particular time and remind me George HW Bush, A Different World, and Shirts with solid fronts and see through sleeves, and a time in my life where I thought that headbands looked good on me.
• Give It Away by Red Hot Chili Peppers – really there’s a number of Red Hot Chili Peppers that I can’t stand anymore. Their time is over! You know when you’re in the car, and you’re pleasantly surprised when a really good song comes on the radio that you haven’t heard in a while, and you turn it up and rock out? All Red Hot Chili Peppers songs have the opposite effect on me.
• Billy Idol. I recently was stuck in the Quest Diagnostics for 3 hours for my glucose test and watched a talk show on groupies. A woman who claimed to be a Billy Idol groupie told a story about sleeping with Billy Idol at his house and in the middle of the dirty deed looking up at the TV and seeing his video come on MTV. I still can’t really wrap my head around that story. While I’m on the subject of Billys – how about retiring any Billy Ocean songs while you’re at it?
• Dream On by Aerosmith – actually a lot of Aerosmith songs could be retired. Rag Doll? Janie’s Got a Gun? Remember how deep Janie’s Got a Gun seemed at the time? Remember all those pre-vegan Alicia Silverstone videos and the discovery of Liv Tyler as a celebrity?

As you can tell I could go on and on insulting classic artists like there’s no tomorrow. This is why satellite radio is on the rise. What songs would you like to see locked up in the retirement vault forever?

This weekend we saw The New World, a film by Terrence Mallick. I really liked it. We went to see it at an “arty” theater that is usually filled with an older crowd that often seems out of place. (There’s nothing quite like watching the lesbian scenes in Mulholland Drive with men older than your grandfather shifting uncomfortably in their seats behind you.) So maybe they haven’t heard of Terrence Malick. Maybe they didn’t see The Thin Red Line, and weren’t aware that the pace of his movies is sleepily surreal. At the end of the movie there was a lot of grumbing from the people around us about how boring it was and how it was a waste of two hours. Anyway – my point is that I LOVED IT. Four of us went to see it and we all liked it. It had a leisurely pace to it, but the story was really great. It’s basically an interpretation of the life of Pocahontas and her interactions with the colonists and John Smith. If you don’t mind movies with a slow pace and lots of romance, then I’d say go see it. It was awesome. I don’t even really like Collin Ferrel that much, but he was good and Christian Bale was in it. Collin Ferrel AND Christian Bale. And they actually had accents. How could those other people in the theater be bored?
By the way, the husband has started upudating his blog again. You can go check it out and pressure him not to let another year lapse between entries.