Best of H. Schiddy: Michael McDonald

Schiddy Pre-warning warning: Schiddy wrote this a couple of years ago, but one of the most prominent members of the Schiddy nation asked for me to replay it, so here you go....


Schiddy warning: The content of this email is for entertainment purposes only. Staunch defenders of Michael McDonald and his body of musical work may find this email slightly offensive. But they should also be used to it by now. I would think it comes with the territory when one is a Michael McDonald fan.

I love this country, I really do. I am privileged to live here. But there are some things that really make me scratch the Schiddy scalp in dismay and confusion, and goll darnit I'm gonna share one with the Schiddy nation. Maybe you folks can afford me the time and energy to ponder this quagmire.
Michael McDonald. The former lead singer for the Doobie brothers has one of the most annoying voices of all time. This guy's voice makes Al Stewart and Michael Bolton sound refreshing. Remember Al's hits "Time Passages" and "The Year of the Cat" from the late 1970's? Sorry to bring that repressed memory up, that rash that is breaking out will clear up in a few days. If you don't remember Al Stewart consider yourself lucky. And if you are a big Al Stewart fan and have all his albums...get a life!
Anyway so Michael McDonald and his voice pretty much ruined a fine blues based pop/rock band (Doobie Brothers) for everyone in the 1970's, and by 1981 the Doobie Brothers band realized there mistake and call it quits. Michael McDonald signs a solo record deal with Warner Records and fades into obscurity for most of the country. Those of us who understood what a rock band should sound like could put on their scratchy old pre-Michael McDonald Doobie brother records and be at peace. Some of us, however, were permanently scarred by our memories of bad Rochester Minnesota FM stations playing Michael McDonald classics like "Minute by Minute" over and over again, not letting it go. Because of super-schlocky-over-produced garbage put out by Michael McDonald and his minions, some of us embraced alternative forms of pop and rock, a more stripped down garage band sound of just an amp and a guitar, and the varieties that spun off of this instrumentation like punk, pop punk, early "new wave", and old fashion straight forward rock and roll. The major American labels for the most part never really got it, but local bands thrived. Slowly the FM fascination with the syrup coated tracks of the Michael McDonalds and the Donald Fagens of the world subsided, and we had some peace.
Then, about a year ago, a group of guys working for an unnamed Madison Ave advertising agency got together. I imagine it was in some big trendy conference room or maybe the company rec room full of Game Boys, foosball tables etc. They were throwing around ideas to pitch to their new client, some phone company I believe. I can just hear them now...
Ad Guy 1: How about we find a dried up old has-been rocker from the 70's to pitch the product. Someone who's very voice sends most people with functioning brain cells screaming for the door.
Ad Guy 2: Great idea! How about Bob Seager.
Ad Guy 3: No, he is already taken by Chevy. He sings that "Like a Rock" song. They play a loop of that song with him screeching with his distinctive sand-paper like vocal styling over and over again. Man I can't get enough of that "Like a Rock" song. I could listen to that for another twenty years without getting tired of it. I want to buy a truck that is "like a rock." I bet it runs really well. But I'm getting off the subject, my fellow clever Madison Avenue coworkers! There must be someone else...Melissa Manchester?...Al Stewert?: that Time Passages song was pretty catchy..., Sammy Hagar...hmmmm, wait! I got it! Michael McDonald!
Ad Guys 1 and 2: Who?
Ad Guy 3: You know! The guy who destroyed the Doobie Brothers and turned off a whole a generation of young adolescents in the late1970's, to the point where they embraced punk music and new wave!
Add Guy 2: Michael McDonald did all that? New Wave was awful. He must be powerful. Lets get him in here.

(Editor's note. At this point in October I stopped this Schiddy rant, because I felt like I needed to see this commercial again so I could make fun of the product Mr. McDonald was promoting, but to my pleasure someone from the company must have actually stopped and listened to the commercial, because after a couple of weeks I never saw it again. I would have let this Schiddy letter die right there, if I hadn't been flicking through the channels last night with Mrs. Schiddy and saw Mr. McDonald "sitting in" with Paul Schaffer and the band. Sorry Dave, you have been getting lamer and lamer over the years, but you lost me there. Anyway that high profile appearance made me realize this Michael McDonald phenomenon is not going to go away, and as a Schiddy nation we need to be up in arms about it.)

