jMcJohnson

I present to you:

Gavin Rossdale-
The Hottest Man Ever For All Time and Always No Matter What

Am I forgiven?

Since Joe posted his list of prettiest ladies on Hollywood I thought I’d post my list of Hottest Most Do-Able Dudes in Hollywood. All dudes are judged from the time period the photo comes from, and as usual, all picks are up for debate (ie: Joe’s Sanda Bullock pick-WTF?)

Clearly, these are based on my opinion as is evident by all the old gruff looking dudes.

In no particular order:

1.
George Clooney
The Godfather of Sexiness-somehow, the older he gets the more hotness he bestows upon the earth.

2.
Robert Redford
What Brad Pitt would look like if he were hot.

3.
Jake Gyllenhall
Umm…yeah. He’s*ahem*quite…attractive.

4.
Johnny Depp
How could you improve upon this perfection? Cover him in frosting?
Actually, can we make that happen?

5.
Harrison Ford
Now? He’s a bit crusty and has an earring. Then? Wookiee-wrangling hotness.

6.
Clive Owen
He sort of looks like he has been in a few bar fights, and that’s sort of what I like about him.

7.
Robert Pattinson (Edward in the upcoming Twilight movie)
Yes, I know, he’s like, 12; but look into his eyes. SERIOUSLY.
See? Yeah, I know. *Sigh*

8.
Viggo Mortensen
I’m not sure I know exactly how to say his name, and when he’s not in character I think he’s just average looking; but slap some facial hair of some sort on him and cinematically transport him back in time and you have historical hotness.

9.
Paul Rudd
My imaginary boyfriend in a world where (Sadly, SADLY) Ryan was never born.

10.
Joaquin Phoenix
Brooding. Moody. Unattainable. Distractingly hot.
Where the hell was he when I was in high school?!

Honorable Mentions:
Javier Bardem
Daniel Craig
Gavin Rossdale (shut up)
Christian Bale
Michael Vartan
Marlon Brando (young, obvs.)
Paul Newman
Jude Law
Jared Leto

An now, my controversial list of guys in Hollywood that are not hot (despite what you may have heard):
Brad Pitt
Leonardo DiCaprio
Ben Affleck
Tom Cruise
Colin Farell
Antonio Banderas
Russell Crowe

Do you own a tv? if so, then perhaps you caught Republican kool-aid advocate Elizabeth Hasselbeck introducing Sarah Palin at her rally in Tampa yesterday (I sincerely apologize for the nutjob righty ads at the bottom of the video):

Good lord, I cannot stand this woman. From her bizarre backwoods/Fargo speech pattern in this video (because that’s how the REAL America talks…wha…?) to making the dumbass point that Palin “supports the troops” as though she’s THE ONLY HUMAN ALIVE WHO SUPPORTS THE TROOPS. God. That’s like saying she’s pro-blinking; I mean surely somewhere there is a small group of people who don’t blink, but they are clearly on the fringe of society hanging out with people who don’t support the troops. Jeez. Also, I love how it’s “sexist” to talk about this Palin wardrobe budget brouhaha. Is it sexist? Well, I’m not sure; it seems like everyone who questions Saint Sarah on anything is a raving sexist. Is it dumb and irrelevant? Yes, totally. People should take it up with the RNC if they don’t like it.

But sexist?! Huh? Is Hasselbeck even sure what that term means?

Sigh.

I guess when you just repeat Fox News talking points all day long, there’s no need to think about how dumb the shit falling out of your mouth sounds.

Oh, Elizabeth Hasselbeck…

I’d like you more with a mustache.

Or a brain of your own.

More on the Ben Folds show from Ryan; lover of all things set-list related.

———————————————————

There are not many artists I have seen more than five times. The list is actually very small. Wednesday night at the Uptown theatre, Ben Folds became the leader in the clubhouse (8 times!) when Jamie, Captain Morgan and I saw his “Way to Normal” tour.

I don’t know if all of you have heard the new album, but it has a much harder, angrier feel than his last release, “Songs for Silverman” This might have something to do with his third divorce and when you listen to the songs you can’t help but feel sorry for his latest ex-wife. He calls her out a number of times and you can tell it didn’t end well. The songs are great though, and if you didn’t know about the break-up you would just think it was just more great storytelling from Folds.

Missy Higgins was the opening act and I must say I was impressed. She has a wonderful voice and is an extremely talented songwriter. Her band was very tight and held back just enough to let her voice fill the theatre. She made me want to hear more so she did what she set out to do for this Folds fan.

