the things I do for rock n' roll

The Pistons are playing in the Conference Finals, but instead of watching the game I'm driving to London to entertain a bunch of hockey-loving hosers.

As if that weren't annoying enough, I have to drive back to Detroit and work tomorrow morning.

Boooooooooo.

pop punk?

The Hat plays the Memorial Cup in London tomorrow night. Despite my residence in Hockeytown, I greatly prefer basketball to hockey. I dig hockey, mind you, but there just isn't enough scoring nor enough bling. Besides, the Pistons are an inspiring, unselfish team to watch. The Wings are basically the Yankees of the NHL, trying to buy the Cup every year. Well...every year but this one, I suppose. So yeah...go Pistons.

In any event, the London Free Press threw us a little plug for this event:

"It continues for almost the entire run of the Memorial Cup, with London performers ranging from R&B's Soul Sausage* to pop punk's Ruth's Hat to alt-country rocker Chris Hart and his band."

People still call us "pop punk"???

I find that rather amusing. These days, mere mention of the words "pop punk" brings to mind the bland sameness of bands like Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, and Not By Choice. Whiny, nerve-grinding vocals and cookie-cutter 3-chord songs. It's not that these bands are so awful; they're just safe, designed for radio airplay and nothing more. A monumental bore, in other words. As such, I reject that characterization of the Hat.

Don't get me wrong; I love the 90s wave of pop punk bands, and still listen to them regularly. The Hi Fives, Pansy Division, Riverdales, Sicko, MTX, Green Day, Queers, and the Smugglers definitely influenced us. I could take or leave the SoCal skate punk crap. I love 70s punk, but hate the shirts-off 80s hardcore horseshit. Give me the Ramones, Replacements, Buzzcocks, and Undertones. You can keep Fear and the Exploited; apparently those bands thought "punk" and "asshole" were synonymous.

But, as usual, I digress. My point is that I don't see us as a "pop punk" band, at least in the conventional sense. I don't think "punk" adequately describes the band at this point; though we grew out of that scene, it never really embraced us, and vice-versa. "Pop" could describe us, provided one defines "pop" music as a separate genre based on hooks and songwriting, rather than simply as a shorter way of saying "popular".

At this point, we're just a rock n' roll band. Or maybe a pop n' roll band. Read the bio (www.ruthshat.com) if you simply must categorize us, but "pop punk" is NOT the way to do it. We all love the Ramones, but we'd rather be the Who or the Beatles.

* - Soul Sausage?

random thoughts

I rather hate the self-assuredness of "confident" people. It's arrogant to approach life as if you've figured it out.

There are no correct answers. There is no proper way to react. There is no appropriate thing to do. There is no right way to be.

ANYONE who says ANYTHING definitively is officially full of shit.

Yes...me too.

morning woody

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying."

- Woody Allen

Bolus used to say that he liked Woody Allen movies, "except for that nervous guy in all of them."

granfalloons

It seems to me that most people are unhappy and unsuccessful, not because they lack effort or initiative, but because they become fixated on the wrong things, or, even worse, the wrong people.

Kurt Vonnegut coined the term "granfalloon," to my knowledge. Basically, granfalloons are seemingly related, ostensibly important groups of people who are utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Granfalloons outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but their mutual association is really just incidental. Vonnegut uses Hoosiers as an example. The protagonist in Cat's Cradle finds himself on an island nation where he is surrounded by fellow Indiana residents. But, other than hailing from the same state, they have no significance in each other's lives. A granfalloon is predicated on nothing real, nothing of consequence.

A granfalloon is inversely related to a karass (essentially the opposite of a granfalloon). A karass is comprised of people whose lives are entwined with yours in mysterious yet profound ways. Such people may not even be a part of any of your more obvious granfalloons, but in the end it is their presence on this earth that influences the direction of your own life.

Needless to say, granfalloons can distract us from our true karass, bringing people together by shared but ultimately false premises.

Who are you with tonight? Why are you with him/her/them?

It's the only thing that matters. You're wasting your life...just not in the way that you think you are.