So the three Ad Guys called Mr. McDonald's agent. I would guess Mr. McDonald, one of the most hated 70's pop artists of this generation, was holed up in a Sadam-like "Spider Hole" somewhere North of San Fernando Valley. But eventually his agent tracked him down, and three months of rehab later they wheeled him out of Hazelton and back in to the main stream of American music pop culture.
Actually, the Ad guy's logic is pretty sound. The Clash, Police, NWA, Rage Against the Machine, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, all of these influential bands have come and gone. Sometimes more than once. But you can still go see REO Speedwagon, Journey, and Styx (Yes because we still all want to thank you Mr. Roboto) at your local casino about once a year. So why not bring back the nasally, creaking, abrasive sounds that emits from Mr. McDonalds mouth?. Why not make him into this year’s poster child for aging pop stars who you could go the rest of your life without hearing? Hey I know, lets give him another record deal and get him in the studio to do a new album also! I'm guessing the Doobies, whenever they do the reunion shtick, probably have restraining orders to keep this guy away from them, but maybe he could go on tour with other banished aging rock stars, like David Lee Roth (that would be a duet I'd pay money to hear...not) and Michael Jackson. Is Kenny Rogers still alive? Put him on the ticket to appeal to the more patriotic country lovin' folks at the Casino. Apparently we can't let these guys go gentle into that good night.

I'm sorry, the mental image I'm getting is starting to affect my ability to focus. I'm starting to shaaakke a litttle. Must ..get to... CD... player. Must get my Rancid CD on......Ah There now, that's better.
I'll be o.k. now.

Have a boot stompin' punk rockin' Happy Holidays,

H. Schiddy, Mrs. Schiddy, and the Schidlets.



"Minute by minute by minute by minute I keep holding on." -Michael McDonald

P.S. Michael McDonald was nominated for two Grammys this year for his critically acclaimed album "Motown."
I can not explain this. It is officially an X-File.

H. Schiddy

Schiddy writes:

Minnesota major college and professional sports team names and mascots must go. There are many reason, which I will suffer the Schiddy masses to endure as I state my case.

Reason #1. Our mascots don’t pass the testosterone-headline litmus test. This test asks: How well does a team name lend itself to bold headlines about how they defeated an opponent? In our case, almost all of our teams fail miserably. Take a team like the Detroit Lions. “Lions Maul the Panthers” or “Lions rip apart the Orioles” let you know that they thoroughly defeated their opponent in vivid and visual terms. It doesn’t have to be violent either. For example the Philadelphia Flyers “Flew past Chicago” or the “Pittsburg Steelers Forge Victory.”

So what can we come up with for the Minnesota Twins? “Twins conjoin Tigers”? “Twins victory identical to previous wins? It just doesn’t really inspire the masses.

And what about the University of Mn. Golden Gophers? The Headline might read: “Gophers create ruts in Wolverines front Yard.” About the only team the Gophers works well with is the Ohio State Buckeyes: “Gophers gnaw on Buckeyes and then store them for winter.” Still even that is not very dramatic.

The Minnesota Wild. Their name connotes a rugged wilderness and the climate and weather that produce it. Weather and dramatic headlines, well that actually is the topic for another H. Schiddy rant, but lets apply our headline test to the Wild: ‘Lemaire’s Pucksters Apply Low Pressure to Devils.’ Not exactly grabbin' ya and making you want to run out and paint your body in green red and scream, “Lets Play Hockey” on W. 7th street at 2:00am in the morning. I’m actually not sure what would make me do that, but I know a guy who could probably tell me (Geno).

Yet we have the Minnesota Vikings. Surely with a name that conjures up images of those historical Norse warriors and their iconic ships some rich headlines can be produced, and indeed they have. Just Google Minnesota Vikings and “Cruise” or “Boat” and you will come up with all kinds of interesting headlines.

