It's official!

...we have awful, awful taste in music. As a nation, I mean.

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`The Twist' is top song of Billboard Hot 100 era

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP music writer

How's this for a twist: Of all the No. 1 songs in the 50 years of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Chubby Checker's "The Twist" ranks as the most popular single.

Elvis and the Beatles didn't even make the top five.

Santana's "Smooth," featuring Rob Thomas, is the No. 2 most popular, followed by Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife," Leann Rimes' "How Do I Live" and "The Macarena" by Los Del Rio.

The Beatles did make the top 10, coming it at No. 8 with "Hey Jude." But Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" and Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" are ahead of that hit.

Rounding out the top 10: Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together" at No. 9 and Toni Braxton's "Un-break My Heart" at No. 10.

The Knights Who Say (nomi-) Ni!

Joe Biden (left) and Barack Obama practice for the three-legged race,

which will determine the presidency in the event of an electoral college tie.

Speaking of Obama (and who isn't?), apparently the final musical performer of the evening is Michael McDonald. The unassailably cool Democratic nominee, who could have chosen just about any musician in America to play him onto the stage, picked Michael Freaking McDonald.

Don't get me wrong: seeing Michael McDonald on TV definitely makes me hungry for change. Just probably not the kind Obama had in mind. I hoped we had come farther than that in the 14 months since Celinegate.

Her heart will go on... a lot of worst-ever lists

Boy, am I glad I've never heard that.

The brief story is worth reading if only because they did such a good job of picking the five best covers. I'd probably sub in Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" for the Muse thing - especially if I were the editor of a guitar magazine - but what are you gonna do?

This will get me in trouble with old people

Bo Diddley was probably known for other things, but if you, like me, are approximately 29 years old, you need know only this:



Anyone who can talk like that to the best guy from Tecmo Bowl must be a badass. RIP, Bo.

Gosh, they weren't *that* bad.

Too cold.

OK, so domestic violence is never funny, but sometimes it gets damned close. Consider this story:

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Vanilla Ice was held without bond Friday following his arrest on a charge of simple domestic battery after an alleged argument with his wife at their South Florida home.

The 39-year-old rapper's wife called the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office on Thursday night, saying he had kicked and hit her. She later told deputies he had only pushed her, the arrest report said.

The report said Vanilla Ice denied pushing her.

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What nearly pushes this over the top into the "funny" category? The reporter's insistence on referring to the accused by his stage name. Also, the opportunity it affords us to wonder what kind of person would marry Vanilla Ice (answer: her name is Laura, and they have two kids named Dusti Rain and Keelee Breeze, which is fantastic).

But the moral of the story is simple: if you want to keep your marriage violence-free, you must remember to stop, collaborate and listen. Good night everybody!

One week late

Sometimes, I work hard for the funny. Other times, people e-mail me press releases with headlines like:


Toby Keith Joins Wayman Tisdale on Barry White Remake


To reinforce this sign of the apocalypse, some visual aids:

Toby Keith

is collaborating with Wayman Tisdale:

on a cover of a song by Barry White:

OK, so they can all be referred to in some sense as "musicians," so they have that in common, but I guess what I'm getting at is that only one of the three has been on television saying "This truck is the big dog daddy." And it wasn't Barry White. Or Wayman Tisdale.

It was Toby Keith, is what I'm saying.

Oh, by the way...

HAPPY 3/11, EVERYBODY!!!

Aerohero?!

Kotaku announced Activision's announcement of the next thing your adolescent kids will want: Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.
Wait a sec. I don't think anyone has ever put "Aerosmith" and "adolescent kids" in the same sentence before. But whatever. There are many other obvious problems with the press release.

(1) "Gamers will experience Aerosmith's GRAMMY® winning career, from their first gig to becoming rock royalty, in a way that no other entertainment vehicle offers."

Uh, shouldn't we start the story in about 1987, after everyone stopped snorting every finely-ground substance they could get their hands on?

(2) "Steven Tyler says, 'Any band that can go from "Don't Want to Miss A Thing" (Aerosmith's #1 smash hit)..."

Really, Steven? That's what you're leading your pitch with? The song from the quintessential badly overblown '90s "event movie"?

(3) Tyler again: "Not only is songwriting a bitch, but then it goes and has puppies."

Um, what?

(4) Head of publishing Dusty Welch: "This partnership will give Aerosmith, a band that has sold more than 150 million albums worldwide, a powerful and innovative platform to reach their fans and new audiences."

Porkchop's translation: "This partnership will give Aerosmith gigantic bags of money, and get our company very little in return, because most of the market for Guitar Hero is made up of adolescents who have never heard of Aerosmith or, if they have, are creeped out by them."

Maybe I'm wrong - hell, I'll probably rent it at least - but this sure sounds like a big scarf-covered train wreck. Unless there's some kind of Alicia Silverstone mode (please, Activision?)

