Top 10 Lists (by the Friends of BMOWP)

March 24, 2006


The Corey Vilhauer Top-100: a list that defines the idea of a “great song,” in my opinion at least. Beginning Monday, and progressing through until the end of the week, I’ll be posting my top 100 countdown.

My top 100 is centered in indie rock — widely varied and obscure to most of those that haven’t listened to college radio in the past ten years. It is one person’s tastes in music (mine) and it’s bound to be skimmed by a majority of my readers. One hundred songs is a lot of entries. I’d skim it myself, if it wasn’t my list.

Because of this I asked others to list their top ten; their 10 favorite songs. I also wanted to bring together my friends and family – the real life ones and the members of my adopted blogosphere family – and I’ve assembled a rather interesting group of people.

One striking thing is how different everyone’s tastes are. It was rare to see an artist repeated, let alone a specific song. Some people’s picks were stationed primarily in one genre, while others bounced throughout the spectrum of music. A few people slipped in some really obscure stuff, while others stuck to the well-known, time-tested classics. In short, every list was original.

There’s also an amazing lack of songs that would be considered “important” in the history of popular music. As Scott Hudson said when compiling his top ten, “There is a huge difference from the ten greatest songs (or singles) of all time and my personal favorites.” It’s true. Sure, we all know that “Hey Jude” could be considered the most important – the “best” – Beatles song written, but it’s not my favorite. Give me “In My Life.” Scott would take “Help!” My mother chose “Helter Skelter.”

Like Rob Gordon in High Fidelity, I believe a person can be defined by the music, movies, and books that they indulge in. It’s not an exact science, but you can really tell a lot by glancing at someone’s music collection or book shelves. Additionally, there’s a certain excitement in knowing someone likes the same stuff as you.

I’ve recently realized how close, at times, my friend Sara (the 2nd grade teacher who often camps out at Bonnaroo) and I overlap in musical tastes. The same goes for Hudson, though his indie-rockerness is a few years removed from mine. And the fact that Kerrie and I often overlap goes without saying – we’ve influenced each other’s tastes quite a bit over the past eight and a half years.

So without further adieu (as they say in “the biz”) I present to you The Friends of BMOWP’s Top Ten Lists.

Oh. You’ll have to go to the next page to see them – I didn’t want to take over the page with these lists.

Enjoy.

————–

UPDATE:

Yes. Sometimes my friends get me things after the deadline. That’s okay — I do the same thing; often, actually. You’ll have to go to the second page, and you’ll have to scroll to the bottom, but they’re there. Eric brought two lists, as did his roommate Tim. An old friend, Jason, rounds out the rest.

So enjoy — regardless of the lateness.

Tags: Blogging, Friends, Music, The Top... |

14 Comments

Vilhauer. Corey Vilhauer.

March 23, 2006


Thanks to MySpace, I’ve become quite familiar with the wide spectrum of “quizzes,” most of which spell out exactly how well you kiss, how “freaky” you may be, and additionally, how hot you are in the sack.

Of course, every once in a while a quiz pops out at me, and it took this one (sent to everyone by my good friend Jimmy P.) to realize my full potential.

Which Action Hero would I be? Why, Bond himself.

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You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6’s best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license’s to kill. He doesn’t care about rules or regulations and somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner.

James Bond, Agent 007 71%
Captain Jack Sparrow 63%
Maximus 63%
Neo, the "One" 58%
Indiana Jones 54%
Lara Croft 46%
The Amazing Spider-Man 46%
William Wallace 42%
Batman, the Dark Knight 33%
The Terminator 33%
El Zorro 29%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

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That’s too bad — I always pictured myself as Indiana Jones — the history loving archaeologist that just happens to hate — hate! — the Nazis.

And snakes.

Oh well — James Bond is witty, intelligent, and incredibly attractive. Not only do I get to save the world, but I also get all the hotties now. Go MySpace!

Tags: Random |

4 Comments

$500,000: un-cut

March 22, 2006


Awesome news for us public broadcasting junkies: Terry Woster reports that the $500,000 cut in SDPB’s budget has been given back.

Legislature decides to restore $500,000 to South Dakota Public Broadcasting

The South Dakota Legislature voted Tuesday to restore $500,000 in general funds taken three weeks from public broadcasting in a budget-cutting move.

The Senate voted 29-4 to approve a new bill that returned general funds to South Dakota Public Broadcasting. The bill also restored $21,600 taken from a program to enhance salaries of state banking examiners.

