Saturday, December 26, 2009

I'm not putting any actual music from them in here because I don't want to encourage Sweetie to listen to them. (Sweetie's Hunk of the Week, 44)

Time to put down my presents long enough to give you Hunk Of The Week Number 44:


Daughtry! (The entire band, not just the guy!)



You Don't Know Them Without You Have a 13-year-old girl living in your house and/or no taste in music. Daughtry is the band formed by Chris Daughtry, a guy who was on American Idol. I know this because we have Middle living in our house, and Middle, despite being a student in college right now and having various parts of her face pierced, is also a 13-year-old girl, at least at heart. For hobbies, Middle does all the stuff that 13-year-old girls do: She watches American Idol, and she takes pictures of her cats, and then she buys the music from the people she heard on American Idol, and puts it on iTunes, so that I can be jogging along, minding my own business and listening to my iPod, when all of a sudden I'm sonically assaulted by David Archuleta, or Daughtry, or Aaron Carter, who I know wasn't on American Idol, but he is on my iTunes, thanks to Middle, and he's an example of the kind of terrible music that Middle, and 13-year-old-girls, love.


The band features one of each required Rock Hairstyle.
In order, from left to right: "Punk," "speed metal," "indie rocker,"
"I'm only in this band because I own a van," and "grunge."


Other than knowing who they are, I don't know anything about Daughtry, and I was surprised that Sweetie did since, so far as I know, the band never guest-starred on Law & Order; I suppose there could have been an episode about a guy who finished fourth or fifth on a reality show music competition called Continental Idol, and then formed a band, and then was onstage performing with that band when the reality-show winner died backstage, seemingly of accidental causes but those accidental causes were set up by the fourth-or-fifth place winner to get his revenge for what happened on the show, which the runner-up/murderer would say was the winner rigging the vote so that runner-up would lose.

That might have been on Law & Order, but it's really more of a The Closer kind of storyline, don't you think?

Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm About Them: I'm at a loss for anything else to say about Daughtry, since I don't know anything about them beyond the lead singer was on American Idol, and also that the band is made up of guys who don't mind that Daughtry is taking all the glory. I've always wondered about that, forming a band with the name of just one person as the band's name, like Van Halen, and... um... The Smiths, I suppose. And Fleetwood Mac, which is a lot like Mick Fleetwood, who I'm pretty sure was in Fleetwood Mac. What do the other people in the band think about that, I wonder? Did they sign up knowing that was the deal? Or were they ready to cut a record, and the lead singer was like "Okay, it's time I told you, the band is named Jim."

(In case you're wondering, a quick Google search shows that no band is currently named Jim, so Jim, or Jim The Band is available for your band-naming purposes.)

(But there are a bunch of bands headlined by guys named Jim, like The Jim Halfpenny Band:



Those guys aren't bad, I suppose, but they should rethink their name; no band named after a real guy has ever achieved any lasting success. The Doors never had a shot when they were The Jim Morrison Band (assuming they were; I don't know if they were or not, but it sounds like the kind of thing that could be true. You never know, with band names. I mean, Simon & Garfunkel began as Tom & Jerry and The Beatles were The Black Jacks, The Quarry Men, Johnny & The Moondogs, then The Nerk Twins (really!) then The Beatals, then The Silver Beetles, then The Beatles, so who's to say that The Doors weren't once The Jim Morrison Band, doomed to playing weddings and the Holiday Inn by I-65, until they changed their name?)(Who's to say, I mean, besides, you know, history? But what does history know, anyway? It can't even get things like what number president Barack Obama is correct.)

That's really the thing that makes you go hmmm about Dau
ghtry, I think: Do they have any chance at success, given that they're named after the lead singer, and given that bands named after real people never make it big?

In fact, if you Google What's the most popular band named after a real person, ever, you'll find out that David Bowie was born "David Jones" but changed his name so that people wouldn't get him confused with Davey Jones of The Monkees. Everyone who would like to see The Monkees perform David Bowie's The Man Who Fell To Earth, but with that patented Monkees slapstic comedy, raise your hand! Good!
It's unanimous! Get on that, Hollywood, or whoever's in charge of such things.

