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RIP Muxtape

Spotted in Leipzig, Germany:

I can’t figure out how to set this picture vertically on the blog, even though it is showing up properly in my image browser. It probably has something to do with me being dumb as hell.

Still, you get the point.

A little repulsed and a lot fascinated by this article. I think it’s required reading (even re-reading), so I’m saving it here for the future.

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In other news, I recently acquired the complete Led Zeppelin catalog for a bargain price (not free, mind you–I paid for it). As a result, I’ve challenged myself to listen to the entire thing start to finish. Now, I’m certainly a LedZep fan, but this little experiment has been a challenge to say the least. Like most everyone these days I suppose, I’m used to dashing in and out of songs on my iPod or computer, changing tunes as rapidly as my moods swings. It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to an album start to finish, much less the entire recorded work of a single group.

Here are some highlights from the (still continuing) journey:

1 — “Hey Communication Breakdown kicks ass!”

2 — The Lemon Song — featuring what I consider one of the most masterful bass lines in all of rock. A friggin’ understated masterpiece by the unsung hero of Zep, John Paul Jones.

3 — “Wait, why does nearly everything after The Immigrant Song from Led Zeppelin III sound like music you’d hear at a LARP convention?”

4 — “The more I think about it, the The Immigrant Song could be a LARP anthem; a call to arms for chubby warrior nerds everywhere. DAMNIT!”

5 — “Hey it’s Stairway to Heaven! Neat!”

6 — “Hey it’s The Rain Song, which is like a billion times better than Stairway to Heaven!”

7 — Uh oh, it’s the soundtrack from The Song Remains the Same. Live albums suck.

8 — Q: Why in the Christ is this live version of Dazed and Confused 18 minutes long?!

9 — A: Because Jimmy Page thinks whacking a Les Paul with a violin bow for six minutes is interesting to people.

10 — John Bonham sure liked the sixteenth-note triplet fills, didn’t he?

11 — “Now I know why people stopped caring about Zep after Physical Graffiti.”

12 — “One hundred songs in, sixty more or so to go (counting the remasters of the first few albums). Am I man enough to finish this?”

13 — “Oh God, it’s Moby Dick live. If you’re reading this, save me.”

I recently bought a book–Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb–on the advice of a friend of mine (an Internet friend, mind you; one whom I’ve never met in person yet have known, talked to, and spent hours gaming with over the years. My wife and I even sent flowers to him and his wife on the day their son was born. Yet it never fails to strike me as strange that I call him my friend having never once shaken his hand). Anyway, getting back to the point: this particular Internet friend of mine is one of only a handful of people I trust for book recommendations. His reading tastes and mine run closely parallel and we’ve had a good track record of sharing book advice over the years.

But, Jesus, look at the cover of this book! It’s like the fever dream of a twelve-year-old with a pube ’stache. And it’s not even nearly as bad as the cover to Books Two and Three, both of which make me feel funny inside. According to my friend, these are very good fantasy novels–and, unlike the works of George R. R. Martin (whom we both admire), the Farseer Trilogy has a beginning, middle, and end. He better be right. Because if it turns out that the interiors of these books are as horrific as their exteriors, I’m going to mail-bomb my Internet friend. As soon as I found out his real name and where he lives.

Though I’m loathe to make this blog little more than a repository for my complaints, I have to say that news that NBC would be bringing out an Americanized version of the great BBC series Top Gear has me more than a little concerned. I’ll admit that, when I first read the report, I was flat-out pissed, if only because the entirely mediocre Adam Carolla has been confirmed as the host of the show. After reading a little bit more about it, I guess I’ll just stick with a reaction of “cautiously skeptical.”

If you’ve never seen Top Gear, you’re flat out missing what I think is the most irreverant, entertaining show on television. Yes, it’s a show about cars and car culture but, thanks to the personalities on the BBC show (not to mention its utter inventiveness), it’s a show that anyone can like. Even my wife, the furthest thing from Top Gear’s targeted audience, loves the reruns that appear on BBC America.

For me, Top Gear is everything that’s right about a great TV series. The show’s three hosts–Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May–are real individuals who bump heads and argue nearly as much (or moreso) than they agree. Better yet, it’s a show that matches its clearly massive budget with even more imagination, manifested in the form of the wonderful challenges the hosts take part in. Challenges like creating boats out of cars in order to sail the English Channel; trying to drive across the Sahara Desert in cars that cost less than $2,000; or (my particular favorite), taking a tour of the American Deep South in cars that each host has spray painted with anti-redneck graffiti. Even the worst episode of Top Gear is loaded with more creativity than a season’s worth of Two And a Half Men. Boil GameSpot’s sports gaming show, The Lineup, down to its essence, and what are you left with? Top Gear with sports games (minus the huge production crew and BBC-sized budget). Or at least, that’s what I’m aiming for.

So Top Gear on NBC has got my attention, but probably for all the wrong reasons. I honesty don’t know who the two co-hosts that will join Carolla (a race driver named Tanner Foust, and former soap actor and HGTV host Eric Stromer) are, which isn’t a great start. Still, it’s tough for me to take the Adam Carolla of The Man Show and Dancing With the Stars fame seriously as any sort of authority on car culture, despite any actual credentials he might actually possess. For all I know, he might be as big a gearhead as Jay Leno, but to me, he’s just the guy who liked to make fun of people with sexual dysfunctions on Loveline.

(In fact, what does it say for the future of the show, when I think I’d rather see Jay Leno as its host?)

Will I watch Top Gear on NBC? Certainly. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find another worthy crossover from the UK (much like The Office, which changed drastically upon coming to the States but, despite staying on for probably two too many seasons now, established a successful approach). The show’s formula is a recipe for success; I guess I’m just worried that the ingredients NBC is cooking with might just end up ruining the entire dish.