“Toyota Yaris Ad Pulled After Sexism Complaints (VIDEO)”:

The online ad, entitled “Clean Getaways,” is for the Toyota Yaris, a small car mainly sold to young women, according to the TheAge.com. The video, which is full of sexual innuendos and suggestive double entendres, begins with a young man arriving to pick up his date and telling the girl’s father at the door, “I’m here to take Jennifer’s virginity out tonight.” From there the young man reels off such lines as “I hope I haven’t come too prematurely,” “it has traction control for when it gets a bit slippery and wet,” and “I’ll have her on her back by 11, I promise.”

The ad was created as part of the “Clever Film Comp,” a short-film competition organized in part by Toyota. Not long after the ad became the winner of the online contest, the competition’s Facebook page was flooded with outraged comments from users, the London Times reports.

One entry on the competition’s Facebook page said, according to the Telegraph:

“I have written and lodged a formal complaint with Toyota’s Australian head office regarding this specific competition entry/winner. I would encourage those who feel the same to also write formal complaints to Toyota. This is 2009! Women should not have to be dealing with this vulgar objectification.”

The charge that the ad made light of incest seems to stem from a line in which the father tells the young man, in reference to his daughter, “She can take a good pounding in any direction.”

Is there really such a thing as a trailer for a trailer? Leave it to Bioware to bring us one:

I for one am excited. Though I fear that Martin Sheen will be phoning it in.

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We are half-way through the TV season – most shows just went on their winter break. Come, join me on a ramble about the state 2009-2010 TV season.

Well, at least for the shows I watch.

The Office
This has been a wildly uneven season – perhaps  more uneven than season five (though I would argue, after watching the season on DVD that season five holds up better in one go). There have been some very good,  perhaps even great, – episodes like “Gossip” and “Murder” – and the writers handled the wedding of Jim and Pam as well as can be expected but much of this season has fell flat. “Scott’s Tots” was one of the worst episodes they have come up with – the show has always walked a fine line between cruelty and comedy and in that episode they really, really crossed the line. The “Dunder Mifflin going out of business” arc seemed to go nowhere and lacked tension, remarkably enough. It also seems that the writer’s are backpedaling on some of the character growth in previous seasons – namely with Dwight. Dwight had grown some soft edges over the course of the fourth and fifth seasons and really started to grow as a character – he basically became less of a dick. That is all gone now and very disappointing and annoying. It is clear that the writers didn’t know where to take the character anymore so they went backwards. This is not saw that the season has been bad – there a lot of great things about The Office. The writers have been using Ed Helms to great effect this season and thus the Andy/Erin romance plot is easily the thing to look forward to in each episode. The story of Jim and Pam remains as compelling as ever. But it sometimes seems that The Office is coasting on the strength of its great characters and not pushing itself enough.

30 Rock
My love for this show has been noted before. Alyssa Rosenberg believes that this season of 30 Rock has been weak. I have to disagree – not that there haven’t been problems. The plotting has been really weak this season and much of the supporting cast has been shunted aside – there are streaks of episodes where we barely see any of Jenna or Pete. This is a trend continuing from season three. And, yes, jokes about how “ugly” Tina Fey are laughable – not in the good way. Yet despite that this has been a strong season. First and foremost Alec Baldwin has brought his A game. He has delievered the sides and one liners – “Weird…in a good way. Like going to the gym drunk”- Fey and her writers have fed him each episode with great aplomb. Baldwin’s characterization of Jack has perfectly walks the line between ironic, wry detachment and honest emotion – as episodes like “Dealbreakers Talk Show No. 0001″ and “Secret Santa” show. Tracy Morgan has also been great this season. How Morgan is able to deliever lines like “Why don’t Catholics eat meat on Fridays? I’ll tell you why: it’s because the Pope owns Long John Silver’s” in a way that makes you both laugh and take him serious is beyond me. But he does and really makes Tracey Jordan work as a character and a source of humor. 30 Rock is easily the best comedy on TV at the moment and that’s a crown I don’t think it’ll lose.

