I’ve always kind of been obsessed with bands second singles.  A lot of times I think first singles generally blow and that artists save their big guns for later, which I’m all about.  Sometimes a band’s first hit is so huge that that it overshadows everything else that they could bring to the table…enter this blog post.

I’m going to break you off with some of my favorite songs by one hit wonders after their initial…wonder.

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5. Kris Kross – I Missed the Bus

So this isn’t actually that good of a song but the video is fucking amazing.  Obviously Kris Kross had trouble keeping up momentum after the novelty of “Jump” and their backwards pants wore off.  I wonder where they are now….

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4. Spacehog – Mungo City

OK so I love Spacehog, fuck you. “In The Meantime” in one of those perfect pop songs, right up there with “Bittersweet Symphony” and “L Dopa.” The actually had a bunch of other singles from three albums in total, this is the best other one from their best album The Chinese Album. YAY.

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3. Alien Ant Farm – Movies

Here is another actual BAD song but I want to tell this story:  So “Movies” was actually AAF’s first single but it didn’t chart so well.  So what did they do?  They pulled an ORGY and just released a famous cover for their next single.  “Smooth Criminal” blew up but then they found themselves with another dilemma…what do they follow that up with.  With no more “hits” left they decided their only option was go back and release their first single, “Movies,” as a single again!  Unreal.  So here is the retardely epic big budget version of “Movies.”  Enjoy.

PS: One time I saw Alien Ant Farm at Van’s Warped Tour and the lead singer was bitching about people throwing garbage at them.  PUNK!

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2. City High – Caramel

Remember City High’s hit song R&B “What Would You Do?” about the ethics of prostitution? Yeah me neither. BUT they did have this pretty amazing second single that is WAY less depressing and has a video which I guess is just a black version of “Weird Science.”

PS: I definitely got drunk two weeks ago and edited out that Eve verse, best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

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1. Marcy Playground – St. Joe On the School Bus

Let’s just get right into it…this very well could be the greatest song ever made (it is also the second song with the word “Bus” in it on this list so there is that).  In fact this whole album, Marcy Playground by Marcy Playground, is amazing slept on stuff. I’m going to go ahead and throw out that “Sex and Candy” might be the WORST song on this album.

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Ok, that’s it.  Did I miss any good ones?  Let me know, people.

This week there will be no High Five and you’ll instead be treated to the Bloglin’s original countdown, Hateball’s “My Top 5.”

So what’s the big idea, son? We don’t hear from you for, like, months, and then it’s twice in a week? I mean…jeez. It’s almost like it’s someone’s birthday and almost like they asked you if you could throw some posts up to, like, fill, while they attempted their first day off in, like, months.

Rilly. Seriously.

It’s like that (headslide) and that’s the way it is. Almost exactly. Here I am….typing from my lap, with a twin-toothed monster chomping at my toes…getting a post or two up this week so as to pitch in and let someone relax. Like, way relax. Chillax, even.

And, while we’re pitching in, I figured I’d write about a shared interest that this person and I have, so boom. My Top 5: Spider-Man covers.

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5. Amazing Spider-Man #306 (Humbugged) // Illustrated by Todd McFarlane

Throwaway storyline. All the 300 shit has sort of died down. Now what? Let’s Biggie-Tupac on some Action Comics shit. If you count backwards from 328 (which subsequently led to Spider-Man #1, which very shortly thereafter led to something called Spawn and Image Comics) you can sort of imagine Todd McFarlane staring at himself in the mirror of his helicopter living room and telling himself how awesome he is/was. Which, at this specific moment, he was. #mcSwag #ballFarlane

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4. Spider-Man #23 (Revenge of the Sinister Six) // Illustrated by Erik Larsen

Gog, dude. Gog. Have you ever read ‘Revenge of the Sinister Six’? This is Erik Larsen on some HUGE Scottie Pippen shit. Jordan’s gone, son. Time for someone to step up and fill some shoes. Fill some damn big shoes. This storyline is so fucking epic…it kind of takes away from Kevin Smith’s run on Daredevil…that saga is so weird and diverse and left-field…but this arc is left-fielder.

