What Came First, the Music or the Misery?

If you are lucky, about once a decade a movie comes out that as if the filmmakers are saying, “Hey Scooter McGavin, this one is for you.” That was the case for High Fidelity, a borderlined obsessive compulsive who cases a little too much about music who seems to mess it up with every girlfriend. High Fidelity, this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame, was a romantic comedy where you were not quite sure if the romance was with the women of the film or the music.

High Fidelity follows John Cusack as he tries to convince himself that his latest failed relationship does not crack his top five most memorable break ups which leads him back to these ex girlfriends to see why exactly things went wrong. (Fun Fact: Justified’s Ava Crowder cracked the top five.) It also does not help that his latest, and possibly greatest, break up it currently shacked up with the hippie version of Tim Robbins.

High Fidelity also marked the breakout role for Jack Black who catapulted from bit player to headliner after the movie. This was well deserved because he stole every scene he was in through the movie as the bombastic employ of Cusack and was the perfect yin to Todd Louiso soft spoken yang. Black even got to show off his singing chops much to everyone’s surprise after every spent the whole movie blowing of his musical ambitions.

But the real scene stealers were the music. You knew from the trailer when Black broke out Walking On Sunshine, this was going to be a special movie and even includes a cameo from Bruce Springsteen. One segment that hit close to home was when a reporter asks Cusack his top five favorite song and he spend the rest of the movie (and a few bonus scenes) editing his choices. This went all the way to the end of the music where I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever) remains one of the greatest credit choices of all time. High Fidelity showed, it does not matter how simple a song is, it is how you interpret it.

I Would Rather Starve than Eat Your Bread

It seemed the less Pearl Jam wanted the spotlight, the more popular the band got. They refused to make anymore videos after Jeremy off their first album and their second Vs. had the biggest first week sales to date. Then they canceled their 1994 tour in protest of Ticketmaster’s service charges and their third album Vitalogy went on to be the second fastest album at the time after behind Vs. and like Vs. is being inducted into the Scooter Hall of Fame. Those two albums that chronicle the band’s tenuous rise of fame will rereleased as a three CD set later this month. Or if you have money to burn, you can also pick up the limited edition five LPs, four CDs, one cassette, an 80-page composition notebook and a memorabilia-filled envelope set. Vinyl hounds will have to trek down to your favorite independent record store when they will be sold exclusively.

Much like its predecessor, Vitalogy starts off with a one-two punch of guitar infused aggression with Last Exit and Spin the Black Circle, an ode to vinyl. I have a theory that the band loves vinyl that they made a CD that is guaranteed to scratch the CD. But in a time when the band was anti-music videos, they came up with some interesting packaging with the medical book theme of Vitalogy (which is the study of life) and the collector cards that were packaged with No Code.

In an age when the band wasn’t keen on self promotion, Better Man was still a commercial success despite never actually being released as a single and is up there with Black as one of the band’s best melancholy songs to date. But my favorite song on the album is Corduroy, a driving song that has an edge to it but remains as catchy as any pop song at the time.

Vitalogy also saw that band go into the bizarre musically whether it be Eddie Vedder singing about bugs around a poorly played accordion or the singer just repeatedly spelling privacy over and over again for a minute, or the vitrally wordless Spanish tinged Aye Davanita that just fades out as it did in. But it didn’t get any weirder than the album closer Hey Foxymophandlemama, That’s Me which saw more repeated phrases, this time about spanking. But the highs of Vitalogy helped Pearl Jam complete one of the best trio of first albums by any rock band.

Memories Can Be Distorted, They're Just an Interpretation

There are plenty of good films that you want to watch again and again but very few movies that once they end, you hit play again because you have to see what you just saw was in fact what you thought you saw. Memento is one of those films. Under most directors, the telling a story in reverse would be a gimmick at best, but in the hands of Christopher Nolan it is a masterful art of storytelling.


