Bob Johnson

rjohns20@uic.edu — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 19:57:40 GMT

Today is the eight of January, and a lot of famous people were born on this day:
Jose Ferrer (1912)
Charles Osgood (1933)
Elvis Presley (1935)
Shirley Bassey (1937)
Bob Eubanks (1938)
Graham Chapman (1941)
Stephen Hawking (1942)
Junichiro Koizumi (1942)
David Bowie (1947)
Wolfgang Puck (1949)
R. Kelly [hah] (1969)

Some died as well:
Marco Polo (1324)
Galileo Galilei (1642)
Paul Verlaine (1896)
Francois Miterrand (1996)
Dave Thomas [Wendy's] (2002)

My birthday isn't so impressive:
Charles Ives (1874)
Bela Lugosi (1882)
Jelly Roll Morton (1890)
Mickey Mantle (1931)
Tom Petty [ugh] (1953)
Snoop Dogg (1971)

It managed to knock off a few notables though:
Anne Sullivan (1936)
Herbert Hoover (1964)
Paul Dirac (1984)
Burt Lancaster (1994)
Not to mention the infamous Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash (1977).

Sorry...just trying to keep my mind off of things.

If it's emotional, it still won't be cool.

rjohns20@uic.edu — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 05:42:42 GMT

I bet that the next big wave of music will be pure crap. Well, I know that, but I think I know what it will be. It's going to be limpdicked little latent homos in cardigan sweaters who aren't hardcore enough to sing punk properly, but go for it anyway. They probably won't know how to play instruments or sing either. I just hope that they don't steal the nervous Jew look. That's where I want to be in five years.

Everything you need to know about music and poopy.

rjohns20@uic.edu — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 05:39:01 GMT

Enduring popular musical acts I simply don't like:

Jimmy Buffett
he Grateful Dead
The Beatles.

Well, I don't know how enduring Jimmy Buffett really is--I know very little of his work. I may not like it, but it's more the image that just plain sucks. Flunkies aren't supposed to be millionaires. That's why we got rid of royalty.

The other two--well, some of the more pretentious (not as pretentious as I) people with "decent" music tastes have thought that I have no right to hate these unless a) I am a teenybopper and must be shot, b) I listen to only opera or Perry Como or anything before the dawn of rock, and therefore I'm worse than your grandfather, and despite my young age should be placed in a nursing home, reason being advanced senility, c) I must be doing something crazy and "whatever [I'm] smoking, [Mr. Pretentious Asshole] want[s] some."

Did I mention that these people, when sober, actually think that they're damnedly funny? Grateful Dead fans--you can pick them out easily. They're those people who, upon being told of something that can get them high, they jump all over it. If you see someone snorting Easy Cheese, he's a Dead fan with mean friends. To like that shit music, you'd have to be deluded or high (or both).

I have to say that I like Elvis. I especially like that song, "In the Ghetto." I have this feeling that the emotion in his songs is placed there by some external agent. I don't know if it's spiritual or scientific. I'll have to look into it.