Read it. Or just look at the covers. But this cover is the best. I mean to say, ALL FUCKING THREE covers of this comic are amazing. Full wraparound, yo. For $1.75. Larsen probably made $900 for writing, pencilling, inking, and covering this issue. How about we reboot back to this moment in time?

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3. Amazing Spider-Man #325 (The Assassin Nation Plot) // Illustrated by Todd McFarlane

As with 306 above, I have little affection or recollection of this story, but it’s Red Skull. This is sort of an epic, all-american Jack Ryan-type cover, and I think it looks boss. The story is probably a little flat, but on the other hand, Todd probably sexed Silver Sable the hell up, so go fig. I love this cover and have always remembered it.

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Hello there. I suck at talking to you. I am sorry. I have been busy—so busy—with many—so many—things. Babies. Working. Websites. Thinking about Space. Dreaming of Electric Sheep. Making a sound in the forest while nobody’s around to hear it.

You get it. And you’re like, save it, Hateball. And you can go ahead and call me Thrifty, cuz I’m bout to save that shit. Takin it to the bank and putting it to work. Straight. Up. Collecting dividends on this whine shit. Balling. Motherfucking Hi-Bounce balling. Reckanize.

And so, it’s July. It’s the very end of July. And I’m sure you know what happens every year at the end of July. Comicon. Of the San Diego variety.

This piece of meat was there, son. Beer in my hand, camera on my face…stunting like a fucking daddy. I took so many photos (with serious help from my good friend Mr. Stash Blackner) and spit so much booth game and drank so much beer and spun so much chrome while I was down there that I needed my own Flickr feed to remember it all. That’s the future, duder: exporting memories. To social networking services everywhere.

You can share in my wealth of Comicon memories—as always—on my photostream. I have cropped, color-touched, smacked up and flipped, and packaged them up—nice and tidy—for you to peruse. I have also take the two following unprecedented steps: made a Short Attention Span Theater version (embedded below) as well as selected—for you, feel?—my top 5 favorite shots.

I’m the guy with his mouth open.

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1. Doc Fucking Hammer

Co-Creator of one of my favorite shows ever to be on television. Or in my case, on DVD, as watched on my standard definition television. I was SO. TOTALLY. STOKED to see him. So much so that I gave him the pin off my shirt…and he was nice enough to both take it and act excited about it. What a thrillride. Getting giddy just ‘talking’ about it.

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2. Thee Brian Ewing and I drink a beer

To each other. For your health.

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3. META Muppet

You’ve read me here before (probably? Maybe?) You know that when something like ‘Muppet’ or ‘Meta’ is in the title, well then, I’m all about it. I’m all about this photo. Just stop—drop the internet persona for a second—and LOOK at this photograph. LOOK at it. Allow yourself to realize JUST. HOW. SURREAL it is. That is all. Carry on.

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4. Droid Boing

I sort of promised myself that this list would NOT be comprised of a bunch of photos of me with pretty girls in costume…and for the most part, I think I’m succeeding. This one, however, is absolutely not pass-uppable. Like. Not at all. IMPOSSIBLE to not include on a list like this.

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5. Do you love Katamari as much as I do?

So much so that you put the theme song on your baby announcement CD? Yeah. Well. That’s how I roll. So you can imagine my pants-wetting excitement when I saw this gal in her home-hewn cousin costume. Like, what.

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BONUS!: THE Becky Cloonan, dog.

Not only is she incredible at art, not only is she just, like, the coolest fucking person ever, not only is she an angel sent from gingerbread heaven…she like, tolerates a person like myself. This isn’t the only photo she agreed to take with me. For serious. There were others. I didn’t even have to pay for this. People are planes. This gal’s a jet. Write it down.

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I think by now it’s probably pretty obvious that one Mr. Hateball is not your typical ‘goin’ out during the week’ type of mister. Sure, I have my fun, and I’ve had my fun, but at the ripe old age of married with a kid and a business, that whole ‘get so drunk tonight that I’ll still be drunk tomorrow’ vibe doesn’t really work. Responsibilities and whatnot, yo.

