Amazon.com is at it again, recommending products that I will be sure to enjoy based on 45 CDs that I have ranked. Using all this data and the best algorithms in the business, Amazon has recommended that I read this book, a coming-of-age sisterhood novel about four young women and a pair of magical jeans. Is this really the same audience that listens to the music that I do? Which part of "male who likes The Smashing Pumpkins, Zebrahead, New Found Glory, MxPx, and Juliana Theory" translates under data analysis into "would be interested in reading books with a target audience of females aged 10-15"?

In an archaeological breakthrough the likes of which we may never see again, scientists discovered an artifact more important to mankind than the fabled Missing Link: an old bottle of Tabasco sauce.

I agree with Eminem.

No, not his views on homosexuals, violence, women, or rap, but rather his views on techno music. In his newest song Without Me, the white rapper blasts a variety of his compadres in the music industry including Moby, who he tastelessly refers to as a "36-year-old baldheaded fag". He also uses the phrase "nobody listens to techno", which if you've ever hung around me is also a phrase that I use frequently, especially when Pete is around.

As much as I despise techno and its complete lack of musical merit and the fact that any old hack with a few thousand bucks can record a boring, repetitive techno song, I find it rather disturbing that I am directly quoted in an Eminem song. Rather disturbing. But not disturbing enough that I will start listening to techno.

I was mistaken in my post yesterday. There are only two Mapps brothers: Scientific and Majestic. Also I forgot another classic name: Georgetown center Ruben Boumje Boumje patrolled the low post a couple of years back.

A few questions to ponder while you're lying in bed waiting to sleep:

-Have you seen that Captain Morgan's commercial, the one with the huge bonfire, the guy at the bar with 4 girls, and the guys standing in an aerobics class watching the (all attractive) women? Does the federal government really think that tiny unreadable text that says "no drinking under 21, captains orders" at the bottom of the screen when the commercial is ending will really have an impact when the whole rest of the commercial basically says "if you want to be this stereotypical ideal guy then you drink Captain Morgan's latest trendy hard lemondate/Zima knockoff"?

-What exactly is "truck season"? I've been told countless times both by dealer commercials and local shysters that now is the best time to buy a truck, but why? Isn't this the end of the model year for cars also?

-For that matter, why does every local car dealership commercial feature a dog dressed in people-clothes? This holds true no matter where in the United States you go, it's more American than apple pie or baseball.

-Remember when this site used to be advertised about 20 times during each episode of Sportscenter? Well surprise surprise it is going out of business. You'd think after the dot-com crash that people would finally realize that you cannot base your entire revenue stream on advertising and be successful, yet so many websites still do it. Note to every web CEO out there: people don't pay attention to your ads anymore, and the companies doing the advertising are starting to realize this (apparently they're not too quick either).

-Do people watch reality shows on TV anymore? I keep seeing ads for "Bachelorettes in Alaska" and "The Mole 2", yet I don't know a single person who watched the original Mole, never mind its sequel. People also seem to love medical shows, which explains all the ads for the latest gritty show about real life hospitals and their patients (as opposed to ER which was about George "Jack-in-the-Box" Clooney's bobbing head). I say combine the two. Call it "Fox presents Who Wants to be a Surgeon?" and cart in 10 weirdos who just want to get on tv so they can star in a B-movie and then disappear off the face of the Earth (Colleen from Survivor, I'm looking in your direction...). In each episode they perform real surgery on real patients. Watch them botch simple procedures because they lack "medical knowledge"! Watch heartrending stories of patients who have beaten the odds to survive this long only to be doomed by inept "doctors"! The winner is the last one to be sued for malpractice.

-Is there anyone out there who doesn't believe that Yao Ming will be a colossal bust in the NBA? And if not why did the Rockets draft him #1 overall? He's skinny, slow, and prone to taking jump shots, yet he is 7'5" tall. This automatically qualifies him as a great center, apparently, despite many many past contradictions of this theory. Speaking of the height-solves-all-problems theory, check this out and scroll down to the Portland Trailblazers. "Second-round pick Jason Jennings is a 7-footer, which the Blazers need." So basically all that is keeping the Blazers from being successful is someone, anyone, even Manute Bol, who is 7 feet tall? Somehow I think "players who aren't thugs" is also a need for the Blazers, perhaps moreso than "7-foot statues who can't shoot and are too skinny to guard Shaq".

