Funny / Todd In The Shadows Trainwreckords 2017

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Specials

Jewel - 0304 (2003)

• Todd assumes that the album's title is referring to the years Jewel thought the album would be ubiquitously popular. "A more fitting name would've been "03 For About Two or Three Weeks".
• He's shocked that Jewel, a published poet, would confuse "casualness" with "casualty."
• As Todd explains it, after "Serve the Ego" became an unexpected club hit, "Jewel got an idea. An awful idea. Jewel got a terrible, awful idea!"
• His confusion at the line "You learned love from Charlie Sheen". The closest thing he can think of is the Spaghetti Kiss scene from Hot Shots! Part Deux.
• Comparing Jewel becoming a pop diva to Joni Mitchell becoming a disco queen or Taylor Swift dropping "Look What You Made Me Do" immediately after "Teardrops on My Guitar".
  • Also him referring to "Look What You Made Me Do" as "her goddamn thing this year".
• Jewel claims that "Intuition" was meant to be ironic, so Todd responds by "ironically" hitting his hand with a hammer.
  Todd: Ow! My hand is ironically hurting! I'm groaning in ironic agony!
• He also notes that, even if he did buy that it was meant to be ironic, it's still self-defeating since the message of the song is "don't listen to this song, it sucks".
• Todd is left in Stunned Silence after he reads that the album was meant to be a tribute to big bands and Cole Porter, juxtaposing that kind of music with a song from the album called "U + Me = Love", then he weakly adds "I'm not hearing it."
• Pretty much everything about his reaction to the incredibly Narmy, forced lyrics of "America". Especially the lines "We love Spam in America" and "Polanski's banned from America".
  Todd: Take that, America, you... Spam-eating non-Polanskis!"

Styx - Kilroy Was Here (1983)

• "Obviously I don't like Styx! I'm a music critic! It's part of the licensing exam. Can't be a music critic if you like Styx."
  • "My little brother likes Styx. He's a huge fan. He's seen them in concert like twice, has their T-shirts... I've failed him."
• Todd describes Dennis DeYoung's voice as "the death of music".
• Everything about the laughably corny concert film for Kilroy Was Here, especially the supercut of Tommy Shaw's horrendous acting.
  Tommy (as Jonathan Chance): "You can't stop the music, you bastards!"
  Todd: Shockingly, after the band broke up, Shaw did not pursue a film career.
  • The scene of the prisoners fighting in the eating area is.. interesting to say the least.
    (camera pans over to prisoners hugging, flailing, lunging and attempting to beat up the Robotos in a metal room with fight noises layered over it)
    Intercom: Attention. Riot in the eating area.
    Todd: Are you sure that's a riot? Are you sure that's not just the jazzercize class warming up?
  • Even before that, the so called riot was instigated by this gem of a line:
    Prisoner: Hey Roboto! Your mother was a Toyota! (throws a book at one Roboto while the other prisoners laugh) You got no rhythm huh, you got no rhythm!
• The theme of "Mr. Roboto" is the dehumanizing aspect of technology. "You're a synthesizer band, you goddamn hypocrites!"
• The blink-and-you'll-miss-it intercut of the Chuck E. Cheese animatronic band playing over "Mr. Roboto".
• Todd admits when reviewing albums for Trainwreckords that sometimes failure or backlash can only show itself during the follow-up. To illustrate this, he shows the opening weekend grosses for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the massive drop-off when Justice League came out.
• Todd's multiple riffs on the nine-minute intro film.
  Todd: Now, as a sci-fi buff, I can't help but notice the similarities between this album's premise and the fictional sci-fi universe created by ME in the eighth grade!
  • Todd's description of other people responses to his own similar sci-fi premise:
    Todd: Critics rapturously praised my conceptual masterwork as "dorktastic" and "lame as balls" before crumpling all of my drawings and stuffing me in a locker!
• "And the robotos, what about them? Well, here's a funny thing. They are not part of this story, like, at all. 'Mr. Roboto' was the first single and the album opener, and it never comes back. Robots are to this album as breast cancer is to The Room (2003)."
• Regarding Jonathan Chance's solo in the Villain Song, "Heavy Metal Poisoning":
  Todd (as Dr. Righteous): NOOO! He's playing rock and roll in my rock and roll song!
• Todd noting how well "Renegade" would have fit on the album, despite it being from a different album.
• Todd as the angry arena audience: "Boo! Play 'More Than a Feeling' already!"
  • And this was after he described the typical Styx audience in arenas as "Angry rednecks, who just want to hear Blue Collar Man."