For Whom The Bell Tolls

Wow, three blog entries in three days! I must be finished posting on the Stephanie blog! :)

Back in 1997, I joined a new band who had a show scheduled in three weeks. The show was at an outdoor carnival put on by a local TV station, and it was a competition. We busted our ass and wrote 4 songs to perform (we only played three) and I must say we played them quite well. We took second place, losing to an all-girl cover band. Ever since then, I seem to have noticed that losing to women when it comes to performance competitions it fairly common. Let's face it, women have sweet, sexy voices and boobs which persuade EVERY male judge to vote highly for them.

Anyway, this band, Frozen Urine also competed. They had to change their name for this show to 'Frozen U' because after all, it was a kids' carnival. They also had to change the lyrics (and title) to one of their songs (Fuck You = Screw You) but they did a nice gesture by playing a heavy metal version of the alphabet song.

The people who hosted the carnival made it quite clear that we were to use THEIR gear in order to minimize downtime between bands. Their gear was crap and didn't function worth a shit. Frozen Urine break into an intermission song in the middle of "For Whom The Bell Tolls" while the drumset is being fixed.



Everyone who participated in the competition walked away with a t-shirt with a picture of a clown on it, which nobody ever wanted to be caught dead in. My shirt went up in my parents' house fire along with all the other shirts I kept as keepsakes from competitions I participated in (I had quite a few.)

Uninteresting Trash

For the many nifty gems that I post on this blog, there are truckloads of trash that really don't make the cut. It's all stuff that's uninteresting, boring, or just plain stupid. Here's a few items that are so awful that they deserve a small mention...

Nils Ling - Half Truths

When I first came across this still-sealed tape, I figured it would be a blast listening to it! With song titles such as "Just Say No To Puppies" and "The Dress Party", it SHOULD promise to deliver entertainment for all!

Right after I put the tape in, on came some shitty Newfie fiddle Celtic music. I can't tell you how much I fucking hate Celtic ANYTHING. It makes Canadians appear as if they all live in a barn behind the bush, wearing red and black plaid EVERYTHING while eating snow drenched in maple syrup.

After the crappy music faded out, I sat there and listened to this guy tell a story about monsters in the closet or some shit. Then more Celtic music, then a story about cleaning the garage and feeding his kids motor oil in the living room. His voice is sickingly over-exaggerated which makes his stories even less funny. You know the way people talk in those cheesy B movies? Take away the motion picture and you're listening to one of those guys. I won't bother wasting bandwidth posting an audio clip of this guy because he's just not that interesting.


Rodney Dean - The Voices In My Head

This is another album with song titles that guaranteed to entertain. I'd never heard of Rodney Dean, but for two bucks I figured I'd take a gamble. This CD is filled with terrible unfunny parodies (Funky Cold Medina = Funky Skunky Smell) and really awful voice impersonations that nobody can identify. While somebody could take a bad impression of Don Cherry and make it funny, this guy only makes it equally as annoying as Don Cherry himself. And his impression of Mr. Mackie from South Park could only exist because he watched one and only one episode. His Mr. Burns from the Simpsons sounds like Mr. Bullwinkle from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

It happens so rarely that I feel embarassed for someone, but this CD manages to invoke that feeling repeatedly. And to think I could've used this $2 to buy a dull Backstreet Boys CD that would only piss me off instead of making me feel like an idiot for wasting my money.


That Thing At The Beginning of Dollarama Videos

Today I picked up three DVDs from Dollarama. Occasionally, I come across some interesting stuff there. I was happy to have found some episodes of The Littlest Hobo which was a 'family' program that I watched when I was a kid. So I popped the DVD in to watch an episode, and this PIECE OF SHIT sung by a guy who looks like that guy from Cypress Hill comes on the screen:



I generally enjoy patriotic and anti-war songs, but this is just fucking awful. The way Devon Scott Dicker sings, it sounds as if his creepy uncle is molesting him while he's in the recording studio.
INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE!


Left: Devon Scott Dicker -- Right: Guy from Cypress Hill

Incidently, all three of the videos I bought have this awful song playing at the beginning. Feel free to comment on the video!

...and if you want to hear some GOOD anti-war songs, here's a few suggestions:
Rooster - Alice In Chains
Universal Soldier – Glen Campbell
Guns Of Brixton - The Clash
Eve Of Destruction - Barry McGuire



UPDATE: April 15, 2009

Here's a response from Rodney Dean!

