Going down

Boxed out

I didn't end up sticking around the Redman/Ghostface/Raekwon show for too long. It's a killer lineup for sure, but panic attacks have no respect for hip hop, and they'll just do their thing whenever. But I did stay long enough to mistakenly barge avec posse into the talent's private opera box. Raekwon was standing there in a long, diamond-y chain and a Nike box under his arm. He looked at me and my dudes -- the skinny hipster guy with one (1) large white guy, one (1) large black guy, and one (1) short half-black/half-Asian guy in tow -- and asked, "These dudes fam-fam?"

My new favorite insult

"[Y]ou sassy cretin."
From this thread.

We've all been there

Don't tell me you never did.

Memes within memes

The most meta thing ever?

Thang-thang, thang.

Jim Jones comes back again with the quote of the month:
"I need to feel that eggnog flowin’ and things like that[.]"
That is some fire.
Also, from Jones' reply to Jay-Z's diss over "We Fly High":
"You say 30's the new 20 / But you 40, I'm 30 / So who's 20?"
I don't know why Jay bothered. Arguing with Jim Jones is like trying to have a conversation with the mysterious crackhead on my street who's always got fresh Nikes on: everyone's talking, but not a whole bunch of useful information is exchanged.
I was kind of thinking that someone should invent a Jim Jones quote generator, but then I realized that there isn't any way to get a computer that high. Not even with a bong. Maybe if someone invented some sort of . . . computer bong.

Blood sports

Lara writes MySpace messages that are better than my blog posts:
I wanted you to be the first to know that I dripped blood out of my nose on to a child, a child no more than 6. He wore a fake leg brace, for he is playing Tiny Tim. Every day my ovaries don't spend in guantanamo is another day the terrorists have won.

I like the internet

This:
"Translated, that means, and I’m sorry for being so graphic, Screech wants you to pay 50 bucks to watch him put his privates in a woman’s behind, pull it out, then paint her a mustache with his thing.
I say 'No.'"

And also this:
"Whether American or Australian, every human life is valuable; otherwise it makes it appear that Mr. Stainton thinks that only one man's is."

Booze helped too.

Are you sick of reading "the iPod turned five let's all talk about the iPod," stories yet?


"It would be a bit much to say that the iPod helped us heal from the wounds of 9/11 –- or would it?"

Okay, how about now?
That is shit writing on such a profoundly shitty level that it not only makes me hate the article (normal reaction to bad writing), and by extension feel like the guy writing it is kind of a douche (severely bad), but is actually making me second-guess my plan to buy a new iPod (off the scale, must buy a new scale because this one is broken now). You know what helped us heal from the wounds of 9/11? Booze and terror sex and the scene from Young Frankenstein where they sing "Puttin on the Ritz," and as much of all of those as we could handle. Not a hard drive with headphones.
Don't try to cheapen terror sex's contribution.

Rollllin' (?)

So you guys can't even mention something that may or may not allude to another male-type human being without having to say, "No homo," and yet you are down with rollerblading. Thanks, Dipset, for finding even yet still more ways to make no sense at all. You've done more to damage my mind than drugs ever did.

We have a winner

From the comments section of Stereogum's post about Ice-T's explicit new album art:

"stripper-wife" is not a phrasal adjective, and therefore should not be hyphenated. stripper-prostitute wife would be a correct use of a hyphen to denote a phrasal adjective.

Congratulations, "redbook." You just won the internet.

ZAP!

People bag on supergroups all the time, like saying they're never as good as the members' original bands. But whatever. Damn Yankees were way kickass, Coverdale/Page was like, "Zeppelin what?" and that one band that had Linda Ronstadt playing with Captain America, Doctor Strange, and C-3PO was the fucking shit.

If your band doesn't have a guitar player who shreds by shooting bolts of magical lightning out of his fingers you should just give up. Maybe work on your ping pong game instead.
Found by clicking on a link to the Portland Mercury on the J-Shep Cowboyz n Poodles blog.

The truth, however humble

From Julianne's interview with DFA/LCD/WHTVR homeboy James Murphy:

Murphy: I liked hip-hop, but not as dance music. I liked Public Enemy. I liked Native Tongues. But I never thought of it as dancing, never really thought about dancing at all until '99. It was good music for my car.


URGE: What happened in '99?


Murphy: I took ecstasy, like everybody else.

Free Dece Jams

You can stream the whole new Hold Steady album Boys and Girls in America over here. If the Killers have any good sense in them--and judging by their facial hair styles, they do not--they will pull Sam's Town from stores because if the Hold Steady's past records have been taking people to school on how to do the "Springsteen thing," Boys and Girls in America is like signing up for an intensive senior-level seminar in Boss Studies.
EDIT: Hold Steady's in the NYT.

Desert Island Top 5 Ironies: Number 4

If you have no respect for musicals, music, Nick Hornby, yourself, or any combination of the four (the last two generally being mutually exclusive), head on over to the website for the upcoming Broadway musical based on Hornby's novel High Fidelity and its simpering-heavy John Cusak film adaptation. I'm sure you'll have a ball. They've not only adapted a novel about desperately trying to hang onto your cool into the uncoolest entertainment form ever, but also adapted a story about an obsessive love of good music by telling it through the most unspectacular, cliche-ridden showtunes I've ever heard outside of parody. No, actually it's at or below the level of most showtune parodies I've heard. And I love it. I hope it makes every whiny baby-man who ever read High Fidelity's opening chapter as a way to passive-aggressively hate their girlfriend (or women in general), or got distracted by John-Cusak-as-Rob's record shelves and never caught onto how pathetic he is, cry a little bit. Or at least get mad that "their" book is getting played like this, that Hornby's sold out about as hardcore as you can get. Or better yet, both. I thought ironies on this level only ever happened in Greek myths or in Hell. I never thought I'd get to see it happen for real.