House
Season six had tough shoes to fill since season five was (mostly) brilliant – the final arc of episodes was truly heartrending. To to be honest this season hasn’t lived up to that legacy and has shown both the strengths and weaknesses of House. The season premier was truly ridiculous and sappy – when you are too sappy for me you know there’s trouble – and would have been unwatchable but for Hugh Laurie’s fantastic performance (as always). But what the ridiculous premier gave us was “healthy” House. House 2.0 is even more interesting, conflicted, and fucked up than “sick” House – as episodes like “Teamwork” show. Hugh Laurie, Robert Sean Leonard, and Lisa Edelstein have been outstanding this season – no surprise there. But what season six of House has really brought out is how I could not give two shits and a fuck about the younger generation of doctors on this show. I constantly want to punch Foreman in the face, 13 is one of the more annoying and exploitative characters on TV (hot bisexual makeouts anybody?), and they had to screw up Chase’s character to make me even (very) remotely care about him. The only younger doctor I even sort of cared about was Cameron and part of me was very glad to see her go. Thus episodes that focus on the drama between Sexteen and Foreman or Chase murdering Darth Vader just fall flat. But really who watches House for its ER aspects? No, what caused me to download the first five season of this show on iTunes in a matter of weeks was Hugh Laurie. And in that department House is as excellent as ever.

How I Met Your Mother
My enjoyment How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) was always been contingent. There was so much for me to dislike about this show – its sexism, the weakness of the female characters, the laugh track, the jock-humor, the catch phrases, the contempt for veganism, the sexism, the fact that Ted is the most boring main character since the dude on Scrubs, etc. – I could go on. But HIMYM has some things going for it – namely Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel. I could seriously watch those two in pretty much anything.  My love for NPH and Segal along with the writers’ willingness to shake things up carried me through the show’s first four seasons. But season five has pretty much broke my what affection I had for this show. The fact that the writers’ aborted the Robin and Barney storyline – after three seasons of build up! – was truly stupid. But the worst is their treatment of Marshal and Lilly. What I always liked about this show is the fact that they were able to treat characters is a serious, committed relationship as neither a joke or fodder for drama. Oh sure HIMYM, being a comedy, made plenty of jokes at their expense – but you were always laugh with them and not at them. That changed in this season. Every arc in which they are featured this season has pretty much been at their expense – “Duel Citizenship” I’m looking at you. With Marshall and Lily’s treatment this season, the Barney/Robin clusterfuck, and Ted’s constant statements about how great the single life is (wasn’t this show supposed to be about him meeting his wife?) I am convinced that someone on the writing staff went through a bad divorce. And it has broke my (limited) affection for the show.

Castle
I will be the first to admit that this show is bad. Awful, really. It is also the poor man’s Bones. Plus it is a crime show and my days of obsessively watching Law & Order are long past. But I am, it must be said, a Nathan Fillion fanboy. I will watch him in pretty much anything no matter how stupid it is – and after watching “Vampire Weekend” you must admit that Castle is a stupid, stupid show. Here’s how Castle works: when Fillion is talking or doing something the show is interesting but whenever another character is doing anything the show gets bogged down in its own stupidity. At the end of every episode I wish that the two supporting detectives would just go away. But sadly, they don’t. The fact that the plotting on this show is god awful should go without saying. Really, I shouldn’t admit to watching this show but I have to disclose it – for honesty’s sake.

Venture Brothers
The fact that this season is superior to season three should go without saying. Really, it is difficult to quantify just how wonderful this season has been. It is almost impossible to pin down what’s been best. Was it the fact that they actually decided to do something with the boys? Was it that we got just the right amount of the Monarch? Or the introduction Sphinx? Or the kinder, gentler Dr. Venture? Is it Sgt. Hatred as Dr. Venture’s bodyguard? Is it the evolution of 24? In fact that the only thing to complain about was that we did not get enough of certain things. There wasn’t enough Brock, Pete White or Dr. O. And you know I was disappointed by a few things on the margins – I despise that they wrote off Trianna. But the worst thing about season four of the Venture Brothers was that the half-season finale made we want the second half now – the sanity of the creators be damned. There is no other show on TV quite like Venture Brothers and that’s what makes it easily the best show on TV.

Alright, that pretty much does it for what I watched this season, so far. In the New Year we get more Office, 30 Rock, and (maybe) Venture Brothers along with the return of Chuck and, most excitedly of all, Lost.

Feel free to disagree with my thoughts in the comments. What have you guys been watching while Blurred Productions has been gone?

Submitted without comment:

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There are a couple of reasons to begin with this video:

1.) This song has been haunting my thoughts for the last week.

2.) I believe it adequately sums up my relationship with this blog.

