Humor columnist for the GateHouse and McClatchy-Tribune news services, and a music writer whose work has appeared in Paste, Billboard, Playboy, All About Jazz, BruceSpringsteen.net and more.
Hilton Head Monthly — A few weeks ago, John Mellencamp wandered through a large and shiny mall in Indianapolis in a futile, climate-controlled and probably Cinnabon-smelling hunt for the record store.
This was, of course, a terrible idea, in part because you can imagine what happens when John Mellencamp wanders unannounced through a mall in Indianapolis, but also because he’d have had about as much luck finding a reliable VCR repairman or some MySpace gear; who knows the last time the mall had a record store. So he abandoned the search and did the only logical thing he could — went over to the Apple store. “The place was packed,” Mellencamp said. “Packed. People swarming in line, the way the record store was when we were kids.”
That was, needless to say, some time ago; these days when you accidentally stumble across a record store it feels weird, like an abandoned mining town or an undervisited museum. It looks passed over and it feels old-fashioned, but that makes sense, says Mellencamp, because so is rock ‘n’ roll.
“It’s done. It’s over. We killed it,” he says, pausing for effect between each little eulogy. “There’s nothing that’s going to revive it, or give us that extra little goose, like punk or grunge did. We ruined it. We outgrew it. So I’m kind of excited to see what’s next.”
It's shocking how little effort was required to find this.
GateHouse — The boy has gotten up twice tonight so far, unable to sleep due to concerns that Cat Heaven and People Heaven are entirely separate places.
But before we discuss how I’ve managed to defuse the situation with some serious ninja-level Ghost-Cat Fathering Awesomeness, a little background:
My son would very much like to get a pet, specifically a cat, which he has judged far superior to a dog based on both slobber volume and evidence provided by the film “The Adventures of Milo and Otis,” which, in his defense, makes a pretty compelling case. But sadly, Dad is allergic to cats — not, mind you, in the way that makes Dad a little snuffly, but in the way that makes his esophagus constrict like he’s being Force-choked by Vader for saying something snippy about his big stupid battle station with the gaping security problems. Believe me, if it was just a matter of knocking back some sinus pills to ensure my son’s joy I’d pop them like Rush Limbaugh on prom night, but I’m stuck.
How in the hell is this the first Google Image result for "jury duty"?
GateHouse — So I’ve got jury duty tomorrow (stupid inconvenient Constitution). More effective way to get out of it: Darth Maul costume, or answering every question by quoting Scientology text while crying?
Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Jeff,” you’re thinking, because you talk to your computer screen or newspaper and tragically lack the comforting touch of human contact, “Why don’t you do what everyone else does: wad up your summons and churk it straight into the trash, and when the policemen come to your door at 6:30 a.m. some quiet Tuesday in October, promptly claim you were on a three-month-long whaling-boat disrupting pilgrimage to the waters near Antarctica and of course wouldn’t have received your summons, which would have been lost on a table covered in blubber?”
Well, yes, that’s a spiffy idea — especially your well thought-out whaling-boat tale (nice work!). There are other good ideas too, such as meowing a lot, or arriving in a ball gown, or aggressively espousing deeply held prejudices against ethnic groups that don’t exist, such as Flttthbptedonians, or the Irish. But the problem is: I’ve done that already. Bunches of times.
Paste — According to the best press release we’ve received in some time, washed-up rapper Rob “Vanilla Ice” Van Ice Van Rob Winkle will soon debut a television show “focusing on his passion for home renovation.” Here is a teaser: “In this 10-episode series, Rob is ready for his biggest project yet—a complete overhaul of a six-bedroom and five-bathroom, 7,000 square-foot lakefront home in Palm Beach, Fla.”
This raises all sorts of questions. For instance, if you had a 7,000 square-foot mansion, would you entrust its renovation to a man who once renovated a pair of inflatable pants in a sparkly American Flag motif? And also, wouldn’t it be funny if all the other rapping relics from the 1990s got into the home-improvement business? We think it would. And we freely offer these business concepts to any of the artists mentioned in this link. CALL US.
NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, if you see my first-grader on the playground, you might want to watch your back.