Raps about drugs

Fuck, man. Still Listen to Gangsta Music posted a new Streets remix today, this time with vocals by Pete Doherty, and it's a heavy fucker. The song is Mike Skinner's coke paranoia jam, "Pranging Out," which makes drafting Doherty for it either a macabre bit of stunt casting or else total brilliance. But I don't even know that anyone did cast him. Doherty's vocals sound sort of lo-fi/home-recorded, and the edits are sloppy. He may have just done it on his own and put it on the internet. Who knows.
The important part is how equally brilliant and fucked up the final piece is: Skinner's epic, stuttering beat and Doherty talk-rapping through it, speaking lyrics that are garbage or stunningly honest and good. He sounds like a messed-up friend on the phone at 3 AM, he sounds like he have been wasted while he recorded it. He sounds like he's already dead.

Flying death fish

Some of you may be overpowered by my blogging abilities and can only bear the relatively mild heat of the sporadic, half-assed blogging I do over here at Critical Darling: As Good As An Internet Web Page Can Be Without Showing Full Penetration. The braver sort among you can among you can point your web browser's prow towards the paradise that is Crickets, the Chicago Reader's official music crit bloggy. If blogs places to buy sushi, this one would be a Jewel at 1 AM and Crickets would be a place that serves $200 hand rolls and the chef periodically whips a still-breathing fugu fish at patron's faces.

No cheap jeans

Last night I played the You Say Party! We Say Die! track "The Gap" in my DJ set and it kind of killed. If you want to listen it you can click here: mp3
As far as I can tell the song is not actually about the Gap, but rather a gap, one which is more of a metaphor and which doesn't have posters of Pete Wentz wearing too much eye makeup all over the fucking place.

It's a saggy-dude sandwich.

Hank Williams Jr. leads the audience vote at the Bad Rock Face World Championship finals between Rick Nielsen and Little Steven Van Zant.

We will all sleep on the floor.

Tim and Mike Kinsella were on Chicago Public Radio's Chicagocore show recently. It is on the internet now, so you just have to click here in order to hear the dudes getting down a la some outre John Lennon (Tim)/George Harrison (Mike) interview styles. At various points Tim appraises a table's "vibrations," offers to fight every member of the Pitchfork Media staff at the same time, and predicts the imminent collapse of America's economy and lifestyle. Mike predicts that in the future we will all end up sleeping on the floor.
Aside from the interview I listened to Tim Kinsella stuff for over two hours yesterday. The next Make Believe record is beyond "slays." I will say it again, and probably not for the last time: Make Believe is the best punk rock band in the world. And not "punk rock" like "Public Enemy was totally punk rock" or "Arthur Lee was truly the first punk rocker." They are punk like Black Flag was punk--maybe even more so--and just because you don't understand it doesn't make it any less true.

Hey Chad VanGaalen

Thanks for holding it down for all the Jag-Stang users out there. Rarely has there ever been a guitar that has seemed like such a good idea at the time, but turned out to be such an ass thing. The Jag-Stang is ugly in a way that B.C. Rich is hiring promising engineering grads at competetive salaries in order to understand. By posing in publicity photos with one, Chad VanGaalen, you are really helping the healing process for so many people. You are basically hauling it out, chuckling a little, and saying, "Can you believe I ever dropped $580 on this thing? Man, the things we do because we love Kurt Cobain so much," and that's helping people, Chad. You're a good dude. Also I don't think your new record is anywhere near as boring as the first one. It even kind of rocks out a little. Really making that Jag-Stang earn its way, huh?
But seriously, did you ever want to get one of those Squire Venuses? They were pretty sweet.

Float

If you don't have an iTunes music store account, now would be a good time to sign up for one, because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' exclusive live set has finally gone live. It's only four songs, but the revelations they contain are fascinating. Like: that without all of the distortion--and without Brian Chase, who has been winning Drummer of the Year awards from the Institute of Me every year since their first EP--their songs have this beautiful, airy fragility to them, like a hologram that would fall apart forever if you put your hand through it. And that Sonic Youth's "Diamond Sea," the only song that's ever made me cry on first listen, is still one of the best Beach Boys songs ever written. And that everyone who talks about Karen O strictly in terms of multiple-simultaneous-beer-pourings and Spike-Jonze-datings needs to stop now. When she wordlessly sings Nick Zinner's solo in "Turn Into"--which, by the way, is Song of the Year For Real--and when she makes the ooh-oohs in "Gold Lion" sound strangely, invasively sexual, it's like she's just now realizing the extent of her power.

Things to see in NYC

Going beyond

Arthur C. Clarke said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If he'd stuck around urban America instead of retiring to Sri Lanka he might also have said that a sufficiently powerful subwoofer in a shitty car is indistinguishable from experimental electronic music.
This morning a guy drove past me in a Scion truck/car/box with a few thousand bucks' worth of stereo equipment in it, pumping enough bass out of what may have been a Pitbull track to make his car doors visibly shake. From the outside all I could hear was the car rattling--the bass I could mostly just feel in my inner ear, and it made me physically feel bad. I started laughing out loud when I realized that this middle-aged dude in a goatee who'd crammed that kind of stereo into a semi-compact car so he could impress the other mind-wizards he hangs out with was making more offensive and seriously fucked-up sound than all of the kids at the all of the Terry Plumming noise-bullshit shows in the world.

