Mid-Day Motivators: Acting

Bay, you're talking from the actress' perspective, yes? lol  Yeah, that wouldn't suck.

~ Hath

BJCT Post: San Antonio

Bon Jovi was in Texas last night!

Check out the BJCT for reviews, the setlist, photos, and videos/audio (as we find it).

Do you have anything you want to share? Drop a line to the BJCT Blog Team

~ Hath

Mid-Day Motivators: Shave

Bay, they sure do!

~ Hath

Mid-Day Motivators: Jokes

Bay, almost everything is better when shared between friends.  I love their laughing faces, though :)

~ Hath

Wanted Wednesday: November 15, 2008 (Richie)

Please rise for the playing of our national anthem.

So, with the RRHOF induction ceremony this week (sorry boys) I though it'd be timely to bring out this 2008 RRHOF performance from the Les Paul Tribute.

Richie played 3 songs that night, leading of with this track. (the others were Great Hall of Fame, which many pooh-poohed as crap, though I like it, and a final jam with the evenings other performers).

Let's Ride!






You can download this track here.



~ Hath

Mid-Day Motivators: Go Ahead!

I know I missed the boat yesterday with the MDM -- sorry -- Mondays seem to suck, and yesterday more than usual...

D'ya suppose next year, when he hits the big FIVE-OH, he does the "don't even mention the word 'birthday' in my presence" thing?  Or will it be the "yeah, I'm 50, but look 35 and feel 20, so piss off" thing?

Somehow, Bay, I think it's the latter lol

~ Hath

Fan Fic Writers: Giving Love a Bad Name?

That's the question posed by Elizabeth Coffee in her most recent JBJ post on Yahoo's Associated Content:

You may as well admit it: you've read some of it. With titles like "Just the Three of Us" and "A Jon and Richie Sandwich," how can you not be at least a little intrigued? And there's enough of it out there that one could spend all of her upcoming spring vacation just reading this genre if she so desired. Hmmm, there's a thought.

Where should one start?

Probably the best place is the Bon Jovi Fan Fiction Directory maintained by The Goddess Hathor. (Google it.) That site provides links to many stories on the web, not only about JBJ but also about other band members. At present on the list provided at that site, Jon is represented as the focal character in at least one hundred stories of varying lengths. Richie Sambora is represented as the focal character in about four dozen; David Bryan is represented as the focal character in eight; and even Tico is represented as the focal character in one. Several other stories on the list represent a combination of Bon Jovi band members as focal characters.

...[T]his writer can not vouch for the literary merit of the stories--maybe another day for that...

If you look hard and long enough, you'll find what you're looking for, anything from the saccharine to the . . . not.

Does Bon Jovi fan fiction give love a bad name? You decide.

I had to answer, and of course, ran off at the mouth fingers and my response got all messed up on her article. Here's what I had to say:

Obviously, I don't think that FF gives love a bad name :) As a FanFic author (of everything from saccharine to decidedly 'not') and hostess of the directory blog, I think it's a great outlet for folks to safely live out their fantasies. It's like people watching -- you sit in a bistro with your Latte and watch the world go by, wondering "what's she doing" or "where is he going". We sit there and wonder "what would happen if xxx happened when the tour is over?" And we answer the questions. In writing. And blog them.

We write mostly for ourselves. Sure, we like to share our stories with other like-minded individuals, but mostly, we write because we HAVE to write, and we write about these guys because they provide good fodder. C'mon, a wealthy, gorgeous leading man who loves his kids and has a fantastic job that allows for world-wide travel? That describes all four prinicpals in the band (IMO). Does it get any better than that?

As for the literary merit -- c'mon, it's fan fiction, not Clancy or King or Scottoline or Grisham or La Nora or even Jackie Collins. Yes, some of the writers represented on the FF Directory are amazing artists, and should be publishing romance novels in the real world. Others are trying out their writing chops for the first time. Yet others are writing in English when that isn't her first language!

You don't have to love it -- you don't even have to like it. The 'X' in the corner of the web page works for everyone.

BUT, if you like romance stories/erotica/chick lit, and like Bon Jovi, I encourage you to come on over and click a while.

So, what do you think? Any opinions? Don't worry about hurting my feelings -- I know that fan fiction isn't everyone's cup of tea.

~ Hath

PS: Thanks to Bay for sending me the link to this article.

30-Day Music Challenge

There are a bunch of us who call ourselves The Fictionistas. We started a blog a couple years ago when we were getting together for the first time, to share our exploits. Since then, it's sorta fallen by the wayside, but Catte has found something cool on another board to try out.

So here's the deal:

We Fictionistas like to Blab. A LOT. On any given day there are a couple hundred e-mails, tweets, texts, and Facebook posts flying between us and our pals.