GateHouse — It’s a static, shatterproof rule of parenting that, purely through nature and momentum, you will endeavor to pass on to your children your own interests and activities, either by grand design or subconscious manipulation, and yes I am looking at you, Couple Who Brought Your Four Grade-School Children To The Van Halen Concert In 2005, Seriously, That’s Shockingly Irresponsible, Mostly Because It Was A Hagar Tour, I Mean Roth I Can Justify, But The “Dreams” Guy Really What Are You Thinking? (I might also mention you, Juggalo Parent Nation.)
It follows then that there’s an equally static, shatterproof rule that there will be things you reflexively shield your kids from, strive to help them avoid at all costs, such as ignorance or prejudice, or badminton, or country music. Ha! I’m just kidding, of course. Badminton’s not that bad.
For instance, my son to this day has no idea that Radio Disney exists; not because I don’t think he’d enjoy it, but because like many six-year-olds he is quick to adopt MANIACAL OBSESSIONS regarding media absorption, and frankly the vaguest possibility of having to listen to Radio Disney even in the briefest, three-minute squirts made me begin dreaming up ways to remove my eyes with a potato peeler, so, long story short, my son’s world is a glorious Jonas-free wonderland, and this is how it shall remain.
But the thing is, I say that now, and I can have the best intentions, but at some point you have to release your child into the world, which is full of friends and stores and outside influences and classmates with Radio Disney backpacks. And when that happens, things begin spiraling faster and faster and time speeds up and up and before long you lose your grip on whatever thin filaments of control you might have hoped to have and then you find yourself watching a NASCAR race on a Sunday afternoon because your son — who, according to our earlier law, is supposed to be into Springsteen, running, “Weird Al” Yankovic and maintaining the rigidly beautiful organization of his iTunes library — is turning into a surprisingly knowledgeable juicebox-downing NASCAR fan. It is likely too late to change his name to Darrell, but don’t think I haven’t thought about it.
Happy Official Release Day to the absurdly talented New York-based jazz ensemble the Respect Sextet; their new digital-only release can be downloaded to your computer thing RIGHT NOW. Grab it quick so when they’re written up again in the New Yorker, Newsweek and/or New York Times you can say, “Pfft, I know those guys already.” (And no, I’m not just saying this because they asked me to write the liner notes. How dare you.)
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Download “Farcical Built For Six” at Bandcamp or iTunes.
Rolling Stone — Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp’s tour wraps in September, but Mellencamp will continue on this fall with sixteen Midwestern dates in support of No Better Than This.
Unlike his immaculately produced ’80s albums, Mellencamp wrote this record quickly, on acoustic guitar, and recorded it in mono on a 55-year-old Ampex tape recorder. “I looked at T Bone and I said, ‘What the fuck were we doing in the ’80s?’” Mellencamp told RS. “I made a record once that took almost a year. I spent millions of dollars dicking around with songs, and in the long run it paid off because it sold millions of copies. But I go back and I listen to the record today, and it was…more of a craftsman thing.” Read the full story at Rolling Stone.
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Stream the title track from “No Better Than This” at mellencamp.com
If Harry Potter land contained a spell which outlawed garments promoting Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and/or jorts, the waits in line would be about nine seconds each.
GateHouse — So we found ourselves with three days off and full-time weekend babysitting, so we did what I think most 35-year-old professional married couples would do when gifted with such a rare opportunity: Went promptly to Harry Potter land in Orlando. My idea was Chuck E. Cheese, but whatever, this was fine.
It’s not Harry Potter land, of course, and the lovely 29-year-old woman we met in line at Ollivander’s Wand Shop who dropped $800 and waited 10 hours to attend the park’s opening day would probably punch me in the quaffle unless I referred to at directly is The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, located at Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park in Florida and basically the single most satisfying aggro-nerd experience I’ve had since the first time I rode “Star Tours,” which was EXACTLY LIKE Beggar’s Canyon back home, or the time we waited outside a Merrillville, Ind. hotel for 90 minutes to get our photo taken with “Weird Al” Yankovic.
