from happyrobot - updated 6/9/2026 3:15:13 AM https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp en-us https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=3014 The night after I wrote about hating retro (all of it) and getting on with my life, I spent two hours with a friend of mine discussing the situational orientation of different sit-coms. That’s the direction from which the situation penetrates the front door and converges on the actors. We were watching Bob Newhart and Jeffrie pointed out that the door is on the left in Bob’s apartment and the situation moves from left to right, as opposed to The Jeffersons which moves from right to left. We ended up with four categories, actually five. I don’t remember the show very well, but Jeffrie contends that in Chico and the Man, situations just materialized in the center of the set. Otherwise, there was the obvious right (All In the Family, Simpsons), the obvious left (Good Times, That’s My Momma, Sanford and Son {This became known as the “ghetto-left.” The door moves to the right once an African American character/family has “moved on up” or allied themselves with an upper middle class white family—Different Strokes or Gimme‘ a Break}), the central hallway entrance with a jail-cell or other cage to the right (Taxi, Barney Miller, Carter Country), and the door directly behind the couch or main conversational area (Home Improvement, Seinfeld, Three’s Company {though Three’s Company’s door was slightly to the right})
There were a few anomalies. We couldn’t remember Benson (though I think it was left to right) And we disqualified shows like Family Ties for which the situations emerged in equal measure from both the front and back doors. Also, sit-coms which were shot and edited like “short films” such as Malcolm in the Middle, Mash or Scrubs, were not considered.
I decided that my house/life will move from left to right if I acquire a goofball neighbor who regularly bursts through the door (cue Chachi hysteria or unexpected Peg Bundy cat-calls) with hair-brained schemes or malignant misinformation , though his/her back will always be to the camera since the couch is against a wall. For my house to work as a show, the action will have to take place in the kitchen where I will stutter and speak in double entendres while pouring drinks, doing dishes or unpacking groceries.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=2438 QUAIL DREAM I HAD
I dreamt I was riding an ATV down a bumpy, weed-cracked sidewalk, jumping over thick tree-roots and bouncing into dusty gutters.
The street was, by some forgotten landmark, recognizable as the one on which I was born, and I stopped in front of the neighbor’s house to look at this “quail.”
One of its wings was caught up inside of the door screen and the other one flapped wildly as it noiselessly clapped like a moth. But what drew my attention was this other quail which was in fact the size of an emu, and with a long, interrogative, shaggy, prehistoric neck. (Like the Pipsquack or Richard Ashcroft.)
Lying In the neighbors’ driveway was what appeared to be a dead guinea pig. I dismounted and took a closer look.
That’s when a woman and her niece came out of the house. They in no way resemble the people who actually live there now, but my dream had cast others—a little girl and her baby-sitting aunt, who ran out of the house to interrogate me. The aunt looked like Sandy Duncan and may have been carrying a golf club. The niece stood behind the her, clutching her denim skirt
I said “Have you seen this?”
“I’ve got friends coming, and the police will be here at any moment.”
“But I’m your neighbors’ son,” I said, spelling my last name.
“Bullshit! You look like a criminal.”
“But I’m not.”
“Well then how do you explain this!?” She shot out her arm to indicate the guinea pig carcass. The niece began to cry.
“The quail did it,” I said.
And just like that, we were at the top of my parents’ driveway, (next door,) loading up a hand-truck with abandoned containers of what I believed to be the byproducts of agricultural bioengineering—small cardboard barrels with stains on them. (It made sense in the dream.)
As we were doing this, quail of every size and mutation gathered at the foot of the driveway. My thoughts ranged from “God help us all!” to “These birds are making me hungry.”
Two quail, which had been genetically modified to grow into little walking advertisements, hobbled toward us. They were shaped like freestanding rectangular cigarette ads you see at gas stations, but with organic feet and tiny vestigial heads that were barely visible. Printed across one of them, in nearly perfect Franklin Gothic fonts inked by blue luminescent down, were the words EAT MORE FAT.
As the woman, her niece and I regarded the words, the tiny vestigial head screeched “Eat more fat!”
I understood that these modified breeds of quail were created to advertise products or suggest lifestyle choices to quail farmers; that one in a hundred quail would grow into a disposable advertisements— like the first Polaroid in a cartridge actually being a coupon for more film.
Surely, this was the end of the world. The three of us descended the driveway, hand truck in tow, gently nudging the freakish quail with the insteps of our shoes.