That is not to say, however, that I don’t sometimes break form and go get my funs on. I keeps it real like that…try to lob little sucker punches on the soft underbelly of The Universe from time to time…keep that thing guessing. Last night was just such an occasion: a friend of mine surprised me with a free ticket to go see The Deftones, a band that I truly like. They played a small club here in Sacramento, and, as a bonus, had invited The Dillinger Escape Plan—another band I like—to play with them.

The show was awesome. The problem, however, is the cellphone. The cameraphone. I was part of this problem. And me, being the metaversal soldier I be, well…I got a little carried away. By the end of the night, it was about seeing who I could sneak up behind and film them filming the band. And then it became about trying to see how many LCD screens shooting footage of the band playing I could fit into frame in my LCD screen shooting footage of the band playing. Very Hateball, I know. But my point, I guess, is that everybody—and I mean everybody (even this douchebag)—at this show was shooting the band with their micro-compact digital cameras. It was sort of like everybody was there watching the show on TV. To turn a phrase, it was like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. Or something.

But! The music was awesome. Dillinger I could sort of take or leave, but Chino and company really did stomp out something special. And so, with little to no fanfare, I bring to you My Top 5 Deftones songs.

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5. “Around the Fur”

Typically, I try not to have any sort of real ‘order’ to these lists. It’s not really like a ‘ranked’ top 5…just a top 5. In this case, however, I LOVE this song. Like, turn it up as loud as it can go whenever it comes up on shuffle. That kind of love. So you may as well slap it my favorite, my #1 even though it’s starting things off.

Something about the drums (obviously) and of course, the Chino-ness of it all…I don’t know. Reminds me of being a 19-year-old store manager at Mr. Rags and getting girls to try on clothes that were way too small for them for my own personal enjoyment. Something to that effect.

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4. “Digital Bath”

Try as I might, I can’t ignore the trippy ‘omg we’ve been touring so long our soul is sort of gone’ video cliche on this one. Was “Wanted Dead or Alive” the first of those? “Nothing Else Matters” is in that class too.

Maybe I should make a list of those (Winds of Change?). Either way, this song is full-on Deftones. Does there need to be another reason?

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3. “Deathblow”

Jim Lee Image Comics Debut Reference. Harmonica. Go.

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It has been 14 years (today) since the rap game lost one of the best lyricists it had come to know. Christopher Wallace, better known as the Notorious B.I.G., grabbed the music industry by its throat in the mid 90′s with his size, delivery, and technique before sadly being fatally shot at just 24. While he only released two full-length albums, he has forever left his legacy on hip-hop with his rugged demeanor, storytelling ability, and voice that has influenced most, if not all, of the hip-hop we hear today. But we all already know that, though.

To commemorate this sad anniversary, I made a little list of my top 5 songs that he has either released on his own or appeared on. Obviously there are plenty more that can be included in this list but we got bandwidth limits on here yo.

5) Juicy

While this might be one of his most commercial songs ever (which makes it less appealing to some), you can’t deny the enjoyment you get from his storytelling about his rise to fame from his drug dealing past to his new found luxurious lifestyle.

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4) Hypnotize

Escargot, my car go, 160 swiftly. Damn, they sure don’t make music videos like this anymore and I can’t decide to this day if the mermaids or Puffy driving the car on the bridge backwards is my favorite part. Either way, another timeless classic.

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3) Gimmie the Loot

The best thing about this song is that it’s just Biggie vs. Biggie with a high pitched voice. How can you not love it?

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2) Victory

This was technically a Puffy song but that’s irrelevant. This is one of my favorite hip-hop songs of all time. Everything from the beat, to all of Biggie’s verses. Completely flawless. “Make dough like Jurassic Park”

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1) Warning

Greatest Biggie Song ever. RIP to the Black Frank White.

First of all, I would like to say, greetings! This is my first post here on the Мишка Bloglin, and I am excited to be sharing with you fine readers some of the crazy/sexy/cool shit I get down with. The first crazy, sexy, cool person, place, or thing I will be talking about is Naomi Elizabeth.

Naomi Elizabeth is a brilliant Los Angeles based performance artist, and somewhat of an outsider pop enigma. I say that because I really don’t know much about her, and I am not sure if many people outside of the USA’s experimental noise/freak community do either? What I do know, however, is that she is incredibly talented as a songwriter, and that I want her to be famous.