-Is there anything more amusing in this world than movies where monkeys are a) dressed in people-clothes b) doing things that are normally attributed to humans, such as checking into hotels or playing minor league baseball?

The CEC was undergoing some growing pains today (i.e. upgrades), so for a short while I had 2 gigs of quota space and no CEC student websites were accessible. Since many of the weblogs in my little community (with the exception of sites hosted on -273) live on CEC webspace, and many of you read only these few weblogs, for awhile I was the only game in town. Nature abhors a vacuum but commerce rewards a monopoly, however I was sadly unable to cash in on my temporary popularity and now the other sites are back up. Next time...

Tonight was the NBA draft, and amongst the bevy of foreign players taken in the first round was one with the amusing name of Maybyner "Nene" Hilario. This got me thinking about all the great names of college and pro basketball past. The Maryland Terrapins of the early/mid-90s had a player named Exree (pronounced "X-Ray") Hipp. In Virginia a few years back there was a fella by the name of Majestic Mapps who had one brother named Scientific and another with an equally amusing name. Boubacar Ow, Mamadou N'Dyaie, and Carlos Boozer are amusing also, but all of these pale in comparison to the immortal God Shammgod.

Imagine having the last name "Shammgod". Then imagine naming your child God. What kind of childhood would they lead? What kind of ego must you have to name your kid God? What is it like trying to register the name God? So many questions...

It doesn't get much more amusing than this if you're a sports fan. To summarize, a woman who was attending a minor league baseball game with her 8-year-old daughter and her Brownie troop ran onto the field of play to argue with an umpire about the call on a bang-bang play at first in the 7th inning. That's right, a minor league baseball game, and the woman does not seem to be related to anyone involved, which would at least be a semi-reasonable excuse. This event took place in, surprise surprise, New Jersey, further confirming my hypothesis that New Jersey is the armpit of America.

My New Found Glory CD arrived in the mail today. Expect a full review as soon as I listen a few times and formulate my opinions.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone how bad the movie "Batman and Robin" is. I fear that as time passes and more and more bad movies are released, Batman and Robin will slip out of our collective consciousness. Someday, you could be browsing the old releases at Blockbuster and come across it. "Have I ever seen this Batman movie?," you'll wonder to yourself, "I don't remember, I guess I'll rent it." And that will be your fatal mistake.

There are precious few things I expect from a Batman movie, but one of the important ones is that the actor playing Batman should be competent. In this movie, George Clooney transforms Batman from a dark, brooding character haunted by nightmares of his parents to a buffoonish character whose head shakes side to side whenever he talks like some sort of walking jack-in-the-box. Batman should command the audience's attention whenever he's on the screen, but Clooney is often upstaged by Robin, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, random henchmen with stupid props, plants, buildings, and neon things.

Speaking of neon things, why the hell is half of Gotham City built with gothic architecture, large stone gargoyles, and huge stone buildings like it's supposed to be, while the other half is inhabited by lame-o street gangs with glowing neon paint a la Teddy Ruxpin's caterpillar pal Grubby. These street gangs, along with taking credibility away from Gotham, also are the central figures of the absolute worst action sequence ever attributed to celluloid. That would be the extravagantly unnecessary "bike race" scene featuring Robin, Batgirl, and a horde of mindless neon people. It does absolutely nothing to advance the plot and wastes a good 15 minutes of our time to make this important character development: Robin and Batgirl are both stupid, stupid people.

On the topic of both Batgirl and bad casting decisions, Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl was about as believable as Denise Richards' Dr. Christmas Jones the Nuclear Physicist in the last Bond movie. Silverstone delivers scintillating lines like "Suit me up Uncle Alfred" no way in hell that even doltishly wooden Batman or impishly stupid Robin would fall for her. Mr. Freeze is a whole other story. Arnold Schwarzenegger looks a lot like Mr. Freeze, but that's all that the large Austrian has going for him. Unfortunately for him, he also had writers who were apparently high on crack. Therefore throughout the movie he spouts awful puns like "Everybody freeze!" and "Let's kick ice!". How can they expect me to hear a line like "My name is Freeze, learn it well, for it is the chilling sound of your dooooom" coming out of the mouth of Arnold without falling on the floor laughing?

