See what I did there, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers?

For the first time, Chick-fil-A earned a higher profit than KFC; as a result, KFC is going to announce their new anti-gay appetizer: Not For Nancy-Boys Spicy Wings.

PETA enlisted four young girls to scold First Lady, Michelle Obama, for using hard-boiled eggs instead of plastic eggs for the White House Easter Egg roll. It is now official, PETA stands for People Especially Tiresome and Annoying.

Since you asked:

We truly live in interesting times.

In the Sixties, Alcatraz was deemed inescapable due to the cold water and strong currents. Now thousands compete in a triathlon starting from barges next to Alcatraz. Many without wetsuits.

And yet we now have a fairly recent phenomenon: people too lazy to talk audibly. I.e., Lazy-Talkers. You know whom I mean. Clerks who barely mumble “Can I help you?” so it comes out garbled and mushed like “Caheyehepu?”

How is it possible that we have a generation of 100-foot wave surfers combined with people too lazy to flip on a turn signal?

At Rite Aid, the young greasy-blonde clerk plus braces and bad acne “greeted” me. He was supposed to say; “Did you find everything OK?” But with his head tilted back, his mouth-breathing jaw agape, his eyes barely open, what wheezed out was;

“Dehewfineheythinohhey?”

But get these same douche-nozzles on a cell phone? Holy carpe diem, suddenly they are louder than Placido Domingo belting out Paganini at the Met.

And you know the lazy-talkers are also the loud shoe-scuffing-shufflers, fat-assed long-diagonal-parking-lot-walkers, the forever-to-pull-out-of-their-parking-lot-spacers, the grocery store aisle-blockers, the no-turn-signal-users, the stop-sign-rollers, the sexy-baby-talker-young women and the still-using-Valley-girl-speak pushy soccer moms.

It feels good to vent, Slattitudes and Nuggliesiaseseses. It feels good to vent.

Can I get a Hay-Nan-Nanny and a Hot-Cha-Cha one time?

Lex has an epiphany

So there I am, sitting on my butt on the cold, hard cement walk, leaning against the cement wall on the walkway above the stands during my daughter’s track meet. This was a duel track meet, so it wasn’t exactly standing-room only.

The meet was running a solid one hour late, so I was, truth-be-told, a little cranky. Getting ready to time Ann Caroline’s 200 meter race, so  I wanted to practice on the 100 meter races. A guy walks up in front of me, talking loudly on his cell phone, and he stands dead-solid right in front of me. Totally blocking my view and just talking away. He could have stood anywhere else. Any freaking where else.

Just as I was about to let out an exasperated, pissed-off and very loud, “Dude, really? Right in front of me? That's where your rude ass is going to stand? ” I hear him say on his phone;

“Listen, I can still hear you all talk, but I have to put mine on mute, my son is about to run.”

Right then, an-odd-for-me thought occurred: let it go. Let it go, the guy seems OK. Maybe he is having a tough day or was on a really important call. Besides, he was so focused on the call, I was pretty sure he did not realize he was blocking my view. Plus, his son is in track, my daughter is in track, so, hell, let it go. There was something touching about the pride he felt in his son about to race. 

So, for once, I did not say anything. Just slid a few feet over to the left. Guess where he moved? A few feet over, right in front of me again. Again, for once, instead of being the politeness police, I just smiled, laughed to myself, leaned around him to the left and let it go.

(Yes, this is still me, your pal Lex)

Right about then, the problem was solved, the guy hurried down toward the track and out of my view. It felt good not to have said anything. Taking the high road was nice. For once. 

The gun for the last 100 meters heat goes off and with it comes a sudden loud, loud cheer. From both teams. All of the other athletes and coaches and volunteers are clapping and running from the infield to line up on the side of the track to watch this last heat of the 100 meters race. A chant goes up of;

“Riley, Riley, Riley…”

At the starting line in the middle of the track in lane four, among seven other oddly slow-moving competitors, in a green aluminum walker, was Riley. 

Riley was a severely physically challenged young man with thick glasses making it down the track as hard and as fast as he possibly could, dragging his feet on the track one shaky step at a time. If there were dry eyes in the place, they weren't mine. It was going to be close for him to make the whole 100 meters. 

This is the power of track. One second I am ready to get road-raged at a guy, the next I am tore-up from the floor up with love and emotion for Riley. 

Riley had all the athletes in the race helping him and encouraging him every inch. And, with their help and his sheer tenacity, Riley finally made it to the finish line.  

The place went absolutely bonkers. Riley got a huge hug and a kiss from his father. 

Guess who Riley’s proud, proud daddy was? You got it. Loud-cell-phone-talker-standing-right-in-front-of-me-guy.  

Bless his heart. 

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford started his re-election bid. He wants to take another crack at the office.

Courtney Love said Bruce Springsteen doesn’t belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Courtney said this while being inducted into the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Hall of Fame.

Portland is going to drain a 38 million gallon reservoir because a young vandal urinated in it. I tell you, this Justin Bieber is out of hand. 

This just in: Chelsea Clinton announced she is pregnant. Her mother, Hillary, is delighted, and her father, Bill, was so surprised he almost fell off of his intern. 

