Tag Archives: Best

Writing

Gen X vs Millennial: The Proof is in the pudding

Leave a comment

I may not be that old, however, I’m still old enough to have seen come pretty cool shit in my lifetime. One of which was seeing Gen X in their attempt at fame. Gen Z should take notes,, because your parents generation did it right when it came to fame.

Never has this song probably been more accurate

So I didn’t grow up where the conditions to aspire to being worthless like most people in my age range apparently. I mean, acting sucked and I found that out the hard way because my lesbian gym teacher had to force her play down our throats at school. No one in my age range could play and instrument, so even trying a band was out of the question. Short of porn and what teenage male wouldn’t have thought of it, Hollywood desires were really lame.

Then along came YouTube in my 20s, which gave way to a whole bunch of autistic nobodies that craved social acceptance and well, entertainment hasn’t been right or worthwhile in decades.

However, while I’ve always been the anti-celebrity guy, even in my youth, there was a time when I found myself impressed with relative unknowns making an attempt at being part of the privacy challenged brigade and that was Gen X.

I know most people have confused me for a Gen X’er 99% of my life and never really got why, however, I don’t make the criteria for more than just being an Xenial at best. So we can rule out relatable aspects making me more accepting here. As a general rule, I don’t have to relate to someone or something to appreciate it or them. It can happen from time to time, but not necessarily the a big factor.

So the internet was in its infancy back in the 90s and analog equipment still ruled. This is important to understand, since a vacuous imbecile couldn’t just share an ignorant opinion and get dozens of likes for it. You had to want it and you had to mean it.

I appreciate their hustle, a drive which I could never relate to back then. I still can’t relate to it, because it is a far better work ethic than my own, as I go for low hanging fruit and prefer it. If you ever seen my sex life, you’d be like “oh he ain’t kidding.”

Live footage of me with anything that I think is beneath me /sarcasm

That’s young 20 somethings, at the time, knew how to take what was historically 30k or more in 1970s equipment and in the 1990s turn it into better than a Misfits recording. They still weren’t perfect, but had I been a boomer executive in Hollywood, I would have been flabbergasted at how people so young with no professional experience could exhibit such a high degree of learning. Remember, this is how Insane Clown Posse and Eminem made their way on to the scene.

Even upwards of 2005, right as YouTube started, I found myself hanging out and listening to the Celtic punk sound of possible flogging mollys or drop kick murphies that could become huge. Too bad that’s when Gen X dropped everything and became family men. While there is nothing wrong with that, I’ve been plagued by the idea that had Gen X managed to figure out social media, the landscape of music would be so much better than it became, which is the complete opposite of how I thought on the 90s of how many Stephen kings could exist if there was a better set up or even better bands than the Beatles.

You have some decent millennial YouTubers out there, still though, nothing out there is quite right, as it should be. Maybe it has to do with being so young and everything was new. Going out late at night and getting home late or other things that helped to increase the times in which I would be exposed to this, which is a small part of it. However, I don’t think it’s the sole reason for all of it.

I wish I still had access to those mix tapes some random Gen X band handed out in the parking lot of Ozzfest, promoting a potential promising rookie band.

Now that Gen Z has had some time and are producing some promising things, it’s kinda changing, but not drastically enough. Maybe some of them need to get their parents to break out their old analog gear and teach them how to utilize it. I know I learned a bit from them, that part of the reason I can mix sounds pretty well, taking an Interest in what they were doing. Could give Gen Z an edge over the talking heads of idiot millennials that failed school, but still need to ADHD clip their way to an opinion that offers nothing. it’s not too late to take it back and move away from the idiocracy that entrainment has become. Threads is filled with some of this, so I know it’s true. Just up to Gen Z to figure out how to do it better.

Stay metal 🤘

Writing

Souled Out!

Leave a comment

“You damn right I’m a sell out, I’ve sold out arenas”-Triple H Monday Night Raw from like 20 years ago.

So if you know anything about me, you know I’ve been against unnecessary drug use since I was young. I was mostly straight edge up until 25 when I decided to actually drink. I did, however, have a few drinks with my best friend before then.

However, in today’s day and age, one cannot be overly picky in applying to jobs, which is why I figured I would write about this. I’m selling out and applied to a job at a weed dispensary.

