Bill Eager

So here we are, it’s the end of November, and we’re moments away from starting our final leg of the amazing journey we all call 2008.  I’ve been not blogging for a month, as typically I’ve fallen off the map, being the terrible friend/son/brother I am.  However, I’m back for the moment, as I’ve trekked off to the distant and remote land of Maine to reclaim my sanity, and eat a roasted stupid bird.

It's pretty muchlike this, but think 70 degrees colder.

Southern Maine is like a miniature Canada.  Both are charming and placid in their own ways, and they both have this peculiar self-awareness that tends toward self-mockery.  Either that or I see both as subtle caricatures of themselves.  Eitherway, Maine is quite different from the rest of the Union, and it’s quite a bit more beautiful as well, if not completely heartbreaking during the winter months.

After burning all my cylinders for so long, it’s nice to be able to get away for an entire week, which is why the oblique and dull way of life is just what I needed to calm my nerves, and get the creative juices flowing again.  Being here in the summer, as is my usual approach, is a highly rewarding experience, and being here on the opposite end of the season is a therapeutic and equally rewarding experience.

Someday imma play in the big kid leagues!!!

One of the more exciting things about Southern Maine is the fact that you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to go see a hockey game.  Whereas the depressingly underwhelming Buffalo Sabres will get you quite a bit for even the most obscure seat (if you can even find it), their new AHL affiliate, the Portland Pirates, will set you right up on the glass at center ice, for about the price of an eighteen pack of Molson and a pack of cheesy Bratwurst (the ‘teener of Molson and Brats is how I measure most things I buy, for the record).

The AHL consists of three types of players.  The first type, and the most common, is the Riser.  The Riser is the one who went through Juniors and got signed with an NHL franchise, and is getting his legs in the AHL, in preparation for the NHL.  A fairly common breed.  The Riser will ultimately find his way into a permanent position in the NHL, or will fade fast when he doesn’t stack up.

The second type of player is the Slumper.  The Slumper is the player who was sent down from the NHL to the AHL for some “remedial work”.  This is not to be confused with the Riser who got called up to play 2 games in the NHL, filling in for injured players, and then was sent back down.  A Slumper is one you take for granted in the NHL, and it’s shocking to see them sink so low as to be sent to the AHL.

The third and rarest player in the AHL is the Lifer.  You know the type.  He’s the only one on the roster who was born before 1987.  He’s been on the affiliate for 8 years.  He is totally committed to the AHL, and despite how he might really feel, he’ll always say the AHL is where his heart is, and wouldn’t want to play in the NHL anyway.  He’s the guy born in 1979 who plays to an average crowd of about 1,000 for the Lowell Devils.  Yep, I looked it up, his name is Ryan Murphy.  Probably a great guy, but you gotta wonder: Did this guy ever plan to sustain himself by playing AHL hockey?

WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND THAT YOU TAKE OUR MONEY AND GIVE US CHEAP CHINESE CRAP IN RETURN!

So anyway, enough about hockey, and on to more pressing issues.  This year will perhaps be the first in my lifetime where Black Friday will not involve gluttonous amounts of spending and a feverish rush for impractical gifts or implausible deals.  Nah, who am I kidding?  Even in these Hard Economic Times(tm), we’ll still spend as much as ever on Tickle Me Elmo, Cheap-ass DVD players, and the newest High School Musical 4 animated lunchbox.

However, in eight months, the numbers will come out showing that retail sales on Black Friday dropped 1.7% over 2007.  This will trigger panic in the commodities market which will drive the price of oil back up to $150 a barrel, resulting in all that $5.00/gal gas that tree huggers were waiting so eagerly for.  Speaking of which, I have it on good authority that up here in Maine you can get premium-grade gas for $1.71/gal.  That’d be about $1.50 for regular.  I don’t know about you, but last time I checked in Western New York, $1.50 worth of gasoline wasn’t even enough to torch your neighbor’s lawn with!

Great hockey seats, stoic weather, and cheap fuel.  Maine really has it all.  It’s a great change of pace up here, and much better than the mania back in Buffalo.  I swear, that city is going crazy.  For instance, someone torched half of my neighbor’s lawn right before I left.  If that doesn’t give you the willies, I don’t know what could!

Cabela's, like Mecca for rednecks. Rednecca. Complete with guns, and a huge-ass fish.

One other thing that Buffalo’s been palling around with is the idea of putting a Bass Pro shop (complex?  campus?  military base?) right downtown where the Aud used to be.  I was of the opinion that this was a rather frivolous idea, but now, after having visited Cabela’s, a variant on the Bass Pro concept, I can claim with absolute moral clarity, that this is a stupid and reckless idea.

