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A new angle on this whole Scott Pilgrim movie… thing.

The music that gets laid down in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is dropped down on a foundation of good times and simplicity. The man behind the music isn’t Michael Cera - probably a good thing - but longtime music man Beck which lends a hearty handful of cred to its rock without a cause.

Have a taste.

And then try dessert.

Like I said, this ain’t exactly a 7 minute epic in which some madman loses his whammy bar @ 3:28. This is your basic essentials with some feeling behind it that you might find from a garage band that’s willing to break out the L word. It’s a bit of a devil to explain because on infinite repeat, Garbage Truck would make you want to put your head in a trash compactor. But you bust it out every now and again and it’ll rock you slowly like the loving you never knew.

So, yeah. Beck makes good things happen on this soundtrack and so, too, does Metric - albeit on one song. But it’s a pretty solid song. A little more gutsy than Metric does and the singer in the movie adds the one thing Metric doesn’t have that would pop and lock them in the heavy mainstream: sex appeal.

That’s the main high points of the soundtrack plus there’s plenty of goodness on the official score as well. Also, it really did take me this long to figure out the difference between official soundtrack and official score.

I learned something today.

The official setlist for Rockband 3 hit the web just yesterday. The link’ll take you there OR I could just lay it all down here for you:

2000s:

• Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”
• At the Drive-In, “One Armed Scissor”
• Avenged Sevenfold, “The Beast & the Harlot”
• Dover, “King George”
• The Bronx, “False Alarm”
• The Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1″
• HIM (His Infernal Majesty), “Killing Loneliness”
• Hypernova, “Viva La Resistance”
• Ida Maria, “Oh My God”*
• Juanes, “Me Enamora”
• Metric, “Combat Baby”*
• Paramore, “Misery Business”*
• Phoenix, “Lasso”*
• Poni Hoax, “Antibodies”
• Pretty Girls Make Graves, “Something Bigger, Something Brighter”
• Queens of the Stone Age, “No One Knows”
• The Ravonettes, “Last Dance”
• Rilo Kiley, “Portions for Foxes”*
• Riverboat Gamblers, “Don’t Bury Me…I’m Still Not Dead”
• Slipknot, “Before I Forget”
• The Sounds, “Living in America”
• Tegan & Sara, “The Con”
• Them Crooked Vultures, “Dead End Friends”
• Tokio Hotel, “Humanoid”*
• The Vines, “Get Free”*
• The White Stripes, “The Hardest Button to Button”*

1990s:

• Faith No More, “Midlife Crisis”*
• Filter, “Hey Man, Nice Shot”
• Jane’s Addiction, “Been Caught Stealing”*
• Maná, “Oye Mi Amor”
• Marilyn Manson, “The Beautiful People”
• The Muffs, “Outer Space”
• Phish, “Llama”
• Primus, “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver”
• Rammstein, “Du Hast”
• Smash Mouth, “Walkin’ On The Sun”*
• Spacehog, “In the Meantime”
• Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”
• Swingin’ Utters, “This Bastard’s Life”

1980s:

• Anthrax, “Caught in a Mosh”
• Big Country, “In a Big Country”
• The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”*
• Def Leppard, “Foolin’”
• Devo, “Whip It”
• Dio, “Rainbow in the Dark”
• Dire Straits, “Walk of Life”
• Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”
• Huey Lewis and the News, “The Power of Love”
• INXS, “Need You Tonight”*
• J. Geils Band, “Centerfold”
• Joan Jett, “I Love Rock N’ Roll”*
• Night Ranger, “Sister Christian”*
• Ozzy Osbourne, “Crazy Train”*
• The Police, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”
• Roxette, “The Look”*
• The Smiths, “Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”
• Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
• Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again”*

1970s:

• The B-52’s, “Rock Lobster”*
• Blondie, “Heart of Glass”
• Bob Marley, “Get Up, Stand Up”
• Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4″
• Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water”
• Doobie Brothers, “China Grove”*
• Elton John, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
• Foreigner, “Cold As Ice”*
• Golden Earring, “Radar Love”
• John Lennon, “Imagine”
• Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird”
• Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody”*
• Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated”
• Steve Miller Band, “Fly Like an Eagle”
• T. Rex, “20th Century Boy”
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “I Need to Know”
• War, “Low Rider”
• Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”
• Yes, “Roundabout”*

1960s:

• Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations (Live)”
• David Bowie, “Space Oddity”
• The Doors, “Break on Through (To the Other Side)”*
• James Brown, “I Got You” (I Feel Good) — Alternate Studio Version*
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Crosstown Traffic”*
• The Who, “I Can See for Miles”

I’m more than a little bit excited for this setlist I can tell you that much. The Beast and The Harlot alone guarantees that I’ll be getting this game. Then there’s all these little quirky songs that a different genre of people have heard of like Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1 which actually grow on you if you’re an indie loser deep down inside. Metric’ll hook my wife in and any chance I get to pretend I’m Slipknot is a win. And that’s just the 2000s list.

