Reality TV's most hackneyed phrase...

... is, without a doubt, "thrown under the bus." As in, "She threw me under the bus!" or, "If I don't have immunity, they'll throw me under the bus!" This is the betrayal, the heartbreaking of reality rejects who make poor alliances because they can't read character or can't compel an alternative. People get thrown under the bus by the minute on reality tv.

Contestants spout off this phrase compulsively whenever a voting-off-the-island is about to happen, but if I really dislike the show, I'll imagine I hear it four to five times per episode. Tonight I heard it on the Biggest Loser finale on NBC. On the finale. How can anyone get thrown under the bus on a weigh-in finale? The only thing you hear more than "thrown under the bus" on Biggest Loser is the pernicious Subway plugs. I wouldn't be surprised to find they sold the phrase "thrown under the bus" to Greyhound, who pays them every time it's said. Lord knows some of the participants live for reading product placements on camera. 

This may be the worst possible time for a writer's strike from an entertainment point of view. NBC already announced that they're weaning off drama and serials for more game shows and reality tv. The problem is, both of these genres painted themselves into a corner years ago. Reality tv is dead. The format holds no drama: group of 20 is whittled down to one by voting or judging, and challenges win them prizes or immunity along the way. This holds true for everyone from aspiring supermodels to the morbidly obese, exploited pioneer kids, seamstresses, chefs, and those odd few hoping to sway an ambiguously bi-sexual MySpace web-lebrity. (That is, ANTM, Biggest Loser, Kid Nation, Project Runway, Top Chef, Shot At Love with Tila Tequila. Kind of an apocalyptic gathering.)

That said, I'll always tear up at watching fat people lose weight. It's life-changing.

Game shows, meanwhile, have become fixated on giving away the most money for the most banal tasks. The bar is set low to make everyone feel like a challenger ("I coulda been someone!"), and the contestants are inundated with spotlights and pounding drums and minor chords, and then the guys says, "We'll find out... when we come back!" And the audience groans like what we only ever wanted in our hearts, in our heart of hearts, was to find out if that case had $1 or $1,000,000 in it, when the guy could've just walked away with $37,500 for no compelling reason. The tide was turned with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and the tradition continues with Deal or No Deal and 1 versus 100. I feel bad for accomplished comedians who have to pay the bills by hosting game shows. They did something real to get there, they got out there and worked their material and carved out a niche in the toughest job in show business, and then they took their accomplishment and cashed it in for a career in white bread. It's like cutting your teeth on punk rock to make a lateral move to Musak. (Though it's a step up from Funniest Home Videos for Bob Saget.)

Drama, as it were, or theater — theatre, if you will, is dead. Dare I say, kicked the bucket. And since I've already declared reality TV dead and what the hell, game shows, let's make some more DOA proclamations: cop dramas — dead. Poorly repackaged Sex And The City knock-offs — dead. Comedies with overdrawn wha?? titles (e.g., "The New Adventures Of Old Christine")— dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Television, theater, drama, writing, the creative urge itself is in dire need of a renaissance or revolution or reconciling or reorientation or retardation or something "re". Given, most of these things beget the mediocrity they seek to overhaul. But I'd love to see a play written by Beck followed by an abstract animated short by Woody Allen with a cubist sketch show improvised live by Dave Eggers and a 12-piece band played all by Zach Galifianakis with a short film chaser by Shiina Ringo.

I think what I'm saying is, TV needs to be challenging to watch sometimes. Nothing much is as of late. I'm signing off with that.

One Night In Atlanta: Vincent Gallo, Cock Rock & Maritime Tunes.

I was in the ATL on a rare business excursion this week, and I thought I must seek out some local sounds. At a dusty-crates record store on Peachtree, I quizzed the clerk on the clubs, and he wrote some ideas on a notepad. I was off to Little Five Points, the adopted spot for Atlanta hipsters.