This version of the band appears to be at least 40% different from
the prior version. Note the absence of Grunge, and note that
Guy With The Van opted to wear a sportcoat. That's why he'll be kicked out next.



Are There Going To Be Any Actual Daughtry Facts In This Post: Possibly.

Okay. Fine. Since you insisted, and since I'm really just killing time until I reveal just how superficial Sweetie is, I'll point out this important fact about Daughtry:

They're lying to you, 13-year-old girls.

How's that for an earth-shattering fact? And I'm not making it up, either. Here's photographic evidence. Consider this screen shot from the front of the Official Daughtry Merchandise store! (Yes, that exists.)






Notice anything? I hope so, because I went to a lot of trouble creating that arrow, which points to a coveted Daughtry stocking cap with some sort of stylized iron cross on the front. But, it's my sad duty to point out, if you click on that cap in hopes of getting yourself a really cool Daughtry cap to show the other people in the line at Arby's that you like bland "rock," you're in for a huge letdown, as there is no headwear available at the official Daughtry shop!

To help get you down from your perch of shocked outrage, or outraged shock (whichever), I'll point out that Daughtry has a fan in Mongolia. Exactly one, it appears. But that's still one more fan than Aaron Carter has, anywhere.


And that fan can't buy this hat. I bet Aaron Carter
would never do that to his fans.




Reason I Tell Myself Sweetie Likes Him: Please don't be the music, please don't be the music ran through my head when Sweetie told me, in the post-Christmas glow last night while I pretended to listen patiently, hoping that she'd get done talking soon so that I could go back to playing with the Kindle she got me, please don't be the music please don't be the music, because what happens when Sweetie or the kids get into a new song follows these three steps:

1. They get into a new song, and download it onto iTunes.

2. Unsuspectingly, that night or the next, I will put on my playlist so that I can listen to my music while I clean up after dinner; I always tell Sweetie and the kids that I don't mind doing the chores if I can listen to my music while I do that.

3. I will be about 38 seconds into the song I've chosen, and I will hear it stop, and then the new song that Sweetie and/or the kids are into will be put on, and I will spend the rest of my time doing chores listening over and over to Poker Face, or Heartbeat by Don Johnson, or Cruel To Be Kind (all actual songs that Sweetie has on her playlist) and then, when I wrest control of the music back, it'll be declared to be too loud and turned down.

So I was relieved when it wasn't the music that Sweetie liked about Daughtry. Relieved, and not at all surprised, because I've never heard a Daughtry song, and I doubt anyone (except that one guy or girl in Malaysia) has.

Instead, I found out what it really was...

The Actual Reason Sweetie Likes Him: ... by asking Sweetie. I said "Why..." and Sweetie interrupted me, blurting out:

"I like 'em. They're cute. I'd be a groupie."

I then finished my question while I tried to digest that: "Why... do you know they exist?" I asked her.

Sweetie said that she'd been working out at the health club, listening to her music on her iPod while watching the TV screen; she heard her music (probably She's Like The Wind, another actual song on her playlist) while she watched the Daughtry guys pout and be bald and not have headgear for sale at their official store. So it was just seeing them that made Sweetie think I would probably follow those guys from tour stop to tour stop, hanging around backstage and trying to sneak into their hotel room and throwing various undergarments at them while they performed their big hit onstage, assuming that they had a big hit, which I'm pretty sure they don't.

Not only did that prove that Sweetie is very superficial, but think about this: She was confessing to me that just seeing Guy With a Van and Baldie Von Balderson made her think "I'd be a groupie," which is exactly what you want your wife and mother of your children to say to you, on Christmas Day: As you sit around, the holidays winding down, tired and full of Christmas pizza (our actual lunch) and enjoying the Christmas tree lights and the few remaining ornaments the Babies! haven't torn off, you want your wife to announce that she'd happily be a groupie for a fourth-tier "rock" band. It's like music to your ears.

Point I'd Like To Make About Sweetie's Actual Reason For Liking Them: Sweetie's just lucky she got me that Kindle and I wasn't really paying attention, or I might've been more...

um...

hey, did you know you can subscribe to magazines on a Kindle? And books are only $9.99! And they've got blogs...

Where was I? Oh, yeah:


Guy With A Van got a whole suit!
And turned into Bizarro Nick Lachey!

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