Manilow & Me

I just watched the most recent Family Guy episode, Back to the Woods. There is a skit contained within the episode where the guys are drinking in the Drunken Clam and hear on the television that Manilow will be appearing locally. Although all of them initially scoffed and swore Manilow fans as pansies (more-or-less), as the scene went on it is revealed that all four of them (Joe, Peter, Quagmire, and Cleveland) are die-hard Manilow fans.

This got me to thinking... Most of these little comments on the show are reasonably accurate criticisms of American society. So, perhaps there are tons of Manilow fans out there that won't admit it. Hmm...

The clip of "Mandy" on the show (which had Mandy's name replaced with Quagmire) sounded alright, so I decided that maybe there was something to it. Then I decided to download "Mandy" and listen to the song all the time and delete the play count on iTunes so that anyone checking out my computer couldn't tell that I secretely have a "Mandy" obsession.

After downloading the song, though, I realized that the song isn't really all that great. The chorus is fire, but the rest of the song is pretty blah. So much for my idea, then. Perhaps, then, I could play the song on repeat everytime I leave the room/house and get the play count up to accomplish the opposite. I could make everyone think that I loved the song so much that I had more plays of that one song than I even have songs on this PC (Over 5100).

I decided to check the song out on YouTube instead to see if the live version was any better, and the real fun began (for me that is).

There are pages and pages of comments on the video by people that went there after watching the Family Guy episode. Pretty much everyone else on there was also amazed at just how many hits the video got by Family Guy viewers.

I was rather disappointed that Manilow didn't replace the name Mandy with that of someone in the audience. (Especially if he had replaced it with something like... oh... say... Quagmire). The video and my iTunes search did shine some light into the commonly held opinion that adoration of Manilow automatically makes you a douche. His jokes were beyond bad, he talked too much, the music bore to striking a resemblance to elevator music, the song is excessively sappy/corny, and the song isn't really all that great anyway.

By the way, if your face is featured in a video on YouTube at a Manilow concert (especially if you are singing along while swaying back-and-forth), you have lost all right to consider in touch with what is and is not cool. If only they'd had lighters in the air... *sigh*

So here it is... Likely the only time that I will ever link to a Barry Manilow video, ever. Enjoy