One of the things that caught our collective eye was a cool little game that's going on over on a site we occasionally get sucked into frequent. It's called Mama's Fallen Angels and it's chock-full of not only all kinds of Jovi-Goodness but lots of other 80's Hair Band yummies (and some not-so-Hairy stuff).

The game is a 30-Day Music Challenge. Every day a music-related question will post; all you have to do is answer. If you want you can post a photo or link to a YouTube vid... but mostly it's just fun to think about and share.

We liked it so much we decided to borrow it and play. Come join us!

Check it out here.

~ Hath

Resplendent Randomness: Richie Painting

Artistic people awe me.

Thanks, JB (no, not that JB lol) for sending me this link. I wouldn't mind hanging this beside my bed (though the Richie painting I have from Judith currently has that honor...)



~ Hath

WHO is Killing the Music Business?

Of course, by now you've heard the buzz about Jon blaming Steve Jobs for personally killing the music business. In case you happened to have missed it, here's the scoop:

"Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it," the Hollywood Reporter quoted the rocker as telling the UK-based Sunday Times Magazine. "God, it was a magical, magical time.

"I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?'" he reportedly said. "Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."
source

Bloggers all over the place have been talking about this -- not only in the JoviSphere, but everywhere:

NY Mag offers this:

Steve Jobs, who presented an online system that actually got artists paid and staunched the illegal downloading that had previously gripped the music industry, has personally thwarted the most important criteria you could use when deciding whether to buy a record: the ability to discern for yourself just how feathery Jon Bon Jovi's chunky Meg Ryan do is on the album jacket.

Mac Daily News is a little harsher:

Johnny Bongiovi misses the time when children were cajoled into parting with their allowance money for wildly overpriced, forced bundles of sight unseen, or rather, sound unheard, crapshoots; 99.9% of which were packed to the gills with filler. Ah, “the good old days.”

Today, thanks to Steve Jobs, a good portion of music consumers still actually pay for music and also actually have – *gasp* – consumer choice! Music consumers can now buy exactly what they want while not paying for things they don’t. Imagine that! Consumers can also still buy a full album via Apple’s iTunes Store, complete with artwork and more, if they so desire. Nobody’s stopping them. And, oh by the way, artists are still getting rich. All of this is thanks to Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs is personally responsible for saving the music business, you vapid twit.

TechRadar was harsher still, but made me laugh out loud:

With average ticket prices of $105 a pop, the band's tour was the highest grossing of 2010.

It's all about tickets. The next album could be seventy minutes of Bon Jovi shouting "balls!" while Richie Sambora plays the banjo with his buttocks, and Bon Jovi would still make tens of millions of dollars from the subsequent stadium tour.

If that's the music business Bon Jovi would like to save, perhaps we're better off without it.

But as fun as a "Balls and Banjo" show sounds, perhaps the best "response" I've read comes from Jeremy Horwitz on iLounge.com:

An Open Letter to Jon Bon Jovi On What’s Really “Killing The Music Business”


Hi Jon,

When my wife—a huge and long-time Bon Jovi fan—asked me to spend over $300 for two floor seat tickets to your Valentine’s Day show in Toronto, there were two reasons that I said yes. First, I really love my wife, and would do almost anything for her. Second, I looked through my iTunes collection and realized that there were more good Bon Jovi songs inside than there were for most of the musicians I “love.” Once my wife assured me that your concerts focus mostly on the songs I liked, I plunked down the cash for the seats, and spent the next four months watching my wife smile every time we discussed Valentine’s Day.

To be totally honest with you, the concert was great. We both had a lot of fun, snapped pictures and video clips from the floor, and told our friends and family how much we enjoyed it.

But now you’re putting our happy memories in jeopardy. For whatever reason, you told The Sunday Times Magazine during an interview that “Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.” I’m not going to try and tell you all of the ways that you’re deeply, profoundly wrong. Instead, I’m just going to focus on a few of them.

(1) My wife has carried around all of your albums (and many more) on Steve Jobs’ Apple devices since she bought her first iPod years ago. I know from personal experience that she taps into your collection at home, in the car, and on vacations—literally at the drop of a hat, whenever she wants. If she hadn’t, I would have forgotten about your band back in the 1980’s. No CD player or radio station would have changed that, I can guarantee you.

(2) When we got married, her music collection became mine and vice-versa. It’s because of her collection of Bon Jovi music—and her constant access to it on Apple’s devices—that I could look at my iTunes library and realize how many of your songs I liked.

(3) We attended your concert in Toronto a month ago. Photos from that concert were uploaded to Facebook using our iPhones, and from my digital camera using a Mac. And when I was testing the iPad 2, guess what I used as examples to show off how the new version of iMovie can edit videos from digital cameras? Sample concert footage. And it looked pretty great, too.

Jon, you lead the world’s top-earning touring band, which made $146.5 million on its last tour alone. If the music business is being killed, you’re still doing exceptionally well, so it’s hard to understand why you’d be complaining about anything right now. But let me take a guess or two.