The first stop of the night was the Star Bar, where some meaty cock-rock bands were gearing up for a go at awesomedom. A fellow named Johnny La Rocha worked the bar, striking a fine Vietnam vet or Jesus, depending on one’s perspective. He told me the real show was over at Eyedrum, where some of his friends were seeing Vincent Gallo’s new music-art project. He said it was only 10 minutes down the road and that I could probably make it.

Abstaining not from serendipity, I drove over and dropped $15 at the door of a rugged concrete-and-I-beam structure, which featured installations and exhibitions by local artists. Eyedrum is the kind of place I’ll own when I’m independently wealthy. Beyond the gallery, a hushed crowd stared intently at a quartet making loose jangles of sonic atmosphere. Gallo sat hunched over a mirror-plated guitar, sporting a thick blonde wig bound with a headband, A thin brunette in a blue jumpsuit touched a keyboard. A long, red nightshirt hung from a tall blonde dude playing guitar with his back to the audience. The fourth wore only tiny gym shorts and tapped cautiously on a drumset bearing their name, RRIICCEE.

Signs reading “There should be no photographs taken during the performance” plastered the walls, so I did a quick study of the show on my hand with a V7. Two small fluorescents lit the stage. The sight dripped with pretension, much like that of Gallo’s controversial movie, “The Brown Bunny.” I liked that film, awash with self-indulgence, and I liked RRIICCEE.

The overt communication of the group was limited to a slight nod from Gallo to the drummer as they felt their way through a tuneless landscape. After about 15 minutes, Gallo mumbled something and they left the stage to uncertain applause. A girl behind me asked if she had missed that much by coming late. People began to filter out quietly, some griping. Someone said the idea was that they never rehearsed. A dreadlocked white guy complained that the drummer never even touched the hi-hat.

I headed back to the Star Bar, where a thick foursome belabored some power chords. I talked with John some more, having traded CDs and listened to some of his band, Ocha La Rocha, in the car. He writes songs with a fiery weave of acoustic/electric distortion, to pleasing effect reminiscent of The Black Crowes and others I couldn’t put my finger on. He told me he was really into the psychadelia sound and gave me names of LA acts to check out.

John asked, “You wanna go to the real party?” The final act was sound-checking angry pentatonics. Amidst the Goths and punks, someone asked me if I was reviewing the show. “Yeah… you don’t wanna be here tonight,” John said. He told me the real spot was an unlabeled club over on Ponce De Leon, behind the Chipotle, called MJQ. MJQ was celebrating its tenth anniversary with some local bands and DJs. I listened to the final band’s first song and decided to head to my third club in as many hours.

Behind the Chipotle, a gray clapboard shack drew down to a crazy space beneath the parking lot. Blue-tinged and strung about with shiny streamers and stuffed fish, the theme was the proverbial “Fish Under The Sea” dance (if Back To The Future is a proverb). The crowd was thick and smoky around the bar, but fairly sparse on the dance floor, where a five-piece called Tongo Hiti played “maritime songs” on ukelele, theramin, guitar, drums, and rubber chicken. They had a convincing sound for their chosen niche.

I caught only two songs before they wrapped up their set. House music came on and people flooded the dance floor, breakdancing and shaking about. I discovered a back stairway up to the parking lot. The doorway at the top fumed like the chimney of a greasy barbeque, venting all the cigarette and club sweat manufactured below into the crisp night air. It’s been awhile since I’ve had the pleasure of smelling like ass after a night of music. As most of the cities I’ve lived in have banned smoking in clubs, I’ve become spoiled with the smoke-free experience. But it’s a fair price to pay for a nice little triangulation around Atlanta’s indie scene. If that’s a typical Wednesday, a proper weekend is highly anticipated.

Stealth Burger Reviews: McDonald’s 1/3 Pound Angus Burger

Stealth Burger Reviews provides a snapshot of the manifold configurations and in the crowded SoCal hamburger market.