O.k. o.k. you say, what about the Timberwolves. Surely they elicit plenty of great headlines with that name? Indeed they have. You got me there. Head lines like “Wolves playoff chances fading like endangered species population.” I guess that would be a pretty long headline but you get the idea.

Reason #2: Our mascots are lame.
Now don’t get me wrong all mascots are pretty silly goofy lame. But Goldy the Gopher looks like a bad theatre prop suit from some children’s community theatre production. And he is so wimpy. I was at the U in the 80’s when Lou Holtz designed a more muscular, buff Goldy with muscular arms and chests. One imagined that under all that rodent hair he had a formidable six pack. (I know I do under all my hair.) Years before Steroids became all the rage, our mascot in the late 80’s for those years was known as ‘Goldy on Steroids.’ So even giving the mascot synthetic testosterone could not help reduce the ridicule he endured, although it was done behind his back at that point. You didn’t want to be on the business end of those pectorals. I believe he nicknamed them Chip and Dale.

Then you have Crunch for the T-wolves. As in crunch time. Get it. This wolf mascot actually looks better than the others, but I think the guy or gal who dwells within that mascot is a little dehydrated or something. I have not seen Crunch do a new bit for about 15 years. He is famous for jumping on trampolines and doing acrobatic dunks. O.k. we get it that you can jump on a trampoline and dunk the basketball guy. That real difficult. Jessica Tandy called; she wants her vertical leap back.

TC Bear. He’s…well…a big ol’ huggable oaf of a lug. Explain to me though…why a bear? Do the Chicago Bears have a couple of Twins for their mascot? Is it because during the Twins formidable years one of their sponsors was Hamm’s Beer, which featured a Cartoon bear that kind of resembles TC bear? I’m just not getting it.

The Vikings. Oh my sweet lord. What a travesty. Gone is the tough grizzled long white haired stern Viking mascot of my youth, waving his broadsword encouragingly at throngs of frozen spectators braving the bitter North blizzards to cheer the real Vikings on to another victory against the wimpy Bears, Rams, or Cardinals. Now, we have Ragnar, the epitome of a aged balding yuppie from the 80’s who wears a business suit all week but on the weekend dresses up to look like a biker. But Ragnar doesn’t ride his ridiculously short-piped bike on the county roads of Minnetonka in his $900 leathers. Instead he dons a little purple and revs his bike in the end zone of the metrodrone. But that is not all. No that is not all. For in addition to this Teflon biker, we also have Viking mascot number two. ----------- looks like a cross between Dino from the Flintstones and Barney, with the result being a Dinosaur that looks like Barney’s dumb illiterate cousin from Appalachia, (or if you prefer, Western Wisconsin). Everybody sing along now, ‘I love Red, McCombs loves me, this mascot, is a perfect legacy, to what he thought of the Viking fan base, now he’s gone and we’re last place.’ (Sung to the tune of “I love you, you love me,” the Barney theme Song.

Reason #3: I could come up with a lot better ideas for mascots, and team names.
The Minnesota Twins we would keep as a name, I’m resisting the urge to say we should rename them the Mn. Corporate Welfare Funded Bankers. But forget about TC bear. Instead replace him with the next hi profile pair of conjoined twins that come along. Instead of shipping them off to the Mayo clinic for 25 hour surgery accompanied with blow by blow updates from surgeons: “We think the surgery is going really well, at least from where I’m at. There are 15 surgeons in front of me, so I can’t really see that well…”
Instead of that, we raise them as our own, slap some Twin uniforms on them, and have double your mascot pleasure!

The Vikings mascot could be my Uncle Frank. He is 85 now, blind as a bat, and slowed down quite a bit. But put a horned helmet on his head and strap a sword to his hip, and he is tougher and has more guts and True Grit then Ragnar or Barney’s retarded cousin any day.

The Minnesota Wild should change there name to the Minnesota Charlestown Chiefs, after the team from Slap Shot, undoubtedly the coolest Hockey team ever except for the Rochester John Marshall State Champion team from 1977 (WFO). I know it is not politically correct to name the team after Native American leaders, and Charleston is not in Minnesota, but it is the price we would need to pay to be the coolest. Take it from me; I pay that price every day of my life.