In the interview, you seem to be upset that kids no longer buy an entire album based on the cover, and suggest that people would be better off not knowing what it sounds like before they make a purchase. I’m sorry, but that’s just crazy. Yes, Apple lets people buy singles rather than entire albums. It also lets people preview tracks before buying albums, and recently extended those previews to 90 seconds per song. This way, potential customers can be sure they’re getting what they want before hitting the buy button—a good idea because those of us who aren’t making tens of millions of dollars a year don’t want to buy bad songs, or worse yet, entire albums full of junk. Singles and previewing let us pick out the tracks we like, rather than having to pay for filler. And there’s a lot of filler in the music business these days.

During the concert in Toronto, and presumably many others you’ve performed over the years, the audience clearly wanted to hear your hits. Crowd noise dimmed significantly every time you said you were going to play “new stuff,” but the energy level went through the roof whenever a classic track started to play. As an aging rock star—granted, one who puts on a hell of a show—you must hate that each stadium full of people just wants to hear the songs you put out 20 years ago. You surely want to point fingers at the system that distributes your music, the way people consume music these days, other performers, and anything other than the music itself for not catching on. At one point in the concert, you knocked Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and seemingly Madonna and Justin Timberlake for not being real musicians. As talented as you may be, it’s obvious that you’re angry about popular music for some reason.

You shouldn’t be. If you don’t realize it already, iTunes, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Mac have given you a platform that would have been inconceivable when you were a kid. You constantly live in your fans’ pockets, on their computers, and inside their cameras. That attachment leads them, and in some cases their spouses, to keep listening to you, watching you, and paying you for more. The more good music you make, the more Apple has empowered you to make money on it in some way, and to spread the word to others. Like me. Like the friends we reached on Facebook. And so on.

Steve Jobs isn’t the problem here. The music industry is the problem—too many bad songs are the problem. It’s the reason the audience doesn’t roar when you talk about playing a new track or two that were added for a re-release of your greatest hits. If your greatest hits were from the last three years, imagine how much money you’d be making on album sales even beyond your touring.

Speaking just for myself, the next Bon Jovi concert I’ll consider attending now will be one with a completely different set list of tracks that I like as much as the ones you released 20 years ago. All you have to do is start recording them, and I promise that my wife or I will purchase them. So will the rest of your fans. Until that happens, and other musicians start churning out great music by the album rather than the song, the industry’s going to be in trouble. And if it keeps blaming the system rather than itself, it will deserve its fate.

Several sources have reminded us that Jon sits on a White House panel with Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. Both are members of the White House council for Community Solutions. Hope they don't sit next to each other.

I think blaming Steve Jobs is ludicrous. He should totally blame Dan Quayle. He did invent the internet, after all. Or maybe we should blame the Buggles.



~ Hath

JonBon on the set of New Year's Eve

Thanks, Rike, for dropping the info in my inbox! If/when we find non-watermarked pics, I'll update the PB folder.

~ Hath

Happy Anniversary!

It's March 14th....

You know what that means, right?

On this date in 1983 a group of guys got together and formed a band. 

And 28 years later...not only are they still tops in our hearts, their on top of their game and #1 all over the place.

Happy Bon Jovi day, everyone!

Strolls off wondering: does Hallmark make a card for that?

~ Hath

Celebrate the 10MM FB Fans

From the Bon Jovi Website:

Bon Jovi has reached 10 million Facebook fans! To celebrate this tremendous milestone Bon Jovi has put up a new profile photo on Facebook thanking all 10 million of you for being with us each and every day on Facebook. We want to invite all 10 million of you to join in the celebration with us. Here’s how:

• Step 1: Create a sign of your own similar to the one Bon Jovi is holding. It can be small or large and should say something about Bon Jovi hitting 10 million Facebook fans. Be creative and make it your own!
• Step 2: Take a photo of YOU holding your sign!
• Step 3: Post the sign as your profile picture on Facebook for all of your friends to see.
• Step 4: Send US the photo! Email it to 10million@bonjovi.com. We will be adding all the photos we receive to a very special Facebook photo gallery and the Bon Jovi Official Facebook page and we want to be sure to include yours!

~ Hath

10,000,000 FB Fans Can't Be Wrong...

Thanks, Q, for the heads up -- I'm not so much into FB :)

You can see a message from Jon here.

~ Hath

FF News

There are two new items up on the FF Directory -- they were announced over there, but not here:

Pictures and Prose Author, Lisa Marie, is starting a new epic-length story.

Damned

What happens when you take one stale marriage, and unappreciated wife and add one rock star? You are Damned!

BJ's Quickies

BJLuver has a home for her rather erotic Bon Jovi Fan Fic Quickies. These are erotic stories that will deal with fetish ideas, including (but not limited to) role play and bondage.

Also, I've taken down Another Reason to Believe, and am revamping the site and story. I expect the re-launch to happen June 1st.

~ Hath