***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

Photo from kidrock.nl.

So Kid Rock, the white trash kid from Detroit who has moments of being a white trash crooner in songs like “Picture,” angered a lot of his fans in Arkansas by playing in a blizzard February 9 in Little Rock.

Eight inches of snow fell on Little Rock during the week and kept roads closed and many fans frustrated that Rock had this “The show must go on” mentality. The fans voiced that frustration on his web site, kidrock.com.

Some fans accused Rock of being greedy in that he went on with the show simply for monetary gain and didn’t care if the fans had to risk their lives to get there.

Rock retaliated by writing on his site: “You bought tix to tonights show and can’t make it, YOU WILL BE GETTING A REFUND, STRAIGHT OUT OF MY POCKET. I’ve never ripped any of my fans off, EVER!!! I have also NEVER missed a show. I know there are people who drove here from Memphis and Oklahoma, been in there cars all day driving and dealing with this shitty weather, the same as me and my band have the WHOLE TOUR. You so called “fans” on my website bitchin and moanin and saying i’m greedy, can GO FUCK YOURSELVES, plain and simple. Throw out my cd’s and lose my number, I don’t want drama kings and queens like yall anywhere around myself, band, crew, family or my fans.” [sic]

Photo from KidRock.com.

On the day after the show, there was a photograph on KidRock.com of one of Rock’s tour trucks that jackknifed off the side of the road.

“Glad our driver Timmy is OK,” Rock wrote on his site. “Trust me when I say that I understand people’s frustrations with travel to see the shows; we are dealing with it too.”

Despite my aforementioned name-calling of Rock as being white trash, I don’t mind some of his music and me calling him that is just in reference to his style of dress, his look and the music he has generally played. I side with Rock in the Little Rock blizzard situation.

People have so much available to them now that they have become more selfish because of it. If this was a concert before the internet, there would be no comment posts for people to complain on.

The irony of people saying Rock that he doesn’t care about his fans is that his fans bought a ticket to see him perform on that date. He is going forward with that performance. No one says you have to go to the show. It is unusual that Little Rock should be hit by eight inches of snow, but it is winter time and when you buy a ticket for a show or anything for that matter, it’s not guaranteed the weather will cooperate.

Was Rock a little stupid for going ahead with the show? Maybe; after all, one of his trucks jackknifed and his thinking that he could beat the blizzard got the best of him. But then again, it’s stupid for people to get on a website and complain about something no one has any control over.

This goes beyond who Kid Rock’s real fans are; this goes to the realm of who the men and the boys are. The men would suck it up and go to that show or if they felt like they couldn’t make it, would have the decency not to complain about not making it. Well, you know what the boys did.

Front page image from zimbio.com.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

Photo from hkgfm.net.

Even though I kind of forgot about the White Stripes (they’ve been on hiatus the last couple years), I was disheartened to find out they broke up.

Yes, I know that music changes and time goes on, but this was a group that turned me on to that grungy, bluesy garage rock. The White Stripes was the first band of its kind that I listened to. The first time I heard the White Stripes it was 2003 with their hit “Seven Nation Army” and I never heard a song so captivating. That bass line tuned you in to a song that was rock, but had such an interesting fresh sound to it that it stood all on its own.

I was so young at that point – 16 years old and a junior in high school – and I hadn’t really listened to groups like Nirvana or the Strokes yet. I also don’t recall groups out there such as The Black Keys that have done well in more recent years.

I’ve listened to three Stripes albums in full – Elephant, Get Behind Me Satan and Icky Thump. The common thread on these albums is you’ll hear the raw power of Jack’s guitar combined with the loose cannon of Meg’s drumming. For a band that had only two musicians, they sounded like they had four or five.

Now much of the time what you’ll hear from the Stripes is grungy, dirty raw rock that has a blues undertone. But then there are those moments where Jack takes his guitar to more art rock caliber places, making white noise sounds, or Meg eases up on her drumming and Jack almost goes into a ballad like on “Jolene.” There are other times when the group would experiment with less serious rock and play a song like “Little Ghost,” that is more of a sing-along than a rock song.

So now that the Stripes have broken up, I have decided to compile a list of my all-time favorite White Stripes songs and why I chose them.

