I play video games, watch reruns of What I Like About You, Gilmore Girls and Star Trek: TNG, and I desperately search for something new (some good, and some bad).

This led me to the discovery that my TiVo is quite capable of showing me YouTube videos on my giant television.  Although YouTube is hardly a new invention, I have never really embraced the phenomenon.  I can always find better things to do on my computer than watch videos.

But watching videos on my television?  Well that’s an entirely different beast.  So I embarked and soon found myself subscribed to Marina Orlova, host and proprietor of HotForWords.

The premise of her website and videos are simple — discussion of the origin of certain words, what they mean, and what they used to mean.

Marina is a philologist by trade so she’s not just some fly-by-night internet researcher.  Her love for words makes her ’students’ hot for words, and there is no better motivator for learning.

Sure it doesn’t hurt that she has a sexy Russian accent and looks like a super model, but it’s really the content that got me to to subscribe.  Learning is fun, and learning in bite-sized chunks is even better.

That long introduction of HotForWords was really to get to a discussion about one of Marina’s latest videos:

This video discusses the meaning and origin of the word mondegreen. It is a word I believe I have come across before but I don’t think I could have told you the meaning before watching this video.

For those unwilling to watch the hot Russian girl above (seriously, what is wrong with you!?), a mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a lyric.

I can’t remember all of the mondegreens I have come across in my life, but I know they are plentiful. From my youth, I can particularly remember mishearing a line in “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.

The real line goes, “Bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stand!” but I always heard it as “Pregnant women, sick of swimming, ready to stand!”

I always just assumed it was some sort of reference to Ariel’s unspoken desire to be a mother.

From the video, I have definitely been guilty of “Hold me closer Tony Danza.” I think the first time I heard Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”, I had no idea what he was saying.  Given his preferences, I figured it was perfectly plausible that he had written an ode to Tony Danza.

What are some mondegreens that you’ve been guilty of? With all of the singing of pirate songs and rock concerts you people go to, surely you’ve run into a few.

In fact, not only is he fighting the crowd today but he also fought it on Sunday for some of pre-inaugaral festivities.

He wrote a post about about it which you can read to get his full experience, but I want to extract this one statement:

“Bruce Springsteen was moving and U2 was rocking, but I would never have guessed the guy who got the crowd going was Garth Brooks covering ‘American Pie’ and ‘Shout’.”

I’m not surprised in the least. As I have posited before, Garth Brooks is one of the most important artists in American history. Of course he got the crowds going — he’s a modern day Elvis.

Making such grandiose claims about Mr. Brooks relevance was a hotly debated topic the first time around.  It seemed to hinge on the definition of ‘important’ and ‘impactful.’

I concede that Brooks’ musical stylings are not all that innovative.  He is obviously heavily influenced by his forerunners and would probably readily admit as much.

But as far as being a performer, a star, a celebrity — Garth Brooks can only be bested by a few musical acts in American history.

I don’t bring this up to debate it again.  I just wanted to let Kerry know that he shouldn’t be surprised at all and that I could have predicted it.

I’m pretty anti-social and my general stance on people other than myself (and those few who have proven otherwise) is that they’re all morons.

American Idol proves how moronic America really is. Every single year.

The only seasons that America had even half a brain were Seasons one & four.

I’m not a big fan of Kelly Clarkson, but I’ll admit she’s a bona fide artist at this point.

And, of course, I think the world of Carrie Underwood who is — by my estimation — the most worthy American Idol winner ever.

The year after Carrie, Chris Daughtry got an early boot when he should have won. And who won instead? Taylor Hicks.

Seriously, I don’t understand the reasoning people use when voting for these contestants. I’m willing to concede that not every one has to have the same taste in music, but it’s not always about musical genre.

It’s about actual talent. There are haves and have-nots when it comes to a fantastic singing voice, and the division is generally very very clear.

But apparently no one’s ears work as well as mine, because I’m continually disappointed by the decisions made by the loyal viewers of idol.

This year we had a final six of Jason Castro, Syesha Mercado, Brooke White, David Cook, David Archuleta and Carly Smithson.

That’s a solid final six, but let’s face facts. Both Syesha and Jason are amateurs compared to the other four. Their voices are weak, their choices are boring, and they have no real chance in the world of music.

Yet somehow, Carly got voted out. Carly; the woman who has the best female vocals by far in this year’s competition.

Brooke couldn’t even sing her song right, yet somehow she got voted through. She’s a snotty, arrogant little brat who constantly interrupts the judges and is in all other ways rude from what I’ve seen on Idol.

Yet America persists. Bunch of morons.

I’m no music connoisseur. I’ve gone to only a handful of concerts in my life and most of those have been Country. But this weekend I watched the Charleston, WV version of Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy Carnival Ride.

I saw both Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban, but I’m going to write up the concerts in separate reviews so I can show off more awesome pictures. The stage has a catwalk that comes out into the middle of the arena and our seats were right on the cat walk halfway down. It was amazingly close.

