Damn That Ojeda!

There hasn't been a single year that's passed since 1965 that James Brown has not had a direct influence on the current music trend in soul, rock or pop. That's how deep it reaches and will continue to reach. One of the facts about Brown's career that surprises me most is that he was almost dropped from King Records because the president of the label at the time considered him unproductive. With Papa's Got a Brand New Bag in 1965, however, there was no turning back for the Godfather of Soul. How he'll be missed. Here he is performing in France a medley of Sex Machine and Get On the Good Foot.

Hope you all get good presents and a great dinner. :)

Peter Boyle died at age 71. He left an impressive body of work as an actor, but, of course, only became something of a very familiar face thanks to Everybody Loves Raymond. His other great work include the movies Joe and Monster's Ball, in both movies playing truly hateful bigots. However, his single greatest contribution for all of film eternity was his brilliant idea (after Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder were at a loss) to have his Frankenstein monster character wail out "Puttin' on the Riiiiiiiiiiiiii" in the funniest scene from Young Frankenstein:

Today marks the one-year anniversary of DamnThatOjeda! I assume I can expect the gift of toilet paper any time now.

I've had a lot of fun posting over the past year and thank those who have written words of encouragement regarding it. It's truly appreciated, since many times you can feel as though you are writing into a black hole called the world-wide web with your information getting sucked in to a cacophony of video, audio, bleeps, blips and trillions of bytes of text. I didn't expect any major things to come out of it, but was glad I was able to do my little part to fill up bandwidth with what I hope was entertaining, thoughtful, outrageous and funny.

For those of you who wonder what it's like to do this, I've learned a few things I can share with you. First and foremost, keeping a blog going on a daily basis is tough. No doubt about it. And if you want to have a blog with creative material, this type of project is incredibly daunting. The flip side however is how great it is to get the project up there for all to read it. You can ask my friend Barry about this (he's collaborated on some posts with me). The finished products definitely make this worthwhile.

The second factor is that blogging will really help you decide what interests you want to write about the most. This fact was hinted to me by my cousin Ralph who was pleased to learn I was blogging but suggested I come up with a focus for the blog. Very sound advice.

When I had begun this blog a year ago, I hoped I would blog about movies and music with politics and satire being a sort of side topic. As the Bush Administration got worse with each passing month, politics started becoming the main focus of the blog. I don't regret the change. I think we all needed to concentrate on the insanity of this Adminstration and do what we could to change power in Washington. This last election restored my faith in the wisdom of Americans and the restoration of the country.

But now I feel I should refocus the blog on the things I do best: present reviews/rants about strange movies I love or hate, hopefully post audio clips of music I've collected over the years (that might take a little while, but it's a goal), and present more creative writings (obviously, these works would not be done on a daily basis). This would mean that the blog would probably not operate as a daily, but as, at least, a weekly.

The one task I want to accomplish before starting the refocus is to change the host. Blogger has had some problems in the past and I have to say I'm quite pissed that AdSense has 1) provided ads for the blog that favored views I'm against (I mean an ad that praises Ann Coulter? Jesus Christ!) and 2) they've accused me of clicking on my own ads, so now they won't pay up for the clicks that supported this blog. Lying Assholes. Blogger is history. So I will be changing hosts pretty soon.

I'm not sure how much I will be posting between now and year's end. I suspect I will be sporadically, but, rest assured, once I get a new blog going, I will announce it and spread the word.

Thanks for your continued support!

Lew Ojeda

I've always been more of a fan of the piano being used for rock 'n' roll rather than guitar. The following is one of the reasons why. Amos Milburn, acknowedged influence of Fats Domino and many others who came after, rocks the Apollo Theater in 1950 with one of his many hits "Down the Road Apiece." Milburn became a major link between boogie woogie jump blues and early rock and roll. Watch how he makes it look so easy. Just incredible.

Thanks to Dave H. for bringing this to my attention.

MBNA/Bank of America thought it was so wonderful they were able to merge into one corporation, a song was sung for its own self-indulgence. It's a bastardization of U2's song "One" and boy, oh boy it's about the most derisively funny thing I've ever seen a corporation attempt. The YouTube hoster of this vid seems to believe it was done in jest, but just listen to the words and the approach to this song, and I think you might agree, these folks meant this. There's no way a merger is going to be undermined by cynical humor from the host company unless they are the dumbest business people on the planet. Then again, if they allow this travesty to occur, perhaps they are.




David Cross with Johnny Marr on guitar cover BOA's U2 cover. Shows you that you can present virtually the same material in a different setting and realize just how ridiculous it is. If any of those bank execs had any healthy contact with the outside world, they would be incredibly embarrassed sitting there listening to this.

National Lampoon does a brilliant job with this hilarious satire.

Eat your turkey slowly. Don't gobble gobble or you'll get gas.