5) “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine” – This is a hidden gem off Elephant. Like many Stripes songs, its lyrics are simple and to the point. Most of what White sings is the chorus, “Girl, you have no faith in medicine,” but I like the idea that medicine is the theme and it is sung repetitively here. Medicine is so forced down our throats in this country and to me, Jack’s reinforcing that idea. The pace and guitar remind me of the Hives’ “Hate to Say I Told You So,” which gets my adrenaline going no matter what mood I’m in.

4) “Seven Nation Army” – I have heard this song a thousand times and still say that bass line is so intriguing. It takes you right into the song. Take it out and you don’t have half as good a song. I’ve heard other songs and bands with good bass, but there’s something about it here, combined with White’s voice that takes me into this song every time.

3) ”Jolene” – Although I have never listened to the De Stijl album in full, I’m glad to have listened to this song. This song shows the Stripes are more than just a raw rock band and can put out a ballad with the best of them. This is a song that I feel is as powerful as their more adrenaline pumping stuff because they successfully made the story of Jolene believable with White’s singing from the heart and Meg’s softening up on the drum kit.

2) “Little Cream Soda” – I originally didn’t like the Icky Thump album all that much when I used to listen to it, but I listened to it again for this article and found some new songs I really enjoyed. “Little Cream Soda,” with Jack’s powerful guitar and use of the repetitive lyrics “Oh Well” make this song a rush of emotion that doesn’t stop from start to finish.

1)”Icky Thump” – This is a perfect song to start off the Icky Thump album. It’s hardly anticlimactic, but rather starts the album on a roller coaster going downhill. Everything about this first song is characteristic White Stripes – it has the bluesy rock but is also filled in with what sounds like white noise from Jack’s guitar to give the song more of an art rock feel. This is my favorite Stripes song because while it’s filled with that bluesy dirty sound, it’s also unpredictable with Meg’s random cymbal crashes and Jack’s improvisational guitar work.

With that, I will miss the White Stripes, but can learn to fully appreciate Jack’s other groups such as The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, who are no longer in their infancy. Thank you White Stripes; it’s been a pleasure.

To see the full statement from The White Stripes, click here, or visit their website, www.whitestripes.com.

Front page photo from wallpapers-diq.com.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

Photo from cbsnews.com.

“Stanley, are you still a virgin after everything I did for you?”
“Yep.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yep.”

These were the last words said in the first episode of MTV’s new show Skins, which started this season.

After writing about Jersey Shore late last year, I thought American pop television reached a new low. That was before I saw Skins, which has now taken its place. Based on a nearly-identical British drama that debuted in 2007, it’s what you get when you take teenagers, sex and narcotics and put them in a blender. You get three things that should never be mixed in a TV show targeted at adolescents.

The main character in the first episode, Tony (played by James Newman), was concerned with getting his friend laid, so much that he said he couldn’t be friends with him anymore if he was still a virgin by the time he was 17. Tony coordinated with his friend Stanley (Daniel Flaherty) to pick up drugs and the woman who he would have sex with and indulge in drugs with at a party.

When Stanley went to pick the drugs up at the dealer’s house, he was met by two prostitutes. We see Stanley meet this drug dealer, who gives him four ounces of weed, valued at $900. The dealer allows him to walk away with the bag and pay him back later, with his balls as collateral. Later at the party, Stanley and this girl he’s supposed to hook up with don’t exactly hook up.

Instead, she overdoses on some pills and while they lay next to each other on a trampoline outside, she says to Stanley, “If we’re gonna do it, we better do it quick.” “Why?” Stanley asks. “Because I just took a bus load of pills.”

At least when I was in junior high, entering high school, the shows I recall from MTV were scandalous and funny. South Park was the Jersey Shore of its day perhaps in terms of popularity. Not to say it’s still not popular, but today it competes with altered-reality shows like Jersey Shore and Skins.

Photo from cbsnews.com.

If you’re going to send a message to a demographic—MTV’s is primarily younger people—you should do so in a very sensitive way that shows these kids that what is being shown is not how things are or should be. It’s obvious watching South Park, or older shows like Beavis and Butthead for instance, that even though the themes in these shows reflect reality, they are done so by poking fun at it.

While Beavis and Butthead would poke fun at the music videos of the 90s, Snooki and The Situation will try to tell you how to live the good life in the new millennium. While Cartman would scream “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!,” Stanley would wonder if the girl on the trampoline killed herself.

