So Long Jimmy Pt. 2

The title is not only a homage to Jimmy Chamberlin, it's also a homage to that song by James Blunt, but that's not all! It's also a homage to the song I Am One Pt. 2, which up until a few days ago, everyone thought was a newly written version of the classic song I Am One, written for the 20th Anniversary shows, but I'll get to that later.

The drummer auditions were a couple of days back, in some unannounced location, to determine who would replace Jimmy Chamberlin, who has recently left The Smashing Pumpkins. *Insert side-rant*

I used to always wonder, if it was "The Smashing Pumpkins" or, "Smashing Pumpkins", but Billy cleared it up for me, and everyone else, when he and Jimmy appeared on that CBC show, hosted by that George S. dude. I think the show is called "This Hour" or something. I remember George's transition into introducing the band, and the way he did it, it was so unassuming and I wasn't even expecting The Smashing Pumpkins to be the featured guests, because he was talking about grunge, Nirvana, alternative, Radiohead, stuff like that, and I remember thinking, well, he has to at least mention Red Hot Chili Peppers, which he didn't, but I soon forgot once Billy and James showed up! (This was my pre-go to smashingpumpkins.com days) Yeah, so it's official, it's "The Smashing Pumpkins", according to Billy. So it bothered me alot, when the Pumpkins were on this new show called "The Chris Isaak Hour" and he kept calling them "Smashing Pumpkins" *side-rant over*

So, back to the drummer auditions, I remember reading how there were originally 600 applications, and then people on the o-board (official forums) kept raving about some dude named 1111phil11111 or something, I think I got the number of 1s incorrect, anyway, I took a listen, sure, it sounded good, but I don't know, chalk it up to bad audio or something, but it didn't sound very good. And I guess whoever did the screening, wasn't too impressed with him, because he didn't make the cut, and wasn't invited to the auditions on April 14, because the pumpkins site did an interview with him and he expressed exasperation that he wasn't getting any new information, so that means he dun make da cut. Then, they reported, that there were now well over 1000 applicants. And there were many people registering on the o-board, and creating threads asking where the auditions were going to be held, because they had heard no additional information.

There was also this pretty peculiar thread, where the guy said, how he already bought the ticket to LA and was already staying at a friends house, and how he always wanted to do this (I don't know about you, but no shit he'd like to do this, if Billy said, "George, come to LA and be my bitch for a year, I won't pay you or anything, but you get to chill with me 7-8pm on Sundays, every other week, I'd for sure do it!) Anyway, the guy was saying, that he was there, and he wasn't going to stay if he wasn't going to get any more information on the process, so I quickly responded, in an effort to defend Billy, and up my post count secretly wishing I'd get flamed for my attitude, thus providing the venue and opportunity to retort and watch my post count sky rocket, but the logic isn't there, if you are already there, you paid for your ticket and you are already in LA, why don't you stay and see what happens? Like, it didn't make sense at all, cus according to the dude, he was about to just get up and go back to Denver or wherever he is from.

Tonight, there was a nice sneak attack on the smahsingpumpkins.com homepage, a sort of wrapup of the auditions, it said how they auditioned 12 people (out of 1000+!) and one was a friend of the current guitarist, who their band "The Lassie Foundation", I think I can come up with a better name than The Lassie Foundation, how about replace Lassie with a word that starts with a Pu and the rest stays about the same, but change the ie into a y, keeping the double s. The other person of note, was the drummer for.....

SYSTEM OF A DOWN!!!!

Yup, John Dolmayan of System of a Down auditioned for this, now this is strange, I'm guessing John Dolmayan doesn't know anyone close to Billy, cus had he come forward, like in early March with his interest to play with the Pumpkins, I don't think Billy would even have done this whole audition thing, because that's usually how it works, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers got Dave Grohl to cover drums for them, when Stan Lynch was going through his initial stages of menopause, and Tom Petty would eventually move on to use Ringo Starr on his solo album, so the industry ties are there and that's what usually prevails, so it's sort of a shock to see this happen the way it is. Not to compare apples and oranges, or as Billy likes to spell it, Appels + Oranjes.

BUT...

SOAD do seem to have quite the following, and judging by their album sales, in 12 years, they have sold around 20 million albums worldwide, maybe cus the whole band is like Lebanese or something and the great people of Lebanon are supporting their home grown.....
were you expecting me to say terrorist - muscians, but from figures that I have, the Pumpkins have sold around 18.5 million albums in the US, though they celebrated their 20th anniversary last year, technically, their first album came out in 1991, and they were broken up from 2000-2006 and Zeitgeist came out in 2007, so really, they've only been around for 11 years, but that's me playing fast and loose with the rules and the RIAA.

So here's to John, maybe you'll make the cut, going from a really popular band to another really popular band, maybe that dude from the Pv$$y Foundation will make it instead, or maybe that 1111phil111 dude will be douche enough to bitch about it and Billy gives him the job just cus he wants to show phil how much he sucks, who knows.