Bags and bags

Just checking in from New York City. I've spent the past two days hanging out hardcore, dancing and drinking tequila-and-sodas and closing out bars with very specific design schemes. As with every trip I take out here I've found myself weighing the pros and cons of moving to the Big City. The relative ease with which one may buy two hundred dollars' worth of tight jeans and obnoxiously colored sneakers is one of those things, a pro or a con, but I'm not entirely sure yet which.

Scenes from a road trip II

Scenes from a road trip

Pulling out of the Skyway McDonald's:
Driver: I swear to god McDonald's puts heroin in their fries.
Recovering heroin addict: Yay!

I know what's on your mind, AnonID: 6837168

You know how AOL accidentally released a gajillion people's anonymized user searches?
Now you can search them. Hit the button that pulls up random searches for an eerie glimpse into America's psyche. A search for violent racist ideas stuck in the middle of a string of "patio furniture" and "slow cooker recipes" pretty much sums up this country's whole situation.
The current popular favorite search user is this weird person, but I'm kind of infatuated with whoever searched for nothing but "chess" over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Cans

If you need new headphones or are thinking about stepping up your personal audio game and you asked me about the situation, I would tell you to try the Sennheiser HD-202's. They're over-the-ear style but don't have the "ask me about my retarded views on current music (except you can't, because I'm ignoring you with my giant headphones [but you can still look])" kind of frontin-ness to them. And when you clamp them on there's a nice pressure change like an airplane door closing and then nothing but a kind of near-freaky isolation-chamber kind of silence before you kick your choice of funky jams. And the bass response easily handles the 808's on this Lil' Weezy track.
Sorry to get all consumer fetishist on you. They're really good headphones. They're also only $29.99 at a store that I will not name, but will only say that they're the ones who sent the cease and desist letter to Virgin Mega Whore. (It's not Coconuts.)

"Chicken in Black"

Do you need another reason to love Johnny Cash? Okay. Here's this kiss-off to a record label that done him wrong: "Chicken in Black".

Love is dead

So another far-out psychedlic pop pioneer is dead. Is this God's work? Or is it some sort of ruthless plot by the editors of MOJO to sell special memorial issues? Is a bump in sales for the History Channel of music magazines worth a man's life?
If I was Sly Stone or Brian Wilson I'd be sure to take care of writing my will, and then writing the inferior but far more commercially viable will that will end up being released.

With love

As a Christian, I follow Jesus for his teachings of love and tolerance; it is people like you who make me sick, I hope you die in a lake of fire and get your eyes pecked out by crows, so that you may go to hell and exist for eternity in a lake of fire getting your eyes pecked out by crows.

With love,

Charlie

Pastafarianism, home of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and best new religion so far this century, inspires poetic, idiotic hate mail

Contractually guaranteed to be the only person playing DJ Khaled

FRI 07/28/2006 9:00 PM Buy Tickets Online
TICKETS $5 Or FREE WITH R.S.V.P. TO CHICAGOGOESOFF@SOLIDPR.COM
THE SHOW IS THE RAINBOW | mp3
MY WERE THEY | mp3
VOLTAGE
LIGHT POLLUTION

FEATURING:
DJ BIG BLACKHAWK
DJ MILES RAYMER
DJ JOHN DUGAN


I'm playing records at this pre-Pitchfork thang-thang on Friday. Come out. I will play rap music at you. I will play it at you hardcore.
RSVP for guest list.

And make sure you give yourself time to use up the rest of your stash.

The Little White Lie at the Border is a time-honored indie band tour tradition, one that can save you valuable visa-applying time ("We are only traveling through your country between point in our home country and aren't playing any shows here.") and money ("No, we do not have any merchandise for sale; we are only here to record at a studio in your beautiful, freedom-loving land."), but apparently one that is also more likely these days to get you banned from our country for several years.
Are we really working to personally piss off each individual non-American body on the planet, or just to make everyone think we are?

L0u R33d iz teh r0xx0r!!11!!oneone!!

This and several other works of semi-retarded genius are up on fark.com's Recreate your favorite album cover in MS Paint forum.

The best rapper alive

I think the people at Dunkin' Donuts are in on it.

Is there any reason why I've been hearing "Bette Davis Eyes" so much in the past week? Is it some sort of soundtrack-based revival? A virus written by a fantaic Malaysian Kim Carnes fan infecting the computer DJs at Jack FM stations? A vast right-wing conspiracy? Or simply the universe's cosmic machinery grinding out a series of events designed to get me to favorably compare "Bette Davis Eyes" with these dudes? Somebody help me out.

Weirdo wake-up

If your MySpace bulletin board is all "room for rent in Brooklyn" and "hey come see me DJ at some shitty bar" and you're getting bored with that, you might want to sign up to be friends with CSS so you can start your day off with Brazilian ESL insanity like I do. The following was posted under the heading "TORONTO-CURRY-FACE-GOOD-GOOD":

TORONTO
HOW ARE YOU?

Yesterday was like honeymoon for us. You made us very happy.
Let's do it again in a month or so, ok?
Don't forget that night... I mean yesterday.


AND FOR YOU WHO HAVEN'T SEEN US YET.... YOU WILL.