Everyone who had anything to do with this movie, which singlehandedly killed the Batman series for now, should be barred from ever entering Hollywood again. It is a travesty to all that is right and good about summer blockbusters and should be required viewing for all film majors and aspiring directors. Only then can we assure that its stunning horrendousness will never be duplicated.

Saw Minority Report last night, and I must say I liked it quite a bit. I won't post any spoilers or anything here, I'll just say that you should see it on the big screen and be dazzled by the effects.

I will talk about future movies in general, though. Why is it that every movie about the future involves needless technology that is "cool looking" but not really functional? In this movie, for instance, they fly around in a helicopter looking thing but it is tall and spiraled like a snail's shell. This looks cool, but is this really an efficient design for holding people and equipment? This pales in comparison to the means by which the psychic folks relay the identity of murder victims. It is done through the intricate three-dimensional carving of a spherical block of wood. In the movie they claim that this is to ensure that no tampering is done, but I'm sure there are easier ways. It looks cool but serves no real purpose.

Is this our future? Are we doomed to be surrounded by products that are futuristic-looking but unwieldy? The answer is yes.

Praise for this site from Rachel on Ouranophobe. But is this site really all that she claims?

Ouranophobe: Well-written by a journalism person.
Chris Hill Festival: Hacked together by a Computer Science major who has the tendency of separating independent clauses inappropriately with commas, therefore he occasionally types in massive run-on sentences.
Ouranophobe: Lets us get to know Rachel and the inner workings of her soul even if we've only met her once in real life.
Chris Hill Festival: Resorts to posting amusing spam, which allows us to see the deepest feelings of scam artists and porn peddlers.
Ouranophobe: Updated daily, sometimes more often, even during moves and other times of flux.
Chris Hill Festival: Often left by the wayside during extraordinary times such as "weeknights".

So there you have it. The only way to truly make the decision of which is better is to read them both yourself. Every day. Even when I don't update. That's right, read the old posts again.

That and keep in mind this one fact that may explain why Rachel writes of my site so glowingly: On the other side of my room, spanning two CD-Roms, is a flawless DAT-sourced copy of the Zwan show that Rachel attended. Surely Rachel is aware that the laudatory comments on Ouranophobe will expedite its copying and delivery to her (that is if michael tells me when he is visiting her). Music is power. Muahahahaha....

I think I win the spam of the day contest. This came into my inbox this evening:

The BEST zoo site on the @net!
Sex With Dogs
Horse Blow Jobs.
Snake Fuck.

I don't know what else to say, there are just so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to begin.

Humans may now be able to teleport things, but we're still a long ways off as a species. This was evidenced today by the family washing their clothes in the fountain near my apartment. Keep in mind a few important facts about said fountain:

-There is no pool, it is just jets of water.
-The water has been dyed bright blue.

This resulted in a very soaking wet man washing his clothes in stained and dirty water and then drying them on the ground in the parking lot across the street. Doesn't lying wet clothes on pavement in a well-traveled parking lot kind of defeat the purpose of "washing" the clothes? I'm at a loss for words.

Random notes from this week:

-There has been a Taco Bell dog sighting. He's co-starring with the talking cgi-lizard on a Geico commercial.

-In Montreal today it was, hold on to your hats, Rusty Staub bobblehead night. Note from the stats that Rusty played in Montreal for a whopping total of three and a half seasons, and he wasn't exactly a hall-of-famer in the rest of his career either. At this rate they'll be making a bobblehead of me pretty soon.

-Charlie Sheen is marrying Denise Richards. That in itself is pretty odd, but check out the first line of the article: "The marriage is the first for Richards". The sentence tone, more appropriate for a statement like "The All-Star game selection is the first for Staub", makes it abundantly clear that it has now become not only accepted but expected for people to marry multiple times.

