http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/05/15/in_boston_or_nashville_hes_true_to_his_roots/

A bunch things that are but aren't:

1. Joe The Plumber:  not named Joe, not a licensed plumber.

2. Dr. Phil: not a licensed doctor.

3. French Kissing:  not French.  In fact, in France they call it "English Kissing."

4. "Elementary, my dear Watson": Sherlock Holmes.  Never said it.

5. "Play it again, Sam": Humphrey Bogart.  Never said it.

6. Killer Whale:  not a whale, and rarely a killer.

7. Bohemian Ruby: not a ruby.

8. Convenience Charge: utility company term for charging a fee to send you a bill. not very convenient.

9. Lead Pencil: graphite, not lead.

10. Tin Foil: aluminum, not tin.

11. Guinea Pigs: not pigs. not from Guinea.

12. Head Cheese: meat, not cheese.

13. Peanut: not a nut.

14. French Horn: invented in Germany, not France.

15. Grape Nuts: no grapes, no nuts.

16. Paul Revere: didn't say "The British are coming!"  Israel Bissell said it.

17. Herbal Tea: no relation to any Tea plant

18. Airplane's Black Box:  painted bright orange, not black.

19. Tremolo arm on guitar:  produces vibrato, not tremolo.

20. Greenland: mostly ice.

21. Iceland: mostly green.

22. Pennsylvania Dutch: German, not Dutch. Someone mispronounced Deutsch, the German word for "German."

23. Christian Science: not a science.

24. Funny bone: not a bone.

25. Scotland Yard: located in England.

So Mother gets shortened to Mom, Brother to Bro, Sister to Sis, but father gets shortened to Dad?  How the hell did that happen? It's not even remotely close.

I don't have Swine Flu, but the constant, mindless reporting of it on TV does make me sick.

If Ray Kurzweil is right, by 2020, me, and all my fellow, lazy, procrastinators, will have nothing to worry about.

The best musical advice I ever got was "Every time you play, play like you're about to get hit by lightning.  And when you finally do get hit by lightning, whatever you're doing at that moment, do it forever."

On WRQQ in Nashville, when Saving Abel says the line "go down on me" they don't censor it,  but when Alanis Morrisette says "go down on you," they do.

The television says investing in Futures might not be good for our future.  How can that be?

I was asked to be a pallbearer at my friend Steve's funeral.  I said "I think I should be a Steve Bearer instead.  I didn't even know Paul."

Ian McClagan, keyboardist for The Faces, said two things to me:

1. "People die, I don't know why, and who cares." 

2. "Nothing is worse than no music."

FDR made the fedora popular, which is appropriate since F, D and R are the only consonants in the word "fedora."

I think rock bands who play "live" to a click track should have to put the click track in the front of house mix.

As long as Americans have cable TV we will never have meaningful, organized protest .  As long as we don't have meaningful, organized protest, our government will do whatever the fuck it wants.  Period.

When I was a kid and my family was traveling through Tennessee in the summer, my father would take a package of hot dogs & leave them on the dashboard of the van in the sun with the windows rolled up.  By 1 o'clock we'd have boiled hot dogs for lunch.

My friend's new car came with a mounted camera in the bumper so he can see what's behind him by looking at a screen in his dashboard.  I guess turning his head was just too much to deal with.

I don't understand.  If freon makes air conditioning work, how come when the system runs out of freon, it freezes solid? 

One of these days I'm gonna listen to every Led Zeppelin song ever released and count the number of times Robert Plant says "baby."

Two words that should never have been brought together:  Elective Surgery.

If a widow is a woman whose husband has died, then why is the living husband called a widower when the wife dies?  Seems like the term widower should be be saved for the dead husband, since he did the widowing, no?

I think tornadoes are an early, faulty version of the toilet bowl that got away from God and never came back.

I can't believe there were two musicians named Engelbert Humperdinck.

I can't prove life after death, but I can prove death after life.

There is a difference between giving up and giving in, I just don't know what it is.

In New York, an unelected Governor is about to appoint an unelected Senator.

In Nashville, legislators are having a city-wide vote to make English the only recognized language. The vote will cost over $350,000 and the polls will only have ballots printed in English.

