I Want You Back - Jackson Five
Posted by Mitch on Jun 29, 2008
The day my dad left for Vietnam is 1969 is the same day that the Jackson Five showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show performing I Want You Back. To this day, it’s my favorite song ever. I told my wife that if I ever go into a coma, this is the song, along with the rest of the Jackson Five collection, to play if she ever hopes I wake up.
So, without any further wait, I present the Jackson Five:
I Wish I Could Do The Beat Box
Posted by Mitch on May 11, 2008
How many folks remember the early days of rap when one of the most popular members of rap group was the guy who could do the beat box?
For those of you who don’t remember, or aren’t hip to this, the beat box guy was the one who made all the sounds that sounded like, well, whatever he wanted them to sound like. Some guys could make themselves sound like record scratching; some sounded just like drums. Some could sound like other instruments; it really didn’t matter. They helped keep the beat when music wasn’t available, and then they would carry it over when there was some music later on. These guys were essential for adding a whole heap of flavor to the beat, and it probably made some groups like The Fat Boys viable in the industry.
Well, a blog post from The Assimilated Negro titled More Beatbox Assimilation; Where Da Ladies At has captured a nice cross section of current masters and challengers to the throne. I thought it was better to link to his blog rather than post them all here.
And, though I once referenced the song in another post on this blog, why not share the real thing, right? So, below, here’s Push It:
Are You 2 Legit 2 Quit?
Posted by Mitch on May 4, 2008
Back in the early 90’s, MC Hammer was the man. There wasn’t anything this guy could do that could fail. Of course, time has a way of catching up to you, especially when you start believing all your own hype just a bit too much. So, Hammer soared, then crashed and burned, then slightly resurrected himself to get back to a place where he’s at least comfortable once again.
When the video for 2 Legit 2 Quit came out, I felt inspired in ways that no other video had inspired me up until that point. No, it wasn’t Thriller, and he wasn’t Michael Jackson, but for some reason I felt something in the message of this song, and I always wondered if that was part of the intention of making it or whether Hammer just felt like spending even more of the money that was coming to him way too fast.
No matter; it made me feel good, still makes me feel good, and it’s great to not only have James Brown being a part of it, but a good number of athletes are near the end that are, for the most part, hall of famers in their particular sports. By the way, pay attention to the kid, if you’ve never seen this video before; at one point it even looks like Hammer is impressed the kid could keep up with him.
Pulp Fiction? Not Quite
Posted by Mitch on Apr 18, 2008
I’ve sometimes wondered if many of the top movies would have still made it if they’d been cast with different people. Often I hear how one person was wanted, but they turn down a part for some reason, often becaue they end up making another movie that was much worse.
In this case, I’m thinking that I would have appreciated the casting about as much as the original, if not more:
Are Board Games Coming Back?
Posted by Mitch on Mar 31, 2008
When I was a kid, board games were a big deal. It was the 60’s, and there were only 3 real channels on TV (PBS was just starting), radio was mostly AM, and parents kicked kids out of the house whenever they could. So we played board games of all types; Candyland was one of my favorites, along with Life.
As I got older, it seemed board games were going out of vogue. I’m not sure if chess counts, but its heyday seemed to have come and gone. No one was playing checkers anymore. We were moving towards video games; I had the original Odyssey pong game, which we replaced later on with the Atari version because it not only had sound, but it was in color.
So, in my mind, I pretty much figured board games were going to the wayside like many other things. Oh sure, Trivial Pursuit had its moment, but you don’t hear much about that these days.
Then I was invited to play Scrabulous on Facebook, and realized just how much that game had taken off. It’s so popular that the creators, who obviously stole it from Scrabble, are trying to exact multi millions of dollars from the company for something I didn’t think they had any licensing rights for to begin with. But I also noticed that many other games that were only board games are being played, and in turn, suddenly there’s a hot market for these games that aren’t online, so that families and friends can get together and just have fun.