Lalalalala means I-WANT-TO-PUT-CURRY-ALL-OVER-YOUR-FACE-WITH-SUNSCREEN-AND-LICK-IT-LIKE-THERE-IS-NO-TOMORROW-IN-TORONTO-BUT-THERE-IS-WE-WILL-SEE-YOU-IN-OCTOBER!

Paranoid & pretty

Sparks goes in, dumb comes out.

My new favorite Intonation Festival story isn't even about me. It's about my friend Ralph. For the few remaining people in in the world who don't know him, Ralph looks like this:

Kinda shitty photo, I know, but note that he has a kinda freaked-out afro and he is black.

When I saw Ralph in the VIP tent at Intonation, he was doing three of the five main activities he most often engages in: bumming cigarettes, promoting himself, and dressing pretty decent. There was someone with a pro-looking video camera floating around the tent asking I guess anyone with an interesting haircut if they were in one of the bands playing the festival. I was too lazy to try to impersonate one of the 90 Day Men, so I passed. But Ralph is always on his grind, so the camera guy got a long interview about Ralph's band the Jai Alai Savant, which was not actually on the festival bill at all.
The good story, though, happened later when a white girl tweaking on Sparks cornered Ralph in the tent and asked him, "Are you Gnarls Barkley?" Considering the multi-level abso-stupidity and racial WTF-ness of the girl's question, Ralph's sarcastic, "Yeah, I'm Gnarls and Barkley," reply was probably kinder than she deserved, although for the record he does have a pretty tough "sarcastic" voice.
I didn't hear about the story until a couple days later when I ran into him at the bar. "Yeah, fucking Gnarls Barkley," he said. "I mean, I at least kind of understand it when I get 'are you in TV On the Radio?'"

New rule.

The new rule is that you are not allowed to compare any record or band to another record or band "on [some drug]" unless you have done the drug you are referencing. The other day I saw a quote on some singer-songwriter's one-sheet that said he sounded "like Elvis Costello on angel dust." Which is wrong. Elvis Costello on angel dust would sound like Elvis Costello yelling at a wall. Needless to say, this dude in particular did not sound like Elvis Costello yelling at a wall.*
It really is true that you don't have to do drugs to be cool. I know a lot of good people who have only ever like tried weed a couple of times and decided they didn't like being on drugs, and getting busted on drug-frontin is way worse than saying, "Sorry, I was totally straight-edge until I turned 26 and decided to start drinking martinis because they looked fun," or whatever your experience was. People dropping references to someone "tripping on heroin" give me extreme "bags of sand"-style douche chills.

*Another thing: ODB, Sly Stone, and Shaun Ryder are the only people to have ever made a decent recording while smoking cocaine, so unless you're trying to compare an artist to one of these three musicians, do not say they sound like "[somebody] on crack." Crack doesn't make you automatically start rocking out spazzy, artsy music; it just makes you want to smoke more crack.

Kthnx

I feel kinda chumpish recommending something so completely obvious, but I just subscribed to the Fader podcast, and the newest edition has like every song that's wrecked me at any DJ night in the past month or so, specifically Raje Shwari's "Average Bitch" and "Teri Baaton" by Raghav. Jams is right. But seriously, I feel like yesterday's Red Eye where the two biggest features were about airlines losing your luggage and how if you're thinking about marrying someone you should learn stuff about them. Derrrrrrrr.

Bang on.

Dead Prez has the best merch. What you know about signature lines of soap?
Their set last night at Intonation was wall-to-wall bonkers. A half-acapella version of "Walk Like a Warrior," a cover of "Another Brick in the Wall," the weekend's only onstage commentary on white people hip-hop fans (condensed: It's okay, but you have a responsibility to look out for black people if you're gonna ride for free on their culture.), and the hands-down best banter of the whole fest: "I see these vampires sucking my blood. I ain't wit it."
DEAD PREZ IS OFFICIALLY ANTI-VAMPIRE. DEAL WITH IT.

Jesus Freakin'

Hello.
My review of Andrew Beaujon's book about Christian rock in online here.

Typo of the Day

"NAS: Earth hottest it's been in 400 years, humans responsible"
BoingBoing.net

And then he starts a "who's the world's best spokesperson for global warming" beef with Al Gore.

"Aging": America's hottest new trend?

"30 is the new 20."
-New York Times, Dec. 23, 2004

"Thirty is the new forty."
-New Yorker, Jun. 26, 2006

I don't know which of these is correct--or if 30 is the new anything besides 30--but I feel like just to be safe I should probably buy a new beer bong and get someone pregnant before next year.
Optimally I would be able to do both things simultaneously.

When your MySpace "Pending Friend Requests" folder tells you the truth.

"Currently awaiting approval from Stevie Nicks"
I think in a way I've been waiting for Stevie Nicks' approval for most of my life.
Breakthrough.

The fetishized gun violence web portal is open for business.

My friend Josh ran off with my "Bird Flu" post and dug up some goods on the deejay,Sample King, who sings it. He's got an official website, but the real goods are on his Myspace page, and by "goods" I mean "songs that test the very limits of how much MIDI gunfire can one song contain." To bear witness to "Weh Dem Know Bout That," (he is Canadian, so despite himself he pronounces "about" correctly, if accented) on the beat to TI's "What You Know," is to know exactly how many gunfire samples his friend who produced the song has on his keyboard. Two things Sample King might want to consider are that there are websites out there that you can download things like that from--nothing says "scraping the bottom of the MIDI barrel" like an old-timey whistling bomb--and that shouting out "sniper rifles" and other shit from Goldeneye is the "they feel like bags of sand" of violent rap lyrics.
More artfully (and more Nate Dogg-ingly) done is the Kadalack Boyz' "Never Slippin'" (mp3 link), which starts off with a beat built out of gun-cocking sounds and cannon blasts. When you get to hear a rap song that uses some of the same ideas the Flaming Lips were fucking with when they were still good you call that "an awesome day."

