Mystic Negro dot Com

The fun thing about having a personal blog (or hell, just keeping up a site all by yourself) is that every so often you just have nothing to say.  Which is why for the last few weeks this place has pretty much just been titties.  I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have thoughts of things to say, I had plenty of thoughts (as you’ll see in about three sentences) but between my crippling Cracked addiction (which I blame 100% on Darren Hough) and the fact that my life is both boring, and none of your damned business, I couldn’t be bothered to put pen to paper finger to keyboard.  Below are some of the things that you didn’t get to read about over the last couple of weeks:

• Help Us Devon Smillie, You’re Our Only Hope…
  No BMXer has managed to successfully break out of Atlanta.  I mean, for about 30 seconds 18 months ago Talem did it, but it didn’t stick.  Trey Jones shows up (or showed up) around here relatively often but he is, in fact, not even from Georgia.  Hell, an argument can be made that for about 17 hours in 2008 I was the most famous BMXer in Georgia, and everyone knows I barely ride.  So, it all rests on Devon’s tiny, birdlike shoulders (and his wrarms, we can’t forget the wrarms) to bring Atlanta into the spotlight…
• BMW Officially Cancels the 5 Series Wagon in the US, Gives Us the Ugliest Vehicle Ever Made in its Place
  This would have been another post about the 5 Series GT, which is how they blaspheme in Bavaria
• The iPhone/Pod/Pad App Store Sucks – Tech Press Performs Ritual Mock Indignation
  Maybe they really are indignant about the fact that Apple’s arbitrary app store rules cause items to be blocked and/or removed for offenses that are never fully explained, are completely arbitrary and completely contradictory with themselves.  Maybe if every other article about Apple in the tech press didn’t read like it was written by someone kneeling, mouth agape in front of Steve Jobs proclaiming their willingness to swallow or take it to the face, maybe then I would take the indignation seriously.  I don’t.
• The iPad, Seriously
  On the low end it costs more, but does less than a netbook.  In order to make it actually useful you have to spend more than a mid-high end laptop and after that, it still doesn’t print.
• Specialized Exits BMX Market and Enters Mountain Bike Market…With BMX Bikes
  Yeah, just read it yourself, this is pretty dumb, but the bike looks nice.
• Mars Needs Women and Rob Zombie Needs to Stop
  An argument can be made that outside The Godfather Pt. 2, The Empire Strikes Back and maybe a handful of other movies that no sequel has ever been as good as its predecessor.  So, I hoped against hope that Hellbilly Delux 2 wouldn’t suck. Unfortunately instead of hearing the evil returning as promised I got a good song (“Sick Bubblegum”) and an entire album of horror movie references over glam rock grooves.  Excuse me, WTF?
  I thoroughly believe that drum and guitar solos only exist live so that the rest of the band can go back stage and hit a bong, so why in the name of the Appice Brothers…why in the name of Carmine’s mighty mustache:
  

  Don't Hate, For it is Mighty

  would you put an eight minute drum solo on an album?  Hellbilly Delux 2 is like if George Lucas woke up and decided to make a movie about trade negotiations and a whiny prepubescent and call it “Star Wars,” fortunately Lucas has better sense than to unleash some boring shit like that on the world.  Rob Zombie, take heed.

As you can see, nothing to see here.  Hopefully I’ll get back on the ball this week.

I’m a huge fan of pin-up photography, also good causes.  This picture is from a book I own where famous actresses were shot pin-up style and the proceeds were donated to charity.  Even though the book is less than a yard away from me, it’s under other stuff and I’m way too lazy to grab it to look up either the name of the book or the name of the charity.  Said book holds the distinction of containing the only photograph of the Olsen twins which doesn’t look horrible…

I found this on the Baratunde Thurston‘s website.  It makes me laugh because it’s true.

Puffy ruins everything he touches.

It’s easy to forget that before she lost her damn mind that at one point, Tyra Banks was simply mindnumbingly beautiful

The purpose of advertising is to make you buy something by making it appear more awesome than it actually is without actually lying, because that would get you in trouble with the law.

So, see, Nissan o’ Canada isn’t lying here, a remote controlled SE-R is exactly this fun, which is about 10 times as fun as an actual SE-R by all accounts (with every generation that car seems to lose more and more of its mojo).

How it was made.  Seriously, awesome.

I know this because Dave Mustaine keeps telling me that he’s a mother effing legend.  No, seriously, I just read an interview with Pete Townsend (PETE EFFING TOWNSEND) where he doesn’t once mention that he’s a legend.  But the below interview is the second interview with Dave in roughly as many months that I’ve been exposed to where he points out that he’s a legend and you don’t get more legendary than a legend, which means that Dave Mustaine is on the same level as Tony Iomi or Elvis.