Not that the rest of the tracks aren’t good but the clear winner in this whole package, by far, is the 1970s list. Honestly, any list that beings with Rock Lobster is a winner. It could be a list of pocket lint and so long as Rock Lobster was the first thing on it, it’s like Snoop Dogg in a candy-pimp suit. Smoke on the Water, Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, Radar Love, Bohemian Rhapsody and then ice that birthday cake with Werewolves of London, Low Rider and FREEBIRD you’ve got a recipe for success.

As a side note, Rockband 3 will feature a keyboard for you’re almost-rock-star fantasies. It looks almost exactly like the parts you would see for lead guitar except you won’t have to strum anything. And the similarity continues in that knowing anything about piano will probably not help you play the keyboard in Rock Band 3. Seems a lot like a gimmick to sucker more people into buying the game (especially when you see the lead guitar part for Queen’s Somebody to Love from Rock Band 2) but with a setlist like this, I could only care less if I really really tried.

When this comes out I’m playing Low Rider until my eyes bleed.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is one of two man movies coming out on the weekend of August 13th. The other is The Expendables as you may already know.

Scott Pilgrim is a different kind of man movie though. I like combat shotguns as much as the next guy but I also play an excessive amount of video games and listen to bad music that no one but a few people could love. That’s what Scott Pilgrim is about. Sort of. It’s the other half of us mans. I’m not saying that we have to choose one movie or the other, I’m saying that even with some random Julia Roberts flick coming out the same weekend, August 13th is a weekend of all that is man in the theatres. Because honestly, Scott Pilgrim ain’t aiming at a female demographic.

Having said that, I just hope Michael Cera doesn’t balls the whole thing up. Let’s face it, the kid has never acted a day in his life. What he does do is be his usual awkward little nerd kid self on screen the whole time in every movie, Youth in Revolt included. It’s played for awhile now but the trick is getting old. Lucky for him we’re still kinda mired in a phase where the awkward nerd is entertaining.

If you’re talking about Scott Pilgrim the character, he was always an awkward loser but not necessarily in the stoned out way that Cera always is. Quiet, two or three expressions, so sickeningly adorable you want to put him a puppy kennel kind of Michael Cera is not the way Scott Pilgrim comes off in the books. But hey, since when does that matter anyhow? What us other mans should be happy about is that this movie was made at all. Unless you’re already submerged in the gaming and possibly indie possibly music elitist culture, everything Scott Pilgrim never warrants a second glance. It bodes well for the sci-fi/gaming/geek/loser/lovelorn/idiot generation that’s finding its footing.

And as an added easter egg you get to see the guy who’s going to play Captain America beat the snot out of Michael Cera.

In closing, I’m going to see Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World back-to-back with  The Expendables because on the most manly of movie weekends, it only seems right.

Just so we’re clear, I don’t much care for Lady Gaga. She’s every other pop act that’s come along with more of her budget devoted to (bad) wardrobe. And the sex appeal factor applies on a much broader scale. Thus, we come to the controversy.

Lady Gaga has been the subject of protesters this past Saturday in St. Louis, Missouri. They were members of the Westboro Baptist Church and were protesting her Gaga’s ongoing Monster’s Ball tour and her outspoken support of gay rights. I’m a little foggy on what the protesting all entailed but when the reports say “violent messages” it immediately gets classified in the stupid category.

Protesting against the rights of any person is an automatic dick move. Protesting against the rights of an entire group of people is just plain bad. Violently protesting against the rights of an entire group of people is not right. And let’s be realistic here, violently protesting anything is not going to yield results unless it’s a complete overthrow of government.

Even looking at it from the protesters viewpoint it doesn’t make sense. If you’re trying to draw people to your cause you either have to actually be victimized or you have to at least appear victimized. If you don’t at least look like you’re being oppressed, you won’t ever draw sympathizers. You might scare a few folks into your cause but it does pay to note that in that case then you’re the oppressors. Anyways, if they really wanted to fight  gay rights they would have to show that homosexual people, through some magical process, are hurting them or their way of life. But since they can’t, they’ll yell, they’ll scream and they’ll scare as many people as they can. Which, hopefully, is not many.