I looked back at the cart of stuff, just as a ten gallon bottle of Chanel #5 rolled onto the driveway and cracked open, startling the aunt, the hundreds of quail and myself.
We all jumped.
The perfume spilled out and sluiced down the driveway to fill the cracks in the sidewalk and pool near the storm drain.
“Is this stuff expensive?” I asked.
“I’ll say,” answered the aunt.

And that’s when I woke up.

Honestly, I don't even know what a quail is.

]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=2325 McMansions. What a great sit-com--four different stories occurring simultaneously in different rooms, every episode ending with the house of the week tilting into a common sinkhole. The entire neighborhood, built over a landfill, circumscribes a playground which is swallowed into the earth causing the surrounding houses to bow to one another. This event ties the season together. The final character from the final story of each episode could crash through a cathedral window and into another of an opposing or adjacent house to introduce the next week's characters.
The second season would be a wagon train of sorts, an SUV convoy across the country, families rebuilding their shattered lives, torching the homes of sex offenders and rediscovering America via regional paraphernalia at Applebees.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=2248 The Australians have accomplished teleportation. You know they'll use kangaroos to test it. They'll teleport a kangaroo to Tom Cruise's workout room and it will punch him in the face.
Australian ruffians will run amok, materializing in women's locker rooms to wag their tongues and yell "struth!"
The fists of world leaders, raised to declare war on teleportation, will suddenly be holding cans of Fosters. They will sigh and look at the camera, then twist their mouths into perturbed little knots, as safari hats with chin straps appear on their heads.
No one will be safe.
Mel Gibson and The Vines will be criticized for not speaking out. They'll be detained indefinitely, then rescued by Yahoo Serious, who will dance a bandy-legged jig, all the while maintaining his Buster Keaton stoicism. The sound bite will be played incessantly.
As Saturday night live parodies the Yahoo serious incident, Jimmy Fallon will disappear into thin air, only to be replaced by a startled Mike Myers in bath-robe and socks. The Prime Minister of Australia will deny responsibility, and Jimmy Fallon will never be seen again.
Months later, a group of Tasmanian school children will admit, (to Ashleigh Banfield disguised as an Aborigine, speaking in clicks and whistles that she learned on the flight over) that they and many of their teachers did not find Jimmy Fallon funny in any way. "We thought he was a dick," they'll say. Ashleigh will make clucking noises and the children will stare at her.
George Bush will meet with the Australian Prime Minister, and will guffaw and slap him on the back after learning that baby kangaroos are called Joeys. "That's just about the dumbest dang thing I ever heard."
America will invade Iraq.
Both of The Proclaimers, beamed in to assassinate him, will accidentally fuse with Osama Bin Laden. No one will notice.

And it just goes on and on like that. Another obnoxious throwaway cartoon bit.
I think I want to learn how to fix cars.
It's the jumpsuit. I need to spend a portion of my life in a jumpsuit.
My dad knows everything there is to know about cars (American, pre 1990.) I used to climb up and peer under the hood to help him work on the Chevy, my feet dangling.
After about ten minutes, this would happen:
"Can you go down in the basement and get me the socket wrench attachments? I need a 3/8 inch"
I would walk down into the basement and scan the work bench, my six year old idea of a socket wrench being something about three feet long with cogs and a motor.
Then, back outside, I'd quietly ask, "What does it look like?"
He would angrily throw a distributor cap, or hit his head on the hood and say "You wouldn't be able to find your ass if it wasn't attached," then stomp into the house to find the socket wrench.
One time, I considered my ass, and how it was always there no matter what. He was right. If it hadn't been attached, I probably wouldn't have been able to find it.
I left and threw a rope over a high limb in the front yard, tied one end to my Green Machine and hoisted it into the sky over and over again.
So, instead of learning how to change spark plugs, I was perfecting this bizarre and useless bit of performance art.
And, of course the garbage men would ride by on the side of their truck, clad in jump suits and bandannas, obviously living life to its fullest, obviously bound for genuine glory.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=2046 The entire first grade class, every afternoon, would march in single file to the library, which was devoid of viable stimulation save a particular Dr. Seuss book, which was like an entire Saturday morning bound into one large volume. Every drawing excited me to the point of fits.