I say, "H5," you say, "N1"!

I don't know that I personally would've put the "Dancin' disease I spread it," line in there (a little too real, dudes), but I fully approve of the insane "shrieking eagle" sound, which I think about 5000x more songs should be incorportating. The latest proof that dancehall can take any trend, fad, or potential globally catastrophic pandemic, and make a song out of it: the Bird Flu song
via the Vice blog. Go here to see the dance that goes with it.

Stop looking like you're going to use that baby to make out with me somehow.

Hi. I'm Common. I stole your baby. Does that make you feel...sexy?

Sex on the Beach without Mr. De

Everyone's already bagging on the new Paris Hilton video (it's a music video this time, not more creepy porn), but that's fine. It gives the opportunity to say the first nice thing on the internet about it: To Paris' credit it takes her nearly one-and-a-half minutes to--by all appearances--begin fellating her co-star in public. Look at the 1:29 mark and tell me I'm wrong.

Because I'm not. I've been watching this thing all day.

Party jams.

Say what you will about the moral/ethical problem of keeping wild animals as pets, but you really can't hate on someone for rolling up on a party in a posse that's partially composed of the hands-down cutest predator in the Sahara desert.
I learned two things over the weekend: that the fennec fox version of yelling "woooo!" at a party is like a kind of meow-y yelp, and that watching people try to hit a pinata with a pair of panties over their eyes is really funny.
Actually, the second part of that isn't as much learning as confirming a suspicion.

An honest piece of truth told with the worst words:

"The real war is between those who are turned on, and those who are uptight."
-Timothy Leary
via Boing Boing

Fierce beards

Ever notice how you never see Al Burian and Gary Oldman as Bram Stoker's Dracula in the same room at the same time?

That’s just what it is, G.

The best rock crit rubbernecking opportunities recently have been Q&As with Ghostface Killah, who has decided to become the worst interview subject ever. There's a certain schadenfreud-style thrill that I get in seeing another journalist having their weakest interview questions backhanded into their faces by a guy who wears a robe in public on the regular.
Also nice is Ghostface getting a little meta on the interview process:
Lately you and many other East Coast artists have been criticizing Southern hip-hop, in particular songs such as “Laffy Taffy.”
Ghostface Killah: Man, that’s all y’all be talking about lately.

Is he commenting on the media's overexamination of artists' gestures, or critiquing the laziness of the pop culture press? Or is he just mad?
"Right now, I say fuck New York. Yeah, I’m from New York, but fuck New York. Because niggas is pussy. They is so quick to jump on the next man’s dick and can’t even deal with what they got in front of they face."
One day I will learn how to hate as hard as Ghostface Killah, and I will become totally powerful. On that day I will buy a robe and a cranberry Snapple and get to hating full-time. It will be the best day of my life.

Does not liking glitchtronica make you racist against nerds?

If you like glitchtronica and Top 40 hip-hop, then this will be your favorite. If you don't like that stuff, I don't know. Eat a burrito. You like burritos, don't you?

A moment of downtime during the Great Internet Indie Rock Racism War of 2006

Hopper: 1800 people come to my blog suddenly now thinking I think they are racists because they are into pavement, not cam'ron.
Me: hahaha
Hopper: whatever, they are.
Hopper: Maybe I should go on a crazy tear and say that "crooked rain crooked rain" is a symbol of the holocaust?
Me: stephen malkmus explicitly endorses the tuskegee syphilis experiments
Hopper: I AM GOING TO PEE I AM LAUGHING SO HARD
Hopper: Gary, the first drummer actually quit once he found out that Malkamus takes shit on known indian grave yards.
Hopper: yelling "fuck you injuns" and stuff.
Me: malkmus will have sex with jewish chicks, but only in the butt
Hopper: I think you should cut and paste it and make a blog post of it.
Hopper: of this, not Steve Malkamus' HASID HATER ANALJAM VOL 3

If it wasn't for press releases I wouldn't know anything.

"We are not supposed to rub food over our naked bodies."
Thank you, art. I was confused on this point.
"Marshmallow Fluff helps create the union between the natural and the inert by its dense, gelatinous consistency metamorphisizing and overwhelming the human and object into one."
Wait, you're just making this up.

Moet or PBR?

Propers to our boy Kanye for taking the hipster neckerchief to its furthest, flossiest end, Louis Vuitton-style:

I wanna seem him get on some nouveau hippie shit next, with like a Jakob dreamcatcher pendant. That would be fly.

Photo by Gina Erdmann of Brooklyn, New York.

Woooo. Woooo.

Do you have a summer project planned?
Mine is putting together a Lifter Puller tribute band, potentially called Lonely In a Limousine, or maybe the Wristbands. I already have dibs on the Craig role, and if Morgan ever comes back from Africa she's going to be Steve Dude, because she wants to play bass and she's always talking about vagina, but if you want to be in it, you should myspace me. We still need a lead guitar and a drummer and we're probably going to end up needing a horn section and some groupies.

Dammit now.