Now, onto my reference to the I Am One Pt. 2 song, recently, Smashing Pumpkins archivest, Zachary Quinto (someone I think on netphoria called him a rat bastard, and I don't know why they did that, but I like the name and it's stuck to Quinto, in my regards), so, rat bastard Quinto shocked the mailing list when he said I Am One Pt. 2 is actually from 1989, oh snap, oh no he didn't!

But yeah, that's what happened, and I hope he knows what he's doing in the Pumpkins archives, cus like, I will pay to just look at that thing, it must be like, the holy grail.

Toronto Blue Jays?!?

Holy Crap! During the off season and during spring training, I was way down on the Jays because I perceived them to be at one of their lowest of lows in a very long time. With the exodus of AJ Burnett, BJ Ryan sucking balls, Sean Marcum and Dustin McGowan out (how typical of pitchers to do that), I had very little faith left in the team, and with hitting as bad as last season (supposedly) I thought that this year would be a struggle to fight to be not-last place in the highly competitive American League East division. But boy was I wrong! It turns out the hype around Travis Snider and Adam Lind were pretty accurate, as I've seen both play and boy, they sure can hit! I remember reading this one blog analyzing OPS, slugging and other hitting stats, claiming that with the arrival of long-time manager Cito Gaston, that the Jays had improved significantly in hitting over the team that John Gibbons had managed. And yeah, I can see the difference, though this might just be the effects of other teams pitching not up to regular season par, since the Jays were hitting collectively around .233 in spring training, and that isn't a very good batting average, so I don't know, but as of right now, I'm sold on this team, and its players, batters like Marco Scutaro, Scott Rolen, Kevin Millar, Adam Lind, Aaron Hill have been so fun to watch, and so far I've seen the whole rotation pitch once, and they're all really good, I was impressed with the rookie pitchers Ricky Romero and Scott Ritchmond, and Doc was as excellent as ever.

So, keep up the good play, and watching how the Yankees are not doing so great even with their new cash-infusion of talent (AJ Burnett among that cash crop), the Jays might have a chance! They finished last year with a record of 86-76, and they were 11 games out of the division lead, it's not that much of a stretch to see this new hitting behemoth of a team squeeze out another 10 wins and they might just come out on top!

Jays record: 4-1

Review: Inkheart

If this blog site would allow me emoticons, and Roger Ebert had theoretically not trademarked his two thumbs review system, I would give this movie two very big thumbs down (N) (N)!!!!
Maybe I was cranky because I was tired, but this was one really bad movie, Brandon Fraser was disappointing, he was sorta acting like a stick, and that little girl in the movie must be down-syndromed or retarded, cus there were times where I was going, please, what are you doing? Such as blurting out Toto's name and revealing to the bad dudes that she could also read shit out of books, or when she gave away to the bad guys that the chick caught in the net was her mom. And there were some serious reality checks needed for the people in this movie, such as this dude named Dustfingers, who keeps on like, double-crossing or screwing over George of the Jungle and his downed daughter, like come on man, if I were George I would have abandoned his ass.

Overall Plot:

George and downed girl searching for books, downed girl has no idea why and bitches about it, does not follow apeman's instructions and some shit happens.

They go to downed girl's great aunt's house, who is played by the Queen. She seems mean, and really weird, like mentally crazy messed.

That dude previously mentioned who will screw over apeman and famjam, does so, the bad people show up. Soon apeman's powers are revealed, we see crazy shit like a unicorn, minotaur, and other fantasmagorical creatures.

There's this really babe chick who can't talk, turns out she's apeman's wifey. Screwjob finds out lets her escape but doesn't actively help to reunite her with her family, and even though he was supposed to help her escape, he unlocks her chains but when she gets stuck under a crumbling building or something, he just leaves her there, like what?

More shit happens, they bring along some thieving dude from Ali Babba or Alladin or something. They go find the author, author gives them manuscript, downed girl finds out she can read too, the Queen bails on them, author backstabs too, everyone's back at the bad dude's castle.

More shit happens, nothing really exciting, turns out the top bad dude kept a copy of that book with him so he could bring some dude named the shadow from the book.

The girl reads, and her pappy had a plan to screw the whole thing up, but downed girl almost f'ed everything up cus she started to read, which I will give her, she had no choice but to, but she read way to fast, like come on, let's not get too excited here downed girl.

Greedy author writes another passage downed girl reads it and all the bad dudes disappear and the castle was lit on fire by Ali Babba and screw-job.

Basically the end.