I’d also like to point out to Chris Broderick that after you get fired (and I know you’ll get fired.  How do I know this? Because you’re in Megadeth.) Dave will spend a few minutes in every interview talking about how you sucked and weren’t a right fit for the band.  Hell, if the split is particularly heinous, he’ll even write a song about you.

Anyway, back to Dave who doesn’t get that if you’re actually a legend, you don’t have to tell people that you are, they know.  And while I’ll admit that in the realm of speed/thrash metal Dave is a big, assed legend and in the world of heavy metal in general he’s a minor legend.  In the world of music in general Dave’s a footnote.  But Dave tends to be oblivious things like that.  Lets just take a look at Dave’s guitar endorsement history.

Skipping B.C. Rich, where he gots nothing.  Dave took Danny Spitz’s advice and chucked all of his other guitars to play Jacksons until he got not just an endorsement deal (right around the time that Jackson went from endorsing six people in the world to endorsing anyone with long hair) but a signature guitar.  Dave’s signature guitar:

The King V was originally called the “Double Rhoads” because both of its points were the size of the upper point of the Jackson Rhoads guitar.  When Dave stopped using Jackson he said that one of the reasons was because they took his name off of his signature guitar, the King V, when he started using the Y2KV and “you don’t take someone’s name off of their signature guitar.” Which, to be fair, Jackson didn’t.

King

Ratt guitarist Robbin “King” Crosby was like 6’5″ and wanted a slightly oversized guitar, he got the Double Rhoads and it became the “King V.”

If only it had stopped there.

Dave hooked up with ESP guitars and upon finding that no one was using their V shaped guitars he “designed” the DV8 series. Of course, the reason no one was using ESP’s V shaped guitars is because their original endorser, guy who hates Dave Mustaine with a burning red hot satanic fury Dave’s close personal friend Kerry F. King had began using BC Rich guitars again.  Leaving Dave playing a modified version of a guy who has expressed his hatred for Dave in every interview, ever.

Dave then designed the ESP Axxion.  The less said about that the better.  Sweet dancing baby mama of metal was that thing ugly.  The two Xs in the name signified Dave’s 20 years in the music industry, or what was on the jug he drank out of before designing it.  Still, it was his own, original guitar.

That didn’t last.

Leaving ESP, he then had Dean design him, well, another fucking King V, that’s what they did.  But not being content with that, he decided he needed a new, better signature guitar. I present to you the Zero:

Now, if you listen to the interview that Dave gave about his kickass new signature guitar he goes into how he had to make sure that nobody else was using this model first, because that’s really important to him. Still, for some reason this really looks familiar.

I’ve got it, how about here.  I can’t embed this video, because the charred corpse of Megaforce records doesn’t understand how the internet works, but I still have the feeling that Bobby Gustafson wasn’t who I was thinking about.

Oh yeah:

Oh, That Guy Who Kicked Dave Out of a Band...

DAVE MUSTAINE’S NEW SIGNATURE GUITAR IS A WHITE EXPLORER, ZOMGWTFLOL!!!10001110101

No, seriously, Dave decided that his new signature guitar should be a guitar so thoroughly linked with his biggest musical rival that an argument can be made that it is the source of all Metallica’s power.  Don’t believe me<

• …And Justice for All – white Explorer.
• Metallica – black Explorer.
• Load/Reload/ Garage Inc/St. Anger – no Explorer.
• Death Magnetic* – white Explorer.

So, you get what I’m saying, Mustaine is oblivious and Metallica has sucked for a very, very long time.

Maybe in the future Dave can be legendary enough to get his own guitar.  I’m not counting on it, but it could happen.  He is, after all, a legend.

*This should be in no way taken as me saying that Death Magnetic was good, it still kinda blew.  Just less.

…where I point out to Sean that “Boobies” and “sexay” are only two of the biggest words in my tag cloud.

…and I Get Wood

What do the BMW M5, Mercedes-Benz E55, Audi RS4 and Audi RS6 have in common?

1. Ridiculous price tags
2. Relative scarcity on the used marker
3. Undeserved quality cachet born of their German origin
4. Wagon versions we can’t get here
5. All of the above.

Yep, 5.

We don’t get the super wagons because, as I’ve said plenty of times before, Americans hate station wagons.  This is why, of course, Cadillac unveiled this at the New York Auto Show:

CTS Wagon + 556 HP Superpowered Corvette V-8 = Automotive Viagra

I’ve always loved super wagons, starting with the 300 hp Audi S6, on to the Dodge Magnum R/T & SRT-8, but now I have found the love of my life (Automotive Category).  Not that I have $65K waiting around to be used, but hell if I’m not considering the devil’s deal that is a lease…