To be fair, this isn’t really my first time around this shit. My father owned a bong shop in Salem Massachusetts in the 1990s. It started in 1995 to be exact and last til about 1998. So I went from 9 to 12 years old by the time it was all said and done. However, it afford me a pretty good childhood at times, so who can really complain?

The stories I have about the era make Hollywood seem tame by comparison. I mean, one time a radio station went to my dad and a bunch of other local business men to get them to sponsor having Marylin Manson come to Massachusetts before he was banned. So let that sink in. I don’t really know how close this was to ever happening to be fair, but it was 90s and Manson was a young rookie in the industry, so it would have been substantially easier to make happen with a young 20 something than a man who would command more now.

However, that ran into a snag, because of local police corruption. Which is another article entirely.

Now, the USA is on the verge of full legalization, which is nice to see, given that much like my dad, I believe it’s use is a personal choice and up to the sole user. I don’t approve of all drugs, nor would I choose to partake in such myself, for a lot of reasons, but marijaunna is the least offensive on the list of scheduled drugs and I’ve been in favor of it since at least 2004.

Maine has been decriminalized with weed since 1999, so getting used to people smoking, vs in Massachusetts where it more recently has been decriminalized, was something I had to get used to and fast.

Now even Trump is looking at a weed and possibly changing its destination. So maybe in this case, I’m not so much selling out as adapting to the changing landscape.

It’s definitely not the most ideal job for me, truth be known, but I mean, I’ve hung out with the weirdos my whole life and beat the shit out of the popular kids in school, so it’s kinda fitting. Ironically, with the exception of a couple times in my life, historically the popular kids were druggies in my youth. Shit, I recall one time in school, the popular kids claiming they were doing cocaine. Not people I wanted around me, even with his bong shop: said kids also brought vodka to school once. I digress though.

Regardless, I’m sure I could excel at this job. I’ve made dozens of sales over the years and been very good at everything I’ve touched, plus I’m no longer at the age where people will pay me to keep my clothes one, it’s now expected or it “sir, you’re scaring the Walmart guest.” So Onlyfans is out of the question. I guess the only thing left to say is, who wants to buy some weed?

Stay metal 🤘

Writing

Is it Real Celebrity or a Facade?

Leave a comment

So social media is pretty fuckin old now. Facebook is twenty, X formerly Twitter is approaching it and the various other forms are catching up.

So, I didn’t grow up a social media native like the Gen Z youth did. Back in my, social media was something like a book, roller dex or who you worked with.

Now with that in mind, these platforms have various ways of “verifying” you. The “celebrity” checkmark as I’ve called it over the years or other identifying marks aren’t necessarily as real as they seem.

For instance, when I started Bestinyourgirl I paid to promote the facebook page and got like 300 or so likes before I ended the campaign. I looked at the engagement rate for it. That page never got and engagement, so I stopped using it entirely because it wasn’t worth posting to, with nothing happening.

My X account got some engagement, but it was mostly non followers. The followers of which I got were mostly fake Japanese accounts with the egg and kanji.

The engagement rate just wasn’t there.

I’ve deleted my instagram account multiple times over the years because instagram has a child fetish that upsold me dozens of very young modeling pages. So I can’t speak to any real engagement back then.

However, I’ve paid enough attention to Hollywood, Wrestling and other accounts and noticed a pattern a couple of years in. Legit engagement is 10 or so likes per 100 followers. So if you take the cap of 2 million or so followers that most of the legit celebrities have, albeit some exceptions like Pewdie pie, by the time you reach that barometer, you have about a quarter million or so legit “fans” that actively engage with your social platforms.

The rest are just for show and can be regaled to the wannabe aera of obscurity where most people still belong, including most celebrities.

However, I would say if This formula is accurate, a better label might be a purple label, since fans and a passion color would indicate a more accurate barometer of why they’re following your account.

Bestinyourgirl for instance wouldn’t fall under this banner as it was always intended as “unbrand” and I’ve set the tone for that over the years. However, since we’re on the subject, my preferred verification mark for this would be 🖕

Which for those paying attention, was the original logo for this to begin with.

The OG logo

Regardless of whether or not any of this holds merit, stay metal 🤘

Writing

Guitarist Retrospective: 1998-2024

Leave a comment

So I’ve mentioned before that I got my 1st guitar at 12 years old in 1998. It was a Christmas gift and fantastic! Interestingly enough, my parents accidentally bought me a left handed guitar, not a right handed one. Since Jimi Hendrix was the biggest reason for learning, that didn’t deter me from trying to learn.

