EH for context (maybe you already know this) Oliver mentioned this story about a month ago, in a climate where a "comedian" reporter had nothing positive to talk about. So the original story included a segment with a link to the Kremlin's website where you could personally tell Putin to get the Geckos back. Celebrities were doing it, sort of like the Ice Bucket challenge. The original one was (pardon the pun) tongue in cheek, but America really needed something to think about that wasn't ISIS, Ferguson, Israel and Palestine, Ukraine. Just Geckos lost in space. Since Oliver raised attention to something that would've otherwise gone unnoticed by the mainstream, I don't think breaking the news like this was too soon at all.

"Too soon" to me reminds me of 9/11. The record store I was working at had just gotten its shipments, one of which was The Coup's album Party Music, which literally shipped on September 11th, 2001 and featured cover art of them exploding the Towers in sort of a Wiley E. Coyote way. Of course we didn't sell it and it was recalled (I've never actually listened to it) but it didn't stop people from trying to get their hands on it. On September 11th. When I couldn't get ahold of my brother who had a job interview about a block from the Twin Towers that day.. anyway that and the candlelight vigils just felt un-heartfelt: Madison's, anyway, had a PA system that included, and I'm not joking, Live's Lightning Crashes and Alan Jackson's Chatahootchie. People were brownbagging and it was a good excuse to leave work for some. I was terrified because I just assumed I had lost my brother forever, but fortunately it was just loss of communication.

Sorry, I'm kind of rambling. Point is, Oliver started it, and Oliver needed to finish it, in a time where many people would say "why the fuck are you talking about Geckos right after a story about nuclear annihilation?" Point is, because we both have souls. Geckos just have cuter eyes.

Party Music is one of The Coup's best albums, you should really listen to it.

Oh wow. The hip hop scene in Oregon was pretty isolated at that time, and basically besides Wu Tang I didn't explore the genre until I learned about hiphopinfinity, which introduced me to Cannibal Ox, MF Doom, etc. basically I became a backpacker. I can remember pretty vividly listening to that whole album (it was our policy to play every new release on tuesdays; the Blueprint also came out that day) and most of us hadn't even heard the news. So our boss comes out and tells us to turn it off or we're all fired. What? Oh. Wait. What? Sensitivity's always an important thing, but this album was definitely a diamond in the rough.

For a little more personal context, I'll always blame myself for the death of my guinea pig, Kavalier, here on planet earth. He and his brother, Clay, lived in a cage that was a little too small so I turned my room into a bit of a habitrail for them. I also worked at a place where I had to constantly pocket or do something with rubber bands. Kavalier started making noises so I took him to the vet, where he died in the back of a taxi cab along the way in my arms. I tried giving him mouth to mouth. They said it was congenital heart disease but I still blame my falling asleep with my pants still on, and rubber bands falling out of my back pocket, one of which he might have gotten ahold of. Clay lived to be 8, which is old for a guinea pig. But I was inconsolable. No matter what, I believe that I destroyed a guinea pig's life by being a human, and not taking small precautions that could prevent that.

People consoled me.. "after all it's just a guinea pig" JUST A GUINEA PIG!?! but I was able to feel better about it: "it wasn't your fault" didn't mean much to me, but like an Irish Wake, we celebrated his short little life and laughed about it as much as we could. He was buried in the same lake that Otis Redding's plane crashed into, and I like to think they're sitting on the dock of the bay together now.

RIP Space Bat

Hey, guys. If aliens ever shoot me into outer space with three girls and they force me to have sex with the girls and then the spaceship breaks so I freeze to death and some alien TV show host who used to be on the alien equivalent of the Daily Show decides to host this pseudo-touching comedy memorial service for me and the girls on the alien version of Last Week Tonight, please, for the love of God, don't let them eulogize me with some crappy piano pop. Make it Manowar.

hahahaha yeah. This band kinda sucks but I don't really know them. I think for me I'd go with early In Flames, pretty much anything off Jester Race. What's funny is he brought national attention to a good friend of mine's band in his very first episode, with a (funny) parody of what it must be like in Portland. It worked out. She's way bigger because of exposure. But Oliver kinda contradicted himself there. This is not music to drink a 40 oz onto.

According to Wikipedia, they got their start on an episode of Glee, and are best known for licensing their music to TV shows like "One Tree Hill" and MTV's "I Used to be Fat".

