off the rails.

Does anyone else worry about repeating post titles? I'm striving for a certain fauxbliqueness with mine that is basically drawn from maybe 400 or so little catchphrases that are bouncing off of each other in my increasingly empty head. We're bound to get some repeats soon if we haven't already.

Until that dark, dark day, I'm just going to keep posting until I can't take it anymore, which is probably right about now, but nonetheless I first wanted to share this all-too-rare example of The Onion being a little funny anymore: American Airlines Now Charging Fees to Non-Passengers. At least a few sentences' worth are funny...but did we need a page-long article (rhetorical)?

+++

I can't decide which band we should be for Halloween: Cameo or Earth, Wind, and Fire. The first 20 seconds of the Cameo video above for "Shake Your Pants" are, I think, indisputably delightful on many levels. I just had a little non-Halloween vision where we built an alarm clock in our (already quite crowded) "living room" that was essentially a life-sized replica of the first 20 seconds of this video. Maybe not the full drum kit, due to space limitations, but definitely the four main ass-wiggling guys. And that's how we'd wake up every morning. How could anyone be anything but terribly optimistic after that.

Something else to consider is that, according to Wikipedia, Cameo started out with 23 members. Could we find 23 people to dress up as Cameo in Amsterdam (I'm pretty sure the answer is yes)?

On the other hand, there are budget constraints. I think EWF might be cheaper prop-wise b/c the lead singers apparently don't need microphones (although there are other microphones on stage...weird). True, "Boogie Wonderland" is not a terribly exciting video, though The Emotions try valiantly to make it so, but there's something endearing about the general enthusiasm level, and you at least have to watch up until 1:56 for Philip Bailey's great diva face.

+++

The thing about being Cameo, though: my first real guitar teacher from early-1980's Atlanta is on the later-period Word Up! record (emphasis theirs). Kind of embarrassing what they did to him in the videos, though: imagine your average, I don't know...construction worker, plumber (sorry, Pat). Then pretend you're the makeup/hair person for this kind of flamboyant black funk band and you have to make this nondescript white dude look like he belongs in the videos. That's him on the freeze frame below. Actual guitar solo at 1:58.

+++

There's actually a pretty great interview with Guitar Teacher here. At least it's great for me because it's very much like being in his crappy apartment off of Highway 41 back in 1984, shootin' the shit and learning Allan Holdsworth solos. Good times. The interview does ramble a bit...I can't imagine you'd read the whole thing unless you were really interested in the life of a currently hot Nashville cat who's played with both Cyndi Lauper and Lynyrd Skynyrd.