The T-wolves could keep there name, but they should replace the fake wolf with a giant-sized Chalupa, and re-introduce the coolest promotion they ever had where they gave away free Chalupas from Taco Bell if the team scored over 100 points.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers have been the gophers for over a hundred years. I guess the gopher is the state rodent…or something to that effect. We should probably leave that alone, and it would be hard to have something else other than the gopher as the mascot, but how about this. Once we build the outdoor stadium, we introduce wild gophers to the natural turf, who will create holes and furrows and ruts that only are team is aware of, and then use it to our advantage. It would be a symbiotic relationship, with gophers and groundskeepers finally living in harmony after all these years.

Historic hschiddy rant, from the "Best of" collection.

H Schiddy writes:
What’s really important in America today? Well, if you want to put your
finger on the pulse of American culture, values, and issues there is no
better place to go to then your local library.

Well you could put your finger on the pulse of the remote control channel
button, but then you would have to find it.

So I'm taking my kids and a neighbor kid to the Golden Valley Library.
Valerie and her friend have to find a biographical non-fiction book on
somebody for a school project. Andy and Maddie went with us to exercise
the valve stems in the drinking fountains (plumbing joke) and twirl those
rotating plastic book shelf thingies until books fly off. A child of S.E.
Asian descent is waiting behind me at the automatic book checking out
machine, and I tell her I'm almost done. Maddie pipes in with a lecturing
tone, "don't talk to her dad, she doesn't speak our language." Yipes,
cultural sensitivity training 101 time kiddo.

After checking out videos, c'd's, and a couple of those old things with
papers bounded together with writing on them, I check to see and how Val
and her friend's research is going. It is not. Val can not find any books
on Amelia Earhardt, the most famous woman aviator of all time. Her friend
can not find any books on Mother Teresa, arguably the most famous Catholic
in the last 200 years. Silly third grader, I think to myself, if you want
to get anything done in this world, you need to ask dad.

Fifteen minutes later I was unable to find anything either. I tried
searching the catalog under title, subject, author search, everything! It
kept referring us back to the same call letters for just a couple of books,
and they were not in the stacks.

Sometimes drastic circumstances call for drastic measures. I am a red
blooded American male, and I know the unwritten unspoken code well. Only ask
for help or directions if your life is in danger or if you are at risk of
being castrated, because the instant you ask for help (especially if it is
a woman) you are instantly emasculated in their mind. Yes they may help
you and smile at you, customer service and all that B.S. But we men know
that the minute we walk away they are whispering and pointing at us.
'Surely he could not survive in the woods, spear fish, or frame in a wall
if he can't even find an address, or a book in a library!' they will say.

But this was a drastic situation, so I bit the bullet and asked the
librarian. He helped me, after commenting to his coworker "looks like
Daniel Boone here needs some help". He could not locate a book on Amelia
Earhart or Mother Teresa either.

By now it was too late to do another search, and the girls weren’t sure who
else they would want to do it on anyway. As we were leaving though, I
looked over the selection of other biographies, and that’s when I saw it.
There were three books on the WWF wrestler "THE ROCK". Apparently THE ROCK
spells his name all in caps. Apparently THE ROCK doesn't like something
called a Stone Cold Steve Austin. Let me repeat for those keeping score:
Mother Teresa and Amelia Earhart, zero, THE ROCK three.

Apparently our culture is more aligned with THE ROCK then it is with
Amelia Earhart or Mother Teresa. It is what THE ROCK likes and does not
like, and who are THE ROCK’S friends, and who are his enemies, and what
THE ROCK plans to do to his enemies that has captured the imagination and
curiosity of a nation. I'm fairly certain THE ROCK could handle Mother
Teresa and Amelia Earhart in a cage match, so it makes perfect sense to me.
Sorry kids, pick somebody more relevant. Maybe a woman wrestler if you are
going to get all militantly feministic on me.

Be afraid people, be very afraid.