After Gayballs left a comment in my last post about Edgar Winter's classic prog metal instrumental "Frankenstein," I've been seeing weird references to Frankenstein songs all around me.

I don't know where it was, but something I read recently referred to an a song by Aimee Mann by that name.



I'm kind of an Aimee Mann fan, but this doesn't really do it for me. A little too spry, not enough moment of clarity despair. Then my mind turned to the New York Dolls.



I've always wished I liked the Dolls more. This clip is nice and rock sweaty, but the song leaves me cold. But maybe the whole glam rock gender-bending thing would get me closer.



That's close to the sweet spot. Not quite there, but close.



Perfect.

Here's the scenario: The earth is invaded by aliens. They will destroy all of humanity unless we can defeat their crazy industrial space music in a battle of the bands. Bands will be judged on one criteria only: do they rock like a motherfucker live.

You are the concert promoter. You have a time machine. What rocks hard enough to save the human race?

The following are some early nominations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9eLeZS9OeY

The Clash, White Riot, live. Song is fast, hilarious, fun and short. Bonus points: Starts with weird argument over pulling the plug. Unknown awesome guy singing with them, and fucking up. Camera panning to awesome guy #2 drinking beer backstage. Crowd looks drunk and exhausted and blissful. Chant for more Clash following 2 minutes of intense rocking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX0QYuVuHrI

Led Zeppelin, We're Gonna Groove. This is far from Zep's best tune, but they just fucking own it on this clip. Page's solo sounds like he's playing a different song. Bonham is insane, Plant, tolerable. Bonus points: Page is dressed like he's boarding Ted Knight's boat party in Caddyshack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJFWirQ3ks

Fugazi, Waiting Room. While the whole thing is great, it really peaks when the band kicks in. Bonus points: Girl in beginning of clip has silliest punk haircut ever. And look at the rest of the crowd. Aliens could never have that much fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oamahR97xpA

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, dig the Who. Bonus points: Yes, that's Keith Richards doing the intro. Yes, he's wearing an eyepatch and smoking a cigar. Yes, this is the song from the Rushmore soundtrack. But questions remain; what the fuck bullshit is this song supposed to be about? Where did the spurting water from Keith Moon's drum sets come from? Why do the Who suck so often when they could be this good?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FqGz0z4dI0

From the same broadcast as the above Who performance -- the unaired special "Rock 'n' Roll Circus" the Stones and others filmed in 1968. The Stones apparently started playing at 4 in the morning, with everything going wrong all around them. Jagger, by sheer force of will and a throaty tantrum, forces his bandmates to go from sluggish wastoids to the greatest band in the world in the space of about two bars. It almost makes you want to follow him into battle. Bonus points: "You can't always get the band you want."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhycbtHfGP4

GNR, Paradise City, 1988. Bonus points: I'm skipping a description because the whole thing is bonus points. Slash's silly blues improv at the beginning. Axl's boss Thin Lizzy shirt. They fuck up at least five times, but it only makes the song better. Axl's stage dive, followed by a perfectly timed re-entry. Slash playing a perfect solo lying on his back.

I'm xanaxed up good and proper and half in the bag -- on a monday night, nonetheless.

What better time than now to blog it up?

I was thinking earlier of my brief stint as a poet. You can find my published work here. Some of it, I think, is genius metered literature for the ages. As proof, I'm reproducing two haikus::

Led Zeppelin rocked
Playing in the seventies
John Paul Jones on Bass

Paterson dealers
always say it is thai stick
but it's more like dirt

Jesus. It's been so long since I updated this blog. I'd like to think I've been busy, but I suspect the truth is that I haven't had anything to say.

Well, I got in a review copy of the new Bad Brains record yesterday. I don't know if I like it or not yet. It seems pretty good, but I keep wondering if I'm grading it on a curve because I want it to be good. There's nothing on it as good as "The Big Takeover," but then again, how could there be?

Anyway, isn't YouTube great?

More from my Russian Attorney. He's currently involved with an immigrant voting rights project in NYC. He sent out the following email to all of his contacts sometime after last week's episode of Heroes.

If any of you watch the TV show Heroes on NBC, i just wanted to point out a few voting discrepancies in the last episode.

First, even though the woman with Mika says that she wants him to see Democracy in Action, she is not talking about our voting campaign, rather the actual experience of democracy in action. I know it seemed confusing.

NYC's voting machines are not tiny touch screen computers portrayed in the show. WE are still a long way from touchscreens. At this point we are more likely to have optical scanners by 2008, but it is still possible that we will still be using old school lever machines, which would be impossible for Mika to control, even with his computer talking power.