Guy Peirce (Bedtime Stories) stars as a guy with no short term memory after a blow to the head in an attack that left his wife dead. Trying to hunt down the person responsible is hampered by Guy’s ability to only remember the past fifteen minutes which has led him to tattoo everything that has to do with the case all over his body coupled with various Polaroids of the key players. These include a creepyly moustached Joe Pantoliano (The Fugitive) and mysterious waitress Carrie-Anne Moss (Red Planet).

Then after all the twist and turns as we go backwards three day, we get on major5 shocker of an ender that demands that you rewatch the movie right then and there one more time. For that Memento landed in at number two on my list of The 100 Greatest Movies of the 00's and is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame. And look out for the 10th Anniversary edition on Blu-Ray coming out later this month.

You're in Everyone I See so Tell Me Do You See Me?

I am not much into making niche lists, but if I were to make a list of the best pop albums of last decade, The Spirit Room by Michelle Branch would have topped that list. Not since Hootie and the Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View was there an album full of radio ready gems from start to finish. But I didn’t make such a list, so instead it will have to settle for number five on my list of The 100 Greatest Albums of the 00’s and this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

Even though every track on The Spirit Room was pop goodness, Everywhere still stood out as the best the album had to offer. With an acoustic intro, crunchy guitars and pseudo religious undertones, the song had a chorus that just screamed to be screamed along with whenever the song came on the radio (possibly with the windows up if you were a dude). Another standout was the token power balled Goodbye to You which was great by itself, but will forever be linked to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer scene Branch cameod in for me.

Though the same age as Taylor Swift when she recorded her first album, Michelle doesn’t suffer from the high school sophomore poetry class lyrics that stricken Taylor’s first (and second) album. Sure songs like You Get Me (which was the theme to the underappreciated Sorority Life) bordered on girly cheesy with lines like “You’ve seen my secret garden where all of my flowers grow,” but most songs like Everywhere were wise beyond the seventeen years she had lived up to that point. Like Something to Sleep To, is a billowing song about longing that would have sounded less moving in the hand of others her age.

With most of The Sprit Room of the purely pop persuasion, it does end on a different not with Drop in the Ocean which sounded more like something that would be championed on an indie blog these days than a pop album in the early 00’s. At the time I was hoping that would be something we would hear more from Branch, but after one more album, she went country in the middle of the decade. Here’s hoping she finds her way back to her roots sometime this decade.

They're Singing Deck the Halls but it's not Like Christmas at All

And really, it is not like Christmas at all if I do not hear Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Where most Christmas tunes are of a more cheerful variety, Christmas was one of the first heartbreaking holiday song for those that do not have anyone to kiss under the mistletoe during the wintery months. Whether it be the original with Darlene Love backed by Phil Specter’s Wall of Sound, or U2 with Bono in full Elvis mode, more the more melancholy version utilized by Death Cab for Cutie, I cannot go a December without hearing multiple versions of Christmas (Baby Please Come) which is what makes it this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame. Below you can watch their versions of their song and click on the artist names to buy the song on iTunes, or you can head over to RCRD LBL to download the version by Slow Club for free.

Darlene Love




U2




Death Cab for Cutie

Long Overdue and Now Philly is Slamming

When you think of nineties music, it usually conjures up thoughts of grunge, or gangsta rap, possibly even the late decade surge of teen pop, yet forgotten in nineties nostalgia is R&B powerhouse Boyz II Men who only broke records held by The Beatles and they even their own record of most weeks at number one on the pop charts. They were a godsend for guys hoping to get their ladies in the mood and thanks to the death of RnB last decade, they remain a go to baby making soundtrack.

The group started out earnest enough as a Michael Bivins vanity group, even having shout out to him and the “East coast Family” in their first single Motownphilly (which begs the question, what ever happened to Sudden Impact, the token white boys of the crew who showed up in the video but didn’t even warrant a shout-out in the song? And what was the Vanderpooleera that was supposable coming soon?). Shameless plugging aside, the song was fun and when it got to the breakdown, who didn’t scat along with the group?