Maybe its the recent release of Dethklok’s “Dethalbum II,” but for whatever reason, music and murder (“Murmaider?”) have been on the brain recently. I have kind of a sick fascination with songs with violent lyrics that come from unexpected sources. If Cannibal Corpse pens a song about a shotgun to the face, we’d have to categorize it among their least imaginative in-song deaths. But if Elton John sang similarly gruesome lyrics set to the same sort of chords, rhythms, and melodies as “Crocodile Rock,” then color me intrigued.

Speaking of Elton John, and to get some sense of the type of dissonance I’m looking for in this list, take a listen to “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself.” It was an early contender, but I had to disqualify songs about suicide, since wow there are a lot of upbeat songs about suicide. No, for this list, it’s 100% “I-shot-a-man-in-Reno-just-to-watch-him-die” murder.

Keep in mind that the following list is in no particular order.

The Beatles — Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

The "nice one" has the decapitated head of a baby in his lap.

The individual personalities of the Beatles’ are usually summed up in one or two words, i.e., Paul was the “nice” one. But to McCartney’s credit, he knew how to subvert this label. Take “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” which must be some kind of sick joke. If you don’t understand English, all you’d hear is a bouncing beat, an anvil used for percussion, and high-pitched background vocals echoing certain lines. If you do understand English, and I”m assuming you do otherwise you probably wouldn’t have made it this far, you hear a song about murder-happy Maxwell breaking the skulls of his girlfriend, teacher, and judge. In the case of the judge, it seems like the bailiff really dropped the ball in letting Maxwell carry his weapon of choice into the courtroom.

Warren Zevon — Excitable Boy

This late 70’s rock song is catchier than it has an right to be, especially since the lyrics sound straight out of the pages of “American Psycho.” The titular character lives in a world where no one pays any mind to the various terrible things he does.

He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom
Excitable boy, they all said
And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home

And that’s it. No third act redemption arc in this song. The last thing the excitable boy does is dig up Suzie and build a cage with her bones. Guitar solo!

This issue of Rolling Stone has Bob Marley on the cover and articles praising Jimmy Page and the Beach Boys. The October 2009 issue has Megan Fox on the cover and articles praising Mariah Carey, John Mayer, and Paramore. Sigh.

Bob Marley & The Wailers — I Shot the Sheriff

Just to prove that sometimes our cold-blooded killers can take responsibility for their actions, the narrator of this song insists that if he is to be punished, that it only be for the crimes he actually committed. Not exactly an innocent victim either, since the sheriff drew his pistol first and apparently just had terrible aim. Reggae is such feel-good music that I had to include it on the list. Obviously there is a social justice theme underneath the main story, but it’s sometimes easy to forget that when listening to one of the many, many lesser cover versions. (Not knocking your take on it, Clapton.)

The Clash — Wrong ‘Em Boyo

Like reggae, ska can effectively mask some brutal lyrics with a few joyful upstrokes on guitar and a horn section. In “Wrong ‘Em Boyo,” a disagreement over a dice game between Billy Boy and Stagger Lee ends with Billy shot to death. Stagger Lee was a real-life murderer who’s become an urban legend with quite a few songs detailing his mostly fictional exploits. The funny thing about the Clash version, a cover of a reggae song by a little-known group called the Rulers, is how little focus the murder gets. The song’s hook is “Don’t you know it is wrong/To cheat a trying man.” Shooting a man dead is one thing, but to “lie, steal, cheat, and deceit/In such a small, small game” is unforgivable.

The Misfits — Last Caress

The Misfits are pretty much synonymous with tongue-in-cheek carnage, so I couldn’t leave them off the list. Equal parts Ramones-like song structure and casual depictions of nightmarish imagery. “Last Caress” is especially murderiffic though, as this song’s narrator happily confesses that he both killed your baby and raped your mother, delivered in the same spirit as the Ramones singing “Hi-Ho! Let’s go!”

Johnny Cash — Delia’s Gone

Pictured: Only available image of Johnny Cash smiling.

Johnny Cash, one the other hand, is one of the last artists you’d think of when you think “upbeat.” And true, “Delia’s Gone” is slow and acoustic, a far cry from the pop-like sound of most of the above  songs. But “Delia’s Gone” is also pretty far removed from the raw pain and bleak nihilism of “Folsom Prison Blues.”

