MERSH

It should not go unremarked that the current McDonald's filet-o-fish commercials, um, borrow from of Montreal.

I see three potential scenarios here:

(1) With the evidence of the Outback commercial in hand, McDonald's assumes that of Montreal are whores to be had for some filet-o-cash. Kevin Barnes rebuffs them, and they stick out their tongues and write a nonactionable pastiche.

(2) Someone in the McMarketing department is a fan, and decides to do a bizarre, sideways homage.

(3) The same theory that postulates that, given enough time, 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters would eventually produce Hamlet.

I'm not going to sweat the whys and wherefores, I'm just going to enjoy...

SUCKING IN THE 70s

I realized last week that the most-recent Stones album I own on anything other than cassette is Exile on Main Street.

So, seeing as I'm in a bit of a new-music dry spell, I've decided to start my own 70s Stones of the Month Club.

Each month, I'm going to buy one of the studio albums between Goat's Head Soup and Some Girls, chronologically.

Some Girls is the one I know best from front to back, so it will be interesting to get more familiar with the outer edges of things like Black and Blue...

DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOR ON THE BEDPOST OVERNIGHT?

I first encountered Trident gum as a kid, when I found it swimming between
bangle bracelets and Kleenex at the bottom of my grandmother's purse.

I picked up a 3-pack the other day, based more on price than Proustian
resonance.

And now I'm here to say that original flavor Trident is just damn refreshing...

GRANDPA'S THEORIES

Somehow, Danielson snuck a single by me back in November.

It's called Moment Soakers, and I have it now. It would not sound out of place on Ships, so you know what to do. (Um, buy or don't buy.)

The B side is an Abba song called Eagle, which serves to remind you that, hey, Abba made albums. For some reason...

MARKS THE SPOT

It’s amazing what’ll stick in your craw…

I have held a grudge against Ira Robbins for years, because he referred to X once as “appalling noise.” I assumed it was in an issue of Trouser Press, even though their old rekkid guide treats X generously.

Well, I was looking through the July, 1986 issue of Creem the other day, and there it was in a review of Green on Red/Rain Parade: “A reassuring antidote to even the appalling noise of X.”

And I was pissed anew. Watch where you’re casting those appallings, bitch…

WHITE PUNKS ON SNOW

I gave my car a reverse snowhawk...

A PUT ON

I had tickets to a Who concert once. Shea Stadium, 1982.

Thing is, I had no interest in seeing The Who. I liked their early mod stuff well enough, but in 1982 I was positively oppressed by Eminence Front, in the same way I was oppressed by In the Air Tonight: from the backseat of a black Z-28 with a custom Blaupunkt stereo pumping 100 watts, so I couldn't hear my thoughts think. And it got loudest when the driver really liked a particular section.

“Listen to the drums. Listen. You can practically feel them.”

I hated it like fuck.

So why did I have the tickets? Well, Scott and I were primed to see David Johansen and The Clash, who were opening the show.

After The Clash wrapped up, we made our way back through the bowels of Shea (and Shea did indeed have bowels, make no mistake), and headed for the exit gate. When we got there, we found it closed off with three or four guards sitting sentry.

They stopped us. “Show's not over. You can't leave.”

“But we're done.”

“Whattaya mean, done? The Who didn't even play yet.”

“We came for The Clash.”

After about 5 minutes of this, they finally let us leave, shaking their heads and clucking behind us.

People still shake their heads and cluck when I tell them this story, but they do so in a way that assumes I now recognize that this was all folly, and that I tell the story as a tale of regret.

But I don't regret it for a second...

AMPED

When I think about my 64GB iPod Touch I touch myself...

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

Aaaaaahhhh! The snowpocalypse is coming!

I'ma head to the Public Library and make Jake Gyllenhaal my full-flavored bitch...

EDITORS

Just finished reading Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers.

It's an important story, told artfully and with restraint.

I have to say, though, that the first edition I read was a bit sloppy.

Now, the old Copy Editor in me could bear the injury of the occasional missed space between punctuation. And that missed period that nearly stopped my heart? Over it.

But to see the Strait of Hormuz referred to as the Straights of Hormuz, particularly in the context of this book, and mindful of the events of 1988, well, that stung a little more acutely...