-Britney Spears is in the news again, this time getting booed because she had to cut her concert short after the power went out. There are so many jokes one could put here, I'll just let you insert your favorite zinger instead:

a) Without additional juice to power them, Britney's breasts would have had to perform at their normal size, which would have been a commercial disaster.
b) The booing was actually for the songs preceding the blackout.
c) Rumor has it that a spiteful Justin Timberlake was spotted near the arena's electrical supply.
d) "Oops! Without pyrotechnic effects people would pay more attention to my music and notice that it is mostly mindless drivel with a few well-placed cleavage shots."

-Americans are stupid, but then again the Japanese have been telling us that for years. This statistic, however, is perplexing: "Only about one-third showed a good understanding of the scientific process, including ideas about probability and how to do an experiment.
Americans did better on some other questions. Ninety-four percent knew cigarette smoking causes lung cancer." Why then are there many, many American scientists while cigarette smoking is still allowed in restaurants?

-And finally, MSN.com, our number one purveyor of useless knowledge and blatant advertising masquerading as "front page news", has the following top story: Brad Pitt's Grizzly Look. If I walked out onto the street looking like that I'd be laughed back indoors, but he's chilling with Jennifer Aniston. Someone explain that to me.

Rachel is listening to Tyler (not the Sky High Drop version unfortunately), David is getting funny emails while michael continues his epic showdown with Aaron, James (there's a reason there's no link) continues to make a mockery of the word "weblog" by not posting for over a month, Amy is dancing and forgetting how to count, Other Amy redesigned her whole page, and Lucas is watching movies, but through it all The Chris Hill Festival has lay dormant.

But never fear, in an effort to bring you the best content possible, I bring you a new feature entitled "Fun with a Fake Hotmail Account"

The first entry is an email from me to the fine folks at Kennelwood Pet Resort, a place for people to board their pets while on vacation. I posted about Kennelwood last month, but my archives still aren't working. Anyway, here we go...

To whom it may concern,
I have an odd request, but one which I hope you will consider. My wife Laura will be in the St. Louis area next month on a business trip, and I was wondering if it would be possible for her to stay at your establishment for the week that she will be there. Economic times are tight, so we need to conserve money wherever we can. Most hotels want at least $60-$80 per night for her to stay, but according to your price list it would cost us only $32 per night for her to stay in a lodge at Kennelwood. She loves animals and would not mind sharing her living quarters with some feisty felines or a few of man's best friends. Please forward me any information about the size of the different rooms and any possible deals for a one-week stay in late June/early July. Also, she loves Golden Retrievers, and would prefer to room with that breed if at all possible. Thank you for your time and consideration, my wife looks forward to a pleasant stay.

Sincerely,
[xxxxx xxxxx]

They replied the next day with...

Dear [xxxxx],

Renee G. Cordes
Marketing Manager
Kennelwood Village & Invisible Fence

Someone is trying to kill me. At least, this is michael's hypothesis after I discovered a large insect crawling on my wall. Remember the scene in Star Wars Episode II (Attack of the Clones) where Jango Fett's henchwoman puts those two giant bugs in Natalie Portman's room and they crawl around really fast? That's how this bug looked, except a bit smaller and probably not one of the most poisonous in the galaxy. I also did not dispatch of it as quickly as the two Jedis did, as my methods involved a piece of tissue and quick reflexes rather than light sabers. Regardless, michael theorizes that someone put this bug in my room with malicious intent, and I think I know who it is.

Benni Zuma.

Today I was stranded at work for awhile during the apocalypse, at least that's what it seemed like when it went from sunny and hot to dark and pouring. It was nothing compared to last summer, though, when at one point the sky turned dark green and it felt like 10 o'clock at night. We may not get the sheer number of tornadoes, but we definitely get those big midwest storms.

So during my time being stranded at work I actually got a lot accomplished. I've been working on two different Java programs the last two days and both are coming along well. I'm forcing myself to learn Java Swing in the process rather than cheating and using the CS101 Canvas, but you don't really care about that. You'd rather hear about the new New Found Glory CD that came out today.

