Careless Caroms Careening Off My Cranium

One thing that has been busting my chops for some time is the ubiquity of the Coldplay-afterbirth band The Fray. By all accounts (a pun here), these dudes should basically be the richest people on the planet from radio royalties. Chances are, if you turn on the radio at any time of day, any place in the world (aside from Afghanistan YOU GET 'EM DUBYA YEAAAAAAHHHHHH), you will hear this band. However, this makes little to no sense. The Fray are still riding on the coattails of 2005's How to Save a Life, which, unless The Fray are the Beastie Boys and can afford six-year gaps between records, is about ninety-five billion years too late. I thought radio sucked the life out of new stuff by the same artists on the big record labels, but maybe this summer they're shorthanded and have to eviscerate the audio cadavers that are The Fray's singles. Or something.

What I find confounding is the omnipresence of The Fray on the radio. I am not a man of the radio myself, but it is always on in one room of the house or another, and The Fray are always there, telling you about saving lives in a cable car or something over tepid piano licks and air-conditioned riffs. Think of it like opening your fridge and always seeing a case of Caffeine Free Diet Coke: it's better for you than Coke and has a fraction of taste more than water, but is it really worth popping the top? It's better to keep the fridge closed and do your part not to further tear holes into the ozone layer.

I equate this whole Fray thing to filling out a form with all of the things you like about music, and then being given a band that is all of those things, only horribly wrong. It's as if The Fray followed directions in How to Be a Good Band for Dummies. It is all very sterile, uninspired, and formulaic. Anything more I say about this will probably border on plagiarism.

What is much more of a good time than using Fray records as skeet is wiffle ball. That is a damn game of men.

Before I go, I found this in the August 2007 Ladies' Home Journal:

"Feeling inspired to start a blog? Great, but don't throw away your handwritten journal just yet. Journaling and blogging serve very different functions. Blogging is a performance - you're not just writing for yourself, you're writing for a digital audience and hoping that their response will validate you. That undermines the honesty achieved when you're writing for your eyes only, says James W. Pennebaker, PhD., a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin."

Well, how's this for honesty: I was taking a shit when I read that article. Why else would I be reading Ladies' Home Journal? Although the celebrity chefs special on summer cooking was worthwhile, I must say.

Real stories about real people doing real things in the days ahead.