Stealth Burger Reviews: McDonald’s 1/3 Pound Angus Burger
Pacific Coast Highway, El Segundo, 3:50 pm

Am I seriously reviewing McDonald’s? This is like reviewing the mass-manufactured teddy bears you win at the carnival, the ones that look amazing above the ski-ball but are filled with Styrofoam when you actually win one.

Actually, that’s fitting, because I feel like McDonald’s does manufacture toys — colorful, edible toys in the shape of fast food. Under-flavored and over-preserved.

When I founded Stealth Burger Reviews, lo, these many days ago, I didn’t envision writing about national burger chains. But I’ve noticed that all the chains are doing a variant on The Six Dollar Burger, boasting Angus or Sirloin or whatever it takes to set their sandwich above the dollar menu and beyond their competitors. And under the gun recently, I got some Mickey D’s. So I picked their contender, the 1/3 Pound Angus Burger.

The 1/3 Pound Angus Burger is clearly intended to go head-to-head with the other confabulations on the market. Same approach of building your backyard barbeque burger: real hamburger with thick pickles, tomatoes and leafy lettuce, sesame seed bun. There are only two real differences from Carl’s Jr.’s Six Dollar Burger: purple onion and lots of mayo. The purple onion is a nice touch, honestly, because you rarely get such an organic color in fast food. And the mayo, the gushing mayo, well, it would be a little much for a choosier palate. But perhaps that assumption is a prerequisite for this discussion.

I must say, the 1/3 Pound Burger is the first thing I’ve had at McDonald’s in a long while that is reminiscent of food. But it still had that lingering flavor of homogeny that plagues everything made at McDonald’s — that bland sameness that ensures you have a uniform experience worldwide. It’s a better burger than they’ve made in awhile. But it’s still McDonald’s, and it doesn’t measure up anywhere close to In ‘N Out, Five Guys in DC, or Dick’s in Seattle. Burgers made by hand daily have the one ingredient that an assembly-line meat product can’t: love.

Then again, I love Slim Jims…

DC City Paper on Analog Jetpack: "We The Geeks"

The DC City Paper has published a good review by Ben Westhoff on Analog Jetpack's new album, And How They Flew. I have mad respect for Ben, as he's published music reviews and insightful music features in weeklies nationwide. When we met, he was writing a story for St. Louis' Riverfront Times on my brother Jonathan Toth from Hoth and Tucker Booth and their epic hip-hop escapades with The Frozen Food Section. Described me in the story as a "squeaky clean, 28-year old folksinger." Since then, Ben has sat down with 50 Cent, caused a messageboard uproar by calling Jay-Z "hova-rated", waxed big booties for the Village Voice, and served updates on  Trent Reznor, Val Kilmer's music career, and the brains behind blackpeopleloveus.com.

In this good company, I don't mind being called out too:

Rob Getzschman, a former D.C. resident now living in Los Angeles, has toiled in relative obscurity for years, releasing mostly anti-folk solo albums that wear left-field politics (Songs for the Anti-De-Counterrevolution), sense of irony (Heirs of Pretension), and high self-regard (Hypocrisy in the Genius Room) on their jacket sleeves...

...even at its poppiest the band isn’t exactly mainstream—on “ICBM,” the group sounds more like They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies than anything now on the radio. On the album’s opener, “We Are the Freaks,” Getzschman addresses his intended target market: “We are the freaks/A loose union of disillusion/Cold distinguished by the company we keep.” That seems a little off—they’re the geeks, of course, disinclined to do anything more radical than fashion fun hooks and embrace their inner nerds.

Funny that this should come through so powerfully.  The Six Points Music Festival summary by On Tap reduced Analog Jetpack to "Clever and nerdly pop-rock blendings." As if comics and obsolete technology aren't cool or something? Surely the geek niche is looking for a rock band laureate...

Read the full review here.