I ended up selling that guitar when we moved to New Hampshire, which is interesting, because it was originally purchased in New Hampshire. The internet was still in its infancy and there was no good resources around to learn anyway. Not like I could have started a band, as I come across so few people in my age range that know how to play any instrument, never mind the typical metal quartet of Drummer, Bassist, Rhythm Guitarist/Lead Guitarist.

Fast forward to 2004, I bought a nice guitar off eBay for about $80 dollars shipped. It was pink and goth style, but it looked so killer. I got to play around with some things here and there, like a wash pedal for the first time. I got tired of just being able to emulate certain things I had seen Rock Stars do, but not really understanding what I was doing. I wanted to really be a musician and not a hack that could chug and play the odd one finger power chords.

So I sold that guitar and picked up a $60 dollar acoustic guitar at the pawn shop and said “I’m becoming a musician”. 2008 would be a year that would drastically change my life for the better.

From 22 to 25 I played that thing non stop. Morning, noon, night. I didn’t care, I spent at least one hour a day learning.

Then like most people I hit the learning plateau that stops progress. So I took a short break from playing, so I could access the problem and find a way back to getting better.

Back then, you didn’t have all the fancy YouTuber’s you had now. You had Justinguitar.com and Marty had only just Started his YT channel. Basically you’re alone on this journey and for me, I would not have had it any other way. I mean, did Jimi have it easy? No, so why should I? I may not become a rock god, but I would become a musician. The latter is the most important part.

So the reason I write this is because I got offered a job interview at guitar center to teach guitar in Portland. I was the only one who applied, but due to conflicts with scheduling of bus routes, could not make it. Let’s be honest, it was a welfare gig from the start as most people learn online.

Hell, when I first started at 12, finding anyone to teach you was a pain in the ass, prior to the internet. My dad managed a band, locally and I could have asked there, but I didn’t want someone to take time to teach me, when it could service them better to make music. Regardless, like I posted above, I preferred the harder route, like many successful guitarist before me had walked.

So you know I would have probably been fired from Guitar Center before Christmas even showed up, unless they needed one more sales man, which I doubt. This isn’t to knock Guitar Center, rather understand the current climate we’re in and that local teaching isn’t exactly appropriate nowadays, since, as I said everything is driven by the internet.

Let look at the whose who of online guitarist

Justin Sandercroe

Marty Swartz

Music is win

Brandon

Rick Beato

And about a million in between all of those. The smart idea would be to build a curriculum on those people and branching out into certification for people who have passed their prerequisites in order to accommodate for people who cannot have access to these people personally like when they first started there channels as the volume, no pun intended, is probably a logistical nightmare.

My style for videos is very concise, too concise I would argue, as my entire series would probably only have about 10 videos total.

However, there is a list of things I noticed over the years that I wish I had known when I started playing in the first place.

  1. Anchor fingers is something I wish I had in the 90s. I might have become a decent player sooner. Look at Justinguitar for more one that. My favorite take away from his lessons.
  2. Music Theory. I never liked the name, as I’m a science guy and was an idiot who was like “if there is evidence for it, then it’s a theory.” As it seemed like the name was used informally. Since the guitar is over a century old, it should be music pragmatism. However, some understanding would be helpful. It helps creativity and doesn’t dash it.
  3. Finding a way to make analogies to the notes on your fretboard. This is a must in the beginning!
  4. Knowing what notes make up a chord. It be simpler to make chords on the fly than rote remembering them all. Also Don’t get bogged down in BS like the caged system.
  5. Tabs suck! If they work for you, all the power to ya. Learning by ear has been so much more beneficial to me than tabs ever have been. I only feel like my ear has recently become well developed and needs to be more attenuated . I have started, recently, learning Hendrix by ear and have made real progress. Something I would not have dared do in the early days of guitar playing.

That’s a small but very important list.

So, here is my structure for learning guitar since 2008.

Kirk Hammett

David Gilmore

Slash

Jimi Hendrix

The idea was to start at Metallica and learn what we could from Kirk. In this case, light solos, a decent pace to strive for and really good for developing your ear. I learned more Metallica accidentally than I ever did intentionally.

David Gilmore is the next logical step. Very long solos, use of whammy, learning when to slow down and when to speed up.

Slash is up next, as he is undoubtedly the hardest to play on this list, before Jimi. Dexterity and speed are very important here.

