If it wasn't true, why did he sing "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy"?

Jimi Hendrix might have stayed in the Army. He might have been sent to Vietnam. Instead, he pretended he was gay. And with that, he was discharged from the 101st Airborne in 1962, launching a musical career that would redefine the guitar, leave other rock heroes of the day speechless and culminate with his headlining performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969. --The Associated Press

I guess that's just a long intro to this link to KissThisGuy.com: The Archive of Misheard Lyrics. It's a fun site--readers submit lyrics to pop songs that they've misheard--but I've got to believe a large portion of submissions are completely bogus.

Including:

Song: Born in the USA
Artist: Bruce Springsteen

The real lyrics were:
Sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill the yellow man.

But I misheard them as:
Send me off to a foreign land to go and kill Piano Man.

I'm not crazy about Billy Joel either, but would the Boss really sing that?

Song: Ain't No Woman (Like The One I Got)
Artist: Four Tops

The real lyrics were:
Ain't no woman like the one I got

But I misheard them as:
Ain't no woman like a one-eyed goat

Yeah, well, that's believable.

Song: Brown-Eyed Girl
Artist: Van Morrison

The real lyrics were:
You're my brown eyed girl

But I misheard them as:
You're my one eyed girl

Better than a one-eyed goat, I guess.

The real lyrics were:
Brown-eyed girl

But I misheard them as:
Four-eyed squirrel

At this point, I'll just take the damned goat.

The real lyrics were:
Hey where did we go...

But I misheard them as:
Hey there amigo...

Um. That's not the lyric???

Jeremiad was a bullfrog

Are the folks in the Metro section of The New York Times sharing a thesaurus?

Saturday, p. 1B:

James Howard Kuntsler, author of the visionary urban-planning jeremiad "The Geography of Nowhere" and the even better "Home From Nowhere," has taken to the Web in a big way.

Saturday, p. 4B:

In case you missed it, Andrew S. Grove has an article in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. ... The article, "Efficiency in the Health Care Industries," was labeled commentary, but it was more akin to a jeremiad.

I had a rough idea what it meant but looked it up anyway.

As an editor, I find odd words come sweeping through as groups. I predict I'll see jeremiad two more times in the next week, then I won't see it again for a year.

Because you're mine, I blog the line

I see I have several subscribers to TVB updates through something called Bloglines. I'm not really clear on what this is, though.

If you use the service, could you explain what it does and how it works?

Whenever I really, really, really hate my job, I stop and say to myself...

...at least I don't measure cow gases for a living.

Movie adaptations of TV shows that I don't want to see

B.J. and the Bear: Jude Law stars as B.J. McKay, an independent trucker rolling the highways of America with his pet monkey (Dakota Fanning). Hip-hop star Ludacris co-stars as nemesis Sheriff Lobo.

The A-Team: Four Vietnam vets, framed for a crime they didn't commit, help the innocent while on the run from the military. Starring Owen Wilson as Hannibal Smith, Ben Stiller as Faceman, Snoop Dog as B.A. Baracus, and Dakota Fanning as Mad Dog Murdoch.

That Girl: Ann Marie (Dakota Fanning) is a struggling actress living in New York City. In between trying to find jobs acting and modeling, she has time for her boyfriend, Don Hollinger (That Kid Who's Now In Every Johnny Depp Movie), and her dad, Lou Marie (Johnny Depp).

The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Young single woman Mary Richards (Dakota Fanning) tries to make it on her own in the big city of Minneapolis. Featuring Will Ferrell as Ted Baxter, Luke Wilson as Murray Slaughter, Vince Vaughn as Lou Grant, and Natalie Portman as Rhoda Morgenstern.

Why our Swedish friends at Ikea might want to have an English speaker go over product names

The Jerker computer table does sound perfect for porn surfing, though.

UPDATE: A concerned reader informs The Velvet Blog that the Ikea Jerker is the subject of some sort of Internet cult.

Smackdown: Land of the Lost vs. Sigmund and the Sea Monsters

In this corner: Land of the Lost



Premise: Marshall, Will, and Holly, on a routine expedition, met the greatest earthquake ever known. High on the rapids, it struck their tiny raft, and plunged them down a thousand feet below to the Land of the Lost. It was always unclear to me whether they went back in time or it was an alternate dimension. Or something. Oh, and there are lizard-like creatures (Sleestacks) and a monkey-boy (Chaka).



Pros: Shows perils of entering time portals, something kids today are rarely warned about. Almost--but not quite--getting home in every single episode also teaches children that life is cruel, scary, and unfair, something they should really have drilled into their heads at an early age.

Cons: Chaka never sings "Tell Me Something Good" or even "I'm Every Woman," which is disappointing. Supports anti-lizardman bias.

In that corner: Sigmund and the Sea Monsters



Premise: Sigmund, a sea monster/father of modern psychiatry, is kicked out of his home for being a bad monster and for being too close to his mother. He befriends two boys, who keep him in their clubhouse. He persuades them to keep it a secret.



Pros: Kept Johnny Whitaker off the streets one more year. Teaches children to keep secrets.

Cons: Johnny Whitaker sings the theme song. Sea monsters are disturbingly phallic. Strangely fey genie (annoying talk-show regular Rip Taylor) joins cast in second year.



On balance: Typical Sid and Marty Krofft psychedelic low-budget extravaganzas.

And the winner is...: Land of the Lost

Deciding factor: Because Johnny Whitaker doesn't sing Land of the Lost's theme song.

Then who the heck is watching Tucker Carlson?

Chimps have very strong and immediate likes and dislikes. Observational evidence to date has revealed that chimps find nature-sound CD's soothing. Younger chimps prefer kids' movies, Disney specials, "Barney" and the like. The mature chimps' tastes, on the other hand, tend toward melodrama and anything with lots of action and aggression. Soap operas like "Passions" and "General Hospital" are big hits, the latter, it seems, because lab chimps have gotten so used to people in white coats. "The Jerry Springer Show" and N.F.L. football games are also quite popular. Golf, baseball and PBS programming (except, of course, for nature shows) are not. --The New York Times

In related news, people who regularly watch "Jerry Springer" often throw poop at the screen.

Lists

Things I did on vacation:
--Fell asleep on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon (multiple times)
--Swam
--Read 892 pages of the new Harry Potter book (only 793 left to go!)
--Swore at (and made obscene hand gestures in the general direction of) the bees living under the deck in my backyard
--Went to see Lisa Loeb (wasn't really a big fan, but she was playing nearby--and she completely won me over)
--Pulled out crabgrass
--Visited friends
--Made ice cream
--Ate ice cream

Things I did not get around to doing on vacation:
--Broker peace in the Mideast
--Get nominated to the Supreme Court
--See March of the Penguins

Things I do not want to do tomorrow:
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work
--Go to work

Vacation

Taking some time off and endeavoring not to go near a computer for a while.

Probably no updates till July 23 or so.

Be good.

Thriller

Disney World on Wednesday reopened a thrill ride that was closed when a 16-year-old British girl almost died of cardiac arrest after riding it. ... An elderly, diabetic woman also died in February after riding the Magic Kingdom's "Pirates of the Caribbean," but the medical examiner said her death "was not unexpected." --The Associated Press

What the story leaves out is that her diabetes was caused by going on the It's a Small World ride too many times. (There--you're going to have that damned song stuck in your head all day, and it's my fault. Sorry.)

Rule of thumb: If the Pirates of the Caribbeann ride is too thrilling for you, definitely avoid the Whirling Teacups. I nearly had my neck snapped on that #*$@&!! one.

In related news (albeit old news, as the dateline is from last October):

Disneyland skippers on the Jungle Cruise ride are once again armed, but not dangerous. It's part of the company plan to "restore the magic" in the California theme park.

For more than 40 years, drivers had fired blanks at mechanical hippos that appeared to be charging the boat in the fake Amazon River.

That stopped in 2001, a change a former skipper said was a nod to "political correctness." But now, the skippers are getting their guns back, and are again free to open fire. --ABC12.com

Blanks? They're blanks??? Then it's true--the terrorists have won.