Has got to be the meanest looking guy out there:

Anyway, here’s the rest from the BBC. Ullrich is targeting leTour especially hard this year, blah, blah, blah. The only reason I mention it is that usually the only Ullrich news between October and February is that he was spotted in some nightclub.

ZZ Top completely rocks. Or did at one point.

It’s possibly a random convergence of Texan urbanization, co-mingling of rock/country/blues possible only in pre-Oil boom Houston, and the trickle-down of cheap sound technologies, but the band has a sound that remains unmatched despite being oft-imitated.

What threw me over the edge was the last 30 seconds or so of “Give Me All Your Lovin’” where there’s a change in the drum machine, matched with a change in the riff, slowly degenerating into noise (though the studio recording fades out) echoing the pure Texas psychadelia of Rocky Erickson and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.

And gave me a new appreciation for the strenght of the video to overshadow music for both ill and good.

Since we haven’t had a good-natured brawl here on the porch for a while, let’s consider Scrappleface’s Social Security Color-Coded Alerts

Color: Green
Message: “The money we’re taking from your paycheck is somewhere safe, so don’t worry, you’re likely to get a lot of it back.”

Color: Yellow
Message: “Improvements in health care are causing people to live longer and we had to give the old people a bit of your money. Don’t worry, we’ll find more money.”

Color: Orange
Message: “Listen, about your retirement savings…uh…hey, do you want to watch some TV?”

Color: Red
Message: “You can feel good about knowing that the money you put into Social Security has helped a lot of needy seniors. A grateful nation thanks you for your personal sacrifice.”

Discuss. I, for one, welcome our confiscatory parents.