Now, I’m not remotely a 800-bones-on-opening-day Potter fan, though it is true that I lost considerable sleep to the books, have been told that my patronus would resemble Springsteen (accurate), and once began concocting a reasonably logical plan to physically enter “Half-Blood Prince” to claim vengeance on Snape (not over it), but let me go on record as saying that The Wizarding World of Harry Potter went all sectumsempra on my expelliarmus. For those of you who read books from the grown-up part of the bookstore, this means it was totally worth it.
Cinderella: One wrong click and suddenly you’re on a page full of ornate period costumes, soaring magical anthems and fabulous hairstyles. There are also some sites about the Disney movie.
Paste — Rumor has it that early-’00s rap-rock ensemble Linkin Park chose to spell its name all funny-like for a simple reason: Someone had already grabbed LincolnPark.com, so the band went with pre-K phonetics and created the world’s first known fusion of search engine optimization and gloppy nu-metal. Regrettably, thousands more were to come.
If you’re going to get noticed online, you need to snag the teeny attention spans of potential new fans while staying accessible to old ones. Many bands address this problem with unconventional, eccentric or exceedingly dopey names like Them Crooked Vultures, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or Taylor Swift. Yet plenty more clearly did not get the memo, because no one gets memos anymore, because they’re all online stealing music. For instance, I recently received a PR pitch from a band called One. A Google search for this band turns up, in order: 1) a group fighting AIDS and poverty, 2) the integer before two and 3) coconut water, which was delicious, but my point remains. A Paste list of bands that have made themselves bafflingly difficult to Google.
Do you see how the jellyfish here look all graceful and calming? FALSE. THEY'LL EAT YOUR FACE.
GateHouse — There have been a lot of jellyfish in the news lately, and by that I mean it’s possible that there have been a lot of jellyfish stories in the news lately. I have no idea, really, but I’ve personally encountered the same jellyfish story twice in 48 hours, and since taking one’s own personal experience, writing about it at breathless, context-free length and behaving as though you’ve uncovered a massing panic of national consequence is how the media works now, I figured I might as well board the Journalism 2.0 train. So what I meant to say there was INVADING MONSTER JELLYFISH WILL DEVOUR US WHOLE, AND ALSO I THINK THAT THEY ARE RACIST.
Anyway, the jellyfish story arrived first via a Friend on my Facebook wall, who I am immediately calling out because he’s the sort of person WHO WOULD POST A JELLYFISH STORY ON MY FACEBOOK WALL, which, for those who know me and my deep disapproval of floaty viscous goo-blobs that sting your face when you’re trying to kite-surf, is the new Most Direct Path To Getting Unfriended By Me, besting the previous winner, Videos From Your Children’s Many Recitals. (Seriously, Gooey Dead Jellyfish Pictures is the new Heather Wants To Share Some Cranberry Bushels With You In FarmVille! Which is to say, delete delete delete.)
The story was then echoed Saturday night by the 11-year-old offspring of friends whose obvious repeating of the story over the past few days had not lessened his relish in telling it. It opened with something on the order of “DidyouknowtherewasajellyfishinNewHampshirethathad45longtentaclesand150peoplewentothehospital?” breathlessly reported at speeds that would qualify him for inclusion in OutKast in the superheated, wild-eyed manner available only to 11-year-olds who are reporting to a passingly familiar adult a recent event in which many people were badly hurt.
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Sting (with Jo Lawry) – You Will Be My Ain True Love
Jeff Vrabel is a humor columnist for the GateHouse news service, editor-in-chief of Hilton Head Monthly magazine and a music writer whose work has appeared in Paste, RollingStone.com, Billboard, Playboy, All About Jazz, No Depression, the Chicago Sun-Times, Backstreets, brucespringsteen.net and several furious Neil Diamond fan message boards. The highly official bio.
Paste
Jeff Vrabel is a humor columnist for the GateHouse news service, editor-in-chief of Hilton Head Monthly magazine and a music writer whose work has appeared in Paste, RollingStone.com, Billboard, Playboy, All About Jazz, No Depression, the Chicago Sun-Times, Backstreets, brucespringsteen.net and several furious Neil Diamond fan message boards. 
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