I imagined how great it would be to take the book home, but books couldn’t be checked out. That was what made it so precious. You had to suffer through a half day of school just to get near it. I’d be in gym class, sitting through duck duck goose, and thinking about how, later, I’d be able to read the goddamned book. Anything less than a stream of absurd, rhyming vignettes was....a turd.
I remember discussing it with a classmate. “It’s good because it’s not a whole story...it’s more like...jokes.”
“Jokes. You’re right. It’s not like Cat in the Hat, but jokes.”
“Like the ‘flashdark that shines in the light.’”
“That’s one...it’s short like a joke.”
I regretted that conversation, because from that point on, it was a thing between us.
My daily walk to the library seethed with fatalistic anxiety—if someone else got the book first—that kid in particular, since no one else cared—I’d be stuck with forty five minutes of Dick and Jane, which was not horrible, but ...inferior, like UHF (after 8PM)
I remember once, he was ahead of me in line and went straight for the book. I watched him pull it from the shelf. The predictability of it was nauseating—he strode with wide wobbling limbs, cradling it like a football, hunching to the most obvious table in the library, then waving me over as if he were doing me a favor, securing an afternoon of good times. The world closed in like gray masonry, as if I were trapped in a revolving cylinder of grinding stone while he, swathed in sunlight, pointed at the illustrations and said “That’s like a joke. You know? A joke.”
Distractedly, I would nod, going along with his dumb, asthmatic, appreciation of MY book.
More often than not, however, I would get the book first, and stealthily slip to an inconspicuous corner of the library. If I saw that kid coming at me, the word “jokes” poised on his snotty chapped lips, I would huddle over and turn my back.
“Are you reading the book of jokes?”
“.......no.”
Sometimes, just the possibility of him saying “jokes,” with his yolky sounding voice and fat, grabby arms, could potentially ruin the book for me. He could be out sick and I’d be at my secret table, my eyes jammed shut, trying to clear my spiritual palate, having just discovered a booger or drool stain on one of the pages.
One day, when I was last in line, he had already gotten the book and was sitting at a table with someone, gesticulating and saying “...jokes.”
The book was in real peril. This handing down of crass misinterpretation would somehow destroy the future, so I approached the table and stood until they noticed. “They’re more than just jokes, you know? They’re whole cool things. Each thing is like an entire big world...and you‘re dumb.”
I sat down in the activities section and slapped down flash cards like I was snuffing random explosions.
I alone knew what was up, and everyone could eat shit as far as I was concerned.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1882 The cigarette in his chubby hand, and the 180 pounds of fast food girth, betray his thirteen years of living, but compliment the outsized clothing and tiny dirt bike, as well as inspire confidence in the third-grade toady, who pedals furiously, yards ahead, then races back to his side. He is the fat punk rock kid in my neighborhood, and he screams for ice cream.
"Here it comes, yo!"
The ice cream truck plays a warbling, music-box version of Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf as it graduates to the side of the road. He grabs hold of the truck and somehow fastens his jaw to the freezer to siphon its contents-- wrestling pops and extreme eclairs, sodden wrappers shooting from a corner of his mouth only to be caught in midair by fluttering swarms of Japanese animation. The smaller boy kicks the tires and exclaims "Daaammmn!"
Cranky but satisfied, the two boys cross the street to kick the shit out of the newspaper machine. The universe, dictated by X-box physics, allows them to twirl atop a magical swell of E minor chords and land spectacular high kicks, the greatest of which sends the machine soaring into oblivion. They collect the change and adjust their Coal Chamber t-shirts.
Then it's off to the overpass.
"We're going to spray-paint the biggest titties anybody's ever seen!"
"Damn!"
They, in fact, do paint a large, uncannily detailed mural of a woman's breasts on the side of the overpass. The skin-tone and illusion of heft are wrought with such tender precision, it is as if an actual giant woman has paused there to exhibit her extraordinary fertility.
Responding to complaints, a policeman approaches in a squad car. He removes his hat, then twists his lapel for a minute. "I'll tell you what, boys. I was sent out here to arrest ya, but now that I see you were out here drawin' a couple o' jugs, I don't see no reason for fussin'."
He pulls away and crashes into a tree, then stumbles from the car, swatting out a small fire at the cuffs of his pants. "It's okay," he says, "because of the jugs."
Unimpressed, they hop on their bikes and slowly weave their way to the record store. The man who works there is arranging LPs and listening to Brazilian space rock. The fat kid steps up to the counter, thrusts an Offspring cd at him and says. "Listen to this, bitch." The music comes to a needle-scratching halt.