Sudoku is a number orgy for those who can't find a real orgy.

True happiness is the willingness of a man to dance when sober.

I played hackysack with a balloon the other night, stoned outta my shiznitz with 5 other people. Maybe the most fun I've ever had.

An NFL football game has four, 15 minutes quarters, and one, 15 minute half-time. That's 1 hour and 15 minutes. The average game take 3 hours and 6 minutes. That means nothing is happening for over twice as long as something happening.

Don't believe everything you read, even if you wrote it.

I like to immediately put the customer service telephone people on hold. I'll wait for 20 minutes to get a real person, then when I do, I immediately put them on hold. Sometimes I ask them to hold but just hold the phone in my hand, then I act out a horrific domestic dispute. After the drunk man shoots and kills his cheating wife, I let it be perfectly silent for 15 seconds, then pick up the phone and say "Problem solved. Thanks anyway."

If you expect everyone to tell you the truth, also expect to be disappointed from time to time.

My buddy's wife said to me "You're problem is that you always let the girl choose you. You never choose the girl." I said "Yeah, because the ones I choose are always crazy." She said "We're all crazy, you idiot, but we still like to be chased. Haven't you learned anything at all?"

Lobster used to be the food of peasants, since they were bottom feeding creatures with hard shells and little meat. Now lobster is the food of the rich, who are also bottom feeding creatures with hard shells and little meat.

Dear Nancy Grace,
Every molecule in my body rushes to press "Mute" when you speak.
Sincerely,
J. Beyer

They say humans can differentiate between 14 million different colors, but only 100-200 smells. I know people who can differentiate between the smells of 100-200 different kinds of pot so I don't agree with that statistic at all.

Bobby Keys kicks ass.

Life is the leading cause of death.

They're making a sequel to the film "Never Again." That seems pointless.

How come the cuter the girl, the dorkier the boyfriend?

Someone needs to tell the red haired guy from CSI Miami that he isn't Clint Eastwood.

Sometimes the perfect note to play is to not play a note at all.

Dear Elizabeth Dole,
Ha ha!
Sincerely,
J. Beyer

What lasts longer, crosses more borders, makes more happy, and kills less, than music?

A smart man in a stupid town can do many things.

Is it me or is Mercury always in retrograde?

I've found if I stop calling some people, I will probably never speak to them again.

True Story: 1995. I'm on a plane from Charlotte NC to Buffalo NY, sitting beside a kid I've never met. The pilot comes on the address system and announces that we are cruising at 35,000 feet and going 500 mph. The kid asks me 2 questions. Are we higher than the moon, and are we going faster than a Nascar. I smile, grab my bag, move to another row, and order a drink.

I think Jerry Bruckheimer committed a crime but I can't get any cops to believe me.

If cats could talk, I can't help but think most of them would look at their owner and say "Take a good look in the mirror bitch, I own your ass."

I imagine not knowing who you are is worse than knowing and not liking it.

MTV only airs actual music 3 hours per day.

Red Stripe without the lime is like sex without the girl.

Am I the only person who can't use a blender without pushing every button?

Sharks kill 8-12 people each year. People kill 20-100 Million sharks each year.

I received a royalty check in the mail for 38 cents. It cost the sender 41 cents to send it. I can't decide if he is really honest or really stupid.

Pluto got a dick sandwich.

Jenuvia, Plavex, Aricept, Bayer Aspirin, Enbrel, British Petroleum, Advair, prescription drug plans, and the nightly news: One stop shopping at NBC. Tomorrow night they're doing a piece on how to survive a plane crash. Considering my chances of even being in a plane crash are 52.6 million to 1, I'm not gonna watch.

Every guitar player in the Muppet Show band Electric Mayhem was left handed.

If you've never loved, check your pulse. You might be dead.

I was at Fido Cafe with my friend Buick in Nashville and by the register they had little packages of "Dark Milk Chocolate." There is no such thing as dark milk chocolate. There's dark chocolate, then there's milk chocolate. There isn't dark milk chocolate. Just like there's no day night or white black. Adding milk to dark chocolate is the very thing which redefines it as no longer dark. I'm just sayin'.