Granted, shows have been losing morals and values for years and MTV sort of sets the limbo bar in this category—how low can it go?—but how low should we? Junior high and high schoolers are at a very impressionable age, and it’s hard to educate students away from the lure of what they learn in pop culture. It’s up to us to help set good examples for the younger generation so they don’t think that the only thing that is important is finding drugs and having sex.

Front page photo from cbsnews.com.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

Photo from hogwild.com.

I was never a huge fan of the show American Idol, but the only thing that ever kept me somewhat interested was watching Simon Cowell.

Now that he’s gone, I figured I would give Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez a chance to see whether they rank up to my appreciation of Simon’s cut and dry judging approach. See, for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Simon would tell it like it was. If Simon didn’t think you had what it took, he wore it on his face or immediately vocalized it.

In a YouTube clip, Simon told one contestant “I think you just killed my favorite song of all time” and “You will never, ever, ever have a career in singing.” These weren’t unusual moments for Simon; but he would also give credit where credit was due. “Vocally, you are just head and shoulders above everyone else in your side of the competition right now,” Simon said in referring to Lee DeWyze last season when he made the Top 20. DeWyze went on to win last year’s Idol.

Tyler and especially Lopez do not have that confidence to tell contestants that they’re not what it takes, just yet anyway. Granted we are just in week one, but watching the three, Randy will have to be the rock this season that has the grounded voice of who is really talented and who is not.

If Lopez had her way, she would have sent everyone to Hollywood. One contestant from New Jersey was sent to Hollywood after being told no by the judges but then Lopez cracked when she started to cry and said yes. The other judges folded and well, she’s in Hollywood.

Her singing was okay, but do I think it was enough to warrant a trip to Hollywood? No, I don’t and they made the right decision in the first place. These are times when American Idol misses a rude tell-it-like-it-is judge like Simon who will show the contestant the door just by looking at her.

Photo from unrealityshout.com.

Is it some rule that every year American Idol hires on a judge that is overly soft? First it was Paula, who couldn’t say something negative to save her life; then it was Ellen who quit the show because she didn’t want to be mean. Now it’s J-Lo.

In the first episode after Lopez had to send someone home she said, “I want to go home.” Don’t the judges interview these people before they come on or is it that they purposely bring on soft-hearted people to add to the drama in the judging circle? Hmm, I think the later. Let’s pair Paula and Ellen with Simon and J-Lowith the lead singer of Aerosmith. It’s like putting together a cast for any other reality show – Survivor, Real World, etc.

Except Steven Tyler is not the rude judge that Simon was. He is kind of like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He’s a wild card. During the first episode, it wouldn’t be unusual for Tyler to let out Aerosmith-esq screams at random and mildly hit on some of his female fans. While this was somewhat entertaining, Tyler’s performance was more decisive than Lopez’s in that he could tell contestants what he thought was good and what wasn’t, but his personality is much nicer than Simon’s.

For example, a teenager came in to sing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and you could tell the judges weren’t going to allow this kid to go to Hollywood and stopped him before he got to the chorus. When the kid asked if he could sing the chorus, Tyler said he could.

So I think if there is a saving grace to this season it will be where will Tyler’s wild card personality go and how will he grow as a judge, but from what I saw so far, the judges are too weak and too indecisive to make American Idol worth watching for much longer.

Front page image from mamapop.com.

Photo from dailymail.co.uk.

By Kevin Kenealy
Staff Writer, Nightmare Fuel Provider

Imagine entering a class as a second grader eager to meet your teacher, only to find out that she is a robot. Sadly, this isn’t a bad TV show. This is South Korea in 2011.

A recent article in PC Magazine reveals that South Korean schools are testing 29 robots to teach English to elementary school children in the southeastern city of Daegu.

I imagine the introduction going something like this: “I’m your teacher class. My name is Engkey [name of the robots]. Never mind that I’m a 3.3 ft. tall white bowling ball with a TV screen at the top with an avatar face of a Caucasian woman. I’m just like any other teacher you’ve ever had before.”

The robots come pre-installed with software that includes songs and alphabet games. They can also read books, and for some reason, can dance along to music by bobbing its head and moving flipper-like arms.

While Engkey may be physically teaching the class, Engkey is controlled by English teachers in the Philippines who can actually see and hear the students – and if you say that sounds like the role of spies and not teachers, I would agree.