But any novelty of the first single wore off with the release of the follow up, It’s so Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday. The a capaella song became a staple of choirs everywhere and is still poignant today to play for the serious, like a loss of a friend, or even the not so serious like when I cue up the song whenever the token hot chick is voted off Survivor.

Of course Boyz II Men if best known for their baby making song and though they didn’t hit the pinicle of that type of song until their sophomore record, there is still plenty to get you in the mood on Cooleyhighharmony, most notably Uhh, Ahh. If I’ll Make Love to You is for love making, then Uhh, Ahh is what you put on during foreplay. The album also features a song that is still a go to for sad songs, Lonely Heart with its heartbreaking chorus which is a must to heal any broken junior high heart.

Added on later after being a smash hit off the Boomerang Soundtrack, End of the Road is another heart wrenching song, the first for the group penned by Babyface who would go on to write two of their biggest hits from the second album. The song makes you wonder why the group didn’t utilize more spoken word from the group’s bass singer Mike McCary whose voice is so low, you need a subwoofer to properly hear his voice. Also added to the deluxe edition of Cooleyhighharmony was a second a capella track, an updated version of In the Still of the Night made famous by The Five Satins, that, again, was worn out by high school choirs everywhere.

With RnB almost dead, it is time for a Boyz II Men revival as they are about to hit their twentieth anniversary next year. I do not expect them to be as huge as they were a decade and a half ago, but if they reteam with Babyface, they should have a few more bedroom anthems in them. Until then, I will just have to induct Cooleyhighharmony into my Scooter Hall of Fame.

Betty Ford, oh, Won’t You be My Valentine

Throughout the nineties artist tried to marry rock with electronic music, even Eric Clapton devoted an album to attempted genre mashing (check out Pilgrim) to little effect, but no one made that merger as successful until David Gray came around. Babylon was a folksy song that was easy to sing along with, but underneath was a beat that sounded like a rap beat stripped of its bassline.

Once you listened to the album that Babylon was found on, this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame, White Ladder, you found more of the same. Where Babylon took the acoustic guitar route, Please Forgive Me when with a driving piano line to go along with the frantic electric percussion track before a head bob-along-bass part gets added to the second verse.

The marriage of folk and electric is most notable on drug fuel We’re Not Right which mixes advanced towards former first ladies and bouncing computer blips and booms. That’s not to says Gray fully rests on the gimmick, even if he still remains one of the few that can successfully make eclectic folk. The stand out track on White Ladder (which recently ranked as number 18 on The 100 Greatest Albums of the 00’s) is the a track that only features his voice and a piano, This Year’s Love, a sweeping ballad that deserves air time at every prom and wedding reception until the end of time.

Gray could also do a stripped down guitar song as heard on the album closer, an acoustic reworking of Soft Cell’s Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. No, seriously, Soft Cell had a song not called Tainted Love and Gray took the new wave, very eighties sounding song and turned it into a reflective, acoustic nine minute gem and fitting end to a classic album.

Hey Yo Kids: Remember When I Used to Be Dope?

This may come to a surprise to some, but on the rare occasion I do completely forget about song. Such was the case while I was browsing Popeaters’s list of Hip Hop’s Most Unlikely Collaborations I spotted a lost gen I long forgot about, Fallin’ by De la Soul and Teenage Fanclub. And there is a reason I forgot about it, despite playing out the song in my youth, when I scanned my iTunes library it was nowhere to be found. Then my copy of the Judgment Night Soundtrack managed to not be in my primary or secondary CD collections but buried in a box that probably hasn’t been opened since I graduated college. Popping th album into my computer to be ripped, it is surprising how much the album still stands up with most of the songs finally making their way onto my iPod.