Well you'll just have to wait, because after a lunchtime trip to Vintage Vinyl (pre-apocalypse), I decided that $15 is too much to pay for a CD when it's on sale at Amazon for $12. The only problem with that rationale is that by saving $3 shopping at Amazon I will invariably pick up some of the other items in my wish list which will end up costing me even more money.

A couple of observations while watching Animal Planet during dinner:

-Ads for the show "Crocodile Hunter" (make sure you have your sound turned on) are shameless. Every one shows the star coming oh-so-close to being bitten or attacked by some variety of exotic animal, and the promo for next week bragged "see the encounter that almost ended it all" while showing a giant crocodile about to chomp on his leg. The website shows a digitally-enhanced picture of the "hand of God" pulling the Crocodile Hunter out from between the jaws of a large crocodile and has the following to say about the episode:

After a near-fatal accident, Steve is partly incapacitated and a target for prey species able to detect any weakness. A wounded lion is a potential man-eater, and Steve keeps a wary eye on an old male that limps into a shady tree. Steve wanders into a charge from a female cheetah protecting her cubs and a close encounter with three white rhinos. The Zebra spitting cobra is the one animal Steve hoped he would encounter, but this dangerous snake proves a real handful to wrangle with only one hand.

You can't get much more entertained than watching someone stumble through Africa being attacked by animals and not being helped by his trusty cameraman.

Other future episodes include:


Danny the vet gets a nasty bite while treating Kenny the water rat


a Burmese python puts the squeeze on Gus


Wes chases down an elusive whip snake hiding in a shed.

Obviously Steve lets his poor helpers handle the smaller, sometimes more dangerous animals while he gets all the glory.
Just in case all of this mayhem isn't enough, go here to see video clips of past maimings and snakebites.

-Some people will believe anything, and all of them make an appearance on The Pet Psychic, featuring a creepy British woman named Sonya who claims to be able to communicate telepathically with animals. Take that Dr. Dolittle. The website even gives tips on how you can communicate with your pets yourself, but not very good tips or else Sonya would be out of a job. Check out the picture of Sonya and the cat on that page. I don't have to be psychic to know what it's thinking: "Good God woman, I'm an American cat. Ditch the accent for Christ sake."

It's not just a one way conversation, though. Our pets can apparently also read our minds. Uh-oh.

Sonya apparently can also contact dead pets, which she did on today's show, in order to find out why someone's dog died. The woman was weeping throughout the whole show and would've believed anything. I firmly believe that if I jumped up on stage and told her that her dog joined a 5-piece bluegrass band to play the banjo and died in a bus accident just north of Dusseldorf on a European tour she would've completely agreed.

There are so many things wrong with the idea of Sonya reading the pet's minds, including but not limited to:

Why does she always ask the owner for the pet's name, when most of the pets respond to (and therefore know) their own names?
If dogs could read our minds, why do they sleep during burglaries and attack small children?
Why does she always tell the owner that the pet wants some new and fancy product (i.e. that a woman's bird wanted a mirror)? How would a bird know the concept of a mirror having never seen one?
Why do all pets speak telepathically in English?
What does one major in during college in order to become a "pet psychic"?

Oh the things you learn from watching Animal Planet, a subsidiary of the Discovery Channel.

Lucas has a weblog. Go read it. Now.

Tonight I watched the Mike Tyson/Lennox Lewis boxing match. I've never watched boxing before, but my friends were going and after all of Tyson's crazy shenanigans I figured it would be a spectacle if nothing else.

Mike Tyson has a history of saying funny things, including but not limited to threatening to eat his opponents children. This is especially funny coming out of the mouth of someone whose voice sounds like they are approximately 8 years old. He also, of course, bit Evander Holyfield's ear off during a fight. During the press conference announcing this fight a few months ago, Tyson decided it would be in his best interest to run at Lewis (while he was surrounded by his entourage) and start choking him. On television. In front of a room full of press and boxing officials. Right before the fight started he was quoted as saying that he has "found inner peace" because his mom sent him videos of his pigeons from New York City. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Because of his history of making a fool out of himself while endangering the safety of others, many states refused to give Tyson a boxing license or host this fight. Unfortunately, the actual fight did not live up to all the hoopla. Tyson came out at the start looking basically like an insane animal who had been caged for a long period of time. This is true, since a team of psychiatrists in Boston did pronounce him insane, and he was indeed caged for a few years in a state penitentiary for rape and assault. However, after the first round he was noticeably exhausted and bleeding. Bleeding because Lewis repeatedly used his extra thirteen inches of reach to tap him on the face and then pound him on the side of the head with a hook. Even though he used basically this same strategy over and over again, eventually Tysons eyes were swollen shut so there was nothing he could about it except take the beating and try to remain standing.