Education officials in South Korea said the robots might actually be more effective than human teachers. According to Kim Mi-Young, a Daegu city education office official, the robots may be upgraded and be brought on as remote instructors full-time. Yet she says this is not an attempt to replace human teachers.

Mi-Young went on to say, “The kids seemed to love it since the robots look, well, cute and interesting. But some adults have also expressed interest, saying they may feel less nervous talking to robots than a real person.”

Nice that she says they won’t replace human teachers. Let me just shine some light on what you said there Ms. Mi-Young; by adding robots full-time, you are in effect, replacing human teachers. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.

And how many people did you talk to when you said the kids loved it and the adults expressed interest? If an adult working in a school has an easier time talking to a robot that is controlled by strange people in the Philippines, than that says a lot about the social skills about the adults in that school.

Photo from technabob.com.

This idea is a ridiculous one, but unfortunately is one that I wouldn’t doubt would make its way to the U.S. The way we cut education funding and lay off our teachers here, it would be a convenient fix to hiring a person to do a robot’s job.

We all want our children to grow up the same anyway. We want them to filter through No Child Let Behind, stress about the SAT and ACT, go to college to get a degree and then when we ask them what they went to school for, they’ll spit back what their major is and how that will help them get a job.

Robot teachers would be the perfect next step to filtering out an assembly line of students who all think alike. Hopefully a rebellious student acts out and pushes the robot teacher over so the students will find something familiar to their childhood toys: “Made in South Korea” or “Made in Taiwan.”

Wake up South Korea! Wake up United States! Watch Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” video and you’ll find it’s not too far from the truth. And in case that day does come with robot teachers in U.S. classrooms, it’s up to the students to go Office Space on those silly flipper-like arm dancing, avatar faced excuses for education.

Front page photo from dailymail.co.uk.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

I was a naive 15 year old in 2001, and I guess you could say the United States was a little more naive, prior to 9/11. It’s been a short 10 years, but a lot has happened. As we begin 2011, I’m going to attempt to go into all the pop culture events that changed my life over the past 10 years. What a long, strange trip it’s been…

2001
It’s hard for me to recall pop culture events from 2001, because my memory is so clouded from the September 11 attacks. There were some quality movies, though.

1)      Pearl Harbor
2)      Moulin Rouge!
3)      A Beautiful Mind — I thought Beautiful Mind deserved Best Picture at the Oscars, and thought Russell Crowe delivered just as good a performance here as he did in Gladiator.
4)      Jurassic Park III — This movie never should have been made and there’s probably a reason Spielberg decided not to direct it.
5)      Ocean’s Eleven – This was just a cool movie – an all star cast ready to do some deviant behavior.
6)      Shrek
7)      Monsters Inc.
8)      The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

No disrespect to Lord of the Rings, but I still say A Beautiful Mind deserved Best Picture.

I kind of faded away from pop music that year. Creed was in my eardrums, but I remember listening to a lot of classic rock. I remember my friend putting on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” in the car. I asked him what song it was and he was astonished I didn’t know. I was sort of hooked to the music of yesteryear for a while after that.

2002
I watched part of 8 Mile yesterday, and there’s part of that movie that I still carry with me: the song “Lose Yourself.” I think there’s a lot to say about yourself in that song. I saw that movie in ’02 and that song woke me up to this idea that I can do anything and be anything and no one is going to stand in my way. The song talks about opportunity but has an edge to it. Eminem is singing that he’s been through a lot of hard times and he’s going to go through more to get to where he wants. So that movie and that song definitely helped bring me to where I am today.

I was turned on to movies about superheroes that year too, as the first Spider-Man came out and just thought “Man, these superheroes aren’t just for little kids but they’re relatable.” I went on to watch the rest of the Spiderman movies, the Batman movies and have grown to even appreciate a few comics.

I also recall I had a strange crush on Avril Lavigne, but who didn’t when they saw her singing “Complicated?” It wasn’t just me, my whole baseball team would rock out to her.

2003
I can’t recall much from 2003. I never got into the Harry Potter series or the Dan Brown books (Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code), but it was around this time I started to delve into classic novels, and really gained a liking for George Orwell. If anything really made a huge impact on me in popular culture then in 2003, it was hearing that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed copyright lawsuits against internet users for trading songs online. I used to be a Napster user in junior high when it was okay to do those things, and then when I heard about this, I knew it wasn’t okay to pick that back up again.

