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Humor columnist for the GateHouse and McClatchy-Tribune news services, and a music writer whose work has appeared in Paste, Billboard, Playboy, All About Jazz, BruceSpringsteen.net and more.
Paste — More than two decades into their career, The Roots can basically do anything. They’ve got nine albums, all of them worthy; they can cover the Beatles and back up Ice Cube, Sting, Eminem and Jimmy Buffett; they can remix cable-news clips of Sarah Palin, angry goats and Whoopi Goldberg. Thanks to their effortless shape-shifting work on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (remember when people thought that might be a bad idea?) they’ve spot-evolved into one of the country’s most versatile bands.
With that pedigree, recording an album of funk/soul covers with John Legend—which they have done on Wake Up!—is a two-handed slam-dunk. The Roots have transformed themselves into a seemingly fully-formed and inordinately smooth R&B outfit here, and you wonder if they even had to practice.
Seriously, every little twinge, every itch, every little fleeting sensation is one of these things, on your skin
GateHouse — Well, that settles it, I have bedbugs. Bedbugs in the bed, bedbugs in the pillows, bedbugs on the couch, bedbugs in the car, bedbugs in the other car, bedbugs in the amphibious assault vehicle, bedbugs in the panic room, bedbugs in the haunted nursery, bedbugs in the room that the clowns dress in. In short, the entire place is thoroughly infested with bedbugs, which, of course, brings up the crucial question: “Thoroughly infested” is totally redundant, right? Because I’d hate to squander my word count on superfluous adverbs.
I should point out here, by the way, that I don’t have bedbugs, not at all, though I hardly see what that has to do with anything. Because according to the web sites, TV reports and magazines that I come across — seriously, what the hell, Pro Wrestling Illustrated — I have bedbugs, and you have bedbugs, and everyone has bedbugs; basically every night you rest your valuable head on what is essentially a forever rustling, chattering dance party of clickering parasites who wait until you drift away to begin nourishing their tiny, bulbous tank-like bodies on your blood. That’s right. Every twinge, every slight rustle, every every tiny fleeting itch on your body? Absolutely every single one of them is a bedbug. Each time. Crawling. On you.
GateHouse — Say what you will about the Tea Party — that it’s a fringe, easily unhinged cluster of elderly Caucasians with an abundance of blog-commenting time and a deep need to have their personal beliefs endorsed by them by their televisions; or that it’s a bona fide, quickly growing grassroots force filled with fringe, easily unhinged elderly Caucasians with an abundance of blog-commenting time and a deep need to have their personal beliefs endorsed by them by their televisions.
Either way, here in the black, mucilaginous heart of Midterm Election/Football Season, when American voters rise up EN MASSE to voice their rage at the State Of Our Country and nearly 11% of them go out to actually vote about it, there appears to be equal reason for Democrats and Republicans to be shaking in the boots which were purchased for them by anonymous political action committees.
Democrats have reason to be concerned because the party in power, as a rule, gets its clock cleaned in midterms, but also because as usual they suck. Republicans, on the other hand, are enjoying the equivalent of realizing that the kids at the Thanksgiving table are starting to find the increasingly slurry jokes about sex and racism being produced by their increasingly PBRed-up step-uncle really pretty funny.
There's an unhinged hillbilly ranting in a parking lot GET ME MORE MICROPHONES! (CNN)
GateHouse — Back when I lived in the city and took the train to work on a route that visited some reasonably shady neighborhoods, I developed a near-flawless method for dealing with any disreputable characters who might, say, visit my car to shout colorful monologues or ask for any spare all-of-the-money-in-my-wallet: I’d put on my headphones and sunglasses, which afforded me a plausible, airtight reason for ignoring them completely, because if I can’t see or hear you, how can you possibly rob me, or shout loudly at me regarding the voices in your head?
My reasoning was that if I was going to get mugged or stared down by, for instance, someone traveling with a live rooster, it would at least be by someone with some pluck and gumption; the casual criminal wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to snare the easily fragmented attention of an iPod addict: “MAN, I TOLD YOU, TURN THAT THING DOWN, STUDIES HAVE PROVEN THEY CAUSE PERMANENT COCHLEAL DAMAGE AND ALSO I AM TRYING TO BURGLE YOU.” Luckily, I never did once find myself in such a situation, although that might also have something to do with the green lizard-eyes I had tattooed on my eyelids. (Great for riding the subway, TERRIBLE for going to the orchestra.)