If you're a radio station and when you bleep out a lyric of a song, you do it in such a way that the song drops a beat or busts the groove, you not only suck, but you even suck at censorship.

Secrets make an honest man a liar without speaking a word.

If you aim to forgive, do it quickly. If you aim for revenge, do it quicker and aim well.

When I was 9 I failed a History test. I asked my father if he ever failed a test. He said, "Yes. A blood test."

Talent is nothing more than tenacity in a person too dumb to give up.

4 meaningless pointless things you can do with bread and peanut butter besides make toast or a sandwich:
1. Plug a hole in the wall.
2. If you forget your flip flops: Put it on the ground butter side up, step on it, and not burn your feet on the boardwalk.
3. Cut the bread into strips, make a ramp and roll balls of peanut butter down it during gravity experiments.
4. Rip up a loaf of bread into pieces then glue it together with a whole jar of peanut butter in the shape of a lamp.

Seems to me they should have stopped changing cars after 1957. They had it perfect then went and fucked it all up.

God created man and Samuel Colt made them equal, but Dr. Ruth told them what they needed to know.

Can anything turn order into chaos quicker than a kiss?

I find it odd that Justice, which aims to find the truth, uses lawyers, who aim to hide it.

Women will forever be in charge, though it may not always look that way on paper.

I asked my friend how far he lived from town. He said "About 3 Bob Dylan songs. So roughly, 40 minutes."

Insomnia must have really sucked before the invention of the light-bulb.

Dear Lovely People of Earth,

It has come to pass that the wonderful city of Boston, Massachusetts, and its legion of musical and powerful elite, have found it in their hearts to nominate someone with my name for this year's 2008 Boston Music Awards, in the category of Outstanding Singer Songwriter. Though I no longer live in Boston, it's sure nice of them to do so.

If you'd like to vote, click here: http://contest.flyfi.com/bostonmusicawards08/vote/

Voting ends December 5th. Thanks.

jb

BrAIn dRaNo : : : to the lonely holiday freakeroutters, the traveling nontravelers, the strangers to homes, n the ones whose skin never fits right. the ones who've dropped the map and are lost in the wilderness. not trees and caves wilderness but planes and relatives wilderness. the wilderness where theres pie on the table. the wilderness where the hard questions you try to avoid all year come at once from people you only see at weddings n funerals. the always another dirty dish wilderness. the wilderness of recalculating everyones new weight in the first 2 seconds. the memory wilderness which chides n dares n flashes enough to make you doubt your place. your face. yer decisions. where the older ratcheted strung up full of book words mind slams into the younger soft clueless illusion mind n rocks so big then arent big at all anymore. n everyones pulled it together but u. where the late night pangs howl in the hills of yer head as u lay in a room in the dark in a bed, thoughts whipped like cotton candy n sticky as sap. like the wilderness of the foggy bottom to a muddy pond of the past the present and uh beyond. hey that rhymed somehow. and it was cheesy mcgee. brain drano no mindy cheesy mcgee or his bonkerz pals....all alone in a crowded room. how can that be? when oh you would have liked to bring someone but oh there is no one to bring. forget your ex's. theyre gone now. if they were good for ya you'd still be with em. so you had some holidays with em n now you miss em. makes sense but aint the end of the world. hard truth cuts deep n quick. longer to heal, harder to see. resolutions? probably a good idea right about now. smile at someone. anyone. a light in the wilderness. the wilderness where discussions are caves, old stories r fallen trees, the stream is in the fridge and the fireplace is still just a fireplace. not the most imaginative name for a place for fire but it sure gets to the point. makes the kitchen the food place the bedroom the sleep place and the porch the smokers place. when you feel like dorky mcdorkersan & u wish u could just feel like wayne dyer. the new, shoeless tao te ching wayne dyer not the one who used to point at a pier 1 imports lamp and call it 'the source'. when you feel like wayne meyer on the K 12 instead of james braddock in round 12. when you feel like woody allen and you wish you felt like dick proenneke, at home in the wilderness. where it makes sense. where aloneness becomes the perfect companion and nowhere is the mayor. there is no greater power than feeling comfortable with being lost. lost in wherever the wilderness comes. anyway...am i still talking? b r a i N drAnO // //