2004
This was an instrumental year because I started to find more of my humor and started to branch out of my comfortable classic rock music tastes. One of my favorite movies that year was Napoleon Dynamite, which perfectly mirrors my sense of humor in that it’s quirky, awkward and corny. It was in this movie that Napoleon made it funny to be those things, and even though I developed this in high school, and it went to light speed in college. My musical tastes started to encompass more music that year as well as I remember listening to the Strokes album Room on Fire, along with more contemporary bands such as The Redwalls, who are a Beatles-sounding band. So I had this four-year sort of hiatus from pop music and then made my way back to it.

2005
The White Sox winning the World Series will always have a special place in my heart, and the song “Don’t Stop Believin’” had new meaning to me. Aside from this memorable experience, I saw some great movies in 2005:

Image from swtor.

1) Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
2) Crash
3) Walk the Line
4) Hitch
5) Batman Begins
6) King Kong

I put Star Wars at the top of the list because although the rest of these films are good, this was the only Star Wars film I ever saw in theaters so it has a special place in my heart. I also feel it is one of the better Star Wars films. So just the thrill of seeing Star Wars on the big screen, it being the last one and it being a really good movie, gave it a special place in my heart.

I also attended my first concert festival this year at Farm Aid, and can still recall Woody Nelson forgetting the words to “The Star Spangled Banner,” and Dave Matthews singing: “One day ya’ll, the world will be nothin’ but flowers.” That’s special.

My musical tastes widened again to include the likes of heavy and progressive metal. I enjoyed bands such as Between the Buried and Me this year, where I never would have believed I would have appreciated them before.

2006
This year was a transition between community college and the university at Eastern Illinois University. Ever since Napoleon Dynamite, I noticed I was attracted to more films with quirky characters that made light of family structures. So Little Miss Sunshine was a perfect look at this. The film taught me that it’s okay to laugh at family dysfunction and that we shouldn’t conform to societal norms.

Image from poptart.co.uk.

2007
In ’07 The Simpsons Movie finally came; for a few years there was talk that “They should just make a movie.” When I saw it, it had a similar impression on me as the Star Wars film, except it wasn’t as good a movie as Star Wars. It has its funny parts, but the plot doesn’t flow well together in a feature length movie as it does in a shorter episode. Nonetheless, I will never forget seeing The Simpsons Movie in theaters. There were only a few popular songs that year that I actually cared for. “Cupid’s Chokehold” by Gym Class Heroes was one and “Stronger” by Kanye West was another. I originally didn’t mind “Hey There Delilah,” but then everyone played it everywhere and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. I ended up buying Kanye West’s Graduation album that year, which I didn’t mind, but would later give up on West when I became turned off by his ego.

2008
This year is memorable because of the TV show LOST. Even though the show started in 2004, I began watching it in ’08. I told the person who handed it to me that I don’t really watch TV shows, but she insisted and from the first episode came the second. Before I knew it, I was lost in LOST. My roommate at EIU left for a party one night at around 10 p.m. and asked if I wanted to go. I said, “No, I’m kind of tired. I’m just going to watch this last episode of Lost and go to sleep.” He came in real late (or early) around 3 or 4 in the morning and I was still watching LOST. I really appreciated the suspenseful writing and character profiles on the show, and the theme of survival present throughout the series. As opposed to 2007, 2008 brought a delightfully addicting and play heavy song “Paper Planes.” I never heard a voice like I heard from M.I.A. and was instantly tuned in.

2009
This was an introduction to 3D movies with Avatar, a movie I didn’t really care for all that much actually. While everyone was so impressed with the film, I saw it as sort of a ridiculous story that was slapped together and ‘saved’ with 3D. My favorite part in this movie is when birds are attacking the huge military machines. It’s like the writers came to a part in the script and decided: “Okay how are we going to beat these guys? Spears aren’t going to bring them down. But we have these big birds. Bingo!”

The Hangover was my favorite movie of the year for reasons largely in thanks to Zach Galifianakis. With stars like Jim Carrey fading out of comedic roles slowly, it’s refreshing to see new blood and Galifianakis was simply hilarious. I attended a modern day Woodstock in ’09 called Rothbury Music Fest in Rothbury, MI, where I saw the likes of Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and everything else that comes with a modern day Woodstock.

