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David Lee Roth Touring With Van Halen Again

It was announced yesterday that the tour will start this fall.

The lastest twist is that founding bassist Michael Anthony has been given the boot, and Van Halen’s teenage son, Wolfgang, has replaced him.

Hmmm. I doubt that statement is entirely true. My guess is that because Eddie Van Halen is such a jerk, Sammy Hagar wouldn’t tour with them again. Sammy and Michael Anthony are still good friends, and Mike probably sees that Ed is a jerk now too and doesn’t want to deal with him.

That leaves Ed and Alex in a bind. They hate David Lee Roth, but they can’t make any money with any singers other than DLR or Sammy. Since Sammy won’t have anything to do with them, they have to put up with DLR, and since Mike won’t have anything to do with them, they have to have Wolfgang play bass.

Dave? He doesn’t care. It’s a chance for him to get on stage and say, “Look at all the people here tonight!” a few more times. He’s probably chomping at the bit to get out on the road and annoy Ed nightly, and I don’t blame him. If I were him, I’d do the same thing just out of spite.

Of all the guys who’ve been in this band, Sammy and Mike are the only ones I’d ever want to hang out with. Dave would be fun to hang out with for a weekend bender, but he’d get on your nerves so bad after a couple of days that you’d have to get away…kind of like being in Vegas for more than a few days. He has, however, done a great job building that reputation and marketing himself.

I’d be surprised if this tour lasts more than a few dates. Look for it to be cancelled because of Eddie’s health.

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Yet Another Dead Wrestler

This time it’s Brian Adams, who was known as Crush when he was part of the tag team Demolition. This is happening way too frequently. The powers that be in pro wrestling have a reputation of chewing guys up and spitting them out–not really caring about what happens to them afterwards, but sooner or later this is going to come back to haunt them.

This is just bad marketing.

It’s sad that they will only be able to see the business side of what all of these deaths mean, but if those are the terms that get them motivated to try and change things, so be it.

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Patriot Act Keeps Us Safe From Fighting Cocks

Whew! Good thing we have the Patriot Act to keep us safe from those radical Islamic…chickens?

Just after midnight on May 13, 2004, a small team of FBI agents crept into the legendary Del Rio Cockfighting Pit in Cocke County.
…
Acting under the authority of the Patriot Act, the agents had obtained a search warrant that allowed them to clandestinely enter the property, search for evidence and not tell anyone about it until the government or a judge was ready to let the owners know they’d been there.

This is unreal. It is bad enough that this is what our law enforcement stays busy with this, but the Patriot Act? C’mon. Guys involved in a cock fighting ring may have a lot of undesirable traits, but being unpatriotic probably isn’t one of them.

The full story is in the KNS. by way of Michael Silence

*** UPDATE ***
More on this important national security issue from Knoxviews and
Tam,

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I’m Looking for Some Yaz…You Holding?

I meant to write about this a couple of weeks ago the first time I saw the commercial for Yaz birth control pills.

“Yaz” doesn’t sound like a reputable birth control product to me. It sounds like the street name for some highly addictive substance made from processing kerosene, roach killer, and cotton candy.

These pharmacutical ads are getting more and more ridiculous every day. The one for Yaz has a crew of good looking women at a club talking about the side effects of birth control pills. While this is probably more common than I am aware, there’s no way they could hold this conversation for more than 45 seconds without some guy overhearing and wanting in on the discussion. More than likely, he just got out of the Viva Viagra commercial and is all revved up.

Seen that one? A bunch of guys sitting around singing “Viva Viagra”. It looks to me like they are holed up in some clandestine barn, where they’ve been crushing Viagra pills, cooking it up in a spoon, and shooting it. They pass the time waiting for it to hit them by singing a parody of an Elvis song. As soon as they are “feeling it”, they walk out of the barn high-fiving each other and get into their own separate vehicles. They’ll all end up in the same part of town ten minutes later looking for hookers, or irritating the young professional women in the Yaz commercial.

But I digress. Luckily, the costs to produce these low-grade SNL skits is passed along to consumers who are not afforded the ability to buy meta-recreational pharmacuticals over the counter. Getting laid these days may require a trip to the doctor and a prescription.

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Flavor Flav Roast

Lisa Lampanelli has to be the funniest person I’ve seen in a very long time. I didn’t get to see the whole thing, but she was the only thing I really wanted to see anyway.