The store clerk removes his Buddy Holly glasses and replaces them with a larger pair of Buddy Holly glasses. "Why I, I've never heard of this before. Let's put it on."
The two boys run amok, jumping onto fixtures and smashing "pussy-assed" cds against the wall. Offspring clamors away as the clerk shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. College girls dance in the aisles and smile foxily as the fat kid urinates onto a listening station.
Suddenly he is in the park, lying face up, a huddle of blurry faces peering down at him.
"He's waking up," says one of the faces. "We found your Offspring CD, fat ass. Did your mommy buy it for you?"
"Gimme that."
His bike is in a tiny heap near his head.
"Stick to riding in your backyard, Pillsbury. You landed on your big fat head."
The toady steps back a few paces, appearing sympathetic, but then conceding the collective look of disgust. "Yeah, blimp ass," he says. "Damn."
"Did anybody get that on tape," asks the girl with the green hair.
"Fuck yeah," answers the boy with the lip disk. "What a homo. Let's go tweek out and fuck shit up."
They all hop onto their handlebars and ride backwards into the sunset.

All right, I was trying to write an absurd story about a fat, commercialized punk rock kid who is always walking by my house. He's this perfect consumer, an archetypal gluttonous clown, eating cream pies because he doesn't know how to throw them (I'm sure you remember the gluttonous, pie-eating clown archetype from Folklore class.)- representing Punk Rock, twice-distilled, through successive generations, becoming a self congratulatory, prepubescent fashion trend not unlike Underoos or Garanimals. But I've written this kid into a heart-wrenching situation and now I feel sorry for him. Everyone leave the brutish, fat, punk-rock kids with the dead raisin eyes...alone. They probably have mean dads who get drunk, watch Full Metal Jacket and throw bookends. (Because what else would one do with bookends?)
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1812 While you were watching Yoda fly around, I was at home enjoying the M*A*S*H reunion. Here’s what you missed:
-The show resembled an infomercial for cottony white hair.
-Alan Alda is now a disembodied squint hosting a row of tiny incisors.
-Radar is still hiding his left hand--During his solo interviews a small lap-dog sat on it.
-Sidney,(who may or may not be Kurt Vonnegut,) was present. Attempting to fit in, he made comments like “yeah...that was...just...whew.” But it was obvious that he had simply shown up and they quickly threw together a montage of all three of his appearances.
-Colonel Potter is still alive. (But he is developing a George Burns, chimp-mouthed, "coo...coo" expression)
-The guy who played Colonel Blake died in 1996— Notable because I was pretty sure he had died right after Hello Larry was canceled.
-Newly amusing: the episode in which they all sit around impersonating father Malcahy, and Colonel Potter says “’Jocularity...Jocularity.’”
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1765 Do horses die standing up? I just heard that Seattle Slew, the horse that won the last triple crown in 1978, (dude, I got so wasted) died in his sleep. Did his owner go to the stable yesterday and pat him on the head, then watch in horror as he stiffly tipped over onto his side?
Because that would be horrible.
Are horses buried standing up? I mean, if that’s the position in which they’re most comfortable, it would make sense for their horsy afterlife, unless they’re simply sent to the glue factory, in which case I think we would all treasure a bottle of Seattle Slew Glue. (label bearing a cartoon of him winking)
Seattle Slew survived to the age of 28, outliving Kurt Cobain, my interest in becoming famous, and imported beer in cans.


]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1764 Not far from here, there is a water- ice booth that does more business than any in the area. From opening to close, a fleet of quaking pickups descends on this tiny Fotomat of a building in the center of a broiling parking lot. The big deal is that the woman in the booth wears a bikini, which, out of context, makes a lot of men in giant trucks horny enough to pay four dollars for frozen lemonade.
It must be the juxtaposition of a fragile, fertile human body against a cracked and littered, tar-reeking cesspool, that attracts them. I mean, the beach (where people are pretty much nude) is not that far away.
But the idea of this one woman spending the day with all of that horse power and sexual angst bearing down on her, just makes me sad. She must witness a lot of feeble desperation— guys who believe they will one day find a small bit of perfection, of cleanliness, far away from the politics of the stereo store, bank, or construction site for a bank. They line up for an infinitesimal shot at permanent pleasure, a reminder of the bliss once suggested by their mothers or baby sitters. Their frion sickness or sun stroke is temporarily washed away.