I really havent heard much of anything from Naomi since 2008, when i was blown away by her now classic video, “It’s Not Easy When You’re Me” but yesterday I was surfing Noisebloid (the Internet’s greatest and only noise scene tabloid) and realized that Naomi has a brand new video! “God Sent Me Here to Rock You” is another brilliant song/video/performance by Naomi.

What I love about her is that I cant tell how much of “Naomi” is her actual self, and how much is a character created as a sort of post-feminist critique on the idea of women as objects of sexual desire within pop music. Is she reclaiming feminine power while being aware of and gaining from the male gaze? Either way, I am a huge fan. keep the music coming Naomi. All of her songs are available to download for a small fee at her website along with more gorgeous photos of the pop genius. You should also hit up her YouTube channel for more videos.

It started with Metallica. Just like it did for a lot of people. I liked music before Metallica, but I did not LOVE music before Metallica. Before I found the fearsome foursome, I mostly just listened to classic rock on the radio and made mixtapes from my uncle’s CD collection. No one true doctrine. An acolyte of no single force. Until Metallica. Until the Black Album. That album smashed into the side of the planet and change our orbit by a bit. Believe it or not, our Earth year used to be 364 days. Until the black album. True story. It was for both better and worse.

And then? Fever. a fever the type of which one cannot recover from. I’ve got (somewhere) a Hit Parader with all four of them in bronzed, overlit, blowdried fury. FURY. I went and saw them at the Oakland Coliseum in ’92 with Guns n Roses and as we all know, it was devastating. Metallica were a tempest, GNR were late. It’s history.

You know what, they can never take that away from me. Never. There was a two- or three-year span when I built up money and excitement and went to Musicland or Sam Goody or The Warehouse and bought the next album in their catalog. I THINK I went directly backwards…starting with Metallica, then …And Justice,—wait, I’m wrong—then Ride the Lightning, then Master of Puppets, then Kill ‘Em All. Each album but Kill ‘Em All sent me spinning. Searching. Seeking. Forgetting who I thought I was and groping to find out who I was becoming.

I was, of course, becoming a bloodbound disciple who would eventually be betrayed, but I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that my Heavy Metal stepdads were so much cooler than I could have ever hoped for. They were mine. We were from the same town. We both knew people who knew Les Claypool. It was Meant to Be.

I’ll always have that…always. I lost track of it for a long time, but then I (sort of) found it again when I saw ‘Some Kind of Monster’. It was sort of like kicking it with my stepdads again, but not really. Trent Reznor had happened while they were gone. Jungle had happened to me too. It would never be the same. The longboxes and magazine clippings were no longer on my walls, and my pimples had finally transformed into a vocabulary that was much more robust than that of my peers.

I guess I eventually forgave them for abandoning me, and I’ve found a way to sit and visit with them every now and again and reminisce about old times, but it’ll never be the same. I’m not old enough to have been there when it all happened, but I was a part of the first generation to hear the stories. Too old to pretend it was never different. That it was always like this.

These are My Top 5 Favorite Metallica Songs…

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Gotta be honest, friends: I’ve never read all the way through these books. I know. I know. I need to. I’m planning on reading them to my kid I guess…while everybody else is trying to remember why they liked the goddamn Harry Potter books so much, I’ll be steeping this little bastard in some stone cold history. I am excited about it.

I don’t know why I never read them, either. As we can all probably agree, they are right up my alley. Right up my freeway, really. I think that prime time I woulda spent reading these books—somewhere between 12 and 15—I was busy consuming just about everything Stephen King had put out up to that point. Not necessarily something I regret…just something. And that’s not to say that I didn’t spend time with the original Hobbit cartoon, either…that shit was a staple for me. I didn’t ever really get into the Bakshi production either…it’s just a bit too weird. In so many ways.

So, of course, when these movies came out, I knew what to expect, but I was in one of those pleasant situations where I didn’t know exactly what was coming. I didn’t *quite* know the whole story. It was like going to a strip club for the first time: you know there will be things in there that you like, but past that, you’re sort of unsure how all the details will come together (no pun).