Oh and they’ll pick an irrelevant stage for their attack. Lady Gaga has no legislative bearing on the rights of anyone in the United States. She might be an influential pop star but she uses her influence to positively affect gay rights. So if protesters wave signs and scream outside of her concert it’s really more like a feature of the show than it is a political statement. There’s far too many people attending a Lady Gaga concert for the Westboro Baptist Church to have any real impact on the populace. But the protesters do have a chance to relieve their outrage a little bit.

They don’t expect to make a difference. They expect to make a scene. What they do accomplish is increasing Lady Gaga’s popularity while striking a blow against the anti-gay rights movement. The pop star took the opportunity to tell her fans to ignore the protesters and pray for them. Gaga will also get more publicity for the controversy the protest generated.

All the protesters get is a few million tweens angry at them.

It isn’t very effective.

It’s a little off of our beaten path at the Rock but I’ve been listening to KoЯn ever since I became full of enough angst to qualify. They have a required amount of angst before you can listen to them you know. Like being tall enough for a carnival ride.

Anyways, KoЯn has a new album due out July 13th called KoЯn III - Remember Who You Are and as of this writing, the whole thing is being streamed over our good friend the internet. I’m halfway through my second full run of the album and if you can say nothing else about KoЯn III, is that the guys managed to bring some of their fire back. As I understand this was all a part of their plan: a return to formula. The good old days of their debut album and Life Is Peachy. None of the songs on KoЯn III are going to charge you up the same way Blind did (still does) but like I said, some of that fire has returned. Maybe Jonathan Davis got cheesed off enough over making failsongs that the band started punching each other in the face one afternoon until something good happened.  Or maybe they finally got their business back together.

I don’t think KoЯn III will win them a new wave of new fans the same way it would have when nu metal was still taking shape. Between the band trying to get back to their beginnings and getting back with producer Ross Robinson you can tell the band’s making an effort. At very least they’re recognizing that the name KoЯn hasn’t been on top of anything since Issues back in ‘99.

KoЯn III is a decent album. It’s not the best ever. It IS a good launching point for some new KoЯn. It might even be the stepping stone the band uses to make another song that’ll take the world by storm.

So long as they don’t screw it up.

The internet found me scaaaary news about the internet today. According to a report done by Norton Online Family, “six in ten kids have negative experiences on the web - from exposure to nudity and violence to having a stranger try to meet them in real life.”

As I understand it, Norton Online Family is now known as OnlineFamily.Norton and is like a firewall for your family computer to keep your family in as opposed to keeping the bad people out. If this is the case then we should all be aware that this is a biased study. Because if you could tell people that there were scary things out there that your product could prevent, wouldn’t you do so?

Anyways, above and beyond this terrifying 6/10 number, the study also says that 45 percent of parents don’t realize that these scary things are happening. Which is probably somewhat true. The history of the world will show that if there’s one thing that parents don’t know, it’s exactly what their kids get up to when unsupervised. The record will also show that kids actually do absorb things that parents lecture them on. Usually. Such is true of this study as well: it says that 90 percent of kids say they follow family rules for internet use and seven in ten would turn to their parents if something bad happened.

And there’s the key. Family rules, kids turning to parents when bad things happen. It comes from the same guidelines that you give kids before you send them out into an urban world. Don’t take candy from strangers, don’t talk to strangers, don’t get into that stranger’s windowless van. I grew up rural so my guidelines were more like “Always point the rifle away from yourself and others.” But with the internet we’re talking about that whole global village thing. And when a kid goes online, they’re essentially hitting the streets of the global village. The dangers are different but they’re still there. So you modify the cautionary speeches you harp on your kids: don’t give away your home address or phone number or email; don’t show pictures of yourself online; don’t go places your mommy and daddy tell you not to, and the list goes on.

This could make me a horrible parent but you shouldn’t have to check in on what your kids are doing online all the time either. Yeah you’re going to poke in every once in awhile just to try and get in touch with what your kid gives a damn about but really. If your kid wants to find it on the internet, your kid is going to find it. Yes do your firewalls, your filters and whatever else not-insane methods you want to but your kid is curious and has a vast potential for learning to manipulate your computer in ways you cannot yet fathom. They’re going to find bustyBabes.com if they want the same way kids used to always end up with naughty magazines under their mattress.

The other thing to remember is that kids are lazy. Even if you’re lazy, they’re still lazier. When your kid is on the internet they’re more likely looking up video game cheat codes or going on Facebook to chat with their friends about things that won’t matter to them four minutes from when it’s said. One of the biggest things your kids have going for their own internet safety, besides your overbearing protective nature, is their own indifference. When they get old enough to wonder about sex, give them THE TALK, tell them not to look at porn (but know they will anyways) and try to relax and know that no one’s going to slip them cocaine through the USB port.

