2006 Holiday Schedule

First I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving or for those outside the U.S. like to call it, Thursday. Just a heads up with the holidays upon us, here’s a look at the schedule the blog will be taking the next couple weeks as well as a list of the best of 2006. There is a link on the sidebar for future reference. Feel free to dive into the archives on days that I will be taking off and on day that are not listed, they will be filled by the regular reviews and such you have come to find at the 9th Green (card subject to change):

May 27 - 2nd Annual Scooter Television Awards
May 28 - Best Shows of 2005-2006
November 23-26 - Off for Thanksgiving
December 15 - Lyrics Quiz: Best of 2006
December 21 - Best Free Songs of 2006
December 22 - Worst Albums of 2006
December 23 - Worst Songs of 2006
December 24-25 - Off for Christmas
December 26 - Best Videos of 2006
December 27 - Best Albums of 2006
December 28 - Best Mash-ups of 2006
December 29 - Scooter McGavin’s Reader’s Best Songs of 2006
December 30 - 100 Best Songs of 2006
December 31/Januray 1 - Off for New Years
January 2 - Induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame


^*As you may have noticed, on the 29th I will have a Reader’s poll on what you all thought were the best songs of the year. So if you would sometime time before Christmas, e-mail me (ScooterKSU@aol.com) your top ten songs of the year. If you need a refresher of songs from the last twelve months, check out the list of the albums I reviewed for my Terror Alert Scale as all the songs from those albums are eligible, and of course any song released this year is okay too even if I didn’t review it. Your nominations will be confidential and I won’t disclose it here at the 9th Green, so if you enjoy the 9th Green please send me an e-mail by December 24. But if I don’t get enough ballots, I’ll just take the 26th off.

Another reason I won’t be posting this weekend is I finally switched over to Blogger Beta recently and will be spending some time going through my archives and assigning labels so if anyone wanted to check out all the Toss Ups between Lost and Veronica Mars and other things hopefully you will be able do so by Monday. If there is a category you would like to see, just shoot me an e-mail and hopefully I’ll be able to accommodate. I haven’t made a full switch yet by picking out a new template yet but hopefully I’ll have one by the New Year (of course a Blogger Beta ready template with 3-columns would make a good Christmas present, not that I’m pandering for one or anything).

Scooter Update: Well after labeling all weekend I only got 200 posts done all the way back to late April of this year. To put that in perspective on Wedensday I'll reach my 600th post. So this is going to take much longer than I expected. And with the Holidays and finals coming up I doubt I get them all label until after Christmas. And I apoligize to anyone's who's feed is getting all messed up with my updating. In old blogger, the feed readers would only update posts on my main page, not when I did anything to older posts. If anyone knows if there is anything I can do to keep the older post from getting updated in the feed readers please shoot me an e-mail.

I Like This Show, it’s Tawdry week 2

Well I was a little wrong last week when I said that Ronnie would go after Chip Diller in regards to his gambling debt and the possibility that he set up Mercer to take the fall for the rapes on Veronica Mars this week. Instead we open with Chipper in his tightie whities with chunks of hair missing from his head. Not surprisingly it turned out to be the Lilith House behind the whole thing. But it was surprising when Vee accused them chicks to be behind other “rapes” she didn’t accuse them of being behind her attack. It’s not like her to not throw around accusations even if she’s outnumbered.

But the big news this week, or so I’m told, was the appearance of Patty Hearst. And her acting skill made the chick from Laguna Beach look like Meryl Streep in the acting department. Well, at least she was better than Paris Hilton. But Hearst was a little bit before my time. It’s not a good sign that I was more excited with an appearance by the dude from The Nanny. Then there were just too many in jokes at Heart’s expense that just went way over my head. And are we to assume that she really voted against the Greeks? I really can’t imagine that is really going to happen unless the Greek system goes underground until they can apply for reinstatement.

But that was all made up for with not one, but two scenes between Dick and Ronnie. You gotta love Dick, who would give up his president just to tell a funny story even to his arch nemesis. Seriously, how funny was the “keister egg” comment? Too bad you started to feel bad for Chipper during the other food court to the point he needed Wallace and Ronnie to help him out. And I’m not sure what was scarier, last week where Vee was dancing back to front with Liam or this week where the bodyguard came out of nowhere to nab her. I’m calling it next week will be the end of the Ronnie/Logan coupling. They have been teasing it too long for it not to happen.

And it’s gotten to the point where they are not even making an excuse for Mac being MIA since the second episode. But just when people may have started to forget about her, look who showed up in the preview. So Mac won’t have any more aunts dieing, won’t be at the gym, nor will have a big midterm. And Mac aside, the preview for next week looks epic. See for yourself with the video below courtesy of YouTube:




For anyone who missed the website that was given after the show it’s VeronicaViewers.com. The site is pretty bare bones excepte for a poll of who Ronnie should date (Logan, Piz, no one) and a contest whre you can win a walk on role for the show. Personally I’m holding out for a speaking role. But anyways. Lastly, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, or to the non-American readers like to refer to it, Thursday. And with Thanksgiving tomorrow, I will be taking a days off but check out this weekend for my holiday schedule and I'll be back in full force on Monday as I break down the probability of who is the Hearst Rapist with Oddsmakers.

When I Come Back Like Jordan Wearing the 4-5

…It’s not to play games with you.” That was a line uttered on Encore, a song from the retirement album of Jay-Z. Then during what Jay called the worst retirement ever, he released a duet album with R. Kelly, a mash-up album with Linkin Park (not to mention the unofficial mash-up, The Grey Album), and spit verses on multiple different albums. Even his comeback was the worst kept secret in music circles as Kanye West and Pharrell of the Neptunes both said they were working on the project long before Jay admitted he was coming out of retirement.

