“Phone balls”. “Phone balls” is when you have the courage to say things to people over the phone, but can’t actually “man up” and say it to their face.

The internet has this as well. “Keyboard balls”.

An example of “keyboard balls”: all the little flamers, haters, trolls and other lacking-proper-social-skill idiots who have nothing better to do than to hide behind their keyboard, and channel all their misplaced rage and anger over their wasted-excuse-for-a-life at people they do not know.

A better example…

It is no secret that there are some people that don’t like me. For a handful, their anger is justified (they sold bootlegs and I busted them, they copied entire web sites and I busted them, they flamed the hell out of people on web forums and I banned them, et cetera). What is real fun is when one of them decides to email you, attempting to rip you a new one (and usually failing). I received a new, unique version of this type of email yesterday. Here is a complete copy paste (including email and IP address - have fun!):

Return-Path: ratze101@gmx.de
Received: from mail.gmx.net (mail.gmx.net [213.165.64.20])
by danielbarassi.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with SMTP id m8U707QG006038
for ; Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:00:11 -0600
Received: (qmail 32301 invoked by uid 0); 30 Sep 2008 07:00:02 -0000
Received: from 87.158.127.113 by www077.gmx.net with HTTP;
Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:00:02 +0200 (CEST)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”utf-8″
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:00:02 +0200
From: ratze101@gmx.de
Message-ID: <20080930070002.37700@gmx.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Youre death in europe!!!!!!!!
To: brat@bratproductions.com
X-Authenticated: #50285232
X-Flags: 0001
X-Mailer: WWW-Mail 6100 (Global Message Exchange)
X-Priority: 1
X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1/wO3szedbwz/qmycOLg6hWyBHH60NYnUdpka79dT
V0EOVobAnjidKw08kMc3W6CFFjattEfSoifQ==
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-GMX-UID: SvnSfPh8f2IsN+cjk25oDg54dWxlc5bE
X-UIDL: X$/”!ZX6″!gO3″!iX-!!

Hello Mr. Daniel Barassi,
We hope to see you this or next year in Europe because we want to do something with you.
A few groups in different countries have enough from you. Your last action with the press conference etc.
Be sure that in a few countries people know how you look because we post some pictures of you.
When somebody see you on a concert we will give you our love.
This trip will be a nightmare for you. Better you stay in your country.
But there its not safe for you to.
See you later idiot.
P.S. Don’t worry when you cant come to Europe, we will find other ways.
Sharing Mp3 under your name and send the results to RIAA etc.

–
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This is fucking pathetic. Some crazy Eurotrash who’s all pissed off that they weren’t picked for a contest wants to kill me? Are you fucking kidding me.

And I thought all the religious extremists in the United States were psycho.

“I didn’t win a contest. Fuck! I will kill everyone responsible!”

To the douche who sent the email: put up or shut up.

To everyone else: have a pleasant Tuesday.

Honda created one of only four “musical roads” in the world, in the city of Lancaster, California,. It is the only musical road in all of North America.

Apparently it’s been around for a few weeks, but I only just learned about it over the weekend, via Laist.

I called my friend Asif, and planned a Monday morning drive up to Lancaster (about 75 minutes North of good ol’ Burbank).

Here is the video…

Sadly, a few local residents have complained about the constant off-key drone, and (unless something changes) on September 23rd, the city of Lancaster will be caving in to the requests of a few people, and paving over the very unique feature of the city.

Honestly, there is no other reason to go to Lancaster. The road is cool, it gets people to come to an otherwise boring town (sorry Lancaster residents - I am used to the activity in L.A.), and it’s a shame to see the road go. Even the person closest to the musical road actually wants to save the road. Check out this news feature from KNBC HD (46.9 meg mpeg4 video)

If only Honda had made the musical road about one mile more West, no one would have complained. There’s no homes there.

Enjoy the video…

I finally picked up something that I have wanted for a long time (but was too afraid to “acquire” off the freeway).

A flea market is the perfect place to buy this, but THIS flea market was extra special (if you are a Depeche Mode fan, you will get where I am going with that).

$85. Haggled to $65.

Mint condition. Authentic. Pretty.

Money well spent!

On this day of reflection, and looking back to the events of seven years ago, I am scared for the future.

This country is filled with a large amount of “bible thumpers”, racists and simply ignorant people (while those are three different categories, a number of people qualify for all of the above). As soon as they hear something, they believe it. So, if the McCain people put forth a bold faced lie about Obama as “fact”, these people would sooner believe it, than hear the real truth.

That is where this video comes in.

