There's Something Going On Between PetSmart and Office Depot and I Don't Like It

I recently moved to Las Vegas from Atlanta and it's been really great. Obviously, there's a lot of differences between the two cities, but the most readily apparent has to be the geography. There's a lot of rocks here. Like, a shitload of rocks. They're everywhere. People even make their yards out of rocks, because if they didn't, a bunch of rocks would just roll into their yards anyway, so, you know, eff it.

His Stupid Mouth: Why I Still Love John Mayer

At some point in his life, every serious music fan has liked an artist before that artist became famous and successful. We love being among the handful of people to attend his shows and enjoy even more introducing our friends to obscure, new music. But when that artist does become successful, despite all of our former proselytizing on his behalf, we inevitably turn on him. The more successful he becomes, the more vicious our condemnations. I am certainly not immune to this phenomenon, in fact, it has happened to me many times. But there is one artist for whom this effect was particularly pronounced, due in part to the extreme fame he has reached and in part to the intensity of the connection that I felt to his music prior to his success. As I'm sure you were able to glean by the title of this post, that artist was John Mayer.* And although I no longer enjoy his new music, I haven't exactly turned on him. I'll try to explain what I mean after the jump.

Love in the Time of Reality Television

I've never been a huge Bachelor guy. Compared to shows like Temptation Island, Flavor of Love, and Average Joe, it always seemed a bit too vanilla for my taste. I need triple kissing, hilarious nicknames, or high concept twist endings in my reality dating shows. Anything less seems like a waste of time. Accordingly, I usually just get my Bachelor updates from The Soup and then tune in to the finale, which is really the only episode of the season worth watching.

But boy is it ever worth watching. A typical Bachelor finale is an hour and a half of intense tension building followed by a complete emotional trainwreck in the last half hour. Because real feelings are seemingly involved, the final eliminations reliably reach levels of savage brutality that you simply cannot get anywhere else outside of a Taliban hostage video. Watching someone's heart get demolished is dark, prurient television at its very finest. I love it.