The Riot Act

[Guest TSMAdmin]

I have connections. Due to my being affiliated with a big shot web site like TheSmartMarks.com, I was recently invited to take a tour of Titan Towers in Stamford, Connecticut. Having been a fan of the WWF for ten years and a victim of the WWE for four days, I jumped at the opportunity. Who wouldn't? While it's unlikely that you'll meet any on-air personalities while there, it's worth the trip just to take in the atmosphere. Think of the history! As expected, the tour was amazing; getting to see the offices where all of those important decisions were made, the props from WWF TV over the years, and so on...I felt like a really geeky kid in a candy store. And then, the strangest thing happened. As I was being led through the hallway near the executive offices, I heard a boisterous, familiar voice in the distance. Briefly shaking off my tour guide, I scurried toward the voice. "Could it be?" I thought to myself. That's when I saw it: Vince McMahon, holding a copy of that week's "Smackdown!" ratings, softly crooning Everything But The Girl's "Missing" to a cardboard cut-out of The Rock. I tentatively approached the most successful promoter in the history of wrestling and gently patted him on the back, whispering "We all do, Vince. We all do." I was then escorted from the building by security. And that was my trip to Titan Towers, in a nutshell. Oh, yeah…I also purchased a ball cap.

 

With that out of the way, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Danny Gregory, although those of you who care would know me better as Kinetic: a regular on the SmartMark board and lord of the music folder. Should you choose to read my columns with any regularity, you'll be party to all sorts of uninformed musical rantings and ravings. If I've learned anything from the Internet Wrestling Community, it's that having an opinion is more important than having any sort of knowledge and I only hope that this column will become a reflection of that philosophy in the coming months.

 

I'm honored to have been accepted to write for this site, as I see it as a more literate alternative to the countless other opinion-oriented wrestling sites out there. The people who run it are some of the nicest people I've ever met, but they will not tolerate garbage. There's an unspoken commitment to excellence here at TheSmartMarks.com and I assure you that myself and each of the writers on this site will do our best to ensure that you won't have to tolerate faulty writing or superfluous fluff pieces; there won't be anything written for this site that only serves the purpose of feeding the writer's egos. Everything will be top-notch.

 

That said, here's a review of a Teenage Fanclub album that my sister wrote. Enjoy.

 

Teenage Fanclub "Bandwagonesque"

 

by Patricia Gregory

 

So, like, there I was in Circuit City this afternoon, all panicky and stuff, looking for a mouse for my computer cuz the old one and broke and I'm like "Uh, hello? Tonight is the JC Chasez chat session on AOL and I already missed the last one with Posh Spice who, even though they're not, like, popular anymore, is still totally girl-powerful and awesome!" I was so totally stoked for this chat and there's, like, no way I'm going to miss it because of some broken mouse or whatever. So, I'm, like, running around Circuit City looking for a mouse and I'm getting all frustrated and stuff cuz I'm, like, so not finding one but then I found a whole row of them and they were totally cheap and I was way happy. So, I was thinking to myself, "Tricia, you're gonna have, like, so much pocket change after this and I know you've totally been saving up for a rhinestone replica of the tiara Britney wore in the 'Lucky' video but, y'know, you've gotta splurge sometimes or you'll totally shrivel up and die!" So, I decided to see if they had anything in the used CD bin that I could get and, like, listen to without feeling all guilty and not responsible and stuff. During this wild scavenger hunt or something, I found this CD called Teenage Fanclub that I bought because of my, like, strict policy of buying stuff with "teen" in the title. I mean, like, all of the best magazines and stuff have "teen" in their title and they have all of the most awesome people in them! I think I saw Teenage Fanclub in "TeenBeat" once but it was probably just in a Columbia House ad or something. ANYway, I bought this CD and I'm like, totally disappointed. It's not bad or anything, really, but I don't know. Woah, that's the name of track five on this CD! That was, like, totally accidental! Well, at first I thought "Woah! Uh-uh. This band is, like, totally biting off of Weezer." Not that I listen to Weezer or anything. It's just that, like, my brother likes them and I saw them on MTV once and the lead singer was kinda cute in a Linus from "Charlie Brown" sorta way. But I looked at the liner notes and stuff and it said that this CD came out in 1991, which totally predates Weezer. Anyway, this CD is called "Bandwagonesque" and I don't know (!) what a bandwagonesque is but I'm really not feeling it. Most of the songs just sound the same. It's all, like, jangle-jangle and then a stupid story or something. "Sidewinder," though, is, like, soooo sweet! They lyrics are, like, "I love your walk/ when you walk/ I love your talk/ when you talk" and I totally melted or whatever. I am so putting that on the compilation I'm making Samantha for her sixteenth birthday party. She'll be all like, "Who's this?" but she'll love it! Other than that, though, this CD is pretty dull. The only other song that's, like, remotely interesting is "Metal Baby," which is either about futuristic cyborg infants or those creepy girls at school with purple hair and Slipknot shirts. Either way, it's totally ick! Teenage Fanclub need to, like, stop using false advertising or whatever. I feel like I totally need to warn all of my friends about this. Don't get fooled! These guys just sound like Weezer!

 

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