2010
I think where pop culture affected me most in 2010 was with Toy Story 3, Lady Gaga, John Lennon and the Pitchfork Music Festival. Toy Story 3 brought me back to my childhood, but for the sake of this column in 2000 I was in transition of childhood and adulthood. Toy Story 3 really made me remember those days when I was letting go of that childhood skin and growing into a more adult skin and looking back over the last ten years I really grew into that skin.

I wrote about Lady Gaga once in this column, where I basically said I was not a fan of hers. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but I think it’s simple to say that my roots are in rock music with the likes of Creed, and Lady Gaga is not anything like Creed. It’s very true that I appreciate other artists and other types of music, but I’ve noticed that 2010 appears to have a heavier emphasis on dance music than in 2000. There seems to be this takeover with club music and techno not just with Lady Gaga but with the likes of artists like DeadMau5 who, to me are the furthest thing from my roots.

John Lennon meant a lot to me this year, because it was the 30^th anniversary of his death and it made me take another look at his life and his death. I gained a new appreciation for a man I admire. Finally, I attended Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park this summer in Chicago where I got a taste of indie bands and this impacted me in that I was able to gain new appreciation for all these new bands that perhaps go unheard of by the mainstream.

That’s my thesis on the events that have affected me in the last decade. But now the question is: What are the events that have affected you?

Front page image from rottentomatoes.com.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

I just watched Home Alone 2: Lost in New York again the other day and noticed something I never noticed before. At the end of the movie, Kevin is at Rockefeller Center in front of the New York City Christmas tree and appears to be praying to the tree.

God’s name is not used, but he is in some sort of prayer conversation. I haven’t talked about religion at all in any of my columns, but I think ‘tis the season to do so. I recently finished a Biblical Perspectives class at Trinity Christian College in suburban Chicago, and the class showed me how to look at the world with more of a Christian worldview.

This means that, in large part, many things in our world are packaged in a secular verbiage. Take the phrase “natural resources” for example. If you were looking at the phrase “natural resources” from a Christian worldview, you would call natural resources something like “creational gifts.”

This column I’m writing I no way intend to force Christianity down your throat or impose a belief upon you. I merely find it fascinating how there is much in our world that I believe has helped tempt us away from our religious beliefs and find them not as important as they maybe should be.

Take Home Alone 2, which was released in 1992. From my perspective this country has become increasingly paranoid about offending the salad bowl (multicultural) population, more so than it is about spreading values. We do a good job of celebrating diversity, but don’t celebrate our individual faiths in society. We are too scared to celebrate an individual faith because one group of people may not be represented. The New Found Glory song “Holiday” does a good job of looking at this by singing about Hanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa all in the same song.

But Home Alone 2 is a movie exclusively about Christmas, and in the scene where Kevin is praying, we don’t hear God’s name but we see Kevin praying to a Christmas tree. Why? Because it’s probably safer not to offend anyone by getting overly religious and keeping it subtle.

It’s interesting when you look at movies throughout the years. About a week ago, I watched One Magic Christmas, a movie that was released in 1985. That movie stays truer to the meaning of Christmas as Gideon, a Christmas angel, is out to help a mother find the Christmas spirit. While this is a good movie and the message is pure, the religious aspect is mixed in with a plot thread about Santa Claus and a trip to the North Pole.

Then there’s the gradual replacement of the more religious It’s A Wonderful Life as a constant rerun Christmas special with the secular A Christmas Story. While I love A Christmas Story and such secular films, I find it interesting that as time goes on, we seem to get further away from deeper, more religious meaning in our culture.

Image from festivusweb.com

Seinfeld had it best with the celebration of Festivus. “A Festivus for the rest of us!” exclaimed Frank Costanza in the 1997 episode “The Strike.” Frank created a made-up holiday called “Festivus” on the episode that included traditions such as the airing of grievances, the feats of strength and putting up the Festivus pole instead of a tree.

The made up holiday caught on and according to The Christian Science Monitor; people all around the world now recognize the holiday. In Indonesia, a blogger tweeted, “Festivus is here: Time to air out grievances.” A 38-year-old prison inmate in California,  Malcolm Alarmo King, even claimed to believe in “Festivism” so he could be fed kosher meals. The judge granted his wishes for two months, but the scam was caught on in another court eventually.