First up was Carrie and she had a lot of costume changes. I’ve never been to a concert where there was even one costume change, much less 5.

Carrie only has 2 albums, so she really doesn’t have a whole lot to work with. She pretty much ran through every song she has in her 1.5 hours on stage.

Although she pulled out the guitar a few times, Carrie is clearly not a guitarist. She is, first and foremost, a vocalist.

I watched Carrie on American Idol back in the day (a whopping 3 years ago) and I’ve always thought her voice was pretty amazing. She proves it at her concert. I have never heard any artist sound so good live. Her voice was flawless.

Some credit probably goes to her sound techs for making sure she sounded good above the music, but you can’t ignore the fact that she just has an amazing and consistent voice. Other than the screams, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a song off of her album and the way she sings it live.

Although her voice is a wonder to behold, she clearly hasn’t gotten the hang of live performance. She used the catwalk sparingly and even when she did, she looked uncomfortable.

The guards wouldn’t let anyone stand at the catwalk, so you had to stand at your seat. There was no chance of getting her to shake your hand or flash you a smile.

She seemed pretty self-conscious about who she did pick out in the audience. They were almost always children. Guess she doesn’t wanna give any stalker-types the wrong idea…

Those are minor nitpicks for a great concert, though. She was a lot of fun to watch and when she was on the main stage she looked comfortable and happy.

She apparently has good fashion sense, too, because my wife walked away with a couple of fashion ideas. Of course, I didn’t even notice…

If you don’t like country, then obviously this might not be your cup of tea. But if you do want to see a display of some of the finest vocals in the business, you can’t go wrong with Carrie Underwood.

Well, recently I was going through my Google Analytics for this site and was surprised to see that I had a few incoming links from dixiechicksfans.net.

Intrigued, I desperately hunted down where exactly on that site I could possibly be linked from. Afterall, I don’t even go by the same ‘call sign’ as I did back then, and I wandered away from the Dixie Chicks online community some time ago.

After a modest amount of searching, I found this thread which is posted by someone who stumbled across my Stalker Days post and connected the dots.

Not a lot of responses to the thread, but it totally stoked me to find out that people remembered me fondly from those days.

I registered on the site, but have thus far not been approved to post.

If I’m understanding correctly, the webmaster of the site is the same who started “Emily Robison, You Rock!” in the same spirit as my own “Natalie Maines, Will You Marry Me?” so we have some history.

Anyway, this tie back to my past has encouraged me to do something I’ve considered doing before.

I’ve migrated the entire NMWYMM site over to my domain here and put it up at http://natalie.lykaon.com. I’ve made a few changes to some broken links and updated the contact information as well.

This will make sure I never lose the site and can keep it tied in with my online web presence.

Many may ask why I would want to, but despite the zany name of the site, I maintain that it was a successful foray into online fandom that I should be proud of.

Surprisingly, my wife has encouraged me to update the site with a Web 2.0 sensibility and add some features to draw in new crowds (such as the awesome idea of an Adrian Pasdar interactive voodoo doll).

Although the Chicks have fallen out of grace with country radio, and I even have my own differing opinion from Natalie these days, I’ll always miss those days when it was just me, the Internet, and my love for Natalie Maines.

The bulk of my collection, however, has always consisted of country music. Perhaps it’s my Texas heritage, but I just haven’t found a genre of music as fulfilling as the fiddle playing crowd.

The king of country can only be Garth Brooks.

Over the years, I’ve had many the philosophical argument pitting Garth Brooks against various other musical artists, trying to argue that Mr. Brooks is far more influential and impactful than most artists in the history of American music.

Most of the time, the suggestions of those more impactful than Garth Brooks are laughable.

I’m sorry, but there is no argument that Rick Astley is more important to American music than Garth Brooks.

There are a few that I can’t rightfully dispute, but inevitably those are the greats — Elvis and The Beatles are among them.

I would place Garth Brooks in the top 5 of most impactful and influential musical artists in American History.

Coincidentally, record sales would agree with me. Mr. Brooks is 3rd overall behind only the two aforementioned heavy weights.

After taking multiple years off from music, Garth Brooks has just released a new single which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. For those keeping count, that’s never happened before.

I doubt anyone would argue that Brooks isn’t pivotal to the success of country music, but I’m sure it’s a bigger pill to swallow to accept him as one of the most important artists of any genre.

And yes, there was the Chris Gaines fiasco but if anyone would actually listen to the album they’d find it to be pretty good overall, though not Brooks’ signature style.

So what do you think?

Leaving the fanboy at the door and being completely honest, who would you place in the top 5 of most influential and impactful musical artists in American history?

(You are pretty much automatically discredited if your list does not include Elvis and The Beatles.)

First off, I hate my cat. He woke me up at 4:30am this morning. This has become a 3-4 night/week ritual in which he decides to meow incessantly. If I call for him, he’ll come up in the bed and be quiet for 5-10 minutes before jumping down and meowing again. The toll it’s taking on my sleep is beginning to become unbearable and I really don’t know what to do to make him stop.