So Long Jimmy

I'm usually a very frequent visitor to the smashingpumpkins.com site, but I haven't been to since March 20 Friday afternoon. I go on that site today, and guess what, in my absence from visiting the site, some legit news actually happened:

THE SMASHING PUMPKINS' BILLY CORGAN ANNOUNCES THE DEPARTURE OF JIMMY CHAMBERLIN FROM THE GROUP

CORGAN SET TO HEAD INTO THE STUDIO TO CREATE NEW SMASHING PUMPKINS MUSIC

The SMASHING PUMPKINS' guitarist, singer, songwriter and founding member Billy Corgan has announced that drummer Jimmy Chamberlin has left the group. Chamberlin joined the band Corgan founded in Chicago in 1988 and played on all their albums except Adore (1998). Corgan will continue to write and record as SMASHING PUMPKINS with plans to head into the studio this spring.
___

The only good piece of news in this blurb is, that Billy plans on releasing more music, hopefully in album format *fingers crossed*. Ever since he said they're done with albums, I was sorta weird-ish about it all. Now what makes me wonder is, it's been a couple of days now, how come there are no new developments? Like, how about the reason why?!? Man, I'm pretty peeved, but at least Billy is doing what he does best, he's soldiering on, and I've always sorta expected this day to come, where Jimmy won't be by his side anymore, just because some of the stuff that Billy says are pretty wonky. At least they aren't going on hiatus, like my other favourite band (Red Hot Chili Peppers I'm talking about you!)

So now when Billy and Jimmy's appear on the Chris Isaak Hour in a pre-taped episode, it's going to be pretty weird, since this was taped back in November of 2008, man will they even show this episode anymore?

Another note of interest, Jimmy's other band, which is aptly named The Jimmy Chamberlain Complex, which has been on hiatus ever since the Pumpkins got back together, there seems to be a test post on their new blog and apparently, JCC just registered for a twitter account, so who knows if the recent activities of JCC are connected to JC leaving SP.

Oh and please, no Kenny Aronoff, that creepy guy with the goggles who replaced Jimmy back on the Adore tour. Wooo, how about Chad Smith from the Peppers? That would be a good way for me to lay back on the Peppers need to get their sh!t together and get back together.

Oh and, where the hell is the media on all of this? Like seriously, are the Smashing Pumpkins so insignificant and or by-gone that something of this magnitude isn't even news-worthy? Or is it because there is a significant amount of information missing from that short blurb that was posted on the Pumpkins website?

Oh and Billy, if you are reading this, or someone from Irving Azoff Management, I played the drums in grade 5 music class, it was a mixed class, grade 5/6 so I'm better than a drummer from a class of straight up grade 5s, because there were grade 6s in that class too. Okay, sweet deal.

The Fogh is Lifting

Does this name ring a bell? Jaap de Hoop Scheffer? Nope? Didn't think so. Though, that man fills a pretty important position, the Secretary General of NATO. And apparently he's leaving that post soon. And the person that seems to be the favourite to replace him is Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. However, Defence Minister Peter Mackay seems to be in the mix too. Now I know at least one person who would root for Mackay to take the position, drumroll please.....
Elizabeth May! See, she's already committed to running again in Mackay's riding of Central Nova, and with Iggy already committing a Liberal candidate in the next election there, her chances of coming out on top are very slim. So if Mackay leaves and goes to Europe, or wherever NATO is headquartered at, the riding will be Mackay-clan free, which hasn't been the case in a good decade plus. And speaking of Iggy, he was in the news twice today, once for phone calling Brian Mulroney cus it's his b-day and another is that Iggy and top Liberals are meeting in their Quebec provincial lair discussing party tactics for an upcoming election if that happens.

Get the Hell outta hur Bill

Bill, Bill, Bill, why oh why are you still sticking around? I'm of course not talking about Bill Clinton, but rather another Bill, this Bill in fact worked for Bill Clinton, then backstabbed Hillary and joined the Barack bandwagon and then was rewarded for his Judas Iscariot tendencies with a plush job at the Commerce Department, which is way better than being the top dawg watching over a state named after the country that Texas is so deftly trying to protect itself against and then he had to give that plush cozy job up because he was under investigation by the Federal Bureuau of Investigation. Ding ding ding, we have a winner! I'm talking about Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico. He's back in the headlines, well at least at cnn.com. He's signing into law, putting a stop to death sentences in his state. In what was once a pasttime for the whole family, is now something that is apparently to be ashamed of. Though I cannot claim to support the death sentence just because of my fear of incompetance by those working for the system, I'm just sorta peeved that this man has not had the decency to step down.

Not so Chipper are we?

I've followed this edition of the World Baseball Classic pretty much from start and to the anticipated finish. And one thing is for sure, it's sorta on the drawn out side of things, like please. But today I read what a certain someone who plays 3rd Base on the Atlanta Braves and Team USA said. He was like, we had to stay a week in Toronto to play 3 games, and it ain't Las Vegas that's for sure. Well Chipper Jones, I'm calling you out, it's not like Hotlanta is anything like Las Vegas either, so STFU! Oh and don't get injured please, I need you in my fantasy pool.