So three years after his farewell with The Black Album, Jay-Z is back with Kingdom Come, a name that comes from a Superman comic book of the same name where the Man of Steel comes back from self exile. Much like his previous album, Jay handles almost all the rapping himself with guests like John Legend, Usher, Beyoncé, Ne-Yo, and Chris Martin (yes the dude from Coldplay) relegated to singing the hooks. And then there is the steller line of producers, aside the previously mentioned West and Neptunes, Swizz Beatz, Just Blaze, and Dr. Dre who behind the boards for five tracks.

The rust still lingers as Jay isn’t on the top of his game for most of the disk. He even brings down some of the joints as his flow is just anemic over Blaze’s great beat of Oh My God. But Blaze doesn’t repeat that success as his sample of Rick James doesn’t work on the title track. And he was also at the helm of the weak comeback single Show Me What You Got that jacks the same sax from the early nineties oversexed Rump Shaker. The Neptunes continue their downslide with the unlistenable. West has a misstep with Do U Wanna Ride.

Even Dr. Dre produced a rare weak track with the poorly conceived 30 Something where Jay tries to convince himself that “Thirty is the new twenty.” Dre does much better on the laid back Lost Ones. Trouble takes his trademark sound and makes it futuristic much better than Timbaland tried to do on the horrible Justin Timberlake album (this begs the question was Timbaland absent from Kingdom Come to make that crap?). Dre also has his hands on the best songs on the album that end the album starting with Minority Report that sees Jay tackle Hurricane Katrina and the broader topic of poverty that features snippets from the evening news as well as the infamous, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” That is followed by Beach Chair that features Martin on the hook and behind the board and may be Hova’s most introspective track to date.

Like the last album, Michael Jordon references are a plenty and maybe it’s too true. The poor verses that Jay dropped on other artists songs during his “retirement” were about as good as Jordon’s baseball career. And lets not forget that Jordon didn’t win the championship in his first season back. Hopefully will get back on track with future releases and doesn’t take the Jordon comparison any further or he may quickly turn into the Wizards version of the basketball star, as Jay already has the executive power.

Song to Download - Oh My God

Kingdom Come gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

First Impressions: Day Break

Thanks to the brainchilds who wined last season that the reason Lost lost it’s thunder last season was too many repeats between new episode even though that didn’t seem to be a problem when the show was good in the first season. So to appease those morons now we have to wait three months in-between new episodes. In the interim we get Day Break, or as I like to call it Tru Calling with dudes.

So much like Tru Calling we get someone who lives the same day over again but instead getting a do over, the dude get the same day over again more like Groundhog Day, but much less funny. But the difference is the main dude carries over his injuries to the next day so no suicide attempts like Bill Murray. But much like the other “live the day over again” premises, they plant plenty of little thing for the dude to catch like always tripping over his belt, making sure he doesn’t break a plate again, and saving a woman from being hit by a bus.

The one and only day we get to see is based around Taye Diggs (How Stella Got Her Groove Back) who is being set up for killing the district attorney. Also possible wrapped up in all of this is Diggs partner Victoria Pratt (House of the Dead II) who has problems of her own as Internal Affairs got her on something. Adam Baldwin (Firefly), the IA officer on the case, just happens to be the ex-husband of Moon Bloodgood (Eight Below) who just so happens to be shacking up with Diggs these days. Then FBI Assistant Director Skinner gets a demotion as he now is working homicide on Diggs’ case. Through in some shadowy figures in a rock quarry who seem to behind the whole thing and you have a tangled web of a television show.

Verdict: Much better than I expected. Granted I may be the one of the few as the premiere dropped over three million viewers in the second hour. With that trend, we may get the dreaded Lost repeats before Christmas. But it’s a good choose to keep the show in a limited run because the premise would get old much like Tru Calling and at Tru at least only relieved the day once. Day Break airs on Wednesdays at 9:00 until the end of January. If you want to check out the series premiere head over to ABC.com.

Don't Download These Videos vol. VI

There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I though I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form so here they are courtesy of YouTube. I advise you to watch them before you read my reviews if you don’t want me to spoil things. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available, if not the link goes to YouTube where you can watch the video in full screen). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.


Do I Creep You Out - “Weird Al” Yankovic



If there is one good thing about American Karaoke, it gave us Carrie Underwood who is moderately attractive. But if there were a second good thing to come out from the show it would be that it spawned this video and parody from “Weird Al” Yankovic. Yeah, I can't say I have heard the orginal version, but that doesn't make it any less brilliant. I may actually like this more than the White and Nerdy video. And for those that were wondering, the video is from Jib Jab, the guys behind those brilliantly funny political parodies from two years ago. Oh and what really makes the song great is that Taylor Hicks dude totally creeps me out so it's nice to know Al thinks the same thing.


Learn to Live with What You Are - Ben Folds



Then there’s Al’s buddy Ben Folds who has a hilarious video of his own. I can’t help think of Dodgeball with Folds walking around the city in a pirate’s outfit.


Illegal - Shakira



It should go without saying that Shakira is uber-hot, but I always thought her perm was somewhat of a turn off so the look in this video is easily her best yet. Throw in some boxing and I’m thoroughly entertained. Oh and for those who didn’t realize, that’s Carlos Santana on the guitar.


No Description (and not necessarily safe for work)



I really can’t describe this video, just watch it, you should definitely like it. If you don’t, well I feel sorry for you. Oh and don’t forget to check out the new Johnny Cash video if you haven’t already.