Day at the Races

Too windy for the beach but way too nice to be indooors, I opted for an afternoon at the track. I made four $5 win bets and, amazingly, won 2 of them, netting a total of $89!

A Most Odious Form of Noise Pollution

The "vroom-vroom" sound of a motorcyle sounds cool at the beginning of Motley Crue's "Girls Girls Girls" and most definitely has a type of adolescent appeal. ***

However, when you are driving with the windows down, waiting at a red light, and a motorcycle revs loudly approximately six feet from your ears, it is virtually painful and recently inspired me to coin the title of this post.

Most Boring Reading Ever

I like to read and will read virtually anything, whether it be the ingredients on a shapmoo bottle while I am cleansing or of food I am eating. ***

While I have never been a big 'reading in the bathroom' person, if a section of newspaper happens to be around in the shared floor-wide restroom at work I will take a look. ***

In doing so, however, I have recently discovered what might be the most boring thing I have ever read: the Bond Buyer periodical. It is all about government bonds and, when not drowning in technical speak, the parts of the stories that I understand relate to whether certain bonds will be passed by the respective governmental body and current bond ratings. Booooring...ZZZ

Best Workout Music Ever

My discman recently ceased to work effectively, thereby causing me to revert to the tried-and-true original tape-playing walkman (not into the ipod thing). ***

Fortunately, I have my all-time favorite workout album on tape. I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys listening to heavy metal/hard rock at the gym.

The Unfortunate Blurring Between Videos and Commercials

In a way, the blending of music videos and commercials is a facet of the "infotainment" concept which has overtaken the American mass media. With the music soundtrack and gratuitous displays of consumption, they are now basically indistinguishable; one cannot tell which is which. ***

Overall this is a negative trend. Music videos, once immensely enjoyable, have substantially diminished in value. At the same time, commercial advertisements (which are barely tolerable to begin with), having taken on the aspects of a video, have become marginally more enjoyable, thereby resulting in a net loss of general enjoyment. ***

On the other hand, this trend means that one is more at liberty to comment about about commercials in general discourse. As for recent car ads, I particularly like Mellencamp's "Our Country" series (the secret reason why the Colts won the Super Bowl), and the Presidents Day campaign which featured a quasi-crunk/dirrrty south re-mix of 'Hail to the Chief'

The Full Video

The Chevy Silverado Commercial