First time I shot her I shot her in the side
Hard to watch her suffer
But with the second shot she died
Delia’s gone, one more round Delia’s gone

All appearances aside, the song ends up being bleakly funny, mostly from Cash’s dry delivery, but also from the little details of overkill (“grab my sub-machine”) and the narrator’s admission that his only options were murder or marriage. (“If I hadn’t shot poor Delia/I’d have her for my wife”) It’s the classic trope of love and hate being only a half-step apart, which leads us right to…

Guns N’ Roses — Used to Love Her

One of the most upbeat songs Gn’R ever wrote, “Used to Love Her” is a short and simple ballad with a rhythm you can clap along to and a killer (sorry) lyrical hook. What’s the hook? “I used to love her, but I had to kill her.”  Repeat with slight variations, which reveal that she’s buried out back, since the narrator knew he’d miss her. It would have been a great blues song if it wasn’t played so happily.

Scissor Sisters — I Can’t Decide

The Scissor Sisters are one of the only bands today that are willing to look at 70’s disco as a source of musical inspiration. They’re also a band that has no objections to the total dissonance of violent lyrics and cheery instrumentation. “I Can’t Decide” is even more dance/Euro-pop than most of the Sisters’ songs. The lyrics on the other hand… well, the titular decision is “whether you should live or die.” The narrator considers drowning and poisoning, but rules out burying alive because “you might crawl out with a knife/and kill me when I’m sleeping.”

For super dissonance power, during the chorus, over the lines “no wonder my heart feels dead inside/it’s cold and hard and petrified” we get a slide whistle!

Beck — Girl

I know, I know, I’m an idiot for even trying to pin down a meaning to a Beck song. But this song is so upbeat and everything from the midi intro to the slide guitar throughout makes this song just plain fun. Fun with lines like “I know I’m gonna make her die/Take her where her soul belongs.” That seems straight forward enough, but how about “Got a ticket for a midnight hanging/Throw a bullet from a freight train leaving”? Is the narrator shooting the girl and trying to run, but knows he’ll be caught and executed for his crime? Hell, I don’t know, this is Beck, I’m just taking a shot in the dark.

Science!

Jonathan Coulton — Still Alive

The song over the end credits of the brilliant video game Portal can certainly be enjoyed on its own, but it’s also tied to the plot, so I’ll try to be as spoiler free as possible. The song is a pleasant little pop tune about science and all the great things science can do… “for the people who are still alive.” While the murders aren’t mentioned explicitly, it’s made clear that testing on human subjects is how “the science gets done.” Over the course of the song, “the people who are still alive” go from being the benefactors of “science” to the subjects of future “research.” Sunrise, sunset.

I was aware of Muse for awhile, but didn’t start listening to most of their catalog until the end of college. The first few songs to catch my attention were some of the odder ones, namely “Apocalypse Please,” a densely layered arrangement of piano, guitars, high-pitch vocals, and high-speed drum fills. These weren’t the songs that made me a fan though. Songs like “Hyper Music,” “Plug In Baby,” or “Knights of Cydonia” had unbelievably catchy main riffs that weren’t terribly hard to play and sounded great. That’s what hooked me on the band — guitar-driven rock that was just plain fun to play. That was really all I ever wanted or expected from the band.

Muse has always been compared to Radiohead but that never seemed a fair comparison. There’s only three similarities as far as I can tell (1) both bands are British; (2) both have vocalists with a somewhat high, somewhat quavering tone; and (3) Muse’s “Falling Away With You,” which sounds so much like Radiohead, I often forget it isn’t Radiohead when my iPod is on shuffle. I always thought Muse had more in common with groups like Rush or Queen. Muse lacks Radiohead’s subtlety, but makes up for it with bombast and infectiously enjoyable ridiculousness. Radiohead wouldn’t write a song about an epic battle with a robotic space dragon, but for Queen or Muse, that’d be par for the course.

(See below the video for “Knights of Cydonia,” which includes ludicrously named kung fu techniques, Old West shoot-outs with lasers, A binkini-clad woman on a unicorn, and mustaches.)

It’s not a glam rock parody, a la The Darkness. It’s still being played straight, but with a wink to the audience, reminding us how much fun songs like “Princes of the Universe” were.