First of all, these big-box outdoors stores are touted as theme parks for the trailer park type, places where people will put themselves up for 6 nights in a hotel just to be there.  These are supposed to be huge magnets for commerce.  I’m sorry to report that this is flatly not the case in the least.  Rather, it’s a dull retail store.  It’s the overfed love child of Dick’s Sporting Goods and Wal-Mart.  It’s the Mall Of Red America.  It’s a huge, whooped up collection of flannel, fly-fishing trousers, camouflage shotguns, and Jeff Foxworthy Brand Venison Jerky.  There’s nothing attractive about it.

And the fact that they think one of these is going to somehow spark downtown Buffalo back into economic prowess is simply laughable.  First of all, this will create no more than 1 month of commerce in the area.  It will become a big, dead, useless retail flop in the middle of a suitcase-city, only to be closed a year later.  Second, it will attract all of the rednecks into the city of Buffalo.  This is bad.  This needs it’s own paragraph.

Replace"Morans" with "Buffalo". You get the picture.

KEEP THE REDNECKS OUT OF BUFFALO.

If anything, put Bass Pro out in Amherst, or Clarence, or Cheektowaga, or ANYWHERE.  Anywhere but Buffalo!  There’s absolutely no reason why downtown Buffalo, flanked on all sides by classy and decidedly-not-rednecky Irish, Polish, Italian, Black, and Puerto Rican people, needs to house the Taj Mahal of White Trash.  It’s just stupid.

Here’s what you can do.  Plow down the Aud, take the land near the waterfront.  Bulldoze the non-tower part of the Main Place Mall (the part with only 15% of the storefronts occupied).  Bulldoze the old AM&A’s building right across the street.  Take allll of those and build the University at Buffalo there.  Oh, and while you’re at it, move the Buffalo Bills downtown too.  I can guarantee you in gold that within 10 years, downtown Buffalo would sprawl and thrive again.  But nooooo, you clowns want Rednecca.  And that makes me cry at night.  But at least you’re getting rid of the train on Main.  Which is a slow start.  But as we know in Buffalo, one step forward always means three steps back.

So I would like to wash out all of the ranting and negativity I just put forth here and wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.  Remember, the Pilgrims were a bunch of puritan ninnies, so when you go out bright and early on Black Friday and find yourself drawn to all the sexy displays and gluttonous shopping, just remember that you’re insulting everything sacred about Thanksgiving!  Eat till it hurts, America!

Go vote, don’t think, just do it!  Well okay, think, and then vote!  I mean, don’t rush your thinking, but make sure you think and vote.  And vote and think!

SEN. BIDEN: The word is, "Nuclear". GOV. PALIN: Um, uhh. N-U-C-U-L-A-R. Nucular, yeah.Darn right!

 One of the things I love most about United States politics is the amount of word-mincing and pussyfooting required to keep one from committing accidental political seppuku.  I maintain a deep admiration for elected officials who manage to spin their way into not being abrasive or offensive every time they open their mouth to preach to a nation of easily-offended voters.  Bonus points if, in the process of covering their arses, they manage to mention something of actual substance.

If there’s anything that tonight’s vice presidential debate proved, it’s that you can put two potential national disasters up on stage together to debate, and end up with partly cloudy skies and a split decision.  Tonight we saw magic as a completely neutered Joe Biden and a completely diluted Sarah Palin emerged in an underwhelming display of self-control.

Let’s not kid ourselves here, folks (or folk… I still don’t think people read this).  This debate was about Sarah Palin.  Palin, a parody of Tina Fey, has tumbled headlong into a hole with her recent appearances in interviews.  Tonight was her one chance for redemption, where she could prove that she was not the sheltered ignoramus she conveyed herself as.  This was unfortunate for Joe Biden.  Not only was he tasked with minimizing the Enlightenment of Sarah Palin, but he also had to steer the debate away from her to put the debate back on the issues.  This was a very difficult task, being that you can’t set the bar much lower than Palin had to this point, so she was destined to have a huge personal victory in this debate.

So Biden took her seriously.  This was the right way of doing it.  He pressed her on her lack of details.  He tied her back to Bush.  He corrected her and called her a liar.  Palin fought back, dodging and ducking more deftly than she had ever before.  He was respectful but forceful.