It sounds ridiculous and childish to write about it — mostly because it’s ridiculous and childish. I know now, with a few years of practical, real-world life experience behind me, that I could have achieved the same effect by either shrieking like a pregnant moose who’s been poked in the nostrils with a pool stick (been there, am I right, ladies?) or, failing that, waving my lightsaber around. Oh come on, tell me that if you saw a skinny twerp on the Green Line with sunglasses and a lightsaber and shrieking like a moose, that’d be the guy you’d light up for drug money or as a prospective audience for you your unhinged conspiracy theories.
I bring this up because — and I don’t know if you’ve heard about this guy Terry Jones or not, you might not have, because the teevee has been thoughtfully subtle if not overly scholastic on the subject — but there’s this mumblemouthed nimrod in some tin-roof town in oh hey this is weird the middle of Florida, and he and his 1856 prospector mustache convinced his 16 followers that they needed to burn the Quran on 9/11 to make a point about Jesus’ tolerance and everybody on television lost their minds.
I suppose the Nelly Furtado cover on this promo art is a pretty good indicator of how popular this thing is, huh
GateHouse — Do you know those annoying, pretentious, patronizing Mac people, the indigestible elitists who swear by their little ivory-colored best friends, the ones who wear small T-shirts with clever slogans on them to work, the ones who schedule days off of work to watch Steve Jobs’ keynote presentations and the ones who shake their heads in sympathetic bemusement at their friends with “drivers” and “security patches” and “several hundred dollars of Norton-based expenses”? Yeah, that’s me. Please take your shoes off and leave your Vista laptops in the car — we don’t serve their kind here.
I am a Mac nerdperson because, much like my indestructible Honda and this previously blue Cubs hat from like 2001, they’ve worked, really well, for a long time. I realize this may not be the common experience, and I can actually hear my reflexiveMac-hater friends clickity clackity-ing up witty rejoinders, but to them, as always, I say: You are probably using them wrong. Try checking the instructions.
For example, I have a nearly-destroyed five-year-old iPod that has basically been through the MP3 version of the Bataan Death March; it has been dropped and kicked and nearly put through the washing machine and almost fumbled into the sea, but the damned thing just will not expire, like that liquid metal Terminator, or John McCain. The front screen is now in a state of such unreadable scratchiness and pixel blowout that you can literally only read titles if you hold the device at a 40-47-degree angle to your nose, and do you know what? IT STILL WORKS FINE. I’m scared of it, to be honest.
Hilton Head Monthly — A few weeks ago, John Mellencamp wandered through a large and shiny mall in Indianapolis in a futile, climate-controlled and probably Cinnabon-smelling hunt for the record store.
This was, of course, a terrible idea, in part because you can imagine what happens when John Mellencamp wanders unannounced through a mall in Indianapolis, but also because he’d have had about as much luck finding a reliable VCR repairman or some MySpace gear; who knows the last time the mall had a record store. So he abandoned the search and did the only logical thing he could — went over to the Apple store. “The place was packed,” Mellencamp said. “Packed. People swarming in line, the way the record store was when we were kids.”
That was, needless to say, some time ago; these days when you accidentally stumble across a record store it feels weird, like an abandoned mining town or an undervisited museum. It looks passed over and it feels old-fashioned, but that makes sense, says Mellencamp, because so is rock ‘n’ roll.
“It’s done. It’s over. We killed it,” he says, pausing for effect between each little eulogy. “There’s nothing that’s going to revive it, or give us that extra little goose, like punk or grunge did. We ruined it. We outgrew it. So I’m kind of excited to see what’s next.”
It's shocking how little effort was required to find this.
GateHouse — The boy has gotten up twice tonight so far, unable to sleep due to concerns that Cat Heaven and People Heaven are entirely separate places.
But before we discuss how I’ve managed to defuse the situation with some serious ninja-level Ghost-Cat Fathering Awesomeness, a little background:
My son would very much like to get a pet, specifically a cat, which he has judged far superior to a dog based on both slobber volume and evidence provided by the film “The Adventures of Milo and Otis,” which, in his defense, makes a pretty compelling case. But sadly, Dad is allergic to cats — not, mind you, in the way that makes Dad a little snuffly, but in the way that makes his esophagus constrict like he’s being Force-choked by Vader for saying something snippy about his big stupid battle station with the gaping security problems. Believe me, if it was just a matter of knocking back some sinus pills to ensure my son’s joy I’d pop them like Rush Limbaugh on prom night, but I’m stuck.
How in the hell is this the first Google Image result for "jury duty"?