Since I wasn’t being allowed to sleep, I went downstairs to log into WoW. I had time on my hands afterall, because going to work at 5:30am isn’t exactly a fun thing to do.

That brings us to what I hate next: large mobs. It seems that Blizzard thinks that the higher in level we get, the bigger mobs need to get. It’s getting to the point that its near unplayable in some places. You simply cannot see anything at all when fighting some of these mobs. If you get another, you can’t tell. If you try to run away, you can’t see what’s in front of you. It’s very annoying when you’ve been woken up at 4:30am by a stupid cat.

Next up: Rascal Flatts (playing on my radio when I got in the car this morning).

If you don’t listen to country music, you may not know who this group is. Country radio seems to want to have their babies. I want them to die in a fire. I simply hate this group. It is the worse musical group in the history of the world and I don’t understand why they get any attention or album sales at all.

Their songs are extremely trite, and the lead singer’s voice is more grating than fingernails on a chalkboard. I’d rather listen to Paris Hilton explain quantum physics than listen to Rascal Flatts. Unfortunately, my local radio station insists on playing their crap every other song.

Which brings me to my local radio station. I hate them too. They play a grand total of 5 different country songs on repeat all day long. I miss Texas where they understand the genre and aren’t catering to these wannabe cowboys who think they’re cool if they listen to Rascal frickin’ Flatts.

Then there’re stupid drivers. Most people will tell you that they hate people talking on their cell phones while driving. I don’t hate that. I hate people who are incapable of doing it effectively.

Case in point: a Toyota FJ Cruiser this morning who literally was swerving back and forth between lanes, without signaling, while talking on his cell phone and varying his speed greatly. Passing him was dicey due to his sudden and inexplicable lane switches.

Furthermore, he had 3 bags of concrete on his luggage rack. This isn’t so alarming in most cases, but this gentlemen seems to think there is no need to tie these things to his vehicle. One slam on the brakes and someone’s getting a concrete bag in the windshield. Luckily, that wasn’t me this morning.

So far, that’s all I hate this morning. Having woken up at 4:30am, though, I’m bound to find more. Consider this a warning. If you’re reading this, don’t be something I hate today.

The reason for this moniker is because it wasn’t *just* a Dixie Chicks site. It was actually a shrine to the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines. I don’t know why they say it was stalker website — so what if it’s affectionately titled “Natalie Maines, Will You Marry Me?”

That website eventually got published in Country Music Weekly, and was a big player in the Dixie Chicks web community. I had professional photographers send me their exclusive photos, allowing me to post them if I gave them a credit. That’s just how much clout I had in that tiny little world. There were even two spin-off sites inspired by my own for each of the other chicks — “Emily Robison, You Rock!” and “Martie Seidel, Will You Be My New Best Friend?”

I was told by more than one fan that the Chicks were interviewed on The Howie Mandell show and that there was mention of a website that had proposed marriage to Natalie. So I have it on faith that even Natalie herself was aware of my craziness. I’m sure bodyguards soon followed.

The stalker days don’t stop there unfortunately. I was also an afficionado of ZDTV at the time where a budding reporter named Erica Hill reported the tech news. She would meet up with Leo Laporte during his awesome show, Call for Help. My roommate at the time and I decided to erect a shrine to her at our simply titled “Erica Hill Fansite.”

Lightning struck twice with that one. Within a few weeks, her cohost brought our website up on live television and showed it to her. I don’t even recall what was said about the site, but they ultimately put our doctored pictures up on the air. That was exciting. I’m sure she hired personal bodyguards soon after.

In case you missed the internal links:

• Natalie Maines, Will You Marry Me?
• Erica Hill Fansite

And those were my stalker days. I hope you get a good laugh out of it. I miss the days when it was easy to make a name for yourself out on the Internet.

… Basically, America, you’ve left American Idol with three crappy contestants who have good voices but no direction. They won’t make good artists, they won’t make good albums, and you will all abandon them when American Idol is over. Meanwhile, Chris [Daughtry] will be making contemporary albums that everyone will buy.

Damn I’m good.

I have to admit that I found this season of American Idol to be pretty lackluster. I skipped more than one episode and didn’t feel like there was much to be excited about among the constestants. At least last year had Daughtry, and the year before that was heavenly with Carrie Underwood.

The only real highlights of the season include body parts: Haley’s legs and Sanjaya’s Hair.

Last night, however, as I forced myself to watch the finale I realized that although the final two this season might not have the charisma of previous winners, they did have the raw talent and wonder that the show should be about. Blake just seemed happy to be alive and Jordin couldn’t be more sincere if she tried.

No offense to her, but I’m glad Melinda got voted out. She was a veteran in the field and had a Charisma modifier of -4. The eventual winner, Jordin Sparks, is really the embodiment of everything Idol should stand for. It found a 17 year old girl with a beautiful smile and an unmarred view of life and made her dreams come true. That’s good television.

Congratulations, Jordin! You are perhaps one of the most deserving Idols that the show has ever produced.