The House followed with a 63-3 vote on the new bill, perhaps the most significant development on the Legislature’s final day for the year. Lawmakers adjourned about 5:10 p.m.

…

Before the House voted to restore the general-fund money, Klaudt said the Government Operations and Audit Committee he chairs will do an in-depth look at public broadcasting this summer, going through the agencys’s budget, audits and spending.

“We need to know what we’re spending that money on,” Klaudt said.

Andersen said she welcomed the opportunity to discuss her agency with legislators.

She said the concern over the $500,000 in the past three weeks perhaps “opened some people’s eyes to the programs we provide,” and “The investigation is a huge opportunity to show what we do.”

How does the budget cut pass, yet weeks later get reversed by such a huge margin? I’ll never understand politics.

Check out the entire article here: “Legislature decides to restore $500,000 to South Dakota Public Broadcasting.” (Argus Leader)

Tags: Politics |

1 Comment

Relief

March 21, 2006


I’m feeling incredibly prolific, writing-wise, these past few days.

I know exactly what it is, too. It’s my new job. More specifically, the rush that came with being offered a position that I truly believe in my heart to be a perfect match. And even more, the relief that comes after weeks of waiting.

For weeks I would check my messages three times daily while at work, each time hoping for that elusive call that would offer me a job – and, ultimately, a way out of my current situation, a situation that has frustrated me for the last couple months. I got into the habit of checking my home e-mail account from work every couple of hours. It was the first thing I would do upon returning home; regardless of how long I’d been gone.

Waiting is a hard thing to do, especially when you’ve got a myriad of personal feelings wrapped up in it. I was hopeful – hopeful of getting an opportunity to put my writing skills to use. I was eager – eager to start, eager to impress, eager to switch careers and head down a road I’ve sought out for years.

Most of all I was becoming frustrated. I knew that this job was within my reach. I could extend my arm a bit and take full hold of it, but unfortunately there was a thin film impeding my grip. Meanwhile, my arm was being stabbed, continuously and slightly, by my current position, a situation that I was just as excited to get out of. Getting hired as a copywriter wasn’t an escape route. But an opportunity to leave my current job certainly added to the hopefulness, and it was a very positive side effect to breaking into the writing business.

And a breakthrough it was. By small increments I picked away at that film that held me back from my desired position until, finally, it broke. Finally, there was nothing that could hold me back.

With that, everything washed away. I had spent the last three weeks in a sullen state about what I had chosen as an intermediate career. I was demoralized by crumbling communication, by the possibility of a complete restructuring and by an incredible feeling of waste. Some people become depressed because they’re not successful at what they do. I am successful, but I don’t like what I’m doing.

Sometimes I think that being successful in something you dislike can be a completely somber experience – the worst kind of disappointment. I have skills that I want to put to use, but until recently I was never given the tools to accentuate them. I was bogged down by a completely functional, yet hardly satisfying, career. Being nearly free of it has really opened up the emotions. I don’t think I’ve been this happy with what I do to make money since being hired at Best Buy at the age of 16.

As I said before, this is a sort of renaissance for me, a personal enlightenment. I’m going to be working with what I want to work with – not children, not supervisory duties, but with words. Precious words. The light that concludes this tunnel has been brightened considerably. I’m proud of what I’ve become. I feel as though I wouldn’t mind having my career be a subtle piece of my personality – Corey Vilhauer, writer.

Relief comes in many forms. But regardless of how it shows up, it’s always welcome.

Tags: Career, Writing |

1 Comment

More complete thoughts on professional wrestling

March 20, 2006


Okay. Let’s get some things straight.

I am not on the anti-wrestling bandwagon. I still have a warm spot in my heart for certain aspects of the sports-entertainment world – I still use a vast section of the vocabulary, and I’m still enamored with a tightly wrestled technical battle along the lines of Benoit vs. Angle.

I don’t hate wrestling. But I will say that professional wrestling, a hobby that I put a considerable amount of time into, has done me wrong. Really done me wrong. I was always a fan of lucha libre, of puroresu, of the Super J Cup Tournament and of Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho. I turned my nose up at the more lowbrow humor, the punchy-kicky superstar matches, and the intelligence insulting.