Maybe our culture is in Festivus season, which was celebrated December 23 by the way. But maybe that’s the direction we’re heading in. In a world where we are too paranoid to offend anyone, maybe we should simply say a “Festivus for the rest of us!” instead of “Merry Christmas!”

Front page image from crazy-frankenstein.com.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame always kind of puzzled me. It puzzled me because, well, think of all the musical genres out there. Now the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame basically says forget all that, all those genres fit into rock and roll.

Vintage Neil Diamond. Photo from rockbackingtracks.co.uk.

I never really paid too much attention to the Hall of Fame until this year when Dr. John, Neil Diamond, Tom Waits, Alice Cooper and Darlene Love made the Hall. It would be one motley crue if these individuals were all in a band together now wouldn’t it? While I respect them all in their own right, they all are in their distinct categories.

Would Neil Diamond play Sweet Caroline with Cooper throwing a chicken at the audience while Waits hums bah bah bah real low and melancholy like on the trumpet part? This isn’t the first time the Hall has inducted someone who you would say is not a rock and roll star. Madonna was inducted in 2008. No disrespect to Madonna, but I would consider her more of a pop star; just as Michael Jackson is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. By the way, what was Jackson’s nickname? Oh yeah, the King of Pop.

In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction process, criteria for artists to be inducted is based on their influence and the significance of their contributions to the development and the perpetuation of rock and roll.

According to Webster’s dictionary, the definition of rock is “a type of popular music whose origins lie in jazz, country music and blues, characterized by a strong persistent rhythm, simple, often repeated melodies, and usually performed by small, electronically amplified instrumentally singing groups.”

According to that definition, a rock band could conceivably be just about anything – but is it really? In doing research about what exactly what rock and roll is or should be, I didn’t find much. But I have always gone by the rule of thumb – “I know it when I hear it.”

James Taylor is another one in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I love James Taylor. His sweet picks on the guitar echo his sweet twangy voice. But when you want a rock show, do you go to a James Taylor concert or an AC/DC show (a band also in the hall of fame)? I think I answered my question.

Elvis Presley. Photo from chandrakantha.com.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been around since 1983 and has been perpetuating such inductions for some time. Yet, we as listeners should be asking ourselves: “What is rock and roll?” And more importantly: “What is the rock of today?”

This philosophical question is important because I think we lose track of what our musical roots are. I think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was smart in ’83 in their wording of the induction process, because they saw how drastically the rock world had changed since the era of Elvis and Buddy Holly. Rock and roll wasn’t as clearly defined anymore. There were artists like Michael Jackson and Prince who competed with real rockers like Metallica for the spotlight in America. In order for the hall to include this new era of ‘rock’ they probably loosened the definition of what rock was, or should be.

They very well could have called the museum the Music Hall of Fame – but the vagueness of what they meant combined with the edginess of the rock and roll name probably meant that the Hall decided to name it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; but in doing so, they loosened the language of rock and roll to include all these artists.

Rock and roll even still is arguably America’s most recognizable and powerful type of music. Put on an Elvis or Beatles record and 9 out of 10 people would recognize the genre as rock and roll. The power of this music is what helped shape our country and music that is here today. However, that music today is far removed from Elvis and The Beatles; so it’s important we recognize just what it is so we know why it’s important.

Front page image from maxkansascity.com.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

Photo from chicagonow.com.

December 10 was Support Star Wars and Geek Pride Day for Katie Sorenson.

Sorenson is a first grade girl who was bullied for being a sci-fi fan, and most notably, a Star Wars fan. She brought a Star Wars water bottle to school in Evanston, IL. After a while of being bullied, she wanted to bring an ordinary pink water bottle to school because she was tired of the treatment.

Kids at Katie’s school insisted that Star Wars was only for boys. Sorenson, who was already a bit of a target because she wore glasses and an eye-patch over her lazy eye, now had to give up her love of Star Wars.

So a fan set aside December 10 on Facebook, when everyone was encouraged to wear a Star Wars shirt or any other paraphernalia in support of Sorenson and anti-bullying. Many people – 34,181 to be exact – joined in this makeshift Rebel Alliance. ThinkGeek, an online retailer, sent Katie a lightsaber. Artist Scott Zirkel sent Katie a cartoon where she was depicted as a Jedi Knight. A first grade class in California got behind the effort by sending Katie letters of support.

