Please shoot me

Posted by Johnny at 4:48 p.m.

No matter how hard I try, I can't dislike the new Avril Lavigne single ("Girlfriend").

I know.

Hooks aplenty, there's a ton to latch onto in this little ditty: the cheerleader chorus, the layered harmonies in the verses, the half-time pre-chorus, etc. The production is great - I'm sure it's compressed like crazy, but the mix is fantastic. The guitars have a nice fluid crunch (I'm aware of the oxymoron), which reminds me of my twangy Strat sound through a high gain setting on my Orange amp. Mmm, delicious. The bass drum is a bit clicky for my taste, but it really drives the verses. The bass is there, doing its job as usual. If vocal pitch correction was used, they probably did it in the background harmonies to tighten things up, but I couldn't really hear any in the lead parts - another plus.

The target audience is clearly the 13-15 year-old female crowd ("she's like, so whatever"), and so the lyrical content is about as complicated and layered as Dude, Where's my Car?, but it's just so appealing to hear Avril say "motherfucking princess" (in the uncensored version, of course). I wouldn't put it in the same league as Norah Jones dropping the MF bomb in her Peeping Tom feature, "Sucker," because that was damn hot/sexy, whereas this is cute/playful.

As far as girl rock/punk/whatever is concerned, I still wouldn't put her in the same league as Katy Rose in terms of songwriting ability, but since most of you are probably saying "who?" to that reference, I think we know who has the better hooks.

The rest of the album is decent, but the 3 ballads feel forced and could have been left out. I highly recommend the uncensored version over the censored one for obvious reasons. After listening to all 40 minutes of it, you might feel like you've lost 30 IQ points and are on your way to developing diabetes, but that might be your thing.

Now to listen to some Shining to balance out my day....

Fate.... or stalking?

Posted by Johnny at 10:55 a.m.

I will summarize this story below:

• Guy dreams up phone number
• Guy sends text message to said number
• Number belongs to girl
• Guy marries girl
  

That was heavily abridged, but you get the gist of it. The couple met because the guy dreamt of her phone number and sent it a text message, thinking he'd met her the night before. He hadn't, but they fell in love and got married.

Seems plausible.... OR DOES IT?

Which of the following scenarios is more likely? 1) I "dream" about a 7 or 10 digit phone number (complete with 10,000,000 or 10,000,000,000 possible numbers), send it a text message, and find out that it belongs to a (presumably) attractive female my age; OR 2) I stalk a girl whom I (presumably) find attractive, find out her phone number, and then contact her by describing scenario 1?

Yeah, that's what I thought. Whatever, it doesn't really matter because they'll be divorced within 2 years.

Bathroom Graffiti

Posted by Johnny at 11:12 a.m.