Well, we started the day with somebody using a cell phone to play “Replay,” and then we just saw a young man play “Replay” using pencils, so I guess it’s okay if we cut all our arts-education funding, because if people can’t afford to learn instruments, they can always just pick up some household junk and go “plink-plonk-plink” along to a pop song, right? “Are you there, Ayn? It’s me, Newt Gingrich.” (Give it up for the CPAC conference, I think it’s still going strong today.)

Honestly at this point I don’t even know what I’m typing about. I’m really tired and — guess what? — I have a certain song stuck in my head AS IF IT’S ON REPLAY.

Let’s get this over with: Just pick some random song and say it’s the winner and go lie down for a minute. What is he singing about, “She’s the gun to my holster?” That doesn’t make physiological sense and it just barely makes metaphorical sense. And you know if something doesn’t make metaphorical sense, you’re in some dicey water!

OH MAN I FEEL WEIRD. IT’S TOO MUCH REPLAAAAAAAY

Here’s our winning video! REPLAY IS THE BEST SONG EVER

I know, it’s just some guy beatboxing to the world’s most insidious song. I don’t care — he wins this week. After all, I’m grading on a curve: THE CURVE OF MY MADNESS

Friday Face-Offs! Whew, this edition edged closed to the danger zone. Next time I will pick a song that I can stand to listen to more than five times.

!!!! OKAY WAIT LAST-MINUTE ADDITION:

This guy wins; I’m stripping the beatboxer’s title. Executive decision. I don’t care how old I get, I will never understand scratching. How do they do it? I’m not even doing an Andy Rooney joke, I am honestly befuddled. Once I saw the X-Ecutioners (famous scratchers) play a show and I couldn’t even keep up with what was happening. All I know is, if I could scratch records like this, it would be all I would ever do. Maybe I’ll sign up for an adult eduction class about scratching.

I think Iyaz implanted a bag of sand behind my left ear.

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!!!!!!!!

Have a great weekend.

How come nobody told me about “Pencil Beats?” You guys realize I make my feeling sharpening pencils, right? (I should put the link here but I feel very tired from all the replay.) Anyway, now I gotta re-invent my business and expand into “musical-pencil sharpening services.” Very well. GAME ON.

(I know this kid — “Shane Bang” — is using ballpoint pens and not pencils, but still — the video is called “pencil beat remix,” and once he tries one of my custom-musical-sharpened-artisanal pencils, he won’t be going back to pens, believe that. And neither will any of you. Believe you me that.)

The best thing about this video is he stops playing “Replay” (which is, guys, let’s admit, no offense if Iyaz is reading this, but really, not such an objectively magnificent piece of songcraft) and makes his way to Jason Derulo’s “Whatcha Say,” which is an amazing song, and now I’m wondering why I didn’t choose it for the grand return of FFO. I know I started researching it, and Lord knows I have listened to it in my automobile whilst zooming around on errands. Maybe I’ll do it later this year. Anyway, yeah, just make sure you get to (2:18), because that’s the total jump-off. And then watch to the end, where something LSD-related seems to happen.

Oh, right, maybe I should post the video so you guys know what I’m talking about:

Friday Face-Offs! WINNING VIDEO IS NEXT

Replay
replay
replay
replay
replay
replay

As a former member of SPEBSQSA, I gotta give it up for this young man. He is 4,000% barbershop. He’s got the classic harmonies, the classic facial expression, the classic BARBERSHOP PRIDE!!!

Also, according to his notes, he lives in Hawaii where apparently it’s noisy as shit outside so he had a frustrating time recording. Here’s everything he lists that was going on outside his window:

“birds, cars, leaf blowers, construction, kids playing outside, people practicing instruments, airplanes, helicopters, etc. etc. etc. “

What the hell is going on over there in Hawaii? “Leaf blowers?” WTF? They have leaves that fall off trees in Hawaii??? “People practicing instruments?” Double-WTF?????? Who’s practicing an instrument in Hawaii? Just go to the beach and drink a rum.

Here’s some free advice for whoever the mayor of Hawaii is: Maybe you should re-name Hawaii “Cacophony Archipelago.” (Actually that’d be a good name for a grindcore band. I wonder if Hawaii has a big grindcore scene? I must remember to google that the next time I feel like I’m about to do something productive.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been thinking about this whole Hawaii-is-noisy theory and it doesn’t add up. I can’t believe it. I’ve got my misconceptions about Hawaii stuck on replay. Great, just great: another paradigm-shattering edition of Friday Face-Offs. How many more of my precious paradigms are going to be shattered, just so you people can keep watching all the great videos I find on my computer??? “Bartender, pour me another Andy Rooney. Better make it a double.” (Whatever that means; I just typed it for fun.)

OH MY GOD I’M LOSING MY MIND LISTENING TO THIS SONG ON REPLAYyyyy

Two more contestants to go! It’s Friday Face-Offs!

FREIGHT TRAIN OF SOUND APPROACHING YOUR HEAD.