Joe Biden took his first “selfie” with President Obama; this just in: the Selfie is officially no longer cool.

This year Easter falls on the same day as the marijuana holiday, 4/20; this will mark the first time people will get so stoned they will actually figure out the connection between the resurrection of Christ and a giant bunny that delivers eggs.

The increased Chinese travelers are gaining a reputation as ugly tourists with reportedly loud, rude and obnoxious behavior. Upon hearing this, tourists from France said; “Mon Dieu, get your own gig.”

Kentucky-based KFC is offering wrist corsages with a piece of fried chicken on it. And for an extra $20, they will have a guy playing banjo on the porch when you pick up your cousin for the prom.

A pornographic picture was on US Airways’ twitter account. “If you want to send someone a sex pic, you do it as a direct message, not on twitter for everyone to see, like an idiot,” said Anthony Weiner.

With the Chinese economy booming, Chinese travelers are gaining a reputation as ugly tourists with reportedly loud, rude and obnoxious behavior. Upon hearing this, tourists from Texas said; “Hey, get your own gig. We’re working this side of the street.”

Last night I saw the rock documentary – or rockumentary – that may have cured my insatiable love of rock documentaries.

“Year of the Horse” featuring Neil Young and Crazy Horse live from rough, rough footage from 1976 and 1996 – nothing in between, just those two tours. The ’76 clips are filmed with a black and white home movie camera and that is also how I think the concert sound is recorded, from the weak-ass mike inside the camera.

There was obviously just one concert camera used and it was shot like a 7-Eleven security camera during the concerts. The only word that comes to mind to describe everything from how Crazy Horse dressed, looked, talked, sounded and played is scruffy if you can leave out the cute part of scruffy and just leave the frayed, slob-like annoying part.

And this is from somebody who really likes both Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

The footage is beyond grainy, the interviews are DMV-like boring and the songs are almost unending, unrecognizable Fish/Grateful Dead stoner jams. Neil Young, one of the greatest rock stars ever, a well-deserved legend, has to be the worst live guitar soloist in history. He picks one note and bangs on it . . . FOREVER.

The most annoying person by far is “Pancho” Sampedro, the rhythm/backup guitarist. He wore a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt the entire tour. As poor as the film quality is, you can actually see Sampedro’s Jimi-T-shirt get dirtier as the tour goes on. Every interview question “Pancho” answers with the same pissed-off question: “How can you get to know our band by asking a bunch of lame questions?”

There are only three off-stage moments, one is just watching the band mill around in their tiny, tiny hotel rooms watching TV and the other two are both nasty fights about somebody messing up a song's arrangement. One fight takes place in the backstage dressing room, the other on the tour bus.

About the only song I really recognized – and it went on about five minutes too long - was probably my least favorite Neil Young song “Like a Hurricane.” Even speeding up through the repetitive play, this hour and a half long documentary took a solid half an hour from my life I won’t get back.

There are two camps in the “How bands should play their music in concerts” argument. There is the raw/jam school started by a combination of pot, acid and The Grateful Dead and there is the “Reproduce the album” school of the Eagles and U2. In one documentary, the endlessly pompous cape-wearing nerd, David Crosby, dismissed the Eagles’ style as mechanical and boring by making the universal sign of boredom: stifling a yawn.

But the other philosophy is both self-indulgent and arrogant. The thought seems to be: “We are so talented we will create a unique and artistic experience each time we play.” Horse puckies. As great a musician as he is, I would not want to hear Eric Clapton try and make up a song on the spot.

Saw the great Stevie Winwood play a concert at Humphries on the Bay here in San Diego a couple of years ago. Without any prior warning in the advertising, the entire concert was all new material. And as well played as it was, it sucked. We called him Stevie When-Would, as in “When would he play a freaking song we knew?”

The artist who answers the “How a band should play in concert” best is, you got it, the Boss. Springsteen gives you that awesome raw passion feel of live, but makes you feel like you got your money’s worth from listening to his albums by taking the effort of recreating the albums in concert.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse clearly have no interest in recreating the albums in concert.

In an article I read about Neil Young recording the other-worldly album, “Harvest” the recording occurs in two places: the Sunset Blvd. studio and a Topanga Canyon barn. When mixing the album, Young was heard to yell to the producer over and over, “More barn” and the magical, earthy results speak for themselves.

Sadly, “The Year of the Horse” features too much of what collects on the floor of a barn.  

The only positive thing I can say about “Year of the Horse” is that it could be the perfect cure for a parent to show their child if they want to dissuade said child from being a touring rock musician.  If this documentary features the part of Crazy Horse’s tours that were interesting enough to film, there is no possible way to imagine how boring the rest of the tour was.

The other possible use of this mess would be to teach film students about the hazards of choosing to eschew production values in favor of “keeping it real.” After watching this badly shot home movie trumped up as a documentary, you can forever replace the words gritty, honest and pure with cheap, lazy and boring.

If the two extremes in under-producing or over-producing a rock concert is “The Year of the Horse” and Martin Scorsese’s slick Rolling Stones concert, “Shine a Light,” I will take “Shine a Light” every day of the week and twice on Sundays.