Stealth Burger Reviews: Carls' Jr. Six Dollar Burger

As the author has a hunger inside him, growing every day, he begins here a chronicle of his pursuit of that mid-century modern delicacy of LA: the hamburger. Stealth Burger Reviews will provide a snapshot of the manifold configurations of this meat-and-bread confection, and the crowded market of options in Southern California.

Carl's Jr.'s "The Six Dollar Burger®" 

La Cienega and Hwy 10 / 12:03 am

Any burger predicated with an italicized "The" and suffixed with an ® means business, and Carl's Jr.'s The Six Dollar Burger is no exception. Specifically, The Six Dollar Burger means $3.99 worth of business, an irony surely savored by the marketing team that dreamed it up. They definitely patted themselves on the back for that. Somebody said, "Let's call it the six dollar burger... but only charge four dollars." And the other guy waggled his finger at the first guy and said, "That's gold."

That said, they could've called it The Six Dollar Burger® and charged $12. Now that would've been a Jedi mind trick. These aren't the dollar bills you're looking for...

The first impression is good: when you only order a burger, and the bag feels like you could send it through a plate glass window, you know you will not sleep easy after the midnight drive-thru. Inside the bag, a box. Inside the box, a burger in the half-wrap that defines SoCal and makes one-handed consumption possible. The box is half process black, underscoring Carl's Jr.'s charbroiled fare, and offers two boasts: "Made with 100% Angus Beef," and a quote from the Albuquerque Journal that says, "I have since tried one of the chain's Six-Dollar Burgers and must report that I have become addicted to them." It's nice to see your burger heralded in the press, but Albequerque is where Bugs Bunny made a wrong turn. I don't know if nationwide people are going, "Whoa, the Albequerque Journal said they're good?"

But down to the nitty gritty: the first bite had some gristle, which, hey, it's hamburger. You gotta be real. Sesame seed bun, charbroiled patty, fresh cold lettuce, pickles twice as thick as a dollar menu burger. Plenty of mustard. Until the mustard, I sense the high notes and robust body of a Whopper, but the mustard put me in a whole new place. Tomatoes were a little mealy, which turned me off some. About three-quarters in, I got a bone chip, which somehow reinforced the 100% Angus claim to me. Perhaps irrationally.

All in all, I'd give it three out of five stars. But more importantly, in response to McDonald's campaign, "Are you a Dollar Menunaire?" I can honestly say, not as long as I can pay four bucks for a six-dollar burger.

Analog Jetpack offical debut today

Today marks an important musical date for me, as my first album beyond solo work is being released on The Frozen Food Section label. It feels good to see it being getting out there, as the production of it was a long process, stretching from January to June this year for recording, and right up until last month with manufacturing. Before that, the band involved a long process of writing new material and polishing older stuff. The album features three songs we wrote on as a band, including one which we never managed to play live called "Robot Garden".

The album was produced by Jerome Maffeo, drummer of Jimmie's Chicken Shack, at his Right On Recording studio in Baltimore. We're fortunate to have the hot licks of his lead guitar player in JCS, Matt Jones. And with more solos and lead guitar is Spencer Chakedis of Deep Sound Diver and The Drive-By Proposals. He's also the antifolk producer of my second and third albums. These hands lend much soul to the project.

Friends, the album is good. I think you'll like it if you manage to purloin a copy. Help us crack the 500 record sales barrier in the first week. Buy one for your momma, you daddy and you tippy-toed granny. Hook up your neighbor. Make jubilant Christmas presents for all your co-workers. Myrrh is très gauche this season, because it has consecutive rr's followed by an h. Forget that.

Buy from any of the links below. If you purchase from the Paypal link at the bottom, I personally will drop a disk in the mail for you the same day, and you will have a hot orange envelope in your hot hot hands in a matter of hours. Together, we can make dreams come true.

iTunes :: CD Baby :: Amazon

Cornhusker prose for Big Red pink slip

Husker Stadium  uploaded by bsmith4815

Yesterday my beloved Cornhuskers finished their worst season since 1961.