The Folds show started with a pre-recorded “om” that lasted way too long. The band took the stage and launched into the title track from the album “Way to Normal”. The craziest thing about this new album is that Ben and his band wrote a fake album that they “leaked” early on the internet. This opening number was both the fake and the real tune mashed together. The next hour and a half was a tour through the new album, the new fake album and a few songs from the 2002 release “Rockin the Suburbs”. He did perform one song off of “Songs for Silverman” (Landed) but you could tell it was in the set list just to twist the knife a little further into the side of his ex-wife.

About 2/3 of the way through the set Ben announced, “If you don’t know any of these new tunes just wait and when we finish we will do that encore thingy and play for a while.” That’s when I knew the encore was going to kick ass. And it did.

The set list and encores were as follows:

Way to Normal
Effington
You Don’t Know Me (with Missy Higgins)
Consider you Gone
Brainwashed
Fake Dr. Yang
Dr. Yang
Annie Waits
Before Cologne
Cologne
The Frown Song
Bitch Went Nuts
Landed
Kylie From Conneticut
Free Coffee
Free Coffee Town
Hiroshima (B-B-B-Bennie hit his head)
Zac and Sara
Fake Bitch Went Nuts

Encores:
Fair
Good Morning Sun
My Philosophy
Kate
Rockin’ The Suburbs
Underground
Army
Fake Frown Song

Second Encore:
You Were Not the Same After That

I had never seen Ben Folds with more than three musicians on stage. For this tour he had a five-piece band for all of the new songs. One guy was a badass aux percussionist and the other was a keyboard player that played all the string parts and other keys. When they did all the old Ben Folds Five stuff he went back to the power trio. The drummer was from Overland Park so he got a nice ovation and the bass player is the guy that has been with him since “Songs for Silverman”.

All in all, a great show. He is such an amazing musician that he could have played Air Supply all night and I would have listened. The show also gave me a better feel for the new album. It is definitely a different album but if you haven’t heard it, I recommend it. But if you are illegally downloading it, make sure you don’t get the fake one.

So Ben Folds is running in the lead right now in my Concert 500. Come on back to Kansas City, Wilco, James Taylor or Phish so we can make this a race again.

Last Wednesday, Ryan, Matt and I got in line to see Ben Folds at the Uptown Theatre here in KC. After squeezing three people under a tiny umbrella for an hour in the ice cold pouring rain, we were quite excited when they opened the doors 10 minutes early (gee, thanks). We got some beer, stuffed our soaked shoes with paper towels and headed to the auditorium.

As we looked around to find the best place to plant ourselves, we noticed a few things. The floor area closest to the stage was rapidly filling up with the 25 and under crowd. In the back of the theatre, there were rows of seats which had begun filling up with the 35 and older crowd. We had no idea who was in the balcony.

The time had come. We had to be part of the young(er) people or part of the old(er) people.

We had no regrets as we plopped our asses into the semi-comfy old people seats. In fact, it totally ruled. Don’t get me wrong, we stood for the whole show, we just didn’t want to get knocked around for three hours by a bunch of dudes who flat-ironed their hair before the show and a bunch of girls wearing kid-sized pants.

So.

Missy Higgins opened for him. She was very cute and has a great voice, but we were definitely counting the minutes until Ben took to the stage. The show opened with some awesome offstage chanting (?) and two huge white drapes covering the back stage wall. These became screens for what was possibly one of the weirdest concert image displays I have ever personally seen. Ryan wrote down the entire set list, so he would know for sure, but I think Ben opened with the fake “Way to Normal” which (try to keep up, this is confusing) was on the fake “Way to Normal” album that the band wrote and “leaked” before the real one came out. Yes, they wrote an entire fake album with all the same song titles as the real one they released months later. I guess when you are rich and extremely talented, you have time for these kinds of things. They did a number of their “fake” songs during the show, and really, most of them were surprisingly good.

So, back to the crazy images. As the band banged out the first song, we saw things like:
1. Giant polluting smokestacks
2. A woman screaming and yelling
3. A bunch of old people sitting in a row in black & white
4. Skeletons/skulls
5. Weird DNA looking images
6. A bunch of other stuff I can’t remember

If you have heard this new album, you know that a lot of it is very…loud. There are some ballad-y songs, but a lot of it is kind of angry sounding and a little out there. Which is not to say I don’t like it-I do. I think asking artists to put out the same album over and over is a bit like someone wanting you to never change ever in your whole life.

Which leads me to a theory I came up with at the concert.

__________________________________

Okay-I just read through this post and it is too long already without tacking on my musical manifesto. I will write about my theory tomorrow.

Try to contain your excitement.

I am really loving owls right now.

No reason, I am just into them and seeing them everywhere I go.

That’s all.

My mom came to visit this weekend.