Sarah Palin came dangerously close to losing the debate in losing her composure or being completely incoherent.  But she held on.  Joe Biden came dangerously close to winning the debate in blowing straight past Palin in that forceful Biden rhetoric.  But he held back.  Much like a classic superhero story, Biden could not kill the archvillain.  The only way Sarah Palin was going down tonight was through her own fault, which her week of debate school taught her to avoid.

Seriously audience, if you even think about applauding or hollering at the candidates, I'll come down there and bust up your neck.

So who’s the real winner here?  It’s not Biden.  He leaves tonight with a draw.  It’s not Palin.  She leaves tonight with the same support she had before, and the same opposition she had before.  It’s not you, the American viewing public.  You didn’t see a trainwreck.  So who is the winner, you ask?  Why yes, it’s Gwen Ifill, who I thought did a great job moderating and asking questions.  She was fair to both candidates, and was pretty hard-hitting, especially going right after Palin about not knowing what a vice president does, and after Biden for saying he wouldn’t be the VP candidate.

 Afterwards, the families of the two candidates came up on stage to mingle.  The Biden family was curious to finally meet people from Alaska.  The Palin family was thrilled to finally meet people from America!

Are you a man, a carnivore, a computer programmer, a fan of excellence, or awesome?  If you answered yes to any of those questions (I answered yes to all of them), then you obviously have an extreme devotion to bacon.  Bacon is the sweet fruit of the meat tree, the first pressing of the swine vine, the sacred transfiguration of meat into manna.

Devout Baconists around the world gather at their sacred city, the Fatican, to devise ways of making bacon even more prominent around the world.  Wendy’s, self-proclaimed purveyors of bacon that they are, decided to go further with bacon than anyone in the world ever has.

Behold, the Baconator.  Billed as a double cheeseburger with six strips of luscious, sultry bacon, she stands in her glory like a fabulous wedding cake, stacked high in honor of the glorious marriage between pork and heaven.  Or the marriage between your arteries.  But amazing it looks.  At least, until you order one:

Bless me Porky, for I have blasphemed against the holy image of Bacon.

What you see on the left is the kind of bacon I would feed my own babies.  Bacon should look like a salty, sweaty cosine function.  It should be redder than the Soviet Union and just as thick.  It should look like Carrot Top at the gym.  But the real Baconator does not.  And the sadness does not end in the image of bacon.  The taste of this bacon is not right either!  It’s not real bacon… it’s more like bacon flavored Play-Doh, squeezed through a mold into shapes vaguely resembling bacon.  This sad, sad lack of authenticity is truly a sin against bacon.  The bacon just tastes like rubber.  And this is wrong.  Because when I eat bacon, I want it to taste like bacon.  I want it to get me crunk!

You may have better luck with this sandwich if you just order a double cheeseburger — which will save you over 60%, by the way, and bring your own six strips of bacon.  Careful though, there may be some jealousy and/or greasy pockets.  Oh and when you order that double cheeseburger, make sure you get no condiments or vegetables on it, cause that’s how the Baconator do.  They’re proud of how terrible their bacon tastes, and they won’t have any mustard or lettuce getting in the way of it!

Originally via Blogadilla.

When someone mentions “I Kissed A Girl” and you think of Jill Sobule.

Arguably the definitive version.

Nothing much to report…

Thom Yorke thinks you're crazy. And that's saying a lot.

It’s always strange to go through mail and papers from years ago.  Though I am separated from things I may receive or write for any number of years, seeing them instantly brings back their context.  This form of recollection is a little unnerving for me, not only for its uncanniness, but for my conclusion that I may never forget about something I might want to forget.

What with all the gloom and doom about the financial sector getting hit today (and no doubt 7% is a large chunk), it’s comforting to me that, as one who lives within his means, I don’t have to worry about it too much.  At the end of the day I can still go about my business as usual, which tonight will include a drank with the kevinator.

I will be finding out soon enough about whether my job will lead me to foreign lands.  They’d better call ahead anyway and have the door heights raised.

I put up two new videos today of me playing cover songs.  I want to fill YouTube with such videos (original music too!) so if you have any requests, leave a comment.

Jabari Greer tiptoes past a sleeping St. Louis Ram, careful not to wake him.

Not much to report, but I’ll happily report that my Buffalo Bills are in a thinning pack of NFL undefeated teams, going 4-0 today against the presumed-weak yet resilient St. Louis Rams.

I can almost measure my life like a football game, however.  Half the time I spend on offense, half the time on defense.  And by offense I mean battling the entropy in my life.  The other half, losing to that entropy.  I took a drastic “offensive” move today and overhauled my home office with furniture and organization.  I actually did crunch an entire stack of papers today (about three feet high), so as Borat would say: “Great success!”