Since it slipped my mind, here is a little reminder far those that can’t remember themselves. Judgment Night is was a movie in released in 1993 featuring Emilio Estevez (in between Might Ducks movies), Cuba Gooding Jr. (fresh off A Few Good Men), Stephan Dorff (what happened to this guy, he used to be the next big thing but the most memorable thing he did last decade was appear in a Britney Spears video), and Jeremy Piven (a year away from PCU) as friends who get lost in gang territory and witness a murder, The big catch being it was an white Irish gang (juxtaposed against a black antagonist) led by Denis Leary (in his first big role that was launched by his MTV commercials) who want to kill off the loose ends. Needless to say, I doubt the movie has held up as good as the soundtrack.

With all the crappy rap-metal hybrids that popped up in the late nineties, it may be easy to forget how revolutionary the Judgment Night Soundtrack was. Rage Against the Machine was still a buzz band back in 1993 and other genre mashing was few and far in-between. But the album brought together some of the best rappers of the era and had their music backed by their hard rock counterpoints.

To get an idea of what the album was all about, there is nothing better than the opener which joined the forces of Helmet and House of Pain (Everlast appeared in the movie as a Leary lackey) where they trade verses between sung and rapped, managing to sound both like one of their own songs individually for Just Another Victim. Then Ice-T, who had just released his own rap-metal album with Body Count, joined up with thrash legends Slayer on Disorder. And in an only in the nineties would we have groups like Faith No More and the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (who really need to appear in a Where Are They Now segment) and here they are on the same track, Another Body Murdered. The Onyx and Biohazard like their collaboration on Judgment Night they even teamed later on a remix of Slam.

But it was all about hard rock. The stand out track on the album was between backpack rapper De la Soul and British alternative rockers Teenage Fanclub and even went the extra mile by sampling Tom Petty for Fallin’. And of course Cypress Hill could get mellow on a track by Sonic Hill for the not so subtle I Love You Mary Jane. Cypress Hill was the only group on the disk with two songs but their song with Pearl Jam was kind of a dud considering they were the two biggest acts in their genre at the time.

Weirdest combination had to go to booty king at the time Sir Mix-a-Lot getting down and dirty with fellow Seattlians Mudhoney Freak Momma. Another standout pairing was Missing Lionk by Dinosaur Jr. providing a funky bass line for De the Funky Homosapien who is no stranger to the rock world by working Gorillaz. Sure bands like Limp Bizkit came along and ruined the rap-rock genre, but bands and rappers on Judgment Night show that it can be done right and is why it is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

Long Ago, in the Beautiful Kingdom of Hyrule...

Where most of the early Nintendo games were your basic side scrolling fair, Legend of Zelda was the first game I remember that seemed epic and even featured a sort of open world that many of the best games today utilize where you could go anywhere in the world to fight baddies and find hidden items and not take a linier path like other games at the time. The game was also one of the first with worth wild replayability where you can, once beating the game, play it again with a completely different map in the same game.

But much like the second Super Mario Bros., the second installment Zelda II: The Adventure of Link was a misstep as it moved from its predecessors patented bird’s eye view to a duel, role playing overhead map where enemies can randomly attack you, and the overused side scrolling for towns, battles and other dungeons and such. And the side scrolling was so frustrating I still, to this day, never conquered the game.

But all was forgiven with the first Zelda title on the Super Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past which went back to the top down perspective of the first installment but utilized ever of the sixteen bits the console had to offer with its cartoony. And where in the original game, you had to defeat the game before you got a whole new world to play; A Link to the Past actually had two different playable worlds (the Light and Dark Worlds) that you had to navigate to beat the game.

As video games moved to the thirty-two bit version, I moved over to Sony’s Playstation console ending my run of the Nintendo exclusive Zelda franchise. But even in all its sixteen bit glory, A Link to the Past remains one of the best video games ever made and this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

In his lifetime, Jimi Hendrix released only three studio albums before his overdose death a month short of his twenty-eighth birthday. Sure we all have The Ultimate Experience in our CD collection, and a greatest hits compilation is usually good enough for a career that short, but all three releases from The Jimi Hendrix Experience are worth getting individually, and you might as well start at the beginning with Are You Experienced? this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

Yes The Ultimate Experience has the stand out tracks like Purple Haze (one of the great track 1’s of all time), Manic Depression (with frantic drumming from Mitch Mitchell), Hey Joe (one of the great break up songs ever), The Wind Cries Mary (maybe the best song Hendrix ever wrote), Fire (a great jukebox anthem), the bluesy Red House, and of course, Garth Alger’s favorite song, Foxey Lady.