In a world (a nod to Don LaFontaine, r.i.p.) where people are gullible, and are more than likely to just accept the same old routine, there is one group of people who are doing more than their fair share to help set the record straight. Those people? Comedians!

Granted, a comedian benefits from having a bad President in office, but after some time, the joke just isn’t funny anymore.

Not only do I want you to watch this video (click the image above to go directly to the Funny Or Die web site), but I want you to forward that URL to everyone you know, ESPECIALLY those people who look at McCain and think “Oh, there’s a good idea”.

While forwarding the Palin video above, forward the Matt Damon video below as well. Matt Damon, while being interviewed by AP recently, hit the nail on the head. No one knows who Palin really is, and yet she’s one old heartbeat away from having her finger on “the button”! If that does not frighten you, you are not worthy of voting…or breeding…or engaging people in daily conversation.

His quote:
“It’s like a really bad Disney movie, “The Hockey Mom.’ Oh, I’m just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she’s president,” said Damon. “She’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It’s absurd.”

Click the frame below to see the Matt Damon video…

I remember, back in the mid-80’s, I was so happy to finally get MTV. I spent all the money I could get on blank videotape (Scotch EG T-120, thank you). I taped MTV almost all the time. All the music videos, all the music specials, all the music news. The only thing I didn’t bother with? The non-music stuff. Luckily, back then, that wasn’t too much.

Fast forward to now. I am suffering through the 2008 VMA’s. After the parade of “only famous because they were on a reality TV show on MTV” stars (”stars” used very loosely) during the pre-show bullshit, I was already banging my head against a wall. But then the “show” started…

Watching Britney get a pity award? Sad.

Watching Russell Brand crack jokes to intellectually bereft mannequins in the audience? Sad (the lifeless crowd, not Russell). And talk about a shit crowd! Watch a replay (it will be on MTV’s schedule for the next few weeks). Watch the crowd as the commercials come up. No one there cares. There’s no applause. There’s no happy faces. All I saw were managers on their Blackberries (is there a plural for Blackberry?), some Viacom/Paramount people filling chairs, and “celebrities” who already know that most of the awards are fixed (I am speaking with knowledge on that topic!). Sad sad shit.

Watching Katy Perry (the only real reason I watched) get pushed to being the commercial break “band” vocalist? Fucking sad!

Watching people not have a clue to where they were supposed to walk, forgetting microphones, missing cues…damn! You know there was a rehearsal for this shit. MTV kept showing clips of rehearsal footage. There was a fucking rehearsal, and yet there were still that many fuck ups? That is just fucking sad.

The Paramount lot? Seriously? It might seem cool to someone, until they learned that MTV’s parent company (Viacom) OWNS Paramount, and you all were either too cheap (or too scared) to have your piss poor excuse for a show in a real venue.

MTV. You celebrated 25 years of your awards show. Time to cancel it, and fill the spot with more pointless fucking “reality” shows (why the quotes around reality? if you are trying to pass your fucking fluff off as reality, make sure the bloopers don’t hit YouTube next time of your “real people” doing multiple takes of the same “spur of the moment, live to tape” scene!). Why even have the awards show this year? Did you play any of these videos? When was the last time *ANY* of your TV properties (excluding your HD channel, which is so lacking in content that it has to replay every program at least 20 times) actually played *ONE* fucking music video all the way through?

MTV, you are a fucking joke. You are catering to an audience that does not exist. Change your name from M(usic) T(ele)V(ision) to M(onosyllablic) T(ele)V(ision), since the crowd you are trying to program for has the collective mental agility to only express themselves with “woo”, “yeah!” and “kool”. You don’t play music. Even if you did, you wouldn’t play anything that was worth listening to.

MTV, you are old. You are pointless. You are not needed anymore. I can buy (or BitTorrent) a music video if I want to see it (since you’ll never fucking play it anyway). If I want to hear new music, I will hit a mp3 blog to sample a new song, and then if I like the song, I will buy a CD (fuck digital downloads as the only way to buy music).

The absolute last place I will ever turn to for “new music” (or, more simply, “music”) is MTV.

In case no one has had the heart to tell you, allow me. MTV, you are dead. Go away. Convert yourself to a channel that only plays reality TV shows, “starring” pompous rich fucks that no one cares about. Oh…wait…you already do that.

Instead of my usual policy of creating my own photo gallery php code, and hosting my images on my own site, I decided to go more “viral”, and use Flickr.

The first gallery: Web Site Splashes

If you want to see all 140+ images that are used at the top of every page of this web site, without having to constantly refresh, then this gallery is for you.

Enjoy!

(click the image to view the entire episode on hulu.com)