Seriously, why are you riding a tandem bicycle? I could maybe be okay with you doing that if it was a big, consciously dorky cruiser bike, and you were just cruising around looking like a dorkily in love couple. I don't get down with that shit, but I'm not gonna be mad at someone for broadcasting their shit-eating-grin love state for all the public to see. I can even forgive certain instances of couples wearing matching outfits. But no, this tandem bicycle was a slim racing bike that I can only imagine is made out of expensive alloys, and you both were wearing helmets and tight outfits and were hunched over your handlebars all serious-looking. Were you practicing? Are you a tandem bicycling team? I hand't thought of that before, but why would you be practicing on the streets downtown during rush hour? That doesn't make much sense.
What the hell, people?

Just (Don't) Blaze

Following up on Hopper's "Average Homeboy" post, apparently one of my co-workers is more familiar with Blazin' Hazen than the rest of us, and recommends this video. I recommend it if you're looking for a reason to be racist against white people, which this video provides at an average of two reasons per second.

My new haircut

Aren't list entries themselves cliched? Hmmm....

If you don't mind, I'm going to just go ahead and add a couple new entries to the List of Rock Band Promotional Photo Cliches. I'm sure we are all familiar with "The Alley That Our Band Is Standing In Is Meant to Represent Our Toughness," "We Are All On The Couch Together, A Band," "We Are Sitting On The Porch and Something Is Troubling Us or Pissing Us Off," as well as the rarer (but still overused) "This Is Us And This Is The Brooklyn Bridge For Some Reason." But time and evolution, and, ironically enough, the desire to take non-cliched promo photos has led to a rise in the number of band photos in these following now-cliched categories:
"I Am Lost In The Woods and Good-Looking"
"This Field Looks Like It Might Be Perfect For A Picnic, Don't You Think?" (doesn't count if band is actually picnicking)
"Hey Check It Out: We're Doing 'We Are All On the Couch Together, A Band'" (ironic)
"This Disarmingly Personal Photograph Shows that Beneath My Cartoonish Rapper Persona I Am Still A Man, and Human"
"Professional-Quality Upskirt"

I got something. I don't think it's the Look. It might just be a hangover.

Starting off two days in the span of one week with Roxette's "The Look" in my head is no way to live. I was having a conversation earlier today about the lyrics to "The Look". I was trying to remember them, and thought I was maybe half-making them up or just not remembering them right. It ends up that I was correct, and that "The Look" just has some lyrics that make no sense. I've posted them below. Current favorite line: "Naked to the t-bone"

"The Look"
lyrics by Per Gessle

1-2-3-4 walking like a man
hitting like a hammer
she's a juvenile scam
never was a quitter
tasty like a raindrop
she's got the look

Heavenly bound
cause heaven's got a number
when she's spinning me around
kissing is a color
her loving is a wild dog
she's got the look

She's got the look
she's got the look
what in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue
when everything I'll ever do
I'll do for you and I go
la la la la la
she's got the look

Fire in the ice
naked to the t-bone
is a lover's disguise
banging on the head drum
shaking like a mad bull
she's got the look

Swaying to the band
moving like a hammer
she's a miracle man
loving is the ocean
kissing is the wet sand
she's got the look

And she goes: na na na na na na na na

And the He just kind of chilled out.

[God said,] "So because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
-Rev 3:14-19
If the "you" in the above quote referred to "salsa con queso," you'd have a pretty good picture of my Wednesday night. And then if God got stoned and watched skate videos, it would be even more accurate.
Truly, the Bible's power of prophecy is bad as hell.

Proof that world music is for assholes?

Probably unintentional publicity-related Goatse reference here.
Apparently all he was trying to do was turn us on to some new world music groups. Who knew?

Poll:

Which part of this rumor is more depressing:
A) That Whitney's (allegedly) gotta wear false teeth because her crack habit trashed her originals, or B) that she (allegedly) has a habit of losing her false teeth around the house during her binges?

Just real quick.

This is a video by a band called From First to Last. The video is notable for containing the most emo thing of all emo time: a beautiful, naked woman puking up blood.

The angel on my shoulder wears a doo-rag.

It's these last fucking couple of weeks of winter that are the tough ones. When you start getting the nice days like Saturday, and they feel like spring, but the next morning it's 34 and sleet, it's like God just saying "pssht" to your face.
I've been trying all winter long to keep my head up. The goal was to make it through one entire winter with neither crippling depression, or medication, the "medication" category including winter-long whiskey comas. I made it all the way through the end of February before a clusterfuck of dramatic situations got a hold of me and started tugging me down. Now I'm limping towards the finish line, bleeding, with little more than the image of Tupac lipsynching "Keep Ya Head Up" in my mind's eye to keep me dragging myself towards the end. I'm not even sure where the finish line is anymore. I figured it would be the first day that I saw girls walking around in tank tops, but that was last week.

Lil' Coldplay: the happening

I had a mustache briefly. I took a shower in a semi-intoxicated state last night and decided to shave down to the mustache-and-chin-beard combo favored by such people as actor Johnny Depp. I woke up today and looked at it and realized that I had made a mistake. I looked less dude-from-Santana than I had hoped, more your-dad-who-lives-in-an-apartment-complex.
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My new rap persona Lil' Coldplay is going over better than I had expected. Thanks to the band Ester Drang and their milquetoast rock music styles for inspiring it. I am going to thank them in the liner notes to Lil' Coldplay's debut album A Rush of Def to the Head. Did I mention that I'm reviving "def"? Hip-hop historian Jeff Chang, you get a shout out in the Rush of Def liner notes for that. "Yellow, falsetto." That is how Lil' Coldplay raps. "Parachutes, bitches." You see that? The Coldplay fan that was sitting down the bar as I was first exploring the world through the eyes of Lil' Coldplay wasn't so amused. He kept telling me that Parachutes is really a good record. I said, "Yellow" at him a couple of times and he stopped talking about it. "I get you pregnant, Gwyneth Paltrow." Then he started talking about how he looooves to do Ecstasy, and that he's a doctor, and that if you take a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) at the end of your E trip you'll prevent any noticible imbalance in your brain chemistry. We tried ignoring him in a forceful enough way that he could tell that we were ignoring him, but he kept on talking anyway.
Somebody make Lil' Coldplay rich. Soon. He needs a new computer.