But The Ultimate Experience was so loaded that even the title track from Are You Experience? didn’t even make the cut. The song was Hendrix at his psychedelic best and his experience doesn’t necessarily involve being stone which he suggests in the song. The even trippier, somewhat instrumental Third Stone from the Stone also gets left off most compilations. And May This Be Love is like a more melodic Wind Cries Mary.

Forty years after his death, some of Jimi Hendrix’s unreleased works are officially seeing the light of the day with the recent release of Valley of Neptune with many more to come over the next couple years. I am a little hesitant when it comes to posthumous releases of unfinished work, but at least we have three albums full of songs the way we know Hendrix intended them to be.

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!

As much as I hate the laziness in Hollywood, I resigned that they won’t stop cranking out remakes because they have run out of original ideas long ago (though I still which I had a Hot Tube Time Machine so I could un-see The A-Team trailer). I even occasionally try to help them out with some casting ideas for remakes. Like isn’t it time for a Victory for a new generation? Instead of Allied soccer players betting their freedom against their German, a group of female soldiers get ambushed by the Taliban and have to show that woman are just as capable as them to secure their release. Get Mia Hamm to replace Pele, Queen Latifah to sub info Sylvester Stallone and Angelina Jolie take over for Michael Caine.

Maybe because of the sport depicted, Victory has gotten lost in the discussion of great sports movies of all time. But how can you not love a movie where the allied forces beat those darn dirty Nazis at a sport they love. Sure having a midget like Stallone as a goalie is one of the biggest stretches in sports movie history (it’s like having Carlton Banks starring in the Patrick Ewing story), but the eighties cheese of it more than makes up for it.

Though one of the scenes still makes me squeamish just think about it, where they break the current goalie’s arm just so they could have Sly play in the big game, probably not a scene anyone who is still in single digits in age should watch like I was when I first saw the movie in my youth. But the movie is still worth of being inducted into the Scooter Hall of Fame. Now can we have Victory in Afghanistan ready for the next World Cup in four years?

Could You Tell Me the Things You Remember About Me

For their debut album, the Counting Crows created the greatest album any moody teenager could ask for so when the first video off their sophomore outing debuted on MTV, it became appointment television (unlike premieres today that randomly appear on the internets like yesterday when the creepy new Christina Aguilera popped up with little warning) which was also the first time many got a chance to hear something new from the band. For the moody teenagers who wore grooves into August and Everything After, Angel of the Silences was a jolt of musical napalm, much faster and angrier than anything we heard from the band before.

And there plenty of new styles Adam Duritz and the boys tried out for Recovering the Satellites like the country tinged Daylight Fading and the new wave synthesizer on Catapult and continue to amp it up for songs like Children in Bloom and Have You Seen Me Lately. And tacked on near the end is the quirky duo of Monkey and Mercury.

The growth of the band is why it is the second time they have been inducted into the Scooter Hall of Fame. But is still plenty of music for the moody teenager in all of us like Goodnight Elizabeth or Miller’s Angels, foremost A Long December which may be the last song that Duritz wrote about having sex with a castmember of Friends that the general public was able to relate to (or that anyone has written judging from the latest John Mayer album). I still get chills whenever I hear the lyric, “All at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.”

Get in My Belly

With apologies to The Jerk, there has been no bigger fool on the big screen in my life time than Austin Powers. Raised on the free love of the 60’s, Powers selfishly cryogenically froze himself when his nemesis Dr. Evil did the same, so they could continue their feud at a later time. That ended up being a cultural opposite of the happy sixties, the drab 90’s and International Man of Mystery was the ultimate fish out of water movie played to hilarious effect.

