"Am I right?"

"So who hasn't felt like this, am I right?" he asks with the intonation of what in his mind sounds like a hack comedian.



Born Ruffians make good music that I like. But i had to hear this song like 4 times before I liked it. Chances are it could start to annoy me in 20 or so more listens, but for now good. But man that video gets sorta distracting, huh? Then I watched it a couple more times and starting liking, it, what's with that?

Then I see this. I like it more. Video is fine, even goodish........then "what's with the fucking animated birds, you had to throw that in there?" he asks, finally.

Balloondogging

Interesting column I urge you to read because a) it's potentially enlightening, and b) it leads me to this series of thoughts I hope someone reads: During this year's election process my father, a very practical thinker, tells me repeatedly that people vote their pocketbooks. For all Obama's capacity to inspire people with his social message, he won so handily because Americans believed he was our best bet to deliver us from economic shambles. And Americans got it right I think. Though the GOP is currently in even worse shambles, the party will inevitably rally around an economic cause that provides renewed focus and respectability with a new generation of voters. They'll find their equivalent to Reagan's welfare queens. And that equivalent iiiiiiiisssssss (drumroll please) OUR PARENTS!!! Of all the irony. My mom is always ribbing me because with all the money my parents spent raising me - buying me shoes, feeding me, sending me to college - I can never repay them. And she's right. But according to the above posted column, a HUGE amount of my taxes are going to be paying for her and other Baby Boomers' social security. So in the next couple election cycles I could be the one going on and on about how the government shouldn't take my hard earned money to pay for some aging Boomer's margarita-filled retirement lifestyle. It should be sink or swim for those oldies! Let 'em fight it out for themselves on Jerry Springer!!

Speaking of generational trends, there's this heartrending (i learned that word from a thousand different movie reviews) performance by Bon Iver.


That's another guy whose music career is benefiting from a good story. Times ago he went away to live by himself in a cabin in Wisconsin where he chopped wood, grew a sick beard, wrote an album critics are required to say is "hauntingly great" (or some variation thereof), and presumably wore a shit ton of flannel. Now his rise in popularity mirrors closely the rise in popularity of flannel amongst the demographic of his fanbase. Flannel in my mind was immediately preceded in fasionability by Western shirts. Western shirts have had a good run, you can still pull one off no problem as long as it doesn't have gold trim or something and double as a dress shirt. A friend of mine who is the most evolutionarily feminine specimen I know - all carnal and fem-crazy - once intimated to me that a guy wearing a Western shirt looks attractive via tapping into some masculine ideal. It's the old school American ideal that men are rugged and can carry a woman in their arms and build a fence. She said wearing a Western was "like cheating". The same goes for flannel I say. It refers to a kind of man who is stoicly emotional and fucking chops wood and starts fires and keeps women warm with body/facial hair. This theory was supported when I arrived at a holiday party all flannel, beat up Tims, hair ignored and unshaven. I met a girl who told me I looked like I was very comfortable in my relationships with women and did I enjoy short girls? (she was a gymnastic 4'11"). To her I looked like a warm chair by the fireplace and fuck if it ain't snowing. So I'm all for flannel. I will say, however, if you're going to wear flannel just choose a pattern that I can't spot from a quarter mile away. Ease off the large checked flannel. It's like a blinking light signifying trendiness. Objectively it's a good look, however, context would suggest you find a more subtle flannel pattern.


Sorry Pat Driscoll (photo courtesy of Black20 Superstars and members of comedy troupe The Dan Ryan)

Tom Chambers Over Mark Jackson

If I were naming a band, or had to come up with a name for a chain of retail stores, or was authoring a menu at a theme restaurant with creatively named combos I would have a hard time not using "Tom Chambers Over Mark Jackson" in all circumstances. The reason is obvious but if you don't know, peep.

Sometimes a mid-air collision can cause you to fly, even if just for a second. A jumper's normal trajectory is a parabola: straight up then straight down, no hang time. Gaining the accidental mid-air boost provided by a hostile defender is my personal favorite phenomenon in life because it's closely related to magic; real magic. Instead of going up and coming straight down (as physics would demand), you find yourself stuck in the air, like you can't come down. It's a wholly (holy) unnatural thing. If the gods are feeling generous you might even climb to a height otherwise impossible. The mid-air boost is sudden and unexpected, creating an unmistakable physical sensation that tingles the brain's pleasure centers. For the most fleeting of moments it feels like flying.

just for kicks, TNT's top in game dunks. extra points for taunting.

Playing in basketball while high?

I've played basketball probably a million times. I never knew anyone dared to play high until one day while on the court I overheard an older Topeka-bred baller mention he was baked. We had just wrapped 2 hours of legit ball, all of us current or former college athletes. As far as I could tell, the dude in question played at full capacity. I never imagined such a thing was possible until that moment. I was 19 or 20, clearly naive. Later I would hear stories of All-American caliber players who got high before playing college games, some who'd personally dropped 30 plus points against yours truly. I guess it's true when they say marijuana opens your mind, because I grew up believing shit like that was impossible. Now I know better and I'm able to just relax and smile when I see things like this.


Take note of the fact that the announcers praise Lamar Odom for having just put up terrific numbers in leading his team to victory.


Keep in mind this guy has been suspended by the league for testing positive for weed. To b fair, maybe in this instance Odom wasn't acutely high, but it's possible he's just perma-high from years of not giving a fuck.

Who throws a shoe?

Bush ducks flying shoes (apologies for the advert (Reuters!!!))


Man alive! that guy chucked his shoe hard. Bush flashed back to a dodgeball match during his school boy days and ducked it clean. The thrower made a crucial error by announcing himself like a samurai before attacking. A less attention grabbing approach and he'd have connected. Notice though how Bush doesn't hide behind the podium, he just stands there all John Wayne and ducks the second shoe. If this footage isn't first and foremost an argument against banning dodgeball in elementary PE then I must be out of touch with the geopolitical significance of this event.

Why?

Should be working but keep trying to learn instead; recreational housewife learning, because