Third, there are NO fully networked election machines anywhere in this country. The danger of an event like the vote-change in the network is what's keeping it from happening. All machines, even the touch screen ones are not fully networked, even though some of them do have WiFi capability, for whatever nefarious reasons.

So once again, please do not worry that an event like a landslide victory for an undeserving politician like Nathan Petrelli can happen in our fair city. We are still not even close to getting the level of technology that is required by federal law and is shown in a show like Heroes to be so easily manipulatable.

As my "favorite movies" in my profile notes, Spider-man is one of my favorite films. I love it like a drug. So I was looking forward to Spider-man 3 a whole lot. I finally saw it this weekend.

And it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Even the fight scenes, which are the best part of the movie, are lackluster. Kirsten Dunst is annoying and a far cry from good looking. The villains are underbaked and lame. And the dancing scenes are pure hell on wheels.

James Franco was kind of cool, though.

I've been trying to update my blog more frequently, but like Jules Winnfield says, "It's hard, Ringo."

Anyway, the latest and greatest is as follows. I wrote an article for my day job that I think is sort of alright.

Also, I had this pretty interesting email conversation with my Russian attorney about Christopher Hitchens.

RUSSIAN ATTNY: I guess the old hack has a little life left

JOHNNYFU: I tried to read excerpts from his book on Slate last week. It was so blowhard-eriffic it was impossible to get through. All the ideological/political issues surrounding him aside, he seems congenitally opposed to making a point.

RA: true.He was good on the daily show though. Very clear that he wanted to make sure that faith became a demeaning term.

i am gonna go buy the book today, i can't resist the title. This is decent

JFU: Yeah. Not terrible.

Except here's the thing: the whole first paragraph could easily have been cut out. What's the point of it even being there? so he can fart a little bit about Hemmingway and John Donne? Compare the opening sentence as is: "When people in America say "no man is an island," as Joan Didion once put it, they think they are quoting Ernest Hemingway" to what it could be if the graph was cut: "The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle."

What gets lost except for the supposition that Hitchens has read a bunch of books and understands them better than his reader? Arguably nothing.

Anyway, it's a little bit of artful misdirection. His essay could be boiled down to "the search for meaning in the Virginia Tech shootings is ultimately pointless and some of the attempts to draw larger conclusions have been embarrassing." You don't have to really do any heavy lifting to construct that point. He threw in some fake heavy lifting to make his point (which isn't a really bad one) seem more important than it is.

My latest obsessions:

Greg Palast.
Just read the paperback edition of Armed Madhouse. Really great book full of unbelievable suppositions and documentation that makes you believe pretty much every word. Kerry won in 2004. Believe it.

The Larry Sanders Show
Haven't seen the new DVD yet, but it looks awesome. Even though every episode is available on YouTube (hint NAMENUMBER) the bonus features on the disc look worth the price of admission.

The Economist
I promised myself I'm gonna start reading it cover to cover every week. I don't care how much it hurts. I found out so much about Bhutan's monarchy and their strange, reluctant move towards democracy (decreed by the King!) by reading the magazine. With practice I think I can get through two articles in a row without falling asleep.

Cheap Trick
Best almost punk band of all time.

I think I have an idea for a really good movie nerd drinking game. It's called "Match the Ben Affleck Character to the Movie."

Wrong answer: take a shot.

You could do it with other actors, but check out the ben Affleck character names you can choose from:

Jack Giamoro
Drew Latham
Ollie Trinke
Gavin Banek
Lawrence Bowen
Rafe McCawley
Buddy Amaral
Rudy Duncan
A.J. Frost
Bryce Hammond
Chuckie Sullivan
Tom 'Gunner' Casselman
Shannon Hamilton

They're all pretty good, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be Gavin Banek, which isn't so much a name as it's a random assortment of consonents that kind of seems like a name.

I think I have an idea for a really good movie nerd drinking game. It's called "Match the Ben Affleck Character to the Movie."

Wrong answer: take a shot.

You could do it with other actors, but check out the ben Affleck character names you can choose from:

Jack Giamoro
Drew Latham
Ollie Trinke
Gavin Banek
Lawrence Bowen
Rafe McCawley
Buddy Amaral
Rudy Duncan
A.J. Frost
Bryce Hammond
Chuckie Sullivan
Tom 'Gunner' Casselman
Shannon Hamilton

They're all pretty good, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be Gavin Banek, which isn't so much a name as it's a random assortment of consonents that kind of seems like a name.