And, of course, hip crowds never buy anything for ironic reasons. No, no hip person would ever buy anything terminally cheesy just so he and his hipster friends could rupture their spleens laughing at it! </snark>

Anyone ahead of his/her time is subject to ridicule by those who simply just don’t get it.

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” — Carl Sagan

But your ridicule, as I have pointed out, ends up fueling the fame of those whom you attack.

Elliot? Elliot McGucken? Oops, I mean Drake Raft? Is that you? It’s been ages! How’s the teaching gig at UNC going?

So keep protesting Boone. And keep protesting me. Many folks cast as clowns eventually end up with the role of KING!

See above.

Now I am sounding boastful again, and I hate that in myself.

No you bloody don’t. I think Eric Sturgeon said it best:

Okay. Now. Let’s see here. Okay. The polite people have had their chance to try and pound some nails of sense into the dense wood-like substance you like to pretend is your head, and apparently they’ve failed, as you continue to display the intelligence of your average lump of mold-encrusted week-old snot. Look, I’ll try to put this so you can understand, although I don’t know why I bother, as my friend’s retarded dog who has repeatedly been run over by cars because he likes to chase them from the front shows better comprehension abilities than you. Being deliberately inflammatory is *not* *good*. Negative attention is not better than no attention.

Think about it, won’t you?

Somebody seriously compared Boone’s “experimental” CD to the White Album, expecting it to have those kind of standards? On a cover album? I kind of doubt that. I think they just wanted to make fun of Pat.

And I’d just like to point out that most of our worst works come from mistakes in musical experiment. Trust me, I’ve made many of them. And if you’re really nice, I’ll give you the link to some of the tamer mistakes (I haven’t put the other stuff online (though I might, if you’re not lucky)).

Oh, and my favorite part about Pat. As given above, he thinks we should stay on a warfooting to avoid another 9/11 (as if we were all peaceniks before), and yet bitches about paying the taxes necessary to fund that kind of stuff. It’s one thing to put your money where your mouth is, and it’s another thing to expect other people’s money to go there. I guess Pat just thinks that wars grow on trees.

And for the real Pat fans, here’s a link to some great Amway tunes (scroll down to #2):
http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/02-2.html
One of these is in my regular iTunes shuffle.

Here in Chicago, if you try to explain candlepin bowling, they look at you as if you’ve sprouted three heads.

As for NASCAR, it does have some appeal to me as something to watch with my 2-year-old son, whom I am desperately trying to keep safe from the Dobsonian Signs of Queeritude. (He won’t sit and watch football with me for very long, but sometimes he will sit and watch the cars go zoom. Then he goes back to fiddling with his sister’s barette, which he has insisted we put in his hair. Is that bad?)

If you read this bog regularly, you should know there are certain inherent risks :-)

Music and acting legend Pat Boone [...]

As in it’s a myth that he can act or sing.
And as far as the NASCAR/sports bit of the thread goes, yeah, this is one of the few places that I really fit in well in the SpongeDob “Is Your Kid a Queer” survey. I really don’t give a shit about any of ‘em. About the only time I can be counted on to show a vague interest whatsoever is when something tickles the libido a bit-like Olympic swimming events (male). Love that underwater camera! But I still won’t go out of my way to watch it.

It’s like, imagine baseball with the players just jogging around the bases the whole time.
But sometimes, just sometimes, the players CRASH INTO EACH OTHER AND BURST INTO FLAMES.

Oh, man–that’d be FUCKING GREAT!!!

Good point. That might make baseball interesting to watch. But instead they mostly just stand around and adjust their cups.

But sometimes, just sometimes, the players CRASH INTO EACH OTHER AND BURST INTO FLAMES.

See, I’m a baseball freak, but I even I don’t do shit like that. I didn’t even tape the World Series last year (even though I shoulda) because most of baseball is just really boring, especially when you know what’s gonna happen.

It’s like, imagine baseball with the players just jogging around the bases the whole time.

On the other hand, NASCAR fans shouldn’t denigrate non-NASCAR fans. A lot of this is just regional preferences. Hey, I grew up in Boston on candlepin bowling (both as a bowler and, yes, a TV-watcher). I’m in New York now and I kind of miss it. It’s a New England thing — you wouldn’t understand. (And I wouldn’t expect you to.)