Yikes! He should've just gotten Laura Gibson. :)

Honestly I don't know anything about Glee, but I am glad that it exists. I was a choir kid an opera singer and had toured half of the world by the time I was 14. But I wasn't a football player or anything. I became very embarrassed to even talk about my past, because I'd be labeled as a geek or a nerd. We just weren't cool, and no show was there to say that we were. It's why I joined a BBC IRC and later POE. Some kids who are different don't have that Ham Radio mentality, and chose suicide instead of carrying on. As cliche as it sounds I'm glad that us outlanders are in the spotlight now, especially at an age where popularity is key. But I still don't watch the show, like ever :)

My best friend's wife is a Gleek, which means he's a jailhouse one (or at least was, back when it was still popular). I tried watching a few episodes, but I couldn't really get into it; it was just dumb, the characters weren't very likeable, and much of the appeal seemed to be rooted in the novelty value of being a televised musical with a hip (I.e. corporate-culturally aware) sensibility. If you like seeing vaguely pretty people sing Eurovision covers of Ke$ha and Journey, then it might appeal to you, otherwise, there's not much there.

I did like some of their over-produced musical numbers, they had some very good singers and they were definitely able to improve on some of the shittier songs they featured. The thing that finally broke the show, for me, was how unbelievable the situations were; I know, I know, nerd alert, but internal logic is a big thing for me. For example, there was an episode where they decided to sing Michael Jackson's Thriller. There was some sort of conflict where they weren't going to do it - don't remember anymore, something to do with highschool drama and "loljocks" or whatever - but the point is, they wound up whipping together this rendition of Thriller at the very last minute. There's maybe, like, a half hour or so that they have to setup and coordinate this whole thing. Yet when they actually do it, it's this huge budget theatrical affair that makes the Superbowl Halftime look like crap, with elaborate, Walking Dead grade zombie costumes and smoke machines and pitch-perfect live sound production, and it's like what the fuck. They're supposed to be highschool kids singing at a pep rally or something, a motley crew of misfits including some newly turned jocks, a token wheelchair kid, and at least one "retard". How are they pulling this bullshit off?! I suppose we're meant to suspend our disbelief and just accept it as some affected-campy artistic licence, but I couldn't do it. I was willing to accept the Buffy Musical, but Glee, no, fuck that, it's too much, or too little, I don't know. You're not missing much.

Also, re: geeks and nerds, that was another thing that rubbed me the wrong way about Glee. There are two ways that you can really fuck up a "nerd pride" story. You can get way too caught up in the whole "grrr jocks r evil" thing, to the point where the writer's unresolved emotional issues bleed through and it starts becoming uncomfortable to watch, and you can grossly misrepresent nerd culture. Glee does both. This isn't like "Revenge of the Nerds". The jocks are presented in the meanest spirit possible, and the nerds all come off as beautiful, popular kids whom exposition has chosen to be outsiders for some vague reason. It's insulting. It's aggressively racist against jocks, and it's passively racist against nerds; I'd call it Nerd Face.

Interesting. Like I said I haven't seen an episode. I guess my/our generation had My So Called Life, which I also haven't seen, but have heard about. That seems to take a more Breakfast Club approach, and more what my high school experience was like. I actually lettered freshman year in swimming so I was technically a jock too, but I cut the letter out of the jacket and put it on the back of my hoodie (which really pissed my parents off.) I could Glee totally taking that "us vs. them" mentality now.

RotN, on the other hand, and it's been a long time since I've seen it, has a much better morality tale: I think the biggest jock in the school turns out joining them, pretty much because he realizes that his FRIENDS are jerks, not that JOCKS are jerks. That's a very important distinction. Unfortunately the subject matter in Breakfast Club and RotN was restricted content, which ostensibly meant that high school freshmen couldn't watch it, unless they actively sought it out or knew the cool guy at the video store or something.

(I was able to catch the one last night btw. I think you'd like it, but I'm not going to submit it. I'm cutting myself off this week.)

I think Oliver's great, but the constant use of metaphors and spending 15 minutes on one story formula is getting a bit old now. I mean, PBS Newshour does that, but they do it every night. It's just not funny and filled with more wrinkles than time itself. That being said, watch it if you get the chance :)