Better than our heads, at least.

You could kind of tell that the little Mexican guy on the 49 Western had liquor in the bottle of Coke he was tugging at the whole time he rode. If I had to put money on it, I'd probably say rum, but that might be some subtle racial prejudice. But the way he got all shifty-eyed each time he got ready to drink from it, sort of eyeing the four other people on the bus to maybe decide if he thought we were narcs, and the frequency of the sips, and the look of complete satisfaction he had after each drink, which you only get that look from drinking Coca-Cola on extremely hot days or if there's booze in it; it all added up. Plus the dude had wrapped his bottle in a way-too-large black plastic grocery bag, even though you could see when it poured through the neck that it was a standard Coke-brown liquid.
When I got home I started installing the new shower head I bought, but halfway through had to stop to take a call from a friend on the West Coast in the middle of a suicide attempt. Right now she's probably at the hospital getting her stomach pumped.
The shower head works great.

Work notes from the seminal period that lead up to his groundbreaking essay "Noise Boners".

My blogging's been suffering under the scope of my planned exegesis on the bukkake'd state of the noise scene. The essay's epic as hell. I've already written it about three times, so I should know.
Otherwise my time's mostly been taking up with arguing the journalistic value of the term "rippersville", trying to invent the onomatopoeia of the "bong rip" sound, writing a profile on the guy who played Jason in the first Friday the 13th (available in this week's Reader), and getting on the guest list for Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors convention in Rosemont. Which is basically to say I'm working on degrading the last remaining bits of journalism's virtue that Maxim and the New York Times haven't gotten to.
Meanwhile, a couple of questions for the readers:
1. Is there a way to address the topic of romantic triangles in song without coming of as exceedingly unimaginative and/or self-absorbed?
2. Is the shaved head a) a stylish and practical spring look, b) a blatant concession to one's turning almost-30 and sort of a physical expression of giving up on chasing styles that are becoming less age-appropriate with every passing minute, or c) too gay?
3. Would it be possible to use the spare cycles of a global computer network, a la SETIatHome, to artificially evolve the best mathematically possible onomatopoeia for bong rips?
4. Do you want to go to the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors?

We're like a full two miles out from authenticity at this point. Soon we'll hit international waters.

Some thoughts on Wolfmother (without going into their name):
Wolfmother rips off good bands and their singer has good hair. Really, wanting anything else from a rock band is pickiness.
That having been said:
No, music critics, Wolfmother doesn't sound like Zeppelin or Sabbath. The guitar lines they jacked from "Paranoid" are a red herring; the proper rock equation is "Jet trying to sound like the White Stripes" or the other way around. Confidential to NYC: And no, not "on acid". Probably on pot, maybe even on a lot of it, but their delay-heavy breakdowns lack the sort of frontal lobe sizzle and absolute pedalitrous conviction that mark the music of real acidheads. I'm not mad at Wolfmother, though. They're just the latest pencil tossed at the drop ceiling for an industry looking for an Important band to justify keeping rock at the front of the record stores. I can almost see groups of record executives kneeling together in prayer in a conference room in LA, trying to wish hard enough for a band that will eventually end up in the RnR Hall of Fame. If wishing doesn't work, then they bring out the checkbooks.

They're for when you're trying to sound smart, but then you realize that you're just making words up.

Portland is still the hipster "Big Rock Candy Mountain": the thrifting's good, the vintage-machine arcade serves beer, and everyone you meet is either a DJ or a band. There aren't any streams running with PBRtinis, but you can order one at a club with a tastefully worn-in modern design scheme, so it's all cool.
I came back from PDX with a bunch of photos of a half-dachshund/half-chihuahua named Carl Weathers and the beginnings of a new look. The look involves a camo parka, more jewelry, and possibly a ponytail. I've named it French Coke Dealer after Jessica's description of me the other morning. She meant it as an insult, but everyone knows that Eurotrash drug dealers are a total high-five among middle class white girls with parent issues. I'll take it as a compliment: that's an important demographic.
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Q: What are the most important tools for someone attempting to write an article after reading nothing but David Foster Wallace essays and Blender for a week or more?
A: The delete key and a bootleg video of The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior.

One out of seven is actually pretty bad

One of my really awesome talents is how I can pick up bits of how a person is speaking to me, little touches of cadence and accent, and incorporate it into how I speak back to them. For instance, the guy selling women's hats on the sidewalk outside of the Bottle last night spoke with a Southern African-American accent, so when I turned down his proposition of gay sex I kind of draaawled it out, y'know? Just kinda letting the vowels run the show. It's the kind of behavior that you read about in the books about the habits of successful people, but I don't read those books. The shit just happens to me.

If I had to spell it out it would be like, "huurrggghhh".