Hey Ben,
I received a link about your blog regarding my CD "The Voices in My Head". I respect the right for you to speak your mind on things, and I'm sorry to hear that you feel you wasted $2 on my disk. Truth is, it was my first professionally recorded compliation back in 2001, and when I compare it to what I do now...well let's just say I can't listen to it anymore, good thing I only printed 1,000 copies. As far as my voices, I've been doing voiceovers professionally since then, and have done quite well with it. I've attached a recent impressions video, if you dare watch, or my direct website is www.rodneydean.com
I've checked out a bit of your stuff, not bad. I will always support someone who is doing something they love, so Kudo's to you. Regardless how you feel towards me, I will continue to work on my craft, can't please everyone.
P.S. If you give me your address or paypal email, I'll gladly send you $2, so you can spend it on something worth while.
Cheers,
Rodney Dean

I'd be stupid to NOT take his $2!

Book Review: Playful Pussy

Here's another item from my childhood that I managed to save. I loved the hell out of this book, and you can understand why... the pages are full of a cute, adorable pussy!

I figured this book came out in the 1970s since it was my book in the 1980s and had someone else's name penned on the corner. I did a bit of digging on the publisher (Doeisha), and the book came from Japan and was published sometime between 1950 to sometime in the 1960s, so the book is much older than I thought. It also seems like I'm the only one in the world who owns a copy of this book, since couldn't find anyone else with a copy on the internet. Some of the other books in the "My Happy Book" series have prices on them ranging between 27 and 39 cents each.

The entire book has its cardboard pages held together by 25 year old masking tape, and has mould spots and warping from leaving it out in the rain when I was around 6 years old. Regardless, I still loved this book. Now, let's go to the land of Pussy!







As we've gone through our adventure with Pussy getting wet, indulging in fish, and becoming exhausted after all the fun, you can clearly see that Playful Pussy is a book that the whole family can enjoy. A clear 10/10 rating!

A New Audio Hosting Site!

Classical Gas Emissions has a new friend! From now on, sound clips will be hosted on Houndbite.com. This place is strictly for hosting goofy audio files, and has rescued the Creepy Hypnotist audio clip from the Youtube trashbin.

The only thing is the audio player doesn't seem to embed well into blogger, but the audio plays fine on the site. The biggest selling points were that it likes Linux and the Opera web browser.

Thank god, no more pissing around with Putfile!!! No more making crappy videos for audio clips! This also means I can get blog entries up faster, since I won't need to eat away time making videos. Don't get me wrong, I have lots more video stuff to put on Youtube, but I don't need to be making a video for every stupid audio clip.

Oh yeah, and you can now DOWNLOAD the audio clips (or as they're called, 'houndbites')

A Cassette For Women: Love Your Body

I'm feeling great today! My head is full of bumps, my nipples feel good, and I like to touch the fat on my hips.

The other day at the thrift store, I came across an interesting stack of cassettes. I picked out two titles that seemed the most interesting and bought them. They're hypnosis tapes that were created by a guy named Romane. Romane made it big a few years back with his 'Quit Smoking Through Hypnosis' seminar. The Allen Carr book I mentioned a few posts ago is cheaper than Romane's seminars, and it works well too.

Anyway, what initially caught my attention with these tapes was the warning "DO NOT PLAY WHILE DRIVING." I thought it was because of the hypnosis, but I was wrong. I would've crashed my truck from laughing if I had played this while driving! This particular tape is called "For Women: Love Your Body." To summarize, the guy tells the woman to get naked and touch herself.

There is a couple of problems I noticed with this tape though. First of all, I believe this tape would have been more effective had it been voiced by a female. Since it's a male, he just ends up sounding like a pervert. Second, the voice on this cassette seems to have been altered. If you look at the waveform in the below picture, you'll notice that everything below the zero line is clipping (lowest point of wave is cut off). However, everything above the zero line is fine, possibly a bit too small:



With the male voice being altered, the guy sounds like a creepy old pig getting off on talking about the woman's body.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A CLIP! (edited down for length)

And of course if you'd like to buy this cassette or any of the other hypnosis cassettes that I left behind at the Thrift store, you can buy them HERE! Sorry, I think they're only available on CD now :(


UPDATE (03-30-2009):

I initially hosted this thing on youtube and it was removed. I'm not quite sure why the video was removed, but here's the reason I recieved:

The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violation of the YouTube Community Guidelines:

* Creepy Male Hypnotist - (drbpony)

Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning strike, which will expire in six months. Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the termination of your account.

For your reference, a copy of this message has also been emailed to the address associated with this account.
Sincerely,

The YouTube Team

Either it was removed for copyright infringement, or for nudity. I pulled this from the community guidelines which pretty much describes both the recording and the images:

YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it's a video of yourself, don't post it on YouTube.

Thanks to Houndbite.com, the audio is back up!