After the fight, instead of trying to choke Lewis again like I would've wished, Tyson instead claimed that all his antics were simply to promote the fight. He then proceeded to kiss Lewis' ass and beg for a rematch. Lewis simply ignored him and proclaimed himself the greatest fighter in the world a few times, then called himself, I am not making this up, a "pugilist specialist". Not once but twice.

In summary: Mike Tyson is a scary, scary man. Lennox Lewis is tall. Pigeons will give you inner peace. Big words, when spoken in a British accent by someone who is sweating and bleeding, sound ridiculous. I will eat your children.

I've just been chastised by michael of all people about not posting, and I know you're all on the edge of your seats about whether I'll be taken in by the Nigerian scam, so here's the latest missive from Benni Zuma:


Dear [xxxxx xxxxxx],

I am sorry for not responding to your mail promptly. I have been out of town on official duties. I just saw the mail you sent to me.
I want to assure that there is nothing to be wary about your sending your tel. and fax numbers down as this transaction is 100% risk free as far as we keep it to ourselves and you adhere to our instructions over here.

Silly me, so worried about sending my personal information to someone I've never met in another country who is planning on laundering $24 million US.

The indemntiy form that we collected from the Justice ministry is now with me. I have to fax it down to you, so that you could have it completed and faxed back to me immediately. So, I would want you to send down your tel. and fax number down so that I can send the form down to you today. My tel. no is +27-834993447.

If this is any sort of real phone number I would be highly surprised. As it is I'll report it to the authorities anyway.

Please anytime you call me, the first thing you should say is 'WHAT IS THE CODE". I would then answer "BLUE BALLOON". If I do not answer correctly, just know that you are not talking to the right person and you should just terminate
the call.

...and then start running. I have prepared a series of aliases for you to use as you fly to a remote town in South America and live as a peasant under an assumed name. Destroy your credit cards and pay only cash, we will contact you in two weeks with further instructions. This sounds like one of those John Grisham novels where the lawyer does something illegal and contacts his client or whomever the target is with a series of crazy fake names and it is always easy to procure fake passports and other legal documents.

This is because we have bad telecommunication systems here and most lines jam when calls are made. This also to ensure confidentiality and to make sure you are speaking with me but not to the wrong person.

i.e. one of the other members of a highly-trained staff of scam artists who are manning the phones daily. Dial extension 01 for Blue Balloon. Dial extension 02 for Red Balloon. Dial extension 03 for Miss Cleo.

I expect your mail as soon as possible. God bless you and your family.

--
_______________________________________________
Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com
http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup


At this point it's about time to have some fun with Benni Zuma, I'm thinking Papa Johns Pizza would be a good international toll call for him to make. I thought about 1-800-My-Sluts or a similar service, but most of those are free (and too obviously fake). I may not be able to get him to reveal enough info to be captured, but I can force him into paying for a high-priced international phone call to a nationwide pizza chain. Here is my response to Mr. Zuma:


Benni,
It would be safer if you called me. I do not want my wife to see a phone bill with an international call on it and start asking questions. My home phone number is 1-703-459-4502. Please call during the evening. I will give you my fax number then. There is a chance my wife or son could pick up the phone. To ensure it is me, say the word "DELIVERY" and I will say the words "RED SPARROW". If it is not me, my family will think it is a delivery man who got the wrong number so you can just hang up. I expect to hear from you soon.

xxxxx xxxxx


The number, interestingly enough is the phone number of a Pizza Hut delivery restaurant in Woodstock, VA. By saying the word delivery, both parties will hopefully be confused enough so that he stays on the phone long enough to rack up a bit more of a toll charge.