Once you learn from them, we would approach Jimi Hendrix, the man himself and this would be close to a Ph.D in music in my mind, for those learning on the outside of a musical theory course.

The point isn’t to be able to play all their songs perfectly, but rather develop the muscle memory to be able to play better. You can replace any guitarist on the list with your personal preference for players.

I’ll leave it here for now. Good luck with your own musical progress. Rock on!

Writing

The Rise and Fall of Vince McMahon, a review of Netflix’s Mr. McMahon.

Leave a comment

INTRODUCTIONS: Let’s get two things out of the way before I begin this review. First, I had a micro investment in WWE in 2014, having bought stock. About 25 shares total. I sold those stocks in November the same year, due to ineptitude of the industry. Second, My entire family, going even back to my late grandfather, all loathe McMahon with a passion, so we’re highly biased. I have no doubt that all the allegations were true and hopefully him and everyone involved get what they deserve in court. That said, this documentary isn’t without flaws from the beginning.

WRITING: Fine

VISUALS: Fine. It’s a documentary, not much to deal with.

EDITING: Swamy and misleading.

CONTENT: Worthless. It’s billed as being about Vince, but is an an unstructured mess that deals more with wrestling in general than the subject matter.

CONCLUSION: This thing is plagued with Swamy Micheal Moore style editing from the beginning. This automatically brings into question its journalistic integrity. They quote-mine and edit things out of context to make certain people or peoples look worse than it is. Bill Simmons is no better than McMahon is with the way he edited this documentary to favor his anti McMahon bias. Which, while I share his bias, still think it’s a disingenuous thing to do. Mind you, this is the problems with this “series” from episode one and I’m only 20 mins in and it’s insufferable.

This doesn’t really know what it wants to be. It wants to be journalism, but fails. it wants to be about its subject matter, but fails. it wants to be about wrestling, but fails. It stacks the doc with ass kissing McMahon sell outs, whilst being a hit piece at the same time. Billy Simmons is proven incompetent as a director and we’re no better off for see this documentary. Maybe in the future, someone could do a legit piece and have it make sense. Perhaps Netflix would have been smarter to have sold this to McMahon and let him destroy it.

2 out of 5 stars

Books, Essays, Non-fiction, Opinion, Philosphy, Review

The Way of Men (Book Review 2012)

Leave a comment

Having just read The Way of Men by author Jack Donovan, I have come to the conclusion that my idea of masculinity has been wrong all these years.
Strength and masculinity have been considered, for years, abstract concepts. That is to say, everyone has their own interpretation on what makes men, men and they are whitewashed hypocritical versions of masculinity to borrow a phrase from Anton LaVey.

Men will often refer to gangster movies as the ideal man movies but in reality, suggest that being a man is something completely different.
In The Way of Men, Jack posits the question of what masculinity is and if there is indeed a true way to BE a man and if indeed there is a true way to be a man, then what is the way of man?

The Way of Men is suggesting that manhood is the way of the gang. Men, traditionally being the hunters of the tribes would naturally have to get along to succeed and keep each other and their tribe alive.
This traditionally makes sense, especially on a Selfish Gene scenario. With Richard Dawkins suggesting the cost benefit scenario that all males of various species adhere to by nature.

Mans true nature is to be territorial, aggressive, dominant, strong and strategic, even to the point of being thieves and going so far as to steal wives from competing tribes. Yet men can also be compassionate and fair.

Men are born with the desire to compete for resources and as horrible and vulgar as that sounds to reduce woman to resources that is the way it has been for centuries. It was the way evolution intended it and the way our human biology still sees it.

It also seems to be suggesting and I could be wrong, but crime, in the traditional sense is really men being locked up for being, well, men.

It is not suggesting a release of prisoners or anything of the like but rather just suggesting that we lock men up more often for being themselves.
It is the fact that society no longer needs for men like that, that leads to frustrated young men turning to drugs and other avenues, often leading to criminal activity for lack of ability to express their true natures.

The Way of Man can be seen as a call to action. For young men to grab society by the balls in only the way men can and assert ourselves to not be breed out of extinction. We must reclaim masculinity and not make our young men feel demonized for their natural predictions.

Men are a completely natural thing and if we allow ourselves to, we will be destroyed.

So then I pose the question: What is the future way of man? The answer is the way of the dinosaurs.

Five out of Five Stars.