Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
To brighen your Tuesday, Randy Rainbow has dropped another great video. Dance to "No Rules For Donald"
Any week is good when Randy Rainbow drops a new video, which I always report here. And we got a hot new one today called "No Rules For Donald."
As usual, he starts with a news interview this time with U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. Rainbow and Barr must be on a first name basis, since Rainbow calls him "Roseanne."
But anway, once we get into the song, which is based on Dua Lipa's hit "New Rules," we get into all of Trump's GOP enablers.
Other than the fact that I will never unsee that brief glimpse of Devin Nunes in ruby red lipstick, this is another video to brighten hour dystopian, gloomy February day. Watch and enjoy!
I blow off steam by gardening and writing silly things like this blog The willow tree on my property decided to blow off steam on November 1 by falling over and crushing my husband's Jeep. We all have our ways, dont we?
I've had a long hiatus from this here blog thingy because I just got too busy. I know that sounds like an excuse, and it is, but there you go. Hard to believe the last post here was on July 4.
It's been an active few months, both with work and lots of stuff to do outside of work. It involves lots of garden work, lots of extra time spent at my other job as we went through a systems upgrade, fun things like Jeff's retirement, parties to honor that and a hot air balloon trip.
There were a few minor disasters along the way, like a storm a few weeks back that toppled my beloved willow tree onto Jeff's Jeep, crushing that vehicle beyond repair. The same storm cut off electrical and cable service, and heat to our house, briefly, so there's that.
Now that winter has set in early, it's time to jump in the saddle again. I don't know where this will lead, and frankly, I do this blog just as a release, because I like to write, even if I'm sometimes not good at it. And to vent. And to expose both really good and really bad ideas to whoever reads this.
Good ideas need to be celebrated, and bad ideas need to see the light of day so that maybe people won't repeat them. I know that humans have an unlimited capacity to be dumb, so I am a bit of a pollyanna when it comes to trying to shame people into stop being stupid. Besides, I'm perfectly capable of being totally idiotic, too. That's life, I guess.
Sometimes, while watching the news over the past few months while I was blowing off this blog, I sort of missed blowing off steam here in this blog thingy. But for most of my hiatus, the weather was warm and pleasant. I have lots of gardens to enjoy. So I would always cool off, both physically and mentally, among the flowers, plants, shrubs and other plants I'm lucky enough to have on my property.
Sometimes, when I am writing, I can do a quick throwaway piece that just shows off a social media meme, a funny video, or one of the zillions of quirky people this good Earth holds. Sometimes, when I have the time, especially on a cold winter day when all I want to do is hibernate inside, I do a deeper dive, which has its own pleasures.
I'm not a great writer. My brain is weird, though, which is actually a benefit. I do hope some people get a bit of pleasure, or at least some type of emotion when I write something and you see it, like here. If not, thanks for indulging me and allowing me to blow off steam.
Freddie Mercury belts out "Time Waits For No One" in a previously unreleased song and video. Proves why he was such a vocal powerhouse.
The great Freddie Mercury passed away in 1991 but I, along with millions of other people, can't get enough of him.
Believe it or not, there's a "new" tune out there by Freddie Mercury called "Time Waits For No One." and it is a gem. According to USA Today,singer and producer Dave Cark recorded Mercury performing a version of the song called "Time" for a sci-fi rock musical.
The song had all kinds of production, some would save over production, with big percussions ad all kinds of backup vocals. That song was released and peaked at number 32 on the UK music charts in 1985.
However, Clark had Mercury record a different version of the song accompanied only by piano. That's what's being released now as "Time Waits For No One."
Clark re-discovered "Time Waits For No One" last year, but decided to wait to release it. He'd been looking for the master and video for more than a decade, but searches of recording studio failed to turn the up, says NPR. Then, miraculously they were found in 2017.
By then, the Mercury biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" was coming out, and Clark didn't want to compete with that, reports USA Today.
So he waited to release it
As you can see and hear in the video below, you don't need any big production values when it comes to Mercury. Just let him sing. You can also see is familiar, unique mannerisms as he performs.
Boy George does a terrific, quieter version of the Village
People classic "Y.M.C.A"
I know, I know, you're all sick of that Village People ditty "Y.M.C.A"
It's a staple at every bad wedding reception, and karaoke bar you've ever seen.
And aren't you tired of forming the letters YMCA with your arms?
"Y.M.C.A" was, however, a daring - for the era, anyway - of acceptance toward LGBTQ people everywhere.
Was the Y.M.C.A. of the Village People's imagination a wholesome place for young men to grow up? Or a gay nirvana? Or both? Probably both.
"They have everything for young men to enjoy You can hang out with all the boys."
As The Daily Telegraph notes, Boy George started thinking about marriage equality, and other issues like mental health and youth unemployment when he was approached by the Y.M.C.A. to do a cover of the song.
At first, Boy George said no way. But he got to thinking about it, and thought it would resonate.
It does. He does a toned-down, quieter version of "Y.M.C.A." and it's actually pretty terrific.
Edgar Maddison Welch of North Carolina being
arrested after he shot up a Washington DC pizza joint
because he believed preposterous stories that
Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring
out of the business
It's clearer than ever that nobody actually relies on facts anymore.
That's being driven home by a series of news items that are getting more and more and MORE absurd, and I don't know where or when or if it might stop.
Through the looking glass, anyone?
My angst started the other day with was in a stunning CNN interview about our fact-free world that went viral the other day.
It got even worse with a bizarre gun attack on a pizzeria that originated from a false news story about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party running a pedophilia sex ring out of the pizzeria that an amazing number of people believe.
I'll get to that weirdness in a minute, but let's start from the beginning.
CNN Hos Alisyn Camerota asked a panel of just regular folks, all Trump supporters.