Too much FreeTime

Today EA has new promotional material up for the Sims 2 expansion pack "FreeTime." It includes a video of sim-Natasha Bedingfield singing a song in Simlish, the Sims' distinctive gibberish language. Some notes:

1) The Sims are still creepy.
2) Simlish is kinda fun to listen to after all these years.
3) Simtasha is hotter than regular Natasha.
1b) Hot Sims are creepier still.

They're gonna put you in a trance with a funky song

Some time ago, or so I'm assuming, alert reader Jennifer W. signed up to an e-mail alert system to make sure she'd never miss out on New Kids on the Block news. And after trillions of years, it paid off this week.

New Kids On The Block Stage Comeback

You know what? Screw the war and the recession. I can hear it now:

"The state of the union is strong. My fellow Americans, the New Kids are back."

The things they do, it's forever. I wake up in the morning and I see their face; they're looking so good, everything's in place. I need them - I need them - I guess I always will. Step by step, ooh baby, gonna get to them, girl.

Dude, I can't even finish this post. I have to go write their names on the back of a Trapper Keeper for a couple of hours. *swoon*

Ephemera

Today's life lesson comes from the headline: Judge Wants More Info on Foxy's Ear Woes. The takeaway? Everything is funnier if your name is Foxy.

On another note, I sometimes take a moment to reflect on humorously worded subject lines to pornographic spam e-mails. Today I got this message: Roger H. Ide Organ Recital on Feb. 10. It turned out to be from my alma mater, trying to get me to come to an actual organ recital, but I got a good half-second giggle in before I realized that.

All together now: "D'oh!"

That's the image that greeted me today when I logged into e-mail. Mind you, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't recognize Steve Jobs if he walked up to me and said "Hi, I'm Steve Jobs," but I am reasonably familiar with the gentleman pictured above, and that ain't him.

(Clicking through showed me the entire photo, which indeed captured Jobs in front of a screen with a 20-foot image of Homer on it. Maybe they meant to crop it differently for the splash page.)

In other news, you may have seen last week's story on the Hannah Montana body double. It wasn't particularly noteworthy, except that it gave us the quote of the young year, from Pollstar editor-in-chief Gary Bongiovanni:

"There are absolutely laws of physics that prevent you from doing gee-whiz things without some hocus-pocus."

I'm too lazy to read all of Newton's laws. Can someone check this one for me?

The gift of pastiche

Yeah, it's been a slow month at Porkchop Central, but, like frugal parents everywhere, we've been saving up for one really great Christmas present.

In this case, Santa is being played by alert reader Andy W., who unearthed a gem that evidently originated on an Australian TV special. In any case, it's a great three-minute alternative to the longish hobbity madness of one of history's most revered and reviled songs.

Without further ado: ladies and gentlemen, THE BEATNIX!

Boy does he ever shred.

My latest issue of Guitar Player turned me on to this guy, who takes videos of famous people wailing away on guitar, and overdubs crappy playing that kinda matches the finger movements. It's available in Santana, Vai, Iron Maiden and other flavors - all of which make me giggle like a wee girl.

No one who isn't a musician has laughed as hard as me when I showed them, so I might as well take a poll:

(a) Are you a musician?
(b) Is this really, really funny?

Two news quickies

The second version of that last headline sounds like a children's book title. The other one sounds like a boring rapper story. I never thought I'd argue against proper punctuation, but there you are.

Meanwhile, Al Gore is apparently practicing for a new career as an illusionist. "I will now make your CO2 emissions... disappear!"

Our princess is in another castle

There aren't many things that make me teary-eyed but we can add to the list marching bands assuming the form of the Triforce while playing the Hyrule theme. If that didn't make sense to you, then (a) joo are teh suxxor, and (b) don't bother clicking through.

A ringing endorsement

I sometimes write about music, which means I sometimes get press releases about bands. Today it was Rockfour, and their album "Memories of the Never Happened." Peep this fantastic blurb:

"Arguably Israel's biggest rock export" -Harp.com

I, for one, would like to hear that argument. My other demand is a t-shirt featuring nothing but the band's name, so people will ask me, "What's a Rockfour?"

Seriously, though, the band sounds pretty good. Click over for some solid jangle rock.

Various definitions of "dead"

A fun trifecta in my e-mail provider's entertainment news today:

For those keeping score, Britney is doing her level best to commit careericide, while Seinfeld is just painfully unfunny. Oddly enough, both are still very rich, as far as I know.

Seriously, have you seen the "Bee Movie TV Juniors" on NBC? How that dude manages to keep getting unfunnier is amazing, considering how high he set the bar in the '80s. I have actually preferred hearing Toby Keith call a truck a "big dog daddy" over and over the past few weeks, and I have previously ranked Toby Keith above Gargamel on my list of all-time villains.

A question of when, not if.

As a way of doing penance for missing my first Creep-you-out Friday in months, I offer this Sunday night headline, courtesy of cnn.com:

Waffle House brawl lands Kid Rock in jail

How could the man surprise us less?