 In review, your kids are in danger. They are constantly in danger from themselves, from others, even from your own safeguards making them too soft for the real world. The internet makes them no more in danger now than they ever were. Hell, playing with fire alone is a bigger threat than a web connection. Speak to your kids to give them a leg up on that whole common sense thing you keep hearing about and know that what they’re going to go through will probably be no worse than what you went through when you were a kid.

And they’re probably too busy drinking at recess to surf the web anyways.

Kellogg Company has agreed to drop advertising claims that Rice Krispies will strengthen children’s immune systems.

Where do you begin?

I think, as a rule of thumb, cereals that children are willing to eat should be considered unhealthy if not outright toxic. You can’t live off of Corn Pops (I’ve tried) and Rice Krispies aren’t any better. So why, then, would one even entertain the idea of Rice Krispies as something that would bolster a person’s immune system? Is it because it’s made of rice? That’s just silly. It’s as healthy as eating grass, which is basically is. (I just asked my wife what the nutritional content of rice is. She said “Asia”)

This then makes Kellogg a heartless company that wants to prey on the fears of mothers looking to save their babies from the ravages of the common cold. If they can convince enough people that Rice Krispies are like flak jackets for your immune system, they can cash in on fear (one of the time-honoured traditions of advertising). But now that the Federal Trade Commission has stepped in and say “Knock it off” Kellogg has agreed to retract their full-of-baloney statement.

One of the more troubling things to be seen in this little story is that Kellogg started making these miracle claims about their Rice Krispies while they were already getting their wrists slapped for saying Frosted Mini-Wheats were “clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by nearly 20 percent”. Let’s say it again just to make sure we all see it: While they were getting told to quit saying Frosted Mini-Wheats cures ADD, they were already starting to say Rice Krispies makes your kids not be sick anymore.

Doesn’t this seems problematic to anyone? That a big corporation is very willing and so readily able to make such obvious lies about their product should send off some warning bells. Yes all corporations have to have some ruthlessness but if they’re going to lie they should at least try to be coy about it shouldn’t they? What’s their next slogan? “Special K, more popular than Jesus“?

It’s like the boundaries are being tested for what a company can get away with saying. So when is a marketing lie something that pins someone to the wall for all of history? ‘Cause from what I can tell, Kellogg Company isn’t being told to pay a fine for false advertising or fraud or anything of the sort. They just got told to quit it. And they did readily.

I’m not saying, I’m just saying: In chess, you sacrifice pawns to make bigger moves a reality.

What greater treachery is our happy cereal company guilty of?

Today we learn about one Ginger McGuire, 36, who is suing United Airlines after she was left locked alone in a plane asleep for about four hours after landing at Philadelphia International Airport. The rap she’s laying down is false imprisonment, infliction of emotional distress and negligence. As her lawyer tells it, Ginger fell asleep in-flight, and didn’t wake up when everyone else left the plane after landing. Eventually the cleaning crew woke her up but she couldn’t leave right away because federal officers had to check to ensure she wasn’t a terrorist stowing away.

I feel that I’m misunderstanding the way legally suing someone is supposed to be wielded as an implement of justice. I was under the impression that you sue someone when you’ve received damages from that person or persons. But when you line up the charges, they don’t stand up in a gentle Lethbridge breeze. The strongest case I think Ginger has here suing for negligencebecause it’s a pretty blatant goof-up to leave a sleeping woman on an airplane for four hours. But something like this could also be written off as a simple mistake. Passenger planes are not small. It’s not like the pilot or the stewardesses can just glance over their shoulder and yell “We’re here! Strap in!” And while I’ve never worked on a plane, I think it’s safe to say that if they check school buses to make sure all the kids are off, they at least glance over the seats in a plane. It’s very much within the realm of possibility that Ginger just got missed for something as simple as her slouching in her seat. Oops, sorry. But take them to court? That’s a bit much.

So let’s go on the the more fun ones. False imprisonment, which is easy enough to figure out. They locked the plane up and left. Then they held her there to most likely grill her about what kinds of bombs she was carrying. What else are you going to do? This isn’t some Home Alone crap where someone left behind has jolly misadventures. If someone is purposefully staying on a plane after everyone is gone, it’s a major concern. If they threw her in the hole to play hardball I’d say yeah, that’s not right. But they didn’t. She probably got a free coffee after her extra four hours of sleep while they grilled her. Not a bad trade, really.