All of the Trump supporters agreed with one of the people in the panel, who repeated Donald Trump's very, very debunked assertion that three million people voted illegally. (The stunning interview is at the bottom of this post.)
"Where did you get that information,?" Camerota asked.
"From the media," the woman answered.
For the record, CNN did report that Trump said that there were 3 million illegal voters, but CNN also made it clear that assertion was false.
"Did you hear President Obama say illegal people could vote,?" Camerota asked the panel.
They all said yes, and of course Obama never said any such thing.
Camerota asked where they heard Obama said illegals could vote. One of the panelist said. "On Facebook. You can Google it."
Yes, you can. And you will find plenty of articles asserting that Obama gave the go-ahead for illegals to vote. These stories are false, but that's apparently besides the point.
But to many people, whether or not the purported source of "news" story makes it well known it's false matters to nobody.
Of course, people have believed fake news and false rumors ever since we existed. We've reached critical mass now, of people who discard facts in favor of things that want to believe.
We're all in our little silos now, having other people reinforce our misconceptions. And some of us allow these misconceptions to get more and more extreme.
Now, things no longer need to have even a tenuous connection to the truth.
Donald Trump was the first politician to fully exploit this phenomenon. He knows facts don't matter, so he says what he wants to fire up the crowd of loyal idiots, and it's working.
On the Diane Rehm show a week or so back, Donald Trump support and panelist Scottie Nell Hughes said, "There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts."
Hughes added, "And so, Mr. Trump's tweets amongst a certain crowd, a large - large part of the population are truth."
People are willing to believe anything, and I mean anything. Which gets us to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington DC.
I'll let the Washington Post start explaining it. Unlike much of what is circulating out there, the following Washington Post excerpt is totally true. Which scares me:
"The restaurant's owner and employees were threatened on social media in the days before the election after fake news stories circulated claiming that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms. Even Michael Flynn, a retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to advise him on national security, shared stories about another anti-Clinton conspiracy theory involving pedophilia. None of them were true. but the fake stories and threats persisted, some even aimed at children of Comet Ping Pong employees and patrons. The restaurant's owners was forced to contact the FBI, the police, Facebook and other social media platforms in an effort to remove the articles."
Got that? Somebody wrote news "articles" saying Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile sex ring and legions of people actually believed it.
And still do. Some idiot named Edgar Maddison Welch from North Carolina came up to DC, went to Comet Ping Pong pizzeria and shot up the place, as part of a "self investigation" into the child sex ring he "knew" was going on there.
Somehow, nobody got hurt, and the guy was arrested.
Not only are the pizzeria, its employees and their families being harassed, but so too are owners and employees of neighboring businesses who apparently are "in on the sex ring." .
Washington Post reporters who covered the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria attack this weekend were also threatened and received death threats by these wackos.
I can't make this stuff up, and if so many people created these weird alternative "realities," God help us all.
Expect a new insane video per day this week from the great Weird Al Yankovic's new album called Mandatory Fun
We already got his parody of "Happy" called "Tacky"
But I really loved yesterday's release. It was a riff on that overplayed hit from last year, Robin Thicke's"Blurred Lines"
Yankovic's madness for this is a riff on terrible grammar called "Word Crimes"
In this video, we're taken to task for inserting apostrophes when they're not needed, misusing words and spelling them all wrong. All done hilariously.
I especially love the dancing punctuation marks.
I admit I'm guilty of some of the word crimes Yankovic cites in the video. Those mistakes appear here in the this blog and elsewhere, but whatever.
Then again, I like the tradition of intentional mistakes. My father owned a tavern years ago, and everybody seemed to point out the "wrong" sign he posted that read "No Bear Feat" Yeah, it was supposed to be "No Bare Feet" but my dad liked messing with people.
My guess is my father had no problem with unshod feet in this business but had real, serious objections to ursine derring-do.
Television weather forecasters and meteorologists in Oklahoma often busy themselves warning the public or describing tornadoes, droughts, floods, giant hail and other disasters.
This KOKO-TV meteorologist was trying to forecast baking hot weather in Oklahoma Monday, but got earthquake shaken instead.
At least they can predict those.
What do you do about an earthquake while you're on-camera, though?
Many people blame fracking, the practice of trying to extract oil from bedrock by shooting high pressure water and chemicals into the rocks, fracturing them and releasing the oil and gas.
For whatever the reason, these quakes are definitely unnerving in a state that's definitely not California.
The awesome singer Pink came out with a song about five years ago called "So What"
A chainsaw would feel good right now, as I watch the news Pink knows how to do it. n
The song is her saying "Screw you" to a former lover, but it can apply to anyone you want nothing more to do with.
We're still all mad at Congress, so this video is dedicated to Washington lawmakers.
"So What" feels totally cathartic as you listen to it, so I recommend hearing it when you start yelling at the television when the news from Washington comes on.
I love stumbling on fun surprises while idly wandering around the Internet when I ought to be working.
And there it was, a song called "Get a Job" by the group Gossip, which I understand has been around for nearly 15 years but for some stupid reason I've never heard of. (Hat tip to gay news blog JoeMyGod for making me notice this. Not sure why this was on that site, Joe does post music stuff occasionally, and hey, it was a great find.)
Lead singer Beth Ditto has an awesome voice. I took the time to poke aroumd some of their recent music. (instead of working) and it has something of an 80s vibe to me, but I mean that in a great way. It's a very catchy tune.
They had something of a hit with a song called "Perfect World" last year, but again, I was too clueless to notice.
The video for "Get a Job," just released this week, is below. It's extremely fun, at least in my twisted mind, and maybe yours, and watching it sure beats getting a job. Here it is:
