Fanfare of trumpets!

It's semi-gallimaufry time today. Get. Effing. Excited.

First things first, I haven't watched the show Glee, mostly because - how to put this? - I'm insufficiently fabulous. Too busy doing masculine guy stuff, like riding motorcycles in color-coordinated leather outfits and rolling around with sweaty dudes in my spare time.

Wait, what?

Anyway, the version of Don't Stop Believin' by the Glee Cast is blowing up the intertubes. Apparently the Journey die-hards are hating it, and the tweens are loving it. I heard it on the satellite radio in the rental car. I'm a big fan of the original, but I'm also loving the new version. Video embedded below.

Here's the thing: The song is f*cking awesome. I've sung it with friends in shite bars all over the world. I've sung it by myself in the car. My friend Sam, who works in the music business and is as cynical a music snob as you'll ever meet, said that the highlight of SXSW two years ago was when Badly Drawn Boy covered it to close out his show. Badly Drawn Boy. The hipsters didn't know what to do with themselves. The record execs rolled their eyes. Sam went ballistic. Sure it's cheesy, but cheese is delicious. So the haters should relax a little. New version is not better. New version is new.

Moar raves: finished a superb story this week, from which I cribbed the title of this post. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. This is on many best-of lists for 2009, but if you're looking for some light summer reading it just came out in paperback. It's at least as good as Girl with Dragon Tattoo, but with a lot less rape and incest. So that's nice.

Army of One (douchebag)

[headline stolen from some guy's comment over on withleather.com. You think I got this fancy degree in English so I could make up stuff on my own? f that noise.]

So a couple guys that played football at West Point aren't going to serve overseas; they are going to be allowed to pursue their pro football careers here instead. It feels to me like it's a big fat go-f-yourself to the troops already there. That is contemptible.

If I were a soldier hating life every day in Iraq/Afghanistan I imagine that I'd be bitter over that kind of preferential treatment. Also, Caleb Cambell is an officer after graduating from West Point, and an officer should never ask an enlisted man to do something he wouldn't do himself, etc. and so forth.

Ironically, he's being given a position as a recruiter. That's got to be an awesome pitch: "Kids, sign up for the Army. Your experience will be just like mine, except you almost certainly won't go to West Point (it's incredibly hard to get admitted) and there's an excellent chance you'll have to serve overseas. Unlike me."

You can read more thoughtful analysis from actual veterans over on 2dinar and withleather.

it's been a crazy, busy week (part the second)

i've been busy. it happens. and when i've had a few spare minutes I don't feel like looking at a computer screen. hence, no blog entries. i've got good topics backing up in my gmail but I haven't had time or energy to address them. this little gem from the onion will have to do for now. it made me laugh. a lot. example content:

In fact, your brotitude is so brossential that, in many ways, you are the ultimate brototype: You sprung out of the brotean ooze at the very broment of creation, unformed, unmolded, and became the ultimate bro, more powerful than any who came brofore.

more is coming. I promise.
thanks to Zach for the tip (truly he is a god among bros).