Today in music history: 1988

Back to 1988, and we find:


"Anything for You" by Gloria Estefan-in Spanish, cause that's all I came up with in my 5 second search.

This song was BOOOOORING.  When I think Gloria Estefan, I think high energy, up-tempo fun songs, and this was...not.

It didn't help that it was in Spanish, so I didn't understand the words, but even beyond that, the chorus was either very short or very non-existent, the verses didn't grab me, and I was really really bored listening to this song.

Did you have a different reaction?

Previously in 1988:

Get Outta My Dreams(Get into my Car)

The Obligatory Avengers Post

So, Joe and I saw The Avengers on Saturday.  I must say, it was freaking fantastic!

Clocking in at nearly two and a half hours long, there is a lot of plot and action to fill the time.  When we got out of the theater, I was surprised at the time, I didn’t think it had been that long at all.

The Avengers is directed and (at least partially) written by Joss Whedon, of Buffy and Firefly, and more recently, Dr. Horrible, fame.

http://drhorrible.com/    Go watch it, now!

I really liked how his humor came through in all the characters.  You wouldn’t think a giant green monster that has three lines could be funny, but I really enjoyed the Hulk, even though I never really watched any of the previous movies…or tv shows…or read the comics.  The dialogue for the rest of the cast was good as well.  Snappy, but not overly quippy, in a way that makes you think no one would ever talk like that.

The action scenes were great as well, first with the group fighting each other, then after coming together as one team to fight off Loki.

Loki was great too, and his attempted manipulation of the group was fun to watch.

My one complaint is that I don’t think they ever named Cobie Smulder’s character, Maria Hill.  If they did, it was a quick thing, but throughout the movie, you never really know who she is, besides second in command.  You would think that the second in command would have a name, no?

BUT: This movie is amazing, go see it.  See it now!  Go!

5/5 comic punches

Melissa Meets Boy: Who you callin’ tertiary?

Last week, we discussed the secondary characters of Boy Meets World.  However, there were many others that fleshed out the show’s universe, and I’d like to discuss some of them here.

Mr. Turner:  Mr. Turner was the other teacher, brought in in the second season, probably due to the whole middle school jump thing, but the show always fell back to Mr. Feeny anyway, so I’m not sure what the initial purpose actually was.  He was a bit of a ‘rebel,’ always wearing leather, and he rode a motorcycle, so we were supposed to think he was cool.  Once Shawn’s dad left in the third season, Shawn moved in with Mr. Turner, and they had their little adventures there, really breaking out of the school/Cory’s home paradigm the show had been kind of stuck in.  Mr. Turner’s final act was indirectly saving Shawn from a cult, by getting in a motorcycle accident.  That moment was another one that got me every time.

Today in music history: 1989

Today we look back to the last year of the 80's, 1989, and find:


"I'll be there for you" by Bon Jovi

For some reason, I had the strange urge to *clapclapclapclap* during this song, dunno why that could be.

This is a nice ballad, with a great little wailing line right in the chorus.

The video itself is pretty unspectacular, with the band playing in an empty stadium, eventually intercut with a couple of seconds of screaming fans.

What did you think?

Previously in 1989:

Like a Prayer

SNL: 5/5/12

This week, I had low expectations.  Eli Manning hosted, and sports people are not generally known for their acting chops.  However, I was pleasantly surprised:  Manning wasn’t afraid to poke fun at himself, and the first half of the show went rather well, though the last half was really mediocre, punctuated by my inability to even stay awake during it.

And now, without further ado: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly!

Excel and you: If this, then that

So, you’re working on a spreadsheet, say with sales figures for multiple salespeople.  Now, your salespeople get commissions, with a couple of tiers.  You want to know who gets which commission amount, but don’t want to have to manually figure them out.

Say the scale looks like this:

-If they have under $10,000, they get 10% commission.

-If they have more than $10,000, they get 15% commission.

Now, you could sort by sales amount, and manually calculate the commission, but what if you want to use the spreadsheet each quarter, and don’t want to have to change the formula for each person?

That is where if/then statements come into play.

Today in music history: 1984

Today we go back a long way, to 1984, and find:


"Hello" by Lionel Richie

Teehee.  This song, oh my.

The song itself, I guess, isn't terrible.  It's vaguely stalkery, but mainly a story about a guy wanting to meet a girl he's watch from afar.  And who doesn't like to randomly burst out into "Hello!  Is it me you're looking for?" on occasion?

The video though, goes into full on creeper mode.  The girl in the song is the Lionel Richie's student, and she's blind.  And he follows her everywhere, and calls her in the middle of the night.  Tres stalkery.

So amusing to me, I must say.

Previously in music history 1984:

Footloose

Week 7: All the miles are belong to me!

 This was a great week for me!  I managed to ride to work for four of the five days, and a tiny bit after the fact as well.  It muchly made up for last week, when I didn't ride AT ALL>.< Vacation made me super unmotivated.

We're coming up on one month to go until the big ride, go here to donate, please!