If you’re wondering what the framed documents on the wall are, one is a diploma for “Most People Playing ‘Replay’ Simultaneously on Acoustic Guitar In Human History,” and one is an award for “Best Microtonal Vocal Rendition of ‘Replay’ in Human History,” and one is a certificate for “There Are Three Plastic Cups on the Table.”

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!!! We’re stuck on replay!

As long as I’m typing on my computer, maybe I’ll just go ahead and admit that for the longest time, I thought the lyric “it’s like my iPod stuck on replay” was “it’s like my EYEBALL stuck on replay.” Crazy, right? But it kinda makes sense, in that loopy pop-song logic — the logic that drives Andy Rooney into AN ECSTASY OF BEFUDDLEMENT.

I can’t tell if everything in this video is from fifteen years ago, or from fifteen years from now. All I know is I’m going to buy my dad that shirt for his 80th birthday.

I think somebody likes playing the guitar. I think somebody really likes, like: LIKE-likes playing the guitar.

Not to brag, but I like to do lots of different things. However I definitely need to find something that makes me feel the way playing the guitar obviously makes this guy feel. What mood is that? That guy is chillin’ sooooo hard.

Truly, guys, just watch this entire video and focus on the guitar player. I GUARANTEE you will start laughing out loud with happiness vis a vis how amazingly hard he is deriving pleasure from being alive.

He kinda looks like Mac from Superchunk — another guitarist who really likes to play guitar — but really, there’s no comparison: Compared to this guy, Mac is like em-effing Andy Rooney on the guitar. Hell’s bells, compared to this guy EVERYBODY is Andy Rooney. Great, thanks to this guy, we now live in a world populated entirely by Andy Rooney simulacra. Great, just great.

You know the thing I don’t understand about the internet? Why is there all these videos on it? Hmmph. Look at how messy my office is, THAT PROVES I’M SMART.

Here we all are, talking about music:

(Actually, this video of us is pretty great. “I don’t know who Lady Gaga is.”)

Friday Face-Offs-Offs-Offs-Offs (stuck on replay!)

Basically, the reason this video is in competition? Is because it contains the hugest instant jump in guitar-tone quality I’ve ever heard (0:12)! Seriously, that’s a pretty dramatic upgrade, right? I’m having a hard time thinking of a record with a guitar that graduates so quickly from pre-K to PhD like that. I guess that’s the miracle of effects pedals …

But still, no, this is better than just stomping on the average effects pedal. Because that initial guitar tone? Is really bad. Maybe he has a special pedal that makes things sound super-duper crappy, in order to make the leap to “rockin’ my balls off” more dramatic. Which is probably why you get that classic hair-flip eye contact move as soon as the tone kicks in, where he’s like, “Yeah you like that don’t you. Get ready to get this shit extremely stuck on replay.”

Also you gotta love whatever Cththtuluhu-type demon he summons at around (1:35.) Goddamn I love scary sounds like that.

Another interesting thing about this video is, it really helps me appreciate that the melody for “Replay” is not especially sophisticated, and when Iyaz brags “Oh girl, I could write you a symphony,” I’m starting to think that maybe that’s not technically true.

But maybe … it is?

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS! Putting Gustav Mahler on heavy notice since 2008!!!!!!!!!

Replay-play-ay-ay

Ohhh yeah, this is how you set it off Friday Face-Offs style! Ring-a-ling-ding, Ma Bell in the house!

Can you smell what the Rock is cookin’? (By “Rock,” I mean “whoever the person in this video is.”) He’s cookin’ up phone-jams for the new millenium! This person is basically the Vladimir Horowitz of phones. And to think, some losers need iPhones to make music on phones. “Ooh, look, I downloaded this app that lets me play on a little piano keyboard on my phone!” Motherfucker, why don’t you just bust out your old-ass phone and roll up your sleeves and apply some good ol’ fashioned elbow-thumb grease? Go ahead, shorty. Get your thumbs stuck on Replay.

Friday Fone-Offs! “ET phone home, because we’re rocking on phones, and we need your phone.”

QUESTION FOR PHONE SCIENTISTS: What would happen if you made this phone-song your phone’s ring tone? Would the whole universe collapse into a black phone-hole made out of phones?

(I’m about ten seconds away from inducing asemantic metamorphicism, the condition when you’ve said “phone” so much it starts to sound really weird and non-wordlike.)

Phoooooone.

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS

Stuck on replay
replay
replay

There’s a new year, in case you’ve haven’t heard. It’s called 2011. And we’re deep into it.

How about we have a nice FRIDAY FACE-OFFS to celebrate? It’s only been, what, ninety-four months since the last one? Okay, yeah, let’s kick it FFO-style to celebrate the new year.

This week’s song is “Replay” by Iyaz. Listen to the original here:

Guys, do you think they used computers and/or machines to make this song? Part of me almost thinks they did … almost.

Okay, let’s get to it. First contestant coming up soon. FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!!!

(I guarantee that if you do your due diligence — listening to every version of Replay I’m about to share with you — by the end of the day, this song [“Replay”] will indeed “be stuck on replay” inside your head, just like Iyaz’s shorty is stuck inside his head, forever stuck on replay!)