I grew up in Nebraska, where love of football is not a mandate, it's DNA. The political discourse of Washington, DC has nothing on the tone and gravitas of football talk in the Beef State. There, football stories are not written in the inverted pyramid style of journalism, but rather, in tender passages of purple prose. Consider this jewel from today's State Paper:

We're on some cold, often unruly stretch of earth that was broken, beaten and beautified by sweat and muscle. And so it must be with our football. Not the design so much as the mindset. This program was built to plow, punish and destroy. It cannot be sweet. It must be starch. Try to flip it and prepare for the reaping.

The Brazilians play soccer with a ferocity and abandon that matches the mysterious, exotic rain forest that surrounds them and the fatalistic poverty from which they rise. The Japanese play baseball with caution and precision. Americans play basketball with flash, pride, freedom, glory and hubris. So goes our nation.

Nebraska must go its own way.

"Plow, punish and destroy." This is more Beowulf than Sports Illustrated. Methinks no one writes like that about the Florida Marlins or the Toronto Raptors.

It's tough to coach for the Big Red. In 1962, Bob Devaney turned around a 3-6-1 program to go 9-2, culminating in back-to-back national titles in 1970-71. He handed the dynasty off to Tom Osborne, who won no fewer than nine games in each of his 25 seasons and took home three titles between 1994-1997. Frank Solich had a respectable 58-19 record in the next six seasons. But current head coach Bill Callahan has only managed 22 wins in four seasons, showing feebly against ranked teams and conference foes. Countless "worst" records were bested this season. To the Husker, this is unimaginable, much less unacceptable.

Today the revered Osborne fired the fumbling Callahan, and there is great jubilation in Nebraska.

If firebillcallahan.blogspot.com is any indicator, it's been a long time coming: "Now is the time for Husker Nation to get squarely behind the next coach... All along, all I knew is that Bill Callahan wasn't the right fit."

Link.

Antifolk Is Dead (deconstructed).

To kick off the new blog at www.robgetzschman.com, I'll send out the old Hypocrisy In The Genius Room by summing up the closest thing it had to a single. "Antifolk Is Dead" is one of the more popular songs from the album, probably because it addresses an enthusiastic niche of indie music. It seems to sell lots in the UK, which has a taste for the old a/f. Antifolk, as most do not know, is a niche of solo-ish songwritery acoustic-punk artists on the Lower East Side of New York City.

After I left NYC in 2001, I wrote this some of this song in a journal in 2002. I never got around to finishing it until 2004, when I finally went to record Hypocrisy, which was intended to be an magnum antifolk opus. Here are the lyrics, footnoted et al. with complete explanation for those that have been down since day one (c. 2000, which, yes, is not day one).

To listen to the song and album, visit iTunes or CDBaby.

On the ace of avenues I played my cards where the sidewalk meets the street

1) The antifolk scene resides largely on Avenue A, where 2) the mainstay venue is the Sidewalk Café, Avenue A & 6th.

The eastern side as the raven flies where you can surf unreality

3) This is all on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where 4) another popular open mic was Wednesdays at The Raven, Avenue A & 12th, and 5) more elaborate antifolk functions took place at Surf Reality, a rented space above Stanton and Allen.

Where every visionary is a latch-key kid and everybody's got a re-run dream

6) Everybody gets their start on the antifolk scene by playing the Sidewalk, which is booked by Lach. 7) Lach recounts his own history as a replay of Bob Dylan's experience in Greenwich Village, in which...

Of being thrown out the door by the folk-hardcore for sounding like a hillbilly

8) Bob Dylan was barred from his first gig by folk purists, who said, "You sound like a hillbilly. We want folksingers here," as told in the song, "Talking New York" on Bob Dylan's debut. In Lach's retelling, the folk purists rejected him for being too punk.

