Rocking For The Weekend: Brendan Benson

Hey kids, it's Friday! And that means one thing...it's time for Rocking For The Weekend! (Never mind that most of you will see this after you're already home from work, if not on Monday. I'm late, so sue me. I'm working nights this week.)

This week I'm featuring Brendan Benson. This is "A Whole Lot Better" from his latest album, My Old Familiar Friend. Most of you have probably never heard of him, but you've probably heard his music. This is because he moonlights as a member of Jack White's other band, The Raconteurs. Brendan's solo work is a little less rock, a little more pop. He would have been huge back in the day when people cared about the Billboard charts and the top spots were occupied by actual, you know, songs. But today, well-crafted catchy pop/rock is a niche genre, and Brendan is a niche performer. Hopefully, today his niche gets a little bigger. Enjoy!

Priorities. I Has Them.

While I enjoy the website Texts From Last Night, I never wish I was acquainted with any of the people who send texts in.

Until now.

Meet the future Mrs. WWW:

(248):
We aren't going to mix hockey and sex texts tonight.
(440):
I totally agree. all sexting is on hold till after the games over.
(248):
Playoffs. This shit is serious.

I only hope that (248) is the woman. (440) has a disturbing grasp of the use of apostrophes.

Rocking For The Weekend: The Heavy

I meant to start this feature again once I went back to work, but I slacked. For the uninitiated, Rocking For The Weekend is a Friday feature where I spotlight a song that has the exhilarating feeling you get while running out the door on a Friday after work. Since everyone (except BeckEye) knows I have outstanding taste in music, this should be fun!

This week I'm featuring The Heavy, a neo-soul group that also incorporate guitar rock, blues and a little dance into their mix. Even if you haven't heard of them, you've surely heard their song "How You Like Me Now?" from the Kia commercial with the mechanical bull-riding sock monkey and the giant red dildo.

If you want to see the actual music video, you can find it here. But I'm going to feature the spectacular live version from The Heavy's visit to Late Night with David Letterman in January. This performance is so good that when Dave comes out to say hi, he asks the band to keep playing the song. Which they do, to the audience's delight. Enjoy, and Happy Weekend!

Reasons To Hate The Movie Business, Vol. 1

In keeping with our desperation to find anything at all to post about, welcome to what will become a new running feature in WWW, "Reasons To Hate The Movie Business". As some of you know, I am a low-level functionary in film production. This makes me privy to a host of stories that make you question the basic decency and intelligence of humanity. Here is the first.

Yesterday, we held what is called a "show-and-tell"¹ for [redacted], one of our studio executives. This is when the executive comes over and we show him character designs, storyboards, location photos, etc. for his perusal and approval before the movie begins production.

A few hours before the show-and-tell, [redacted]'s assistant called our production office with a request.

"Can you make sure that there are, like, interesting little things on the table to fidget with? [redacted] really likes to fidget with things while he's thinking. It helps his process."

- Fin -

1. Official movie lingo!

Fun With Camera Phones: Date Night

"Put on your fanciest halter top, baby! I'm taking you out for endless salad bar! And we are going in style."