I hated the sexism and xenophobia that is still prevalent in professional wrestling. I hated the poo-poo humor that permeated any “humorous” skit or angle. I truly was insulted when an 80-year old woman gave birth to a hand, when female wrestlers were relegated to mud wrestling, and when a seven-foot “monster” performed an act of necrophilia.

Wrestling requires some reality suspension. Obviously. I just can’t do it anymore because, well, there has to be a little continuity involved. For some reason the entire genre turned me off. I’m not saying this to sound conceited, to sound as if one kind of reality suspension – clay figures going to the moon and eating cheese in a spacecraft flown by a dog, for example – is better than another (the fact that grown men wait until they’re in an arena full of people to settle their differences by flopping around on the mat comes to mind).

The thing is, I used to be able to suspend reality for a few hours while watching wrestling. But that is when the storylines where still fresh. When the art of wrestling was still followed. Three things ultimately ruined professional wrestling for me.

1. The downfall of the independent circuit. I used to love watching ECW. I also loved watching the mid-card level personalities in the WCW and WWF. I loved watching them because they were different – they were doing things that you couldn’t see in Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker. They were wrestling. And to me, it was fresh.

Eventually, I realized that what they were doing wasn’t interesting – it was the fact that I hadn’t seen it before that made it stand out. Once it became commonplace, I tired of it. I gave it up. That’s about the time that the great wrestlers started getting relegated to punchy-kicky type matches and started being involved with storylines that were designed to give them personalities – personalities that they didn’t have.

2. I got too involved backstage. I, like Kerrie mentioned, used to make changes (with a red pen) in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Professional Wrestling. It was horribly inaccurate. It was outdated within a week of its publishing date, and it was incorrect throughout anyway. I knew what was going to happen before it happened, thanks to the Internet. I over analyzed Pay-Per-View events. I had actual interest in whether or not a wrestler’s comments were “shoot” (real life comments) as opposed to scripted.

There were no surprises left for me. And even when surprises tried to manifest themselves, I was always disappointed. I thought way too much about programs that were designed to make you think as little as possible. It’s like analyzing the backstage antics of ER, and then trying to figure out if a patient’s comments were in some way directed at George Clooney’s departure nearly ten years ago.

3. I realized that a figure-four leg lock doesn’t really hurt (unless it’s applied incorrectly). Thank you, Owen, for reminding me of this.

A lot of the glamour of wrestling disappeared when I started watching American wrestling exclusively. Gone from my repertoire were the stiff forearms of Mitsuharu Misawa. Forgotten were the neck drops of ECW’s Taz. Lost were the suicide moonsaults of Toryumon’s Dragon Kid. Instead, I watched move after move that did nothing to convince me that they were even painful.

Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle were still putting on wrestling clinics – using moves that borrowed heavily from the laws of physics, leverage, and balance. The rest of the league was flopping around and using half-assed fists to swing past their opponent’s head. Wrestling is more ballet than boxing, and I always knew that. But I don’t like ballet. And really, I don’t like boxing. So why was I watching it so much?

I say all of this because I don’t want it to seem like I’m on some high and mighty pedestal, throwing stones at the people – of which many of my close friends are included – that still watch wrestling. I have no problem with professional wrestling. I’ll always feel a little warmth in my heart for a soundly contested suplex-fest. It’s just that I personally can’t take it seriously anymore.

No, that’s the wrong way to put it. A person who takes professional wrestling seriously is in more trouble than they ay think. What I mean is that I can’t bring myself to watch it. Things have gone so far off course that I don’t think I’d ever be able to come back. The main event companies are boring retreads of what I used to watch, which ultimately was a boring retread of what ECW did in the mid 90’s. The indie leagues are trying to hard to be successful, a feat that can really only be completed by creating a league that is nearly identical to the WWE.

I’ve lost the heart for wrestling. I’m not sad about it at all. I’ve filled that empty space with things that I find more personally fulfilling. But far be it for me to completely write it off. Currently, the product is only a fraction as interesting as it used to be, and at some point in the past few years I must have grown apart from whatever it was that led me to enjoy it in the first place. I still think wrestling is lame now. I’m wrestling free, but I’m not forgetting my roots. I can still hold my own with the rest of you wrestling fans – almost as if it’s ingrained in my DNA. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or even admit it.

I hope that explains my position a little better.

And yes, I promise — no more ‘rasslin.

For now.

