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Paul Wesley

Certifiably Surly
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    2011
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Everything posted by Paul Wesley

  1. My wife just had her Spotify station playing and this song came on. Right from the beginning, I was like, "Wait, did he just say fentanyl?" Yes, he did. "He bet I couldn't take them all, And if I did and didn't die, He'd teach me how to fall, 'cause he can't teach me how to fly."
  2. This. I mean, MJ is the GOAT, and he should get all the accolades. That said, he did NOT win a championship in roughly 66% of his NBA seasons. The 95 Rockets were one of the hottest playoff teams in history. They played the four teams with the four best records in the league, were on the road all four times, and left NO doubt in each series who the better team was. Olajuwon bettered Malone, embarrassed Robinson, edged a young Shaq (whose supporting cast just wilted vs Horry/Cassel/Drexler/Smith). Those Rockets swept the Magic team that had just beaten Michael and the Bulls. “But Jordan wasn’t in shape in 1995.” Horse shit. He was a pro athlete in the prime of his career. His other career? Pro athlete. How many months was it going to take to get into such unbelievable shape that Hakeem was no longer going to be guarded by Bill Fucking Wennington and Will Fucking Perdue? How many months until BJ Armstrong would have outplayed hot-shooting Kenny Smith and Sam Cassel, or until Harper would have outplayed the younger, more athletic (and also red-hot) Robert Horry? The 1995 Bulls weren’t winning shit.
  3. So I’m genuinely curious how a story like this is reported by Daily Beast on a Friday, and then it just disappears. If the bigger media outlets reported it, I didn’t see it. (Of course, I understand that Fox isn’t going to tell their viewers) Why does that happen? I just missed the stories from other outlets? The whole thing was bullshit? Daily Beast has a leaker that they trust, but no other organizations can confirm it? Seems like someone would run a “daily beast is reporting that…” story.
  4. Arkansas and Nebraska. OU obviously. I mean, you had the Iowa State offensive lineman this year saying, "Since I've been here, it's just Iowa and Texas (as Iowa State's main rivals)" I cannot imagine Yormark and his K State cohorts getting more fired up for a game than the one vs Texas. It ain't just in-state schools. Fans all across the shithole flyover states hate us. Give us some fucking credit, man.
  5. Possibly the bravest “truth to power” since a Chinese man faced down a column of advancing tanks. RIP
  6. I think maybe when you pick a band instrument in 6th grade, the worse your decision, the more likely you'll own a Les Paul at some point. Very impressive on the Michigan scholarship, jimmyjazz.
  7. There used to be this super cool store on 35th Street called Radio Ranch. They had a lot of old scientific artifacts like chemistry lab equipment from the 50's, a super old x-ray machine with giant knobs, etc. Anyway, they had a beat-up old horn there that I bought for like $50. Turned out it was a marching mellophone, which I guess is a straightened-out French horn. It was very hard to play... much harder than a trumpet, I think. I sounded horrid. I have had other equally unsuccessful "pretty sure I can play this instrument" adventures.
  8. Trombone or French horn? Those seem like the two hardest to nail a pitch.
  9. Side bets on what band instrument Celery played? I played alto sax. Hard to get less cool than that. The fucking oboe section was kicking my backpack down the hall.
  10. Me: Data from lobbyists should be viewed with some skepticism. Criminals should be prosecuted. Slorch: “Fairy tales with massive plot holes!!!!”
  11. 1. Definitely not what I said 2. You’re quoting “data” from a lobbying group who advances corporate interests. They have an agenda. 3. I tried to make this point clear, but despite my caveats, it only took a few minutes to be misquoted: in a nuanced issue, multiple things can be true at once. We don’t have to choose one or the other. For example: a). Mark Furman is a perjurer and a dishonest cop who dropped N-bombs on a daily basis. b). OJ is a murderer. Both true. In this case: a). The NRF is a lobbying group that represents billions (?trillions) of dollars of private corporate interests, and their data should always be viewed with that in mind. b). Property crimes should be prosecuted and punished.