I did have one question though…where were Chuck D. and Terminator X? I’m assuming they were in attendance and I just didn’t see them. I sort of expected them to be up on the main stage.

I got to see Public Enemy play at the Bijou Theater (I think it was 1992). It’s funny, but looking back, PE actually represents everything that could possibly be right with rap. They were pretty controversial back then because of some of the things they said, but at least they were saying something.

Good luck finding that today. You’re lucky if you can find a guy (Mike Jones) who is talented enough to say his name over and over.

Flavor Flav said it best…”don’t believe the hype.”

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Some Advice For My Fellow Ron Paul Supporters

I’ve been clicking around Technorati and Digg to see the reaction on the Iowa Straw Poll, and of course there is already talk in the blogosphere about voting machines.

Look. I like Ron Paul. I support Ron Paul. I want his campaign to continue. If you feel the same way, it may be best to stop with the “Diebold-gate” talk.

At worst, you run the risk making the whole movement look like it’s full of 9-11 conspiracy nutjobs.

At best, you make Dr. Paul look like Al Gore.

Neither is very appealing. Nobody likes self hating wackos or crybabies.

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Bueller? Bueller?

FladaBlog has an excellent post on public school socialism:

Let’s consider an island with one family with children and one childless couple. Does the family have a right to force the autonomous couple to contribute to the education of their children? Most rational people will agree that they do not have such a right. Additionally, the childless couple does not have the right to force the other family to let the couple dictate how the family’s children should be educated. Does adding another family with children change the underlying principle of rights? Again, most rational people will agree that it does not.

So the question is: at what number of families does it become moral to force the childless couples to pay for the education of the families’ children? At what number does society gain the right to force families to start allowing the society to educate their children? Is 100 the magic number? 1000? 1,000,000?

Anyone? Anyone?

Read it again, substituting “education” with “health care”.

Again, this time with “retirement”.

Again, this time with “cable television”.

Again, this time with “reduced rates for energy” (corporate welfare).

Again, this time with “watermelon”, or “hair brushes” or “tire guages” or “jock straps”.

Of course, we all have the right, and I believe responsibility, to choose to contribute at any time. The question is, at what point do others have the right to force us to contribute?

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The Knox County Plot Thickens

Just how bad is this going to get. There are almost too many things here to even begin to comment on.

We could really use a guy like Jesse Jackson or William Jefferson to come in and clean this mess up.

For all of you who are hell bent on using the gov’ment to solve our social ills, read on…

At the Fam-Sec site, Muenzer recorded meeting with program director Joy Douglass, who was there alone with her children, watching a movie.

and

At TennCorp, which operates in a building owned by Finch’s company, B&F Properties, the room designated for the children’s program contained Christmas decorations and van seats, according to a memo summarizing the site visits

and this

“(Ballinger) said they had not had any attendance in quite some time and that she had even mentioned to Michelle Maultsby that it was a ‘glorified baby-sitting service’ since it was usually just her son,”

and this

The file was taken to Finch’s office that night for review and was returned to the Community Development office the next morning. The memo was missing when reporters again looked at the file Wednesday.

more here…

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Fox News — Sensationalist?

I just went to our cafeteria here at work to get some coffee and saw this “headline” on Fox News…”Bloggers a Threat?”

To be fair, I (thankfully) couldn’t hear what they were saying, only see the alert they had scrolling across the bottom of the screen. But are these guys serious? I used to think that the whole blogosphere vs. mainstream media thing was sort of a ploy by bloggers to make themselves seem a little more important than they are. Now I’m not so sure.

Even locally and regionally, there have been incidents like this, that show the divide is very real, and the tension is building on both sides.

In general, I think local news outlets do a decent job at reporting. But there really isn’t much analysis of local news except in the blogosphere. True, there are editorials in the newspaper, but without competition from the blogosphere there would be no balance of opinions. In this sense, there is a real market (need?) for local blogging, and I think that may scare local media.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is national coverage, with several 24 hour stations and analysis of the news–infotainment. Large media outlets have a lot ($$$) on the line, and cannot afford to only report the news. They have to entertain their viewers to keep them glued and keep the ad dollars rolling in. It seems to me that they are afraid of the blogosphere because they are actually getting scooped on stories that matter and are losing journalistic credibility. Others **cough O’Reilly cough** just can’t seem to take the heat of competition.

But I could be wrong.