As great of the first movie was, the second, The Spy that Shagged Me remains its best. Thanks to Heather Graham, in one of only two roles she wasn’t completely horrible in (the other being Boogie Night which can say something about her personally), as the female version of Austin that he teams up with when Dr. Evil time jumps back to the 60’s. And then Mike Myers manages to create an even creepier character than Dr. Evil, Fat Bastard, a real life version of Jabba the Hut. And of course, there was nothing more entertaining than Mini-Me.

Sure Goldmember was a colossal disappointment and many of the most memorable lines from the franchise have been beaten to death more than any other quotes in the past decade other than “I think I threw up a little in my mouth” (though I still like to throw out “She’s a man, baby” every once in a while) but Austin Power still deserves a spot in the Scooter Hall of Fame. There are rumors of Mike Myers working on a fourth and here is hoping it is better than recent trilogy killers like the recent Indiana Jones movie. Or at the very least have a line or two we can beat into the ground for the next five years.

Fly Like an Eagle

There are some anniversaries that make you cringe and that happened a couple weeks ago when I saw someone mention it was twenty years ago that Super Mario Bros 3 was released twenty years ago. Most of my formative years were dedicated to playing that game and to hear that the game was released two decades ago just made me feel real old. But the greatness of the game makes it this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

After an unnecessarily silly sequel, the Super Mario Bros. series got back on the right track with the third of the original NES trilogy. Similar to the first game, SMB3 tweaked the game just enough and in the right places like adding more power ups giving Mario the ability to fly for the first time like the Raccoon Suit (granted the Frog suit was a little too silly). As well as adding a world map that gave you more choices in your route to completing the game, not just a straight threw version of previous games.

The world map also gave an element to a new two person version where you could “challenge” your opponent to who goes next if they go over the spot you were occupying by playing the original Atari game Mario Bros. And back in college we would play the old school Mario Bros. most that almost every other game that led to more fights than alcohol.

Recasting We Are the World

When Michael Jackson passed away, like most people I went back and listened to the music of his on my iPod which included We Are the World. That got me to thinking it that there was still plenty of poverty in Africa and it may be time to remake the song for a newer generation (especially considering Do They Know it's Christmas? is already on it'd third version). While doing research, I realized the twenty-fifth anniversary was this year so I sat on the suggestions I made at the time so I could release it to coincide with the anniversary. Then new came out last week that the co-writers of the song Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones (along with Jackson) were planning on doing so after the Grammy’s next week to benefit Haitian relief (so I guess they will be renaming the group USA for Haiti). So here are my suggestions next to those that did the original part. And as a point of reference, here is the original song:




Lionel Richie – Ne-Yo

Stevie Wonder – Maxwell

Paul Simon – John Mayer

Kenny Rogers – Taylor Swift

James Ingram – John Legend

Tina Turner - Beyoncé

Billy Joel – Norah Jones

Michael Jackson – Michael Jackson

Diana Ross – Christina Aguilera

Dionne Warwick – Alicia Keys

Willie Nelson – Keith Urban

Al Jarreau – Justin Timberlake

Bruce Springsteen – dude from Green Day

Kenny Loggins – dude from Fall Out Boy

Steve Perry – dude from Maroon 5

Daryl Hall – Robin Thicke

Michael Jackson – Michael Jackson

Huey Lewis – dude from The Fray

Cyndi Lauper – Lady Gaga

Kim Carnes – Kelly Clarkson

Bob Dylan – Dave Matthews

Ray Charles – Jamie Foxx

Stevie Wonder – Stevie Wonder

Bruce Springsteen – Bruce Springsteen

Dan Akroyd – Adam Sandler

Jackson Family Chorus – Jonas Brothers and other Disney stars Chorus


Naturally the hardest singer to recast was Michael Jackson himself and came I up with three alternatives; Bono, who technically is not American; Prince, who was actually supposed to duet with Jackson in the original but didn’t show up the first time; or have a chorus do all his part. But maybe it would be best to just pipe in his original vocals. And even though I recast their earlier parts, I still have to bring back Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder to recreate their duet which was the highlight the orginal. Not bringing them back would have been like not asking Bono to sing "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you" for the new Do They Know it's Christmas? versions.