I think this is why the recently released The Resistance initially feels like a bit of a let-down. The music is more complicated, more self-serious, and less fun. The opening track, “The Uprising,” is the only one to sport the sort of boot-stomping rock energy I’d expect from Muse, but even that gets somewhat soiled by lyrics that appear to be influenced by singer/guitarist Matt Bellamy’s beliefs about a 9/11 conspiracy:

The album is experimental, I’ll give it that, but it jumps in so many directions at once, sometimes within the same song, that I don’t really know what to make of it. There’s “Undisclosed Desires,” where Muse suddenly sounds like Depeche Mode or New Order. There’s “Guiding Light,” which could easily have come from U2. There’s two piano ballads with awkward titles, the Queen-like “United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage)” and the poppy, half-French, self-referencing “I Belong to You [Mon Couer S'Ouvre a Ta Voix].” To top it all off, the album ends with a three-track 13-minute symphony called “Exogenesis,” which alternates (more seamlessly than you’d expect) between classical piano and arena rock.

The first listen will likely leave you thinking, “Well… that was weird.” I initially figured this review would boil down to little more than “I have no idea what to make of this.” Subsequent listens have cleared up my view a little, and ultimately the album’s excess has begun to grow on me. The video below is for “United States of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage).” The abrupt increase in volume at 1:18 sounded cheesy (and VERY reminiscent of Queen) during the first few listens, but somewhere in the review-writing process the cheesiness became endearing.

In many ways the overwritten songs have held up better. On my first listen, “Unnatural Selection” stood out as the only track that sounded as if it could’ve come from the old Muse: fast, heavy guitar rock with a very distinct riff. But there isn’t much depth to the song. The guitar work is too precise and too sterile, not the more distorted and more energetic sound the band has had in its early albums. “Unnatural Selection” was an early favorite, but I’ve been listening to it less and less. On the flipside, “I Belong to You [Mon Couer S'Ouvre a Ta Voix]” has grown on me because of it’s weirdness: an upbeat rhythm over minor chords and vocals that breaks into a classical-sounding middle section with French lyrics, then leads into a clarinet solo (not sure about this, this is my best guess on the instrument) before returning to its poppy beginning. Sound completely unpalatable doesn’t it? Somehow, it works, or maybe I’ve just listened to it so many times trying to figure it out what the hell it is that I’ve lost my mind and fallen for it.

Not sure how much I’ll return to this album, but I do have to give Muse credit. Since an unhealthy portion of the band’s American fanbase knows them as “the band that did that song in Twilight,” I was worried they’d release an album of “Supermassive Black Hole” soundalikes. They didn’t, thankfully, opting for instead for an hour of music that recklessly alternates between insane and excellent.

A thought experiment occurred to me after I heard news of another round of “tea parties.”

I thought, “hmm, these folks are so dead-set on not paying taxes, I say, let’s exempt them from taxes.”

How, you might ask, could we exempt these right-wing foot soldiers from their duty to pay for the services they enjoy? Simple: stop including them in these services.

But how could we exclude them effectively? I mean, no one would voluntarily give up the privilege of driving on the roads, public education —well, maybe some of these Bible-thumpers would be OK with that one — enjoying the protection of the armed services, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., etc.

So, then I thought, why not just gives these whiney, wannabe tax-cheats their own country, you know, the part of America that consistently votes Republican.

But what would this look like? I mean the last time part of the country seceded from the other part, didn’t that turn into a national disaster, and didn’t the conservative, backwards part of the country get thumped bad and forced to reintegrate? Who would comprise the Conservative States of America?

Well, we can lose these tea partiers right off. I mean, tea parties are for little girls, not gainfully employed adults with a sense of responsibility.

But who else do we lose? Creationists. Still, I’m thinking good riddance.

I can see test scores improving already. There will also be much less people with Confederate Flags, people telling me that “God hates fags,” and almost no pro-lifers.

Things are really looking up for the Blu-Nited States of the East and West Coast of America (and parts of the Midwest)

But, the real pain is going to be that we will lose large portions of our armed services, and a lot of rich people. This could be a blow to the B. S. E. W. C. of A. (and parts of the Midwest).

But maybe we’ll get by. I mean, there will be less federal and state government employees, who come to tax-funded jobs Monday through Friday, and then attend tax protests.

We’ll have achieved what conservatives wanted all along, and shrunken a bloated, ineffectual bureaucracy. Hmm, still looking up. Maybe we’d even be able to cut taxes, too.

So what will the Blu-Nited States look like? Well, we’ll have universal health care, most of the Hollywood elite, the “main stream news media,” artists, the gay, lesbian and transgendered members of the military, I would imagine pot would be legal, everything would be unionized, and women’s bodies would be their own business.

We’d also get D.C., so there would be no need to relocate the nation’s capital. Hmm, not too bad.

But who gets Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the other defense contractors? Well, they tend to go with the highest bidder, and since the Blu-Nited States would still have the nation’s richest states, I think we’d be OK there, too.

But what would life be like in the no-tax, no science, states’ rights CSA? The way I see it, kind of like the bastard child of Franco’s Spain and the Confederate States of America.

While roads, and other public works projects are completely unfunded, and all services are privatized, but staffed by a relatively incompetent pool of workers, the quality of life for the average person will comparable to a third world country.

The military will be a national one, paid for by levies upon the public. I say levies because they won’t call it taxes, even though it essentially will be.

The rich will live in great manses, guarded by private security forces to keep the roving bands of the poor, uneducated and drunk from entering. They will still fly Leer jets and secretly do business with liberal rich people in the Blu-Nited States, while chanting demagoguery lifted from the Dark Ages to the masses. There will be no roads after about two years from the strain of the SUVs driving on un-funded highways, but this will be fine because “we’ll make our own roads.”

If you get sick and can’t afford insurance, well, in the words of the now-immortal cyborg Dick Cheney, “fuck you.”

Broken bridges covered with ivy will stand as monuments to an ancient civilization of wonder at every road crossing the Mighty Mississippi.

The clergy and business interests will still collect money from the masses in the form of tithing, and a largely feudal state will emerge, the conservatives’ wet dream since Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre (look it up.)

Jobs will largely consist of the option to work at McDonalds, or the option to work at Wal-Mart.

And while the liberal-socialist paradise of the Blu-Nited States, with its relative affluence, top-class entertainment, sexual liberation and free-wheeling attitudes towards drugs will produce a contented culture, the repressive authoritarian culture of the Conservative States of America will require an outside enemy.

Without anyone to hate, the uneducated, superstitious and aggressive populace will turn against each other.

Churches will compete over who can be the most ridiculous in their rejection of fact and hatred for those who are different. Rednecks, without any gays, blacks, or really any brown people besides Ramesh Ponnuru, will turn against each other in a nation-wide orgy of bar fights.

Anarchy will erupt, even in the completely, monistically homogenous society, because, let’s face it, conservatives need something to hate in order to get out of bed in the morning. And who would be better than the queer-loving, Godless socialists next door.

A cry will rise from a jail cell somewhere in Alabama, a book detailing the struggle of the white working man to succeed despite a government that doesn’t tax him or question his supremacy will be written, tea parties thrown, brown shirts donned, and war will be declared against the Blu-Nited States, because the CSA needs “breathing room.”

And the overly-militarized CSA, despite its lack of innovation, will still have numerical superiority in the longest, bloodiest land war in history.

Rednecks with M-4s will mow down pot-addled college students, given a divine sanction by the Southern Baptist Convention. George Clooney’s head will adorn the pike of a small, toothless child wearing a shirt proclaiming “Lucky Devil.”

Eventually, Premier-for-Life Obama will have to nuke middle-America, dooming the remainder of us to a nuclear winter in socialist paradise.

So, go ahead and have your tea parties, bitch about the taxes you have to pay without reflecting on the services they provide for, and threaten secession. I mean, we Democrats may want a socialist paradise, but we’d still get the nukes in the divorce.

• One of the best parts about watching this trailer, just like when the trailer for Season 3 came out last year, is how a lot of the clips shown are even more amusing in no context whatsoever. (Like Dean’s “Hitler just needs someone to believe in him!”)
• Part of me is still a little concerned about how entertaining 21 will be without 24, but I do admire the balls it takes to kill off a character everybody loves.
• Anyone else kind of sick of Sgt. Hatred? I liked him better when he was a reoccurring off-screen joke, rather than an actual character with still, just one joke.

I’m weirdly not bothered by most accusations of musical plagiarism. I can appreciate the Chili Pepper’s “Dani California” and Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” on their own merits, in spite of the nearly identical chord progression and strum pattern of the verse. I had no real opinion in the whole Coldplay vs. Joe Satriani vs. Cat Stevens debacle, because hey, there a millions of musicians and billions of songs, and every artist is inspired by everything else he’s heard before. Riffs will repeat themselves.

Depending on how litigation happy the former members of The Jam are, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Weezer’s newest single get slapped with a lawsuit. Compare Weezer’s “If You Are Wondering If I Want You To” with The Jam’s “Town Called Malice.”

vs.

Disclaimer: As long as we’re talking about plagiarism, I should point out that this discovery was not my own. The similarities were pointed out to me in the comments on the UltimateGuitar.com news feed.