Jared W. Smith

…not even Rupert Murdoch will run his trashy TV series and book in which he details a “hypothetical” way he would have killed his wife and Ron Goldman. No one on Earth with anything resembling humanity would publish such filth. I’m glad to see that News Corp. has some shred of dignity left and cancelled the project. I can’t believe they gave honest consideration and poured publicity money into the project in the first place. I wonder if O’Reilly had anything to do with this, as he claims he did…

I hope we can forget this terrible reopening of these wounds and let O.J. collect his NFL pension out of the limelight, where he belongs…

CNN:

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) — Steve Irwin, the Australian TV presenter known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” has died after being stung in a marine accident off Australia’s north coast.

Australian media reports say Irwin was diving in waters off Port Douglas, north of Cairns, when the incident happened on Monday morning.

Irwin was killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest, according to Cairns police sources. Irwin was filming an underwater documentary at the time.

I’m saddened to hear of his passing. I remember being introduced to Irwin in my biology class in 9th grade — his shows were certainly a fantastic departure from the bland videos I had been used to watching in class, and I continued to watch him off and on over the years. Irwin’s enthusiasm for all things nature, especially those with sharp teeth and a maximum amount of danger, will most certainly be missed.

Kevin Federline’s song PopoZao is…erm…lousy. Yeah, that’s a good word. Be warned, it’s a bit explicit. Then again, the censored version is offensive enough.

Every time I watch the Local Forecast on the Weather Channel, the Intellistar - the computer in our area that runs the local forecast presentation - emits this awful buzzing sound once or twice (sometimes three times depending on which products display) during the forecast.

It sucks.

Rant:  Over. 

CNN/Money:

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to suggest that cable companies could best serve their customers by allowing them to subscribe to individual channels instead of packages of several stations, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

It may not get implemented - but this would be a huge step in the right direction, and something cable customers like I have been wanting for years.

Now that I’ve given “All The Right Reasons” more time to sink in, I think it’s the closest Nickelback’s come to diversity since The State. Says a lot right there. My criticism of reusing the How You Remind Me riff in “Savin’ Me” stands. But this album is definitely easier to listen to.

If you’re a music addict like I tend to be, then you should really look into last.fm, formerly known as Audioscrobbler. It’s quite sweet, as it lists your musical tendencies. It accomplishes this by a small plugin you put in your media player. It’s totally unobtrusive (at least with Winamp) and seems to work very smoothly.

Here’s my profile there if you’re interested. You can also get to it by the link to last.fm in the sidebar, under “Queued in Winamp.”

So I’ve had an opportunity to listen to the new Nickelback album in its entirety. And I must say, as I’ve commented to a few people by now, that Nickelback would gain much respect from me if they shedded their formula and went with something fresh, i.e. not incorporating the How You Remind Me riff into some of their songs four years after it hit the charts. They did it with Someday on The Long Road and the offender on their new album All The Right Reasons is Savin’ Me. It’s not a bad song, but it’s like the third time I’ve heard How You Remind Me, and I dunno…it’s starting to get old.

All The Right Reasons is notable because it’s the first Nickelback album since the firing of Ryan Vikedal, their long-time drummer. They replaced him with Daniel Adair, formerly of Three Doors Down. Adair’s not that bad of a drummer. I just wish Nickelback’s song structure would let him cut loose some more. Briefly, in the opening song of the album “Follow You Home,” Adair does some sweet double-drumming reminiscent of Lars Ulrich, and then the standard Nickelback Drop-D Song Formula ensues. That’s the thing that’s always bugged me about this band since Silver Side Up - they’ve been very formulaic. Listen to Curb and The State, and you’ll hear a much freer band, which is more liberal about their song diversity. I just feel like Nickelback’s painted themselves into a corner as a “solid rock band.” While they’re not necessarily as repetitive about their music as Brian Johnson-era AC/DC, I still think they could do some work branching out a bit. Using pianos on a couple songs is a good start toward that, but I think - hell, I know they can, listen to Worthy to Say on The State - do some outstanding, funky stuff.

All The Right Reasons is another solid rock album, but I think Nickelback is long overdue for a reinvention.