  12. (I haven't read to the bottom of the thread yet, so apologies if someone already made this point) When I was a kid, one of the refrains of the corporations was that their ability to conduct business was under assault from frivolous lawsuits. The narrative was everywhere. The "hot coffee" victim was a national punchline. Every late night comedy show monologue for half a decade, "Look at this stupid reckless person who did something stupid and was stupid and is now trying to get money. Outrageous!" Except that when you look at the facts of that case decades later, you have to admit that the company (McDonald's) was doing something reckless -- handing people boiling hot coffee/water in a little paper cup with a marginally secured lid -- and numerous people had already been injured, and the company knew that, but the company kept doing it despite their awareness of those earlier cases. Anyway, this whole "PEOPLE ARE STEALING EVERYTHING FROM US!" from the retailers... that feels like an eerily similar corporations-as-victims claim, and I'm going to apply a small bit of skepticism when they present their alleged data. I think this latest round of corporate propaganda is even more powerful because we've got actual videos of actual criminals doing brazen smash-and-grabs*, and this lines up perfectly with other ecosystems of thinly-veiled racism and "lawless cities!" propaganda. *since nuance is dead, let me say that for sure that those property crimes very much need to be punished
  13. The Hole in the Wall episode with Don Henley is one of Austin's finest legends, IMO. The RS article references it with this link: https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2014-06-20/don-henley-must-die/
  14. Sure, I’ll concede that’s true. But you’d have to also agree that it’s the other kind of “terrible” that we’re actually subjected to on a regular basis. You aren’t getting the Shaggs in elevators, dental waiting rooms, commercial breaks, etc.
  15. I hear you, but there are different kinds of "bad." There's "bad" like no musical talent at all (Shaggs), and "bad" like really talented people creating commerce that tries to pass itself off as art (pandering). (edit) Arguably, there's another kind of bad, which is adopting some kind of silly affectation and using some sort of pressure/trick to get everyone to agree that the action has artistic merit.
  16. I feel like the Doors are one of those stages-of-life bands. Sort of like discovering Kerouac or Hunter S Thompson, there's a point in life where the Doors *seem* to be rebellious or counter-culture in a way that appeals to a youthful brain. And only later do you get more breadth and depth of experience that allows you to accurately reclassify those artists according to their actual artistic merit (read: "meh"). For the Doors specifically, reading "No One Here Gets Out Alive" and considering Morrison to be a genius -- that time period will coincide with the one where you're still a gawky virgin, but you carry that same condom in your wallet for an entire fucking year. Someone should start a "bands you outgrow" thread.
  17. Username checks out.
  18. If Swift mobilized 20 or 30k of otherwise non-participating voters in each of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin-- it would be massive.
  19. Looked like that 2nd down throw-away went out of bounds a few yards short of the line of scrimmage. Maybe it's not ruled the same way as a punt(?)
  20. I had never heard this Led Zeppelin legend - linking to the podcast website, but it's on all the streaming services. It's episode #4 in this Allan Cross-narrated series: https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/uncharted-crime-and-mayhem-in-the-music-industry-podcast/
  21. In the 90’s, I got an American Express card in the mail. An hour or so later, I set out for California with my buddy in his Isuzu Trooper. Skipped school for a week. Slept on the floor of a frat house library in Tempe (don’t know which one…my buddy told them he was in that frat in Austin). Drank a lot. Hung out on the beaches of San Diego for four or five days. One day, we set out for LA because he knew these twins from his time at Texas Tech. I was awakened the next morning by a pretty big earthquake. The girls had (somehow) left for work, and I thought my buddy had come into the bedroom I was in and was shaking the bed to mess with me. Then I realized that I was in the room alone. I went running out to the living room at the exact moment he ran out of his own bedroom, and with the walls still rattling, we popped open a couple beers to celebrate. “Earthquake! Whooooo! Earthquake!” Anyway, on the road from San Diego, we listened to “LA Woman” by Billy Idol over and over again. And it kicks the shit out of the original. When we got home, I had to sell my car to pay the Amex bill. Had to walk everywhere for the rest of the year. In the words of Max Fischer: “You know what? It was worth it.”
  22. “Wichita Lineman” is a fucking terrible song. Stupid lyrics. Melody that meanders aimlessly. Compelling like a dirt sandwich. Totally fucking pointless and without merit. I guess the record company decided Glenn was handsome and marketable and so they paid off the radio stations to play this banal and insipid piece of shit. Sorry if you got tricked. Yes, I resurrected this thread to say that. I’ve needed to get it off my chest for decades.
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