Thus ends my saga with some perpetrators of the Nigeria Scam. I'm also reporting it to the Secret Service as they have a special account set up to gather information about the scam.

Want the perfect example of how proof logic, no matter how scientific, can still result in incorrect results that make you look like a complete idiot? Check out this page (thanks to Ab9 Online for pointing this one out), which claims to have scientific reasoning that proves that the world is only 6,000 years old and that everything in the Bible is true. Not only is the reasoning off, but the author makes himself look like even more of a fool by making claims that if you don't read and understand this proof now you will look like an idiot when everyone realizes that it is true. He says this multiple times. He also did some funny eccentric/psychopath things like write an open letter to Stephen Hawking and submit his proof to a scientific journal (it was rejected, surprise surprise). There are some real nutcases out there. Wow.

Chris' Guide to Summer Music

I know what you're thinking right now: "Chris, you have such good taste in music, but there are no albums out there right now worth getting. Which CDs will be the ones that I remember this summer by?" Even if you're not thinking that (and you're probably not), here's a little preview of what new music is coming out this summer into early Fall.

Sticks and Stones (New Found Glory) -- June 11
Say what you will about NFG being too poppy, too commercialized, and looking and sounding like every other pop-punk band out there. If you look beyond the image and the screaming girls, their self-titled album was start-to-finish one the catchiest albums to come out in a long time. My expectations are so high for their new album, especially after hearing the first single "My Friends Over You", that I will probably be let down, but as long as they stay away from Blink182-ish subject matter and sing reasonably mature songs in their usual fun style I will be happy.

Cheer Up! (Reel Big Fish) -- June 25
These guys have been dormant for awhile after the followup to their breakout album Turn the Radio Off kind of fell flat. There was supposedly squabbling amongst the band over whether or not to even release this album, and I hear that once it was finished some members were not happy with how any of the songs turned out. It will be interesting to see what they've cooked up now that ska is officially dead, since most of their songs were about how sickening it was that ska was so popular.

The Underdog EP (Yellowcard) -- "Midsummer"
You probably haven't heard of Yellowcard, but their album One for the Kids is pretty big in an underground sort of way. They have a rock violin player which kind of separates them from other standard punk bands. They're on a real label now so it should be interesting to see what their first "big" release sounds like.

Yellow #5 (Mustard Plug) -- September 17
Speaking of ska being dead, Mustard Plug is still kicking around in Michigan and they even recorded a new album. Their first two albums were horrible, horrible, horrible, but their last two were great. That means this album will be good, then the cycle will repeat itself. And by then there will be no more ska.

[as yet untitled] (Zebrahead) -- "End of Summer"
Judging from the timeline of the last Zebrahead album, "end of summer" will become "end of 2002". Their last album Playmate of the Year was supposed to put them on the map for good, but it was too poppy for their old fans and never got the airplay to make the leap to the mainstream. This album is supposed to "hearken back to the early days" but will that be a return to a good sound or a step backwards?

[as yet untitled] (The Ataris) -- Early October
Again, this is the band's own preferred release date so it'll probably get pushed back until Christmas music season (November). The Ataris albums that I've heard start off really well and end with a bunch of songs that all sound the same and aren't very good. Hopefully they get over that track record with this one, since it's too early for there to be a tracklisting or sound clips.

There you have it. 6 albums to check out in the coming months. I'll probably review the ones that I get so if you want a more in-depth and accurate look at them before making a purchase then keep checking back. And by all means *Buy the album, don't just download mp3s*.

As michael mentioned, two nights ago we recorded a few shoddily-done cover songs. It's amazing how something that doesn't sound half bad when you do it can sound so unbearably horrible the next day. I thinsay anything about the movie without ruining the surprise twist ending (which is kinda cool), but suffice to say that if you don't like scary old houses, quick shots of strange old women, and creepy servants who seem to be always plotting and scheming, then this may not be the movie for you.

Everybody is gone this weekend, so it's been kind of slow around here. When people start returning this week things should pick up a bit.