Things I don't "get"

Ah, the perils of false advertising. No, this isn't gonna be a blog entry about the lovely ladies I've never had the chance to "get" (a long list) as compared to the list of lovely ladies I've "gotten" (a very, very short list).

Nope, just the musings of a newly-minted old fart. Think of it being read to you in the curmudgeony voice of TV's Andy Rooney.

Metallica's collaboration with Lou Reed, Lulu: I don't get it. Why bands do this is beyond me. I'm no expert on the creative process but when a band's been around as long as Metallica has it's obviously released some gold and some poop. Metallica caught lightning in the proverbial bottle with two fantastic records, Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets....then Cliff Burton died and they've been uneven since then - going so far as to try and "reclaim" their former sound on 2008's not-so-bad Death Magnetic. Some of their post-Justice stuff has been great and some, not so much. I've only previewed the songs on Lulu and am figuring on saving my cash, it's Metallica playing with a spoken-word artist. Lou Reed's done some great stuff with Velvet Underground and as a solo artist, Heroin is still on my playlist as is the less-great Dirty Boulevard, but from what I hear on Lulu he sounds old and angry. Maybe I'm wrong, and the entirety of the album is better than the 30-second clips I'm hearing.....decide for yourself, but I don't understand the "point" of the recording.

Collaborations are nothing new, Jagger worked with the Beatles, etc. At some point in their career some members of Metallica weren't satisfied with just being Metallica (as Keith Richards writes in his book Life, "what's so wrong with just being Mick F-ing Jagger?") and have tried to wear many different hats. Maybe it's part of the aging process, or they were bored with crunching out The Almighty Riffs that they were so good at.

Or maybe they just lost their mojo......

There's no shortage of alternatives if you like metal, though, and the best of the current lot is Mastodon's The Hunter. I'm an avowed Mastodon fan and have been to see a few of their shows (they're playing the 9:30 club in DC in November.....) and they've taken Metallica's baton and run with it. I won't bother naming every song in a pedantic track-by-track review but I will say that the album (with one glaring exception that's weird and sounds completely out of place) will not disappoint. If you like metal, that is. Even if you don't, it's a good example of what's out there in rock music that's worth listening to.

I don't get my neighborhood's high-schoolers. Time was, you got to be 15 or 16 and trick-or-treating wasn't an option. We had a legion of driving-age kids schlumping around our neighborhood begging for candy (well, maybe not a legion). Sure, I understand that there's free candy to be obtained but at some point don't we want these doofuses to get jobs?

Maybe this is old-guy bitterness but when I was 16 I'd had a job for a couple years. My wife did, too, and so did most (if not all) of my friends. I don't recall teenagers being so opposed to the idea of earning money. Kids today seem to only want to sit in front of their computers and consume. Where are my Geritol pills? I seem to have misplaced them. Those kids probably took them....stupid dummies.

I don't get NFL football right now (though I am forced to get the lackluster Redskins, who need several more years of building....not re-re-re-re-rebuilding). Why is passing the football so all-fired great as opposed to a balance between run and pass? Why does "scoring" have to be up? Why can't Theismann and Riggo just come back and bring with them the good old days?

Hmmm....this blog is taking a turn towards Nitwitville.......

Ok, what makes the spectacle of a team passing for 400 yards every game so great? It wasn't that long ago that running backs were as important to a team's fortunes as the quarterback. And the O-lines can't be that different....those guys still must prefer the easier practice of run-blocking than the far more difficult art of pass-blocking. The "new" rules that Indianapolis argued for in 2005 or 2006 (the 5-yard no-contact zone) have made old-fashioned bump and run coverages illegal. I'm no sports blogger, and Sports Illustrated broke this down far more eloquently and in-depth in their annual NFL Preview last August, but I think it kinda sucks. today's game would have no place for names like Walter Payton, Emmitt Smith, and Terrell Davis much less defensive players like Jack Tatum and Mike Haynes. You Redskin fans might recall the awful experience of Super Bowl 18 in 1984, where the LA Raiders played bump and run coverage that removed the Redskins short-yardage passing game....then they stuffed Riggo as well and Game Over. Nowadays with these rules the 1984 Redskins probably win that game, as would the 2001 Rams in their game against Tom Brady's Patriots.

Defense used to win championships, not it's almost a liability. Somehow, Baltimore and Pittsburgh have maintained excellent units in spite of the rules changes. Hey Shanahan....you watch tape on them?!

Speaking of Baltimore, I don't get purple. Ok, the Vikings are purple. So are the Lakers and the LA Kings. Why would Ravens be purple? And those stupid-looking numbers.....I don't get that either. Why does Joe Flacco look a little vacant to me? He's got this open-eyed stare that, when couple with his obvious mouth-breathing says...."duuuhhhh."

Of course, so does Eli Manning but Eli's got an excuse because he's Eli.

How about that snow over the weekend here in DC? Wild and wacky, huh? All of you climate-change apologists and "skeptics" (who must work for oil interests ,or are dangerously retarded) take note. Oh, hold up, it snowed on October 29, 1971 in DC (I have it on the word of my parents whom I met for the first time in a hospital that day). I don't"get" snow in October.

And I was out driving in it all day and I can tell you that DC-area drivers are the worst. There was a doofus hauling a boat over the 14th street bridge and he was driving too fast - thus his boat ended up blocking two of the three lanes. His doofus-ness made me late for my daughter's hockey game, ass. Of course, if you live here you know that some drive too fast in bad weather conditions and others drive like they're racing a terrestrial mollusk home......soooooooooooooooooooo slllllloooooowwwwwwlllllllyyy.

I "get" all of that, but I hate it.

Hey, why is it "cool" to decorate your house with dismembered limbs and gore on Halloween? I don't get that. Is it supposed to be scary or edgy? Or are you guys trying to slowly indoctrinate us to the idea of cannabalism being ok? Sorry, guys, I can't support the cannibal agenda.

Been watching "American Horror Story" and am starting to love it and its attendant weirdness. But I don't get why "Sons of Anarchy" is so universally loved. I watch the show but can readily admit that it's stupid as all hell. It's essentially a male-oriented soap opera. Every episode has these bikers simply wandering into the local hospital for a scene or two. Or there's the "home-based" scenes at their hangout clubhouse or in an actual home. And the dialogue's always something riveting like "we've got to deal with this shit." Whoah! How badass. The show really amounts to a bunch of grown men avoiding growing up by riding motorcycles and subverting law-enforcement at every turn. It's like an updated and slightly edgier "Dukes of Hazzard." Storylines are clearly being dragged out to keep the fish-like viewer hooked. You just know that someday, some friggin' day, Jax is gonna read those letters and make Clay pay for his sins.

It's stupid but it's a guilty pleasure, so I guess I get it.

I don't get lots of other things too, but I think I'll stop now. Excelsior!