But it’s just a water-ice stand.
That’s why all of these places: strip clubs, dentist offices, hair salons, bikini car washes, Fox News; they all remind me of the suicide booths from Welcome to the Monkey House. I suppose it’s a concept as ancient as Odysseus, sirens and all. But when you consider its current manifestations, the future becomes just as vivid as a Hooters billboard.
As we, Generation X (sorry), tip the population scales to a senior citizen majority, hobbling around, childless, still looking for irony on TV, I can see well designed suicide booths becoming a boom- industry for the smaller generation of nihilists raised on Grand Theft Auto and Slipknot.
The booths will be small, and positioned near the Piercing Pagoda, which will by then of course be a lip-disk, flesh-hook-suspension pagoda. (or tattoo removal) You will be able to choose from a variety of “hosts.” Men will browse a menu beginning with Winona Ryder and ending with the woman from Fashion Emergency. Women will choose from a pantheon highlighting a young Rasputin and the guy from Incubus.
The lights will dim and someone will play Smells Like Teen Spirit and/or a Helen Reddy song on a piccolo. You’ll view super8 films of ancient bowl-cut children climbing on truck-tire jungle-gyms. Then there will be a Karaoke option to last as long as you would like, though at your signal the room will finally mist over, begin to smell like almond extract and then....you know.
This is becoming more depressing than I thought it would. But I do remember feeling like I was in a suicide booth, once, when I worked on the GM assembly line for two days in 1988. By the middle of the second day, demented, and with hands that, as far as I could tell were broken in several places, I asked to see the nurse.
In stark contrast to the rest of the plant, the medical office was carpeted and air conditioned and the nurses were very tall and seemingly conjured from confectioner’s sugar and candy cigarettes, a heavenly antidote to the gang of dim beflanneled auto workers on the other side of the door.
I lie on a crisp hospital bed and the nurses washed my hands and wrapped them in gauze, after which, I would have done just about anything to avoid returning to the greasy, sweaty psychotic minutia of the assembly line (If you’ve ever worked in one of these places, I’m sure you understand.)
During that short respite, if I had been unaware of a larger world—with blue skies, books, and Freedom Rock—I would have gladly accepted a purple pill and a farewell kiss on the cheek.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1763 The Delaware House of Representatives just passed a bill that will ban smoking in all public places including bars, casinos and restaurants.
Also pending legislation is a bill that will require homeless people to wear Barney or Jabberjaw costumes while drifting through populated areas.
I had a feeling it was all that cigarette smoke wafting out of the bars and settling on major waterways and lakes that was causing all of those beach closures and bacteria warnings. Obviously, the second hand smoke can be blamed for the average life expectancy in Delaware to seemingly hover somewhere between 50 and 60.
Surely, DuPont has nothing to do with it. Motiva can’t possibly be to blame. I mean, those places both have no-smoking policies.
What in the fuck is wrong with Delaware? A smoky bar is ten times safer than even standing next to the Christina river. (that’s a river here that is filled with raw sewage, mercury, and the bodies of missing secretaries) Or sitting in traffic on I95 behind three thousand monster SUVs on their way home from spraying allergy medication into the faces of beagles at Astra Zeneca.
Anyone over fifty here looks like a giant bloated fire ant in a polo shirt. But, it must be the cigarette smoke, not the smoke-free fast food establishments or family oriented Batter-Dipped Aussie-Death-Splash restaurants.
I mean, I knew a lot of people in this state were hypocritical twits, but this is just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard—and I’m actually very tolerant of hypocrisy on a personal level— but the head of the Delaware Division of the American Lung Association was quoted as saying “We will be a shining example for the rest of the country.”
Well, let me be the first to apologize to the other states, (other than New Jersey) because if America is a restaurant, Delaware is a fat midget in a tight jogging suit puffing a comically huge cigar and lending money to the bus boys at a 19% APR.
Please don’t blame me. I voted for the Green Party guy.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1729 So with the automated supermarket checkout, if you accidently move one of your "items," like to switch it to another bag, the computer screams "See the cashier! See the cashier!"
Then the cashier, who is more or less a lifeguard now, comes over and explains that you are not allowed to move your items. She erases everything and you start over.
Then when your change drops into the little slot, a quarter falls out and rolls behind the machine and the lifeguard has to fill out a form to refund your 25 cents. Being a headstrong jackass, rather than saying "don't worry about it," you make her fill out the form, all the while cracking wise about what a convenience this new technology is.