Finally, infliction of emotional distress which can so often be such horse hooey it’s hard to take serious unless the other charges surrounding it are suitably grave. In this case wild speculation can tell us that Ginger got a pretty harsh talking to from airport security and federal marshals. Maybe she got cavity searched but that usually makes it into the news. So barring some unpublished police brutality, she’s claiming emotional distress because she got a very stern finger-wagging from some uniforms.

I could understand if she wanted an apology from the airliner and that she might even get. But unless something comes to light of her never having another restful sleep again for fear of being stuck on a plane, that’s all she would ever get.

Or maybe she could buy a watch with an alarm. That’d be helpful.

Robert Munsch has done cocaine. And a lot of it by the sounds of things. He’s also abused alcohol. And most of us are okay with this.

Munsch’s admission is relatively new and as soon as I heard about it I was immediately saddened to know that a childhood favorite author wasn’t as perfect as I had originally thought. Then I was saddened again to think about how everyone was going to hang him out to dry over his substance abuse. And then it was the national equivalent of “Meh“. As a people, we didn’t really care. Not to say that absolutely everyone said way to handle that blow, Munsch, but it was not nearly as negative as I expected. Especially after getting so upset over our Stephen Page.

The two sides of this public opinion break down like this:

Pro - “Really, what does it have to do with a story you read to your child at night. It’s not directly related to what he does in his own private time.”

aaand Con - “My children love his books, it will break my heart to tell them the truth but as their mother I have to. Our family will not idolize those who do bad things. The press makes stars out to be ‘gods’ after they overdose on drugs or cheat on their wives, but we will not!”

And as much as I hate to side with a person that sounds like they’re having an anxiety attack of self-righteousness, I think the Con side has more closely sunk their mine shaft near a vein of truth. Maybe. Try looking at it like this: What would it take for Robert Munsch’s works to be no longer acceptable? What if he had been doing meth? What if he was selling drugs? What if he was guilty of domestic abuse or kidnapping or murder or any number of other illegal things that you get locked up for?

I’m not saying any of those crimes necessarily make his books more or less acceptable but at SOME POINT, society would stop and go ‘Hey now, that’s not right’ and boycott all of Munsch’s stuff by the bonfire pile. Not so much because his crime had more or less of an impact on his writing but because we wouldn’t be able to say that it was okay for us to let the bad things slide. And it’s a lot like the view that we put on music, movie and television stars. And to a lesser degree ourselves. In a nutshell, we’re saying it’s okay to do some cocaine, just make sure you don’t screw everything up too bad (and if you really want you can say that for doing a lot of other things too).

This is just that whole slippery slope argument that political debate people like to bring up so much. Walking a fine line and trying to be careful we don’t sink down too far and all that jazz. If this type of thing had happened 60 years ago, Robert Munsch probably would have been locked up. Now he gets a pat on the back for kicking the habit. It’s not a question of if we’re getting on a slippery slope it’s a question of whether or not the slope has an angle at all. We’ve always kind of operated on a level ice sheet of morality and we skate all over the placedeeming the spot where we are at the moment as publicly acceptable.

Now that the pretentious rant is mostly done with, I love Robert Munsch books. I will continue to love Robert Munsch books. I think it is great that he got off a path to inevitable self-destruction.

I also love his book 50 Below Zero. Good stuff.

May 22nd is Pac-Man’s 30th birthday. 30 years ago, a little yellow guy that kinda looked like a pie chart was the absolute greatest thing in video games. It rocked our world.

Were we thinking about the way games would be today when Pac-Man first came out? Was it even possible then? The animation in video games today completely annihilates the special effects of any movie from 1980. Anything like Final Fantasy XIII or World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto would have been such a far-fetched idea that it would be nothing more than flights of fancy.

Now that we’re here, though, looking back… Is the gameplay better? With a sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto you run around all the live long day being an all-around hooligan and you can do so with complete disregard for the main storyline (also the in-game law). In Pac-Man it was simple. Eat the dots. Don’t touch a ghost. The big dots make the ghosts eatable for a short time. That’s it! And it enthralled people. Now we pay 15 bucks a month to run around for hours on end not actually accomplishing anything in a game. Or we drool at the graphics during double-digit hours long tutorial.

Is the gameplay better? Yes, most definitely. It can be infinitely complex or hard-hitting and straight-forward or sometimes just as simple as Pac-Man itself. But the way games play out has absolutely imoproved. It’s more the content that we have issues with. It’s kind of like now that we have all the flavours of ice cream in the world, we can’t decide which one we want the most.

When we just had vanilla, vanilla was awesome.