The Tribe Has Spoken

No television show changed the landscape of network TV last decade than Survivor. Before premiering on CBS, reality programming was relegated to cable and PBS, after, ever channel scrambled to jump on the bandwagon with every network grabbing their own flagship reality program, The Biggest Loser on NBC, ABC nabbed The Bachelor, and dudes still continue to sign bad karaoke on Fox. And VH1 might as well chance its name to RealityTV1. (And let us not forget all the colossal failures like Kid Nation, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, Date My Dad and Farmer Takes a Wife.) But none can match the entertainment level of Survivor.

The concept is simple, drop a bunch of strangers in the middle of nowhere and have them vote out each other one by one. And that unfamiliarity of the contestants is the key because the two previous times they brought back familiar faces, All Stars and Fans vs. Favorites (as well as the upcoming Heroes vs. Villains) remain the weakest seasons to date. These contestants are stuck in exotic locations with the sole instructions to Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. And the one person that does that is named the Sole Survivor.

Even as the contestants change every season, there are two constants, host Jeff Probst and a beautiful local. Probst add brevity that other reality hosts fail to obtain (and to my knowledge is still the only host to go on to date one of his contestants). As for the locations, except for the lone hiccup of the dry and drab African National Reserve, the show keeps finding lush and exotic places to set up camp and thanks to the elements have as much effect on the games as the people playing it with torrential downpours and fluctuating temperatures (but not too much fluctuating as there still need enough sun for gratuitous bikini shots).

But it is the casting that has kept Survivor appointment television for an entire decade giving us such characters like the naked gay Richard Hatch, the curmudgeon Rudy Boesch, the country bumpkin Big Tom Buchanan, the overgrown hippy Rupert Boneham, the squirrelly Yau-Man Chan, the bow-tied Bob Crowley, the grave digging James Clement, and the recent biggest Survivor villain ever, Russell Hantz. And let us not forget all the token hot chick the show has given us like Danielle DiLorenzo (who recently lost the award for smallest bikini ever to Samoa winner Natalie White), Amanda Kimmel, Parvati Shallow, Jenna Moracsa, and Elizabeth Filarski who people best know today as The View blow-hard Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

After nineteen seasons, Survivor is a worthy induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame and even landed at number 10 of The 100 Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s. And be on the lookout for the latest season coming February 11 and look out for more post commemorating the twentieth season of the landmark show.

Tell Your Friend Veronica it’s Time to Celebrate Chanukah

I am not Jewish but I have an uncle who is so I know the inferiority complex one may have celebrating Chanukah over Christmas. That all changed in 1996 when even the good Christian children around the world wanted to celebrate the eight crazy nights thanks to Adam Sandler who proceeded to run down a who’s who of Jew (and one famous non-Jew: O.J. Simpson) on The Chanukah Song part 1. And apparently there were so many Jews in showbiz he recorded two more versions on 1999’s Stan and Judy’s Kid and the soundtrack for his animated holiday movie Eight Crazy Nights to round out the trilogy. And fellow Jew Neil Diamond (who for some reason never got a shout out from Sandler in any of his three versions) even recently did his own version of the song which is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

Do You Believe What I Sing Now?

After suffering through three years of grunge, fun started to creep back into rock in 1994. Beck made everyone who didn’t select Spanish as their foreign language requirement regret it, the Beastie Boys picked up their guitars (and ill fitting wigs) to Sabotage us. Then there was Weezer who were one of the few rock bands that didn’t mind choosing glasses over contacts. Hey, it even gave then a good idea for a song considering the glasses made them reminiscent of the last famous male rocker who wore them, Buddy Holly.