Then Katie’s school showed their support. The school worked towards instilling an anti-bullying policy and December 10 marked a “Proud to Be My Day” where kids were encouraged to wear whatever it was they were interested in, be it sports, princesses or the like.

Photo from dailymail.co.uk

Katie reminds me of Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. While Leia was a strong character, she was running out of hope, which is perhaps why the movie is called A New Hope. Katie is that rebel character, that one who stays true to what she believes in. But there comes a point where you’re surrounded by villains (or an evil empire of first grade bullies) that weighs on you.

She was beginning to turn, to conform when her friends began to arrive. Even though Leia didn’t give the Empire the location of the rebel base, she was forced to choose a planet for the Death Star to explode by telling Vader the rebel base is on Alderaan. “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope,” she says in her message to R2-D2.

Sorenson is a strong person because she stayed true to what she believes in. Her nature to conform was human, but her friends were there to battle off the evils of the empire. Leia was the same way.

Star Wars can in a lot of ways be compared to bullying in the classroom. It’s a story of good versus evil – of the Rebellion against the Empire. The Empire well outweighs the Rebel Alliance in size and power, but the Alliance has values and friends they believe in. This is lacking in the Empire, which eventually bring about their destruction. There’s a lot more themes to the Star Wars story, but just comparing these two environments, I’d say this holds true.

Sorenson amassed a Rebel Alliance that was just too powerful for the Empire and was able to bring peace and justice back to her world; hopefully the message will spread to the rest of the universe, or at least to schools everywhere.

Front page image from StarWars.com.

***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

White. Image from idolator.com.

Just as Thom Yorke pioneered selling records on the Internet with In Rainbows, Jack White is taking that a step further: selling Third Man limited edition records on eBay.

White’s record label, Third Man Records, has a subscription club called The Vault, which allows its diehard album collecting fans to get their hands on rare records. Recently, White found out that instead of getting to the fans directly, the albums were being funneled through record scalpers, or flippers, who would take the albums and sell them on eBay for ridiculous amounts of money, as in the $500 range for one record.

Like any smart businessman, White capitalized off this and for his latest rare release, put the records directly on eBay himself, which quickly went up in bids totaling in the hundreds. Antiquiet has a couple of excerpts from an argument between White and a subscriber of The Vault about this choice that took place on a White Stripes forum. The fan called the move “fan exploitation” to which Jack had some Supply and Demand 101 to respond with, all in texting grammar perfection.

“if you don’t want it, DONT BUY IT. and if you do want it, don’t act like you DON’T want it. get in line like anyone else, hunt for it like anyone else. you act like we bury them in tunnels in vietnam for god sakes [sic],” White said.

This is a perfect example of White taking advantage of capitalism. People are unaware as to how much they are really in charge of the prices in the market. Take for example the escalating prices every season for the Chicago White Sox. Every year ticket prices go up and every year people complain about the high prices of seats. But do people stop going to games over it? Is there a fan strike that says, “We want prices to go down or we won’t go to a game?” No, but there was a Major League Baseball player strike in 1994 that demanded more money. Guess what? They got it. After that strike, people were generally turned off by Major League Baseball. But is it still going strong today? That’s a rhetorical question by the way.

Photo from distractible.org.

My example with Major League Baseball correlates here. White later went on to say that sure, they could produce more albums and sell them at $20 a piece so they are easily accessible, but that would defeat the purpose of making them a rare commodity and thus defeat the point of hunting for them.

I think people have this allusion about our economy that the price that’s given is the price that’s set in stone. It’s not ridiculous that White is selling his rare records for hundreds of dollars. It’s ridiculous that people were buying them for that price. I remember I stopped buying CDs because even the cheap ones at Wal-Mart went for $10 or $11 and most CDs at Wal-Mart are not that great – they’re edited and don’t contain a great selection. If you’re going to Best Buy you’re talking in the $13-$15 range, and that was a couple of years ago; a local record store would be even more.

If anything, fans long exploited their artists with the Napster culture. Artists have to be smart like White and Yorke to find creative ways to make money. It’s a changing music business and artists need to adapt in a world of record companies with dwindling profits, but at the same time, fans need to adapt so that hopefully we aren’t paying $50 for an everyday record at Best Buy in the near future.

Front page image from lifehackery.com.