Where there ain't no strangers to the system whether it's heroin or heartbreak

9) Antifolk artist and writer Jim Flynn interviewed dozens of the homeless in Tomkins Square Park for his book, "Stranger To The System". 10) Mike iLL's antifolk opera, "The Seduction of Sarah Sahonie", featured the song, "Crack, Heroin and Heartbreak".

Or workin' 'til close in 50 shows in 50 nights in 50 states

11) Philly antifolkist Adam Brodsky set a Guiness World Record by playing shows in all 50 states in 50 consecutive nights.

And antifolk music is dead

I stood by the foot of the bed and I watched it go

No, no, no, I said antifolk music is dead

And as soon as it was cutting edge I should've known

When there's trouble in the country and the soil rains down like you're one foot in the grave

12) Paleface's debut album on Polydor features his signature song, "Trouble In The Country", which he later renamed "Say What You Want" and included on his Multibean Bootleg album. 13) Brer Brian's self-released, Man With The Artichoke Heart, includes the song "Soil Rains Down". 14) Beck's album One Foot In The Grave is an antifolk classic, as is his harmonica stomp, "One Foot In The Grave", from the album Stereopathetic Soulmanure.

And four score lightnings hit the sky, you're bound to drive out of range

15) Diane Cluck sings "Four score lightnings hit the sky / and that's 80 if you multiply" on her keyboard-centric debut. 16) The title track of Ani DiFranco's sixth album, "Out Of Range", is a classic expression of solo antifolk.

When the bad faces come and your lucky number nine is going east with the wind

17) Grey Revell's song "The Bad Faces" includes the lyrics, "Oh, I feel the bad faces coming". 18) The Moldy Peaches' debut includes the song "Lucky Number Nine". 19) Jeffrey Lewis' song "East River" includes the lyrics, "Three, two, first avenue / Going east with the wind / Across the FDR to the east river / Fall right in."

And you don't even wanna be a rock star anymore, grab these words:

20) Major Matt Mason's song "Rockstar" features the lyrics, "I don't wanna be a rock star anymore", while 21) Prewar Yardsale's song "Weird" includes the line, "Grab these words".

(chorus)

So let's all be beautiful and let's all be bulletproof

22) A Lach piano ballad pleads, "Let's be beautiful," and 23) a Joie Dead Blonde Girlfriend acoustic-punk song boasts, "I'm bulletproof, yeah yeah, bulletproof..."

And when I finally get back to that smoke-filled room I'll see the setting sun with you

24) My song "Finally Get Back / Na Na Na" from Brooklyn Demos is about walking back to Brooklyn from the Sidewalk's interminable open mic. 25) Turner Cody sings on his album This Springtime, And Others, "I see the setting sun / I see the setting sun..."

'Cause antifolk music is dead -- it floated up to balloon heaven and I watched it go

26) Antifolk producer Spencer Chakedis recorded dozens of antifolk projects at his Brooklyn (and formerly Jersey City) studio.

(chorus)

There it is for the record. For posterity. And you know how I feel about posterity.

All-Ages Acoustic Madness with Tucker Booth

...at the Starfish Learning Center. It's my impression that this is the kind of venue that Ian MacKaye requires for a live show with his act, The Evens. Indeed, the show Tucker's pulled me aboard for is an all-ages show at an alternative learning center. And while it's not a kids' show, I had to design the flyer as such. 'Cause if there are kids there, dancing will be compulsory, if not, indeed, irresistible. Hope to see you in Hermosa Beach on December 1st!

iLike me, if you will.

For our listeners far and wide who span the depth and breadths of social networking, iLike me here:

Yes, "iLike" me, as in the verb, "add me to your iLike list". Like "MySpace" me, "Facebook" me, "friend" me or "comment" me. All websites are verbs now! So Google yourselves, YouTube your friends, and I'll Flickr you my pics so you can Twitter us about anything and everything. So totally, I'll MillionDollarHomepage you later and we can eBay the wreckage when the big ship goes down. Let's get it on!