"When it came time to record, it wasn't hard for Stipe to recruit the artists who participated in the project. In addition to the duet with Coldplay's Chris Martin, Justin Timberlake and will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas) contributed a remix of the song that will also be available for download. Also involved were Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger, who plays piano, and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, who produced the song with Stipe and Arthur at Stratosphere Sound studio in New York City."

In a tribute to the destructive power of Hurricane Katrina, Michael Stipe has created the perfect storm of douche chills. I'm not going to say that this press release makes me fully understand what it is to be a bloated corpse floating around in murky sewage water, but I feel like I'm a lot closer to it than I was yesterday.
This is like the musical equivalent of that scene in Wayne's World where Garth's talking about someone vomiting and the puke chain reaction that it started.

That's money in the bank.

I was thinking earlier about Yacht Rock, and I was thinking about how Jack Johnson is like the Yacht Rock of now. Peaceful vibes, sort of just mellowing out and looking at the sunset with maybe like a pretty girl with a giant bowl of G-23 government-grown turbo weed, that kind of thing. And then I was thinking that Yacht Rock 2004 would be a really good project for the Chicago kids to do. I would play the part of John Mayer, because I have the same ladykilling eyes that he does, and we both play real middle-class blues. Jeff Tweedy could play Dave Matthews because they're both like "the king", and Rob Lowe would make an awesome Ben Harper, because it's either him or Damon, since they're the only black guys our scene pays any attention to. (UPDATE: Rob calls this idea both "hilarious" and "really sad".) I'm not sure yet who I'd cast in the role of Jack Johnson. My first thought is Rob from Pit Er Pat, because he has short hair and seems to be stoned all the time, but I'm totally catching a "peaceful easy feeling" from the idea of a Conor Oberst cameo. I heard that dude has the fucking chronic, and besides he can probably write a full-length off of the trauma of cutting his hair. That's money in the bank.

You can't prove that it wasn't.

I mean, odds are that it was the prad kra-prao I had for lunch, but I'm gonna hold onto my theory that listening to the new Jenny Lewis record will give you violent stomach cramps. Cuz I'm a dick like that.

Food: there is just so much to talk about

When you are deciding on a name for your sushi restaurant, make sure you consider the fact that if you call your restaurant Touch of Sushi, I will associate your restaurant with someone poking me in the face with a piece of room-temperature shrimp, and that will keep me from ever eating there ever.
Food-related note: I am currently hungry. The second-closest place to buy food from my office is the place that deep-fries cheese. Not exactly a good situation.

Close to Chuck

I just snagged a book about Chuck Close from our review pile. I can still remember the first time I saw one of his paintings in real life. I can actually remember the exact words that went through my head at the time: "No fucking way. Oh my god." Not quite the stuff that gets one into Bartlett's, but if you've ever seen his works in the really real I'm sure you know the feeling.
I plan on totally jacking Close's whole late-60's look, as exemplified in 1968's Big Self-Portrait

if I should ever find myself physically capable of growing a decent mustache. Yes, the style-jacking plan involves never wearing a shirt, and yes I know it's sort a molestorfied look, but if Chuck's not sweating it I'm not gonna either.
I'm not so amped on the books title, Close Reading, but I can't really hate. You know there's not an editor on earth who'd let you write a book about Chuck Close and not use some shitty pun as its title.

Money is Still a Major Issue: the Internet's Premiere Financial Advice Blog

I'm putting some thought into putting together a serious, mature drug addiction. I'm across the board less interested in drugs than in previous years (despite Chris Hansen's friends who have been fucking with compounds that can apparently effect visits from Jehovah himself [psychedelics that inspire visitations from J-Hova are apparently not yet available] and Joe Rogan's ringing endorsement of DMT). I'm mostly just interested in knowing exactly where all of my money goes. If I had a drug habit I could definitively say, "I spent all of my money on drugs," an economic strategy whereby my drug dealer would become something like a bank account although one that doesn't allow me to access the money I deposit and also that has an interest in me being addicted to drugs. I'm okay with that, though. Strictly from a financial perspective it could be a good move, adding an element of certainty that my current spending habits lack. As it stands, I finish up every pay period with nothing in my bank, scrambling to figure out where all my money went and coming up with nothing solid to show but magazines, more jeans than I should own, and piles of bright, shiny things.

Super-producer and power seducer.

JR and I are both giving mad props to Lola Ogunnaike for giving us not only a dece, skeptical-ish profile on Scott Storch, but also for one of the Times' all-time most double-entrendrefied headlines.

Celebrate

For the past couple of days my main source of worry is my recent weight loss, which has resulted in some loss of definition in my pecs, but then I got a press release for a Martin Luther King Day foam party out in the suburbs and now I'm just worried that I'm going to go to hell for hanging out with white people.

I'm just gonna write about TV because I'm lazy and I love my TV.

I finally finished out the Lost DVDs, busting through the last two discs Sunday afternoon in marathon fashion in the company of serious homegirl Lara. We blankied up on our respective couches, ordered Pizza Hut, and said "Fuck you," to 2006. 2006 is a dirty bitch, and we will continue treating it as such until it delivers fame and riches unto us. Recognize, 2006. Recognize.
Finishing Season 1 was kind of a bum-out, though. We don't have broadcast TV or cable up in our place (we say "fuck you" to cable around here, as well as to 2006 and a number of other things/concepts), and our current level of in-house computing power precludes me from being able to (legally or not) download Season 2. Either Apple's gotta drop those Intel laptop jams now, or I'm gonna have to wait until next month's Portland birthday excursion and jam on some new episodes at Krystal's. Fucksville.