Needless to say: these movies are incredible. If you have not sat through them yet, or if you haven’t seen them since they came out, do yourself a favor and netflix the extended-extended-extended versions. I’m not really a fan of when there are 3 versions of a movie that one has to keep track of (thanks, Dune) but with these, just look for the longest version of each and go with that. It’s worth it. I’ve made a sort of tradition out of watching all three movies in relatively rapid succession each year towards the holidays, and, well, I’ve just finished this run, had time to ruminate a bit, and now I’m ready.

Here, in this age of men, I present to you My Top 5 Favorite Things about the Lord of the Rings Movies. Hail.

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This list is missing one important shirt. The old-school Мишка Kill ‘Em All flip called Moscow ’91…which I’m thinking is from 2005 or 2006. I no longer own that shirt. [Editor's Note: The tee is from Fall 2006]

For what it’s worth, the reason I no longer have that shirt is this: I wore it to a crazy zombie rave one year (2007) during Comicon. One of the members of our little group was an ex-military badass…some sort of seal or ranger or paratrooper…I’m sure he would be offended at my vagueness in this regard, but I’d rather be vague than wrong. Anyway, he is a knife enthusiast, and, for some reason, he pulled a knife out during the party and started stabbing a table, ahem, ‘to death’. His ferocity in this endeavor was such that caused his hand to slip past the hilt and he sliced his palm open just before going berzerk and getting escorted out of the happening. I didn’t think much of it until I woke up the next morning to a giant red hand of Saruman on my shirt…crusty and foul with someone else’s dried blood. I don’t really think I threw it out, but alas, I can’t find it anywhere. So yeah. That’s that story.

An additional note about the accompanying images; this post marks a true failure. I thought it’d be fun to sort of make my own little lookbook of practical applications for these shirts. Something that would show them, in-context and be something a bit more interesting to look at than the same old product shots that we always see on websites. Well, this is incredibly hard to do by oneself. Especially when you don’t know anything about what you’re doing.

My wife helped me with one shot (the one in the garage) but all the others were done in one night with a tripod and a remote. I am criminally unhappy with how they came out, but, well, you know me. RDFL. I figured I’d include them here just the same…and not just so you could make fun of my pitiful protest beard (so please don’t). I hope to make up for these ills with the inclusion of the ubiquitous hanger-shot, but, well, I tried, nonetheless.

Here then, are My Top 5 Favorite Ye Olde Мишка T-Shirts…

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You know exactly how this game works. Don’t EVEN try to front like you don’t know. Even if you’re a sweet, lovely, loving young lady…you know how this works. In fact, you might even be more familiar with these here rules than we dudes are. The List. The Significant Other Legal Lay List. You know I wouldn’t even trip….it could be both ours.

That’s right: I am invoking Friday. For some reason.

The rules are the same as what you’d expect. Except I am modifying them slightly so as to a) remain an upstanding citizen, and b) put the following in context.

These lists have become some quite fun for me. But! But, I worry: I don’t want you (or me) to expect a music- or movies-related post each week. I want to be mad unpredictable with this shit, dog. And since I regularly type at you about toys and space (ha!) and other shit here, I need to make sure that I can mix things up without getting, like, way redundant way redundant. So. So we’re gonna try this one. My Top 5: Celebrity Dream Lays.

A few more things, however. Do you see that space right up there? The one between ‘Dream Lays’ and ‘A few more things…’? Yeah, that is a pixelated representation of the hourlong break I just took to talk to Mrs. Hateball about the birth plan for our baby. Motherfuckin’ House Hunters INTERNATIONAL is on my plasma right now, son. This shit is so domesticated and so happily married that, well, it’s sickening. I got the idea for this post this morning and then proceeded to stare into space for the next two hours. Only after calling Mrs. Hateball and asking ‘Um, who is on my legal-lay list?’ was I reminded of everybody but Scarlet Jo and Tina Hendo. So yeah.

What that means…and what keeps this game MAD classy, is that these women have to be celebrities. They cannot be porn stars or swimsuit models—they have to be people my wife (or your significant other, in your case) would recognize. Incidentally, they also cannot work at the sandwich shop down the street, which I have discovered the hard and disappointing way.

So heeeeeeerrrrre wego.

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