Sure the band sang about Dungeons and Dragons and twelve sided dice, but don’t lump them in with other nerd rock of the nineties like Barenaked Ladies. What set them apart was their love for hard rock (Rivers Cuomo even calls Kiss his favorite band during In the Garage). Sure there are quirky songs (Buddy Holly), bizarre songs (Undone – The Sweater Song), and the depressing sort (Say it Ain’t So) but in every song the band makes sure there is at least one shredworthy solo with crushing guitars throughout most of the songs.

All the while each and every song is power pop heaven with required sing-a-long lyrics no matter if they are upbeat (No One Else) or not (The World Has Turned and Left Me Here). “I made love to your memory one thousand times in my head,” a lyric from the latter, made the former teenager hit repeat multiple times. But it is those singles that will stand the test time.

Even at the height of alt-rock, you are not to find much bigger hits more odd then Undone –The Sweater Song with its two word per line verses with background voice splitting them up and its spastic ending. Not that it matter because when it came to the chorus, it all became who could shout it the loudest. Buddy Holly instantly because one of the greatest video of all time thanks to its Happy Days infusion. And for whenever your parents kept you up fighting, all you had to do was to slip on your headphones and let Say it Ain’t So (which was inexplicably was flipped recently by Asher Roth for his ode to college) and down them out. Which is why the original Weezer album is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

One, Two, Freddy’s Coming for You

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to avoid coming up with new ideas, A Nightmare on Elm Street is the latest slasher film to get “re-imagined” after Rob Zombie’s Halloween (which is already onto the sequel) and the horrible reboot of Friday the 13th earlier this year. Of course it is almost an insult to Freddy Kruger to call his movie a slasher flick because he was much more cerebral than the slow and stalking killers of his ilk which made him the scariest of the genre. Of course this begs the question how soon until the second scariest, Pinhead gets his own millennium makeover?

Unlike the unwatchable reincarnation of Friday the 13th (except of course for that one “stupendous” scene), the new A Nightmare on Elm Street may live up to its legacy. C’mon, it stars Tami Taylor and Beaver Casablancas. Although I have never heard of the girl who updates the chick from Just the Ten of Us. Where they may lose me is that they did not bring back Robert Englund as Freddy instead opting for Rorschach from Watchmen. Are you telling me even a sixty-plus Englund still couldn’t still pull Freddy? This is almost as egregious as not bring back Mr. T for The A-Team movie. Englund may not have been included in the new movie, but his version of Freddy Kruger is being inducted into the Scooter Hall of Fame. And here’s hoping if the long rumored Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash ever comes to fruition Englund gets the nod.

But what do I know; check out the Englund-less trailer below for yourself:

Movie Trailers: A Nightmare on Elm Street


The real question though with the new Elm Street coming April 30, 2010 is which rapper is going to update DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s A Nightmare On My Street for the film?

A Nightmare on My Street

Anyone for Croquet, Wouldn’t that Be Nice

Next week is Labor Day which means one last hurray for summer; one last cookout before you start getting the patio ready for winter. And the last time the McGavin clan gets to pull out the croquet set for one more round. But before we break out the mallets for the last time in 2009, it is time to enshrine the sport in the Scooter Hall of Fame.

But the bi-annual McGavin family croquet match isn’t you stuffy great aunt’s croquet, like every competition at McGavin gathering (euchre, poker, horseshoes are other favorite),the game is very cutthroat with a lot of trash talking and we are not above cheating just to beat the six year olds playing. And it seems like new rules get added every year to suit different player’s cause.

And don’t even try winning if you are a newcomer to the clan. In fact plenty of boyfriends have been one and done after a round of croquet with the uncles in the family. One in particular actually made it all the way through the course to be the apparent winner only to be told we play poison ball in where anyone that finishes the course becomes poison and then can only be eliminated if they hit a wicket then the last ball standing wins. So flustered, dude hits a wicket and is never heard from again.

But nothing is more entertaining than when someone drunkenly tries to send somebody’s ball only to whack their own foot with their mallet. Good times.