I have three things for you.  First and foremost, my good friend Kev decided to start blogging about politics, and I highly recommend his writing and opinions, as they’re both well-thought.  So check out http://slatteryonpolitics.blogspot.com.

The second thing is to check out my new youtube video.  Or as we say in the Elmwood Village, “It’s a vlog, silly.”  I mostly made it to get the rickroll off of my website.

The third thing is something shiny.  It’s a cover song I made a few years ago, at the height of my Keen Measure recording days.  Those seem long past.  Here’s the song: Bill Eager - Daydream Believer.

And speaking of Keen Measure, that will be posted up here to download soon enough.

Music isn’t the only cool thing you can do with sound.  Observe from this video.  Warning!  The sound gets annoying, especially for pets.

Will start updating you more.  I had hockey last night so I had no chance to fix brokeness on the site or watch the debate.  Action on the former and analysis on the latter to come…

Hey everyone, WAKE UP!

In hiding the shame of all of my past web blunders, I’ve once again redesigned this site.  I think it’s okay… eh.  Despair not, however, if you are in search of COMA CLUSTER, it’s right here.  And it’s still cheap as free.

Right now a lot of the navigation is no workey, I’ll get to fixing that soon enough.  Any other bug reports or anything can go to me at bill@billeager.com.  Sweet.

(EDIT: It looks like PatrolMag.com got wind of this a while ago, before the release date.  Good to see they had the great idea for a post title, just as I did, and that other people saw this too.)

I grew up listening to a fair share of Christian music in my childhood. I was complacent in listening to it, mostly because it was of the non-preachy, more rock-and-roll variety, and partly because I didn’t really know any better, as that’s what Mom put in the house. As I got older, and began branching out musically (i.e., paying attention to the radio and invading my friends’ music collections), I began to discover the dirty, dirty secret about Christian rock music: it takes mainstream music and co-opts it for its own evil (er wait… holy) purposes.

I was okay with this. Music is all about co-opting, sharing ideas, and evolving creativity. I would occasionally get a nagging feeling that some of the Christian music I listened to was more than just similar to mainstream artists, but it never really made me sufficiently outraged.

Now, I don’t really listen to Christian music at all, but as luck would have it, I’ve found the artistic plagiarism egregious enough to speak up about. Here’s the cover to Third Day’s latest, “Revelation”:

Third Day - Revelation

Look familiar at all? Of course it does! Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Radiohead:

Radiohead - Hail To The Thief

Normally, something like this wouldn’t get me so worked up. But it’s not about the fact of the artistic piracy, it’s more about the unprofessionalism, the cheesiness, and the puzzling questions this begs: “What were they thinking? Did they think we wouldn’t know?”

First of all, the Radiohead cover art (which was done by Stanley Donwood, the creative mind behind most of Radiohead’s albums) is a colorful, interesting piece, combining provocative, mundane, and silly words together in a burlesque, dada-ist collage that sets you up for the musical content of the album.

The Third Day artwork is a deliberate abuse of Radiohead’s cover, and it disrespects the qualities that make it artistic. It’s two colors, blood red and dull white, on black (oh wait, there’s a joke in there: what’s black and white and red all over? plagiarism!). It lacks the color and mood of the original, and it lacks the sharpness of subject matter. In fact, it not only lacks the sharpness of subject matter, it insults it by substituting cheap worship-music platitudes. It lacks the detail and sophistication of the original, and completely misses the intrigue and forgoes the skill of Donwood’s. To top it all off, it looks so damn the same! It’s not really truly insulting until you realize that there’s nothing else it could possibly be.

So the question now becomes one of motive: Is there anything other than lazy, selfish, wholesale creative infringement in play here? Re-use is nothing new in music. Album artwork, lyrical allusion, sampling, remixing, arrangement, and covers are all widely accepted in music. But they (for the most part) seek to expand or honor the work they’re based on. In this case, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that Third Day is enriching Radiohead’s album cover in any way by stealing the concept for their own. In fact, it’s done in such a serious and self-important manner that it would probably deny the very existence of Radiohead.

I have not heard the music from Third Day’s “Revelation” yet, but I am not encouraged to do so. I believe that it would be a similarly cheapened and dishonest experience. The only remote comfort I can take away from this entire debacle is the amusement that the original album cover belongs to an album called “Hail to the Thief”. Perhaps Radiohead are more prescient than I thought.