Week 7(April 29-May 5) totals: 36 miles
Week 6(April 22-28) totals:         0 miles
Week 5(April 15-21) totals:       12 miles 
Week 4(April 8-14) totals:         12 miles
Week 3(April 1-7) totals:           32 miles
Week 2(March 25-31) totals:    18 miles
Week 1(March 18-24) totals:    26 miles

Total Miles:136

The funny stuff: School’s out forever!

This week, we had a bunch of new episodes, starting with

How I Met Your Mother: This episode was completely, utterly forgettable, save the last two minutes, where Lily went into labor.  I did have one funny line I wrote down though:

Lily, after telling the group Marshall’s been swaddling her in preparation for the baby: Swaddled is just like sleeping in a warm burrito. *happy face*

2 Broke Girls: Another rather forgettable episode, though it did push the plot along a bit as well, with Max quitting her nanny job so she could focus more on the cupcake business.  Again, I got one funny line I wrote down:

Max: Scaring people into participating isn’t success, it’s Scientology!

The Middle:  This episode was amusing, with the parents getting a new bed and headboard, but not assembly, and then completely failing on getting it together.  Once they finally did, they hated the headboard, and went back to their old one anyway.  The entire episode was framed with the ‘three main fights a couple has’ and then the rest as well, so that got a chuckle each time.  Sue, the daughter, decided she needed to ‘be the me I want to be tomorrow, today,’ and thus decided to change her name to Suki to stand out.  Of course, the school thought ‘Suki’ was some kind of bird flu, so that whole thing kind of petered out in the end, but Sue got her main goal: to be included in the yearbook, even if it was only in the In memoriam section.

Suburgatory: Suburgatory went for character development this week, with the dad attempting to have a relationship with his best friend’s surrogate, and Tessa throwing herself full force into her job at Dallas’ store, to the chagrin of George.  I  really though George was going to step in it, and offend Dallas by telling her that he didn’t want Tessa to end up like her, but he sidestepped by saying he wanted her to spend more family time.

Community:  Oh my.  This episode was crazy!  Riots in school, expellations, Dean in a can-can dress because the Bio class was (can) canned.  The framing device of the show was Starburn’s wake, and it started with Abed and Annie watching a video Starburns made in case of death. 

The show rolled on to the group coping with the death of a person they marginally knew, some in more grownup ways than others.  And of course, Britta trying to use her psych major to help, and failing miserably.  It was then the dean came in in his can-can dress, and told the group that they’d have to do summer school to get their bio credits, due to their professor quitting.

This led to the wake, where the group went on stage and rallied against Greendale, and we had some fantastic speeches to accompany that, from Annie’s ‘Our flag is an ANUS!’ to Shirley’s starting off calm, and getting increasingly frustrated.  The whole thing led to the riots, and Chang using them as an excuse to gain control of the school with his teenaged brute squad.

We then go to the group getting expelled, due to Chang running things, and them meeting up at Troy and Abed’s apartment.  Abed posits that they are in the worst timeline, but Troy brings them back, saying how it can’t be, since they are together.  Aww.

30 Rock:  This was one strange mama-jama.  They did it in the style of Tracy’s wife’s reality show, Queen of Jordan,  lampooning the genre pretty hard core.  There were a couple of funny moments, like the baby saying ‘Rude!’ but mostly it fell pretty flat.  None of the characters seemed like themselves, and there was no growth, and only one plot point moved forward, that being Avery coming home.

The Office: So Andy’s gonna do something with his new Big Red paper company, we just don’t know what.  My guess was he is going to sell it back to Dunder Mifflin with ownership rights.  That should be fun.  Other than that, this episode was pretty miss for me.  The humor just wasn’t there at all.

Parks and Rec: I love this show so much.  The characters are great, and fully realized people, and yet, they still manage to bring laughs just about every week.  Andy slow-mo pieing Jerry, the bus running over the memorial portrait after they realized it was a trap, Chris speeding past the bus on his bike.  This was a great episode to build to the election, now we just have to wait to find out who wins!  My bet is on Leslie, I’m guessing they want to give the show more options in terms of story, and a different section of government is just the ticket.

Today in music history: 1991

Today, we find a song that I had never heard of in  my entire life:


"Joyride: by Roxette

The tune is catchy enough I suppose, and the whistling is kind of fun.  But other than that, the song is rather forgettable.

The video though?  Hilarious.

Roxette is apparently a band, with a guy that does most of the heavy lifting, and a girl that essentially writhes around in argyle pants(?!?) occasionally yelling ROXETTE!

So the premise of the video is these two sitting on various vehicles as they fake drive through greenscreened madness.  Oh, and once time, an airplane wing.  And by greenscreened madness, I mean a toy clapping monkey with a ferris wheel, and a tiny city.  They also like to stand around in the greenscreened madness, so variety!

This song was okay, but I'm confused how it made it to number one.  It doesn't seem like #1 material.

Previously on music history 1991:

Baby, Baby

You're in Love