…talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity, we use it. – Maya Angelou | Dictionary.com.

Oh, Ms. Angelou, is there nothing you can’t say eloquently? I bet she even orders her Wendy’s Spicy Chicken burgers with an ethereal grace.

It’s funny how we can forget so much. Until “Volcano Girls” came on the radio just a moment ago, the part of my brain that retains the knowledge that Veruca Salt is (was?) a band had been looked away in the dark, dank recesses of my mind (for some reason, I’m picturing a sad, lonely mushroom, animated like a Disney cartoon, locked away in a dungeon like prison cell – I know, I’m concerned for me too).

Anyhoo, whatever happened to Veruca Salt?

One quick Google search later….

OH MY GOD, THEY STILL EXIST AND ARE PERFORMING!

Oh boo. It’s not the original line up (not that I know or care who they are) but still, as soon as one member defects, doesn’t the group then seemed hackneyed and washed up? It’s like your uncle trying to recreate his high school garage band by recruiting his bowling buddies to jame with him. No matter how good their rendition of “Smoke on the Water” is, you can’t look past the spare tires and solar panels.

As Lainey of laineygossip.com would say, it smacks of TRY HARD.

But who am I to judge? These people found a way to be paid to do what they love for a living and they’ve found a way to continue to be paid for what they love even though their heyday is long over. Really, they should be applauded for stumbling upon exactly what everyone else in the world dreams of doing, being paid to pursue their passion (alliteration is fun!).

I had this same revelation the other week when about to voice my embarrassment for Steven Tyler, having stooped so low as to be a judge on “reality” TV. Midsentence I stopped myself–the man’s a rock star and by rights allowed to do whatever the hell he wants (which is the very essence of a rock star), if he wants to appear on TV twice a week to say yay or nay to aspiring singers’ performances and take home millions of dollars as a result, more power to him. Really, it is the ultimate rock star move. He literally just has to sit down, throw together a few barely intelligible phrases (Paula Abdul left the bar really low) and receive tons of money. Plus, by being on a weekly show aimed at tweenagers (I hate myself for writing “tweenagers’) Steven has introduced himself to an entirely new potential fanbase– a group whose grandparents may be more familiar with the music of Aerosmith than their parents are.

Good on ya, Steven. And good on you too, Veruca Salt.

DEAF PUPPEDY JAM: Dog Learns Sign Language

By Michelle Collins

http://ahref=<p><a href=”A” _mce_href=”http://vimeo.com/20759580″>A”>http://vimeo.com/20759580″>A Brief History of Title Design</a> from <a href=”Ian” _mce_href=”http://vimeo.com/albo”>Ian”>http://vimeo.com/albo”>Ian Albinson</a> on <a href=”Vimeo.http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

EDIT: WHY WON’T YOU EMBED?!?!?!

1. Unless you have a car sickness issue which requires you to sit in a specific seat in the vehicle, nobody cares whether you sit in the front or the back… Actually, now that I think about it, I believe it’s law that someone of your age wears a seat belt. If that is a five-passenger vehicle, then you should sit in the back. You don’t won’t the po-po on you for not being properly restrained in the vehicle.
2. Again, now that I think about it, you actually spend the majority of your in-car time sitting on the headrest of the backseat/the trunk so, for arguments sake, you kind of copped out and chose not to sit in either the backseat nor the frontseat. You chose some kind of nonseat to sit in. Also, quit singing about where you should sit while you are already currently sitting.
3. Did you really sing about a bowl of cereal? Did that seem like a good idea when you recorded the song? “Yes, of course! This is what pop music has been missing – references to both cereal and the bowls in which cereal is eaten!”
4. “We we we so excited”? We we we should have gotten ourselves to English class as we’ve obviously missed some pretty inportant information regarding verbs and contractions.
5. Who the hell is the guy rapping? Is he the chaperone?

…………………….. DAMN IT, WHY WON’T THE PHOTO EMBED?!?!?