Tags: Wrestling |

13 Comments

Nacho Libre

March 19, 2006


Yeah, I used to watch professional wrestling. And not just during my youth – I watched it very closely up until about two years ago. I’m not proud of it. In fact, I’m a little ashamed. It took a wrestling sabbatical to realize that yes, wrestling is pretty lame. Sorry, friends – it is.

These thoughts of shame were compounded when I was flipping channels the other day. Without cable, I was wrestling free. I never even ran across it anymore. But now that the WWE has started showing Saturday Night Main Events again I’m finding professional wrestling being beamed into my house through the antenna instead of the cable cord. We’ve got wrestling on free television.

I stopped on the show last night to see Shane McMahon, the son of WWE leader Vince McMahon, grappling with Shawn Michaels, a former multiple-time WWE Champion. And even though I had seen Shane wrestle before numerous times, it took the clarity that came from stepping back from the product to understand that a match like this, to put it in a family-friendly way, is utter bull-poop.

Seriously? This scrawny wimp is actually supposed to be getting a decent fight from a former champion? Reality is suspended in wrestling, I realize, but stuff like this insults whatever intelligence the average viewing public still has. But this is just how it is now. Professional wrestling outfits have gotten lazy with their product, their storylines, and their overall effectiveness to sell merchandise (which, ultimately, is the only reason they’re still around).

With all of this said, I can’t help but love the idea of a tongue-in-cheek movie about wrestling. No, nothing like the horrible Ready to Rumble. Something with a little star power. Something with, say, Jack Black.

Enter Nacho Libre, starring Jack Black. A priest who moonlights as a Lucha Libre star.

Awesome.

Thanks to Dave at I stared straight into the sun for the link. Also, a big “hooray!” that he’s putting out posts more consistently. We missed you, DWiddy!

Tags: Wrestling |

1 Comment

Spring fever

March 18, 2006


In all my life – through the 27 winters that have passed by before my bundled eyes – I have never experienced a spring fever like the one I’m being attacked by this year. It’s an unfounded, completely encompassing fever. Unfounded? Our winter has been remarkably mild. We’ve experienced more days of 55-degree weather than we have seen days with snow on the ground. Completely encompassing? It’s all I can do to keep myself from going ballistic; from running outside with a hair dryer and melting the frozen ground just enough to warrant getting the patio furniture out.

I don’t usually get spring fever. In fact, I’ve got no reason to have it. As I said, we’ve been blessed with an unseasonably warm winter. Our snow has been so sparse that I’ve only broken out the snow blower three times since getting it fixed, and two of those times the snow was so wet that the blower just clogged up and was rendered useless.

But when you look at the grand picture it’s not so unusual. You can see that I’ve got my reasons.

I know that this year will be the first that Kerrie and I go camping on Memorial Day – an ultra busy campground day and the official first day of camping season. We’ve already got our spots reserved (our favorite: a cozy little tent spot set away from the RV’ers at Lake Herman) and I’m gearing up for it. Even though it’s over two months away.

Additionally, I won’t have to worry about working holidays anymore. This means that I can make plans to enjoy the beautiful weather on Memorial Day. And the Fourth of July. And Labor Day. As far as I know, most nights will be open. Weekends will, for the most part, be completely free. I’ve got nothing but time to enjoy the outdoors. My yard will be yearning for the days of less attention, especially after I’ve trimmed the grass under the fence with my little grass scissors.

I’m going through my own personal renaissance right now. I’ve gone from a time of industrial drudgery, dutifully putting in my time as management, to a time of grand creativity. It’s as if the gentle springtime sound of young’ns at play have invaded my soul, leaving me feeling happy and refreshed and not the least bit stressed or anxious at all.

How’s that for over the top?

The truth is, I’ve been waiting for spring since last fall. I’ve become an outdoorsy guy, now. I’d go camping every weekend if it wouldn’t mean neglecting our yard. I’d play in the yard every night, except I fear the land would revolt and send me flying onto the driveway. I eagerly anticipate our first trip to the greenhouse – the one that ends up costing way more than I’d ever imagined – to plan our front gardens. And our vegetable garden. I’m ready to dig up the old and start working on the new.

Okay, snow, you’d better listen to me. Start melting. Go away. Sure, I may hate it when people complain about the weather, especially when it’s been so mild, but to hell with winter. Let’s bring on the warm weather. I’m ready to break out of this shell I’ve been cooping myself in for the past six months.

Bring it on, Mother Nature. I dare you.

Tags: Outdoors |

3 Comments

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