In the meantime the one remaining express line is backed up to the Dairy section and there are angry ghetto-fabulous rednecks behind you, waiting their turn to stare dumbfounded at the machine when it yells "See the cashier! See the cashier!"
I hope this movement continues to fail from now until I have a robot doing my grocery shopping for me.
Lazy Daisy indeed. ]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1728 September 11th seemed to have wiped pop culture away. For months, the commercial landscapes were barren or quietly patriotic . Then, with little fanfare, one particular marketing icon stealthily embedded itself in the American Zeitgeist. Most know him as the Dell Computer Kid, a quasi-California rip-off of Alex Winter (Bill, from Bill and Ted.)
It makes little sense, culture never does, but that guy seems to have been referenced in every late night monologue, every neo-Mclaughlin Group standoff and by nearly every American with a habit of conversationally inserting celebrities into situations where they don't belong. Honestly, it's been torture for me to avoid mentioning him on the website. He's the most available comedic reference since Ernest Borgnine.
Once again, I won't bother researching who he is, or whether or not there have been articles or interviews.
But I am curious as to why that guy was able to break into the tightest circle of trivial awareness. He made it farther than the Encyclopedia Britannica kid from the early nineties, which can probably be attributed to more expensive time slots. Though as nostalgia will go, "Dude you're gettin' a Dell" will be far less impressive than "I always wondered where my mandibula was."
But we have to remember that Americans were far more freaked out this past year than during any phase of Operation Desert Storm. Apparently there was something about a dumb surfer kid, the cliché of which was fascinating and comforting to many Americans. It was just so uninspired and uninteresting that we stopped for a moment to wonder if we were missing something. Then we realized we were missing nothing. Then we realized that there was a DELL COMPUTER KID! We had our first post-11th Clara Peller or Messy Marvin. We had a stupid dude, a STUPID DUDE! The antithesis of John Ashcroft warning of imminent explosions, or Bon Jovi wearing American flag pants. The commercials had aired for months before September, and the kid hadn't changed. He wasn't lamenting the demise of the old world, he was still convincing his friends' parents to buy stupid computers. He was an invincible pop cultural Adam for the "new world," destined for Trivial Pursuitdom, to join such prestigious "pink wedge" answers as Sonya Henny and OJ Simpson.
When Time was considering alternates for Man of the Year, you can rest assured the Dell kid was mentioned, in jest, but subsequently given a few seconds of earnest contemplation.
He has also blazed a trail for such newcomers as Andrew WK, and the breakdancing Mitsubishi girl. But they are both currently on, and will remain on, the B list. The Dell kid is forever.
An editorial like this may seem like a corporate ass kiss
but, trust me, I don't care enough about computers to be affiliated with Dell.
In fact, I hate computers.
Don't buy one.
Save your money for a hybrid car.
Then, for Christ's sake, don't buy a hybrid car!
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/endtimeworks.asp?id=1726 The CEO on the Grammys who cried about Americans downloading music files, which somehow jeopardizes his salary and the salaries of the members of TRAIN, was the highlight of my entertainment week. It was like watching a principal telling a student body that whenever they drink a beer, the future of the Science Olympiad is at stake. Then, to illustrate his point, he invites the entire science team onto the stage, puts his hands on their sheepish shoulders and says. "Do you see who you're hurting with this behavior?"
All that guy has to do, is suggest to the biggest record labels that they need to cut cd prices in half. This does not necessarilly jeopardize the music industry. It simply means that the dad of that guy from the Strokes will have to take a modest pay cut.
Do people believe that they are investing in the arts when they pay $18.99 for a Moulin Rouge cd?
The assumption must have been that anyone watching the Grammy's who is gullible enough to believe that it is a showcase of the finest musical talent the world has to offer, is also gullible enough to NEVER download another music file because the members of TRAIN (whoever they are) will not be able to achieve their dream of someday buying the set of New Zoo Review to set up in their living room for ecstasy parties to be attended by Milla Javovavovavich and both of the dudes-where's-my-car. (Winona, God bless her, can come too.)
At the very least, the guy should have attempted to reprimand America in a context which illustrated the glory of music and what it means. (if he'd had a really furious Jazz band with a great drummer playing behind him)
As it was, his entire speech could have (should have) been given by Christina Aguelera's ass with eyes painted on it. ]]>