Well, never let me be one to try to fight trends; look below:
Chaka Used To Be Every Woman
Posted by Mitch on Mar 1, 2008
My cousin Kevin was the first person to ever tell me he was in love with Chaka Khan. I couldn’t blame him for that, as I thought she was really hot also. She seemed to be the type of woman who would be trouble if you even thought about bringing her home to meet your parents, but you wouldn’t care anyway. Nowadays people see Chaka looking a little bit less than the very sexy person she used to be, and the young ones wonder what we were drinking back in the day. Well folks, to see it is to believe it, so here she is, from 1978:
Don’t Blame It On The Sunlight
Posted by Mitch on Feb 28, 2008
It’s snowing once again, and at the present moment it’s snowing while the sun is shining. This is a big time phenomenon in central New York, multiple days of snow, and sharing snow with the sun. What do we blame it on? Well, today, I’m blaming it on the boogie:
Congress, Get Back To Real Work
Posted by Mitch on Feb 17, 2008
The congressional hearings on Roger Clemens and steroids was in full bloom last week as he and his accuser sat at the same table and endured heavy grilling from different congressional leaders.
I’m not here to take sides on this one, though I do have an opinion on it. I’m here to give an opinion on two other things. The first is that I don’t believe this is an issue that Congress should be dealing with. I mean, we’re in an election year. We have problems with the economy, we’re still in Iraq, we’re starting to see signs of global warming that may be our fault, they’re predicting gas could reach $5 a gallon by summer, houses are being foreclosed upon at record rates, they just recalled even more food products after having recalls of toys and the like all throughout last year, and unemployment is rising. Don’t these guys have better things to do that bring in Roger Clemens and others on something that has absolutely nothing to do with them, stuff that supposedly happened many, many years ago?
Two, this thing about steroids and other drugs in baseball. There are now rules for using steroids in baseball, but there weren’t in the past. Why is this suddenly a big issue? There are many sports pundits who are saying that the games and records are tainted because these athletes have been using steroids and thus the playing field wasn’t level. Please; stupidest argument I’ve ever heard. We know as a fact that football players have been using steroids since the late 60’s, and no one is saying those games shouldn’t matter. Baseball players have long used other drugs and stimulants because of the number of games they play, and no one has ever said that tainted the game. Doc Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates wrote in his book about being stoned on cocaine back in the early 70’s when he was pitching, and the Pirates won a World Series; anyone talking about taking that championship back?
Once something is made illegal, that’s when the story changes, because now there are rules on the books. I can fully understand that, and agree with it. But the way Congress is running these witch hunts on things that happened in the past needs to come to an end. Congress needs to get back to the business of taking care of the country, sports leagues need to get back to enforcing the rules they have at the time they set them, and the rest of us need to be allowed to just get back to watching sports and enjoying them for what they are.
And now I’m off this soapbox.
My Favorite Commercial From This Year’s Super Bowl
Posted by Mitch on Feb 8, 2008
There’s nothing closet about it; I’m a major league Michael Jackson fan. For those of you who weren’t around to know just how much he meant to the music industry in the 80’s, and for those of you who do, and, mainly, for me so I can find it whenever I want to, well, here we go:
Ask And It Is Given
by Esther & Jerry Hicks
Will Someone Tell Britney To Stay Home!
Posted by Mitch on Jan 16, 2008
You know, I’m probably going to hate myself in the morning, but I just have to comment on this train wreck that’s known as Britney Spears and all the vultures it seems to have accumulated along the way.
Can’t someone just call her up and tell her to stay home? Better yet, move to the desert or the grasslands just to get away from the madness. I mean, it doesn’t matter what I’m watching: E.T., Access Hollywood, the regular news,… this stuff is everywhere. And the press is in a frenzy. Just tonight, for instance, we heard about her trying to go to court and leaving because there were just too many press people around. We heard about this restaurant she went to and what she ate. We saw pictures of her being zipped up in a dress. We heard her speaking in her little Southern accent, then switching to a British accent. And we heard the TV announcer call her a “pop tart”.
I’m not going to hate on her, because it just seems obvious that she’s having some sort of mental breakdown. People are comparing her to Anna Nicole Smith; Smith wasn’t crazy, she was mistreated medically. Britney needs to have a nanny, period, take over her life and guide her into some good decisions, or she needs to take the advice of Dr. Phil and get some serious treatment. This stuff is getting out of hand.
Thing is, her last album wasn’t all that bad. I actually reviewed the album Blackout on one of my other sites and gave it a fairly positive review. This shows she hasn’t lost it totally, but that’s not going to get her life back into focus.
People want to put fault on someone, either the mother or K-Fed (no, I couldn’t go the entire post without mentioning the “himbo”), but when mental illness is involved, there is no fault. Someone help this woman, and soon; we have an election to get back to.
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