Anonymous Communist

I know that I am way late on this, but A) I have to however grudgingly give precedence to my kids’ needs and 2) I just can’t let this stupidity stand.

The Guardian recently asked several artists what they considered to be the most overrated record. Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips picked Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

Full disclosure: It is impossible for me to think objectively about this record. I was 16 years old when this record came out, and I fully cop to falling in love with it.

That said, Wayne Coyne has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. Instead of discussing the record on its own merits (you know, like if the music is good or not), he criticizes it because, through no fault of its own, it dares to have a lasting legacy:

(Y)ou don’t find yourself ever longing to listen to it, because there were — still are, in fact — so many mediocre bands that sound like it, that you’re constantly experiencing it.

Yes, Wayne, it’s the record’s fault that shit-smears like Third Eye Blind and Fallout Fall Out Boy exist. “Nevermind” swept away the the bloated corpse of 1980s cock rock, and in its place installed so-called “alternative rock” as the new mainstream paradigm. But what about the music?

He further criticizes what he calls the “sainthood of Kurt Cobain” as having a “pernicious influence”:

(It) overshadows the album: Kurt’s lyrics, his attitudinising and navel-gazing, were hard to separate from the band’s image.

Sorry, but if there is any band that has no room to criticize another for “navel-gazing,” it’s the Flaming Lips, whose pretentiously self-indulgent album “Zaireeka” was released on four discs meant to be played simultaneously on four CD players.

Besides, the Flaming Lips lost all credibility with me when they appeared on “Beverly Hills: 90210.” (Hey, it’s what teenagers watched in 1993. Sue me.) One might be tempted to defend their gig at The Peach Pit as ironic, but when David Silver asks, “Yo, is that tha Lipz?” while the group lip-syncs its way through “She Don’t Use Jelly,” it’s 12 kinds of corny.

Wayne Coyne should just save his energy for the ridiculous pink fuzzy bunny suits and his group’s pompous pseudo-art rock.

Attention parents: The RC2 Corp. is recalling various Thomas and Friends trains. Why, you ask?

Hazard: Surface paints on the recalled products contain lead. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects.

How is it, given that the use of lead-containing paint was banned in 1977, that thirty years later toys are being recalled for containing lead-based paint?

Whatever. Maybe the trains are made by the same company that poisoned the pet food several weeks ago.

I rounded up the engines under the recall that we had. The ones that I could find anyway. These things tend to get scattered about.

Absolutely ridiculous. At least 32 people (per CNN TV) are dead in what The Associated Press is calling the worst shooting incident in U.S. history, on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

I first learned of this via Dave and Thirty. Especially poignant is Hilton’s elegy to the victims.

Ah, guns. What a wonderful invention. They’re like cigarettes: When used properly, they’re deadly.

UPDATE 2:35 pm: Here’s some video via Yahoo that a Virginia Tech student took with his cellie. Audible are about two dozen gunshots, then near the end you hear an extremely loud gunshot, probably from a 12-gauge shotgun, then loud yelling. My guess is that’s the police killing the gunman. Try to ignore the commercial at the beginning.