GateHouse — So I’ve got jury duty tomorrow (stupid inconvenient Constitution). More effective way to get out of it: Darth Maul costume, or answering every question by quoting Scientology text while crying?
Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Jeff,” you’re thinking, because you talk to your computer screen or newspaper and tragically lack the comforting touch of human contact, “Why don’t you do what everyone else does: wad up your summons and churk it straight into the trash, and when the policemen come to your door at 6:30 a.m. some quiet Tuesday in October, promptly claim you were on a three-month-long whaling-boat disrupting pilgrimage to the waters near Antarctica and of course wouldn’t have received your summons, which would have been lost on a table covered in blubber?”
Well, yes, that’s a spiffy idea — especially your well thought-out whaling-boat tale (nice work!). There are other good ideas too, such as meowing a lot, or arriving in a ball gown, or aggressively espousing deeply held prejudices against ethnic groups that don’t exist, such as Flttthbptedonians, or the Irish. But the problem is: I’ve done that already. Bunches of times.
Paste — According to the best press release we’ve received in some time, washed-up rapper Rob “Vanilla Ice” Van Ice Van Rob Winkle will soon debut a television show “focusing on his passion for home renovation.” Here is a teaser: “In this 10-episode series, Rob is ready for his biggest project yet—a complete overhaul of a six-bedroom and five-bathroom, 7,000 square-foot lakefront home in Palm Beach, Fla.”
This raises all sorts of questions. For instance, if you had a 7,000 square-foot mansion, would you entrust its renovation to a man who once renovated a pair of inflatable pants in a sparkly American Flag motif? And also, wouldn’t it be funny if all the other rapping relics from the 1990s got into the home-improvement business? We think it would. And we freely offer these business concepts to any of the artists mentioned in this link. CALL US.
NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, if you see my first-grader on the playground, you might want to watch your back.
GateHouse — It’s a static, shatterproof rule of parenting that, purely through nature and momentum, you will endeavor to pass on to your children your own interests and activities, either by grand design or subconscious manipulation, and yes I am looking at you, Couple Who Brought Your Four Grade-School Children To The Van Halen Concert In 2005, Seriously, That’s Shockingly Irresponsible, Mostly Because It Was A Hagar Tour, I Mean Roth I Can Justify, But The “Dreams” Guy Really What Are You Thinking? (I might also mention you, Juggalo Parent Nation.)
It follows then that there’s an equally static, shatterproof rule that there will be things you reflexively shield your kids from, strive to help them avoid at all costs, such as ignorance or prejudice, or badminton, or country music. Ha! I’m just kidding, of course. Badminton’s not that bad.
For instance, my son to this day has no idea that Radio Disney exists; not because I don’t think he’d enjoy it, but because like many six-year-olds he is quick to adopt MANIACAL OBSESSIONS regarding media absorption, and frankly the vaguest possibility of having to listen to Radio Disney even in the briefest, three-minute squirts made me begin dreaming up ways to remove my eyes with a potato peeler, so, long story short, my son’s world is a glorious Jonas-free wonderland, and this is how it shall remain.
But the thing is, I say that now, and I can have the best intentions, but at some point you have to release your child into the world, which is full of friends and stores and outside influences and classmates with Radio Disney backpacks. And when that happens, things begin spiraling faster and faster and time speeds up and up and before long you lose your grip on whatever thin filaments of control you might have hoped to have and then you find yourself watching a NASCAR race on a Sunday afternoon because your son — who, according to our earlier law, is supposed to be into Springsteen, running, “Weird Al” Yankovic and maintaining the rigidly beautiful organization of his iTunes library — is turning into a surprisingly knowledgeable juicebox-downing NASCAR fan. It is likely too late to change his name to Darrell, but don’t think I haven’t thought about it.
Jeff Vrabel is a humor columnist for the GateHouse news service and a music writer whose work has appeared in Paste, RollingStone.com, Billboard, Playboy, All About Jazz, No Depression, the Chicago Sun-Times, Backstreets, brucespringsteen.net and several furious Neil Diamond fan message boards. The highly official bio.
Paste — More than two decades into their career, The Roots can basically do anything. They’ve got nine albums, all of them worthy; they can cover the Beatles and back up Ice Cube, Sting, Eminem and Jimmy Buffett; they can remix cable-news clips of Sarah Palin, angry goats and Whoopi Goldberg. Thanks to their effortless shape-shifting work on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (remember when people thought that might be a bad idea?) they’ve spot-evolved into one of the country’s most versatile bands.
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