If you know my mom (or dad) you will know that this is unusual. I have lived away from home for thirteen years. In that time my parents have very rarely come to see me where I live. Let’s do the math, just for fun. Here’s where I lived followed by the times my mom or dad has visited:

Lawrence, KS: This was looong time ago, so I’ll estimate. Dad: 1 Mom: 2 (I am probably being generous)
St. Louis, MO: Dad: 1 (when he helped me move and he only stayed about four hours) Mom: 1 (although truthfully, I can’t ever remember her coming up, I will say one, just in case I am forgetful)
Chicago, IL: Dad:1 (when he had to be in Chicago for work, he stayed about two hours) Mom: 0
Fort Lauderdale, FL: Dad:0 , Mom:0 (yeah, yeah, it’s far away. whatever.)
Kansas City, MO: Dad: 0 (yep. two and a half years. ZERO visits.) Mom: 2
For the record, I go see them about once every month or two now that I live closer.

Clearly my parents have perfected the “hands off” parenting technique. Not that I need to be parented exactly, but still. Now I admit, there is distance and time and expense with travel to think about, but it still surprises me when I think about it. So much that I have to admit to myself how it makes me feel.

It really bothers me that they never come see me. I have told them, and we have joked about it, but the fact remains that it has hurt my feelings in the past.

Nevertheless.

A little backstory about this weekend. We were supposed to go see Lion King this weekend with mom’s friend and her daughter, but the friend broke her shoulder and decided not to go, so mom called to tell me that we would just sell the tickets. I asked her why she didn’t just come up and we would go, but she said that was “too complicated” (whatever the hell that means.) I said ok.

She called back an hour later and said that she would come up after all, and we would see the show together.

Mom got here Saturday at 12:30 and we went and had lunch. I asked her if she wanted to go shopping or to the Plaza to walk around or something but she said no. We went back to my place (Ryan was waiting in line all day to see Barack, so he was not around). We talked a bit and then…we really didn’t have much else to talk about. So we turned the tv on and watched tv together.

As I sat there, I thought about how strange and sad this was. My mom is not old or incapacitated in any way. We don’t see each other that often or really even talk more than once or twice every two or three weeks. Still, here we were, face to face and after an hour and a half there was nothing more to say.

We are different people, my mom and I, and I really don’t have enough bandwidth to explain how that all boils down, but suffice to say, we just don’t communicate that well. She surely has her critiques of me and mine of her are basically that she really doesn’t pay much attention when I try to tell her something or start a conversation. usually I get a head nod or an “uh huh” and that’s the extent of it. This is why we rarely speak on the phone and when we do, it lasts all of five minutes. I accept all this as it being “just the way it is,” things could be worse of course, and my conversational needs are met in other areas of my life, so no boo-hoos from me. I certainly hold some responsibility for the distance between us as well.

So.

We saw the show and it was great. Afterward, we went out to one of the casinos (mom LOVES casinos, but that’s a whole other story). She won $184 (a crappy night for her as she is usually VERY lucky) and so we headed home. As we drove home chatting about the show and the casino I felt the urge to talk to her-to really talk. And to just accept whatever her response was. So I did.

I told her that I loved her very much and that I was really happy for her (she recently got remarried.) I told her that I wanted to get to know her new husband better. That I really had no more bad feelings about her and my dad’s divorce. That I wished we could spend more time together. That I wished we could be closer like we used to be. How happy I was that she came up this weekend. I felt so hopeful that this would start a meaningful conversation about all these things and maybe more. It felt good. It felt freeing. It felt honest and full of love.

I waited.

She stared out of the window and said…nothing. She didn’t say a word. She nodded her head. She wouldn’t even look at me. My one-sided conversation was over as soon as it began.

That’s when I knew. This conversation was never going to happen. She would never let it happen. She just couldn’t speak any of the words. I could see it all swirling in her head, behind her teary eyes, but it all just stayed right there. Right on the edge, but never going over. And it was just silent, and the tears receded and she made a comment about how busy the neighborhood was and it was over.

We went to bed almost immediately after we got home. She left early this morning. As I lay in bed after she was gone, I thought about how the boxes we put ourselves in can never be unlocked by anyone else. No amount of forgiveness or love or honesty from anyone else can free us from the prisons we make of our own guilt. And until we speak the words about ourselves, until we are willing to forgive ourselves of whatever real or imaginary sins we have committed, we have to stay where we are.

No freedom. No rest. No peace.

I love my imperfect mom. I know that she loves her imperfect daughter. I know that even if we never have the breakthrough I hope for, I will be ok.

I just hope someday she will be, too.

I will post something marginally interesting on here that has nothing to do with the election.

But not today.

Check this out. Your breakfast will be back up in no time.

Crazy conservatives getting you down with all this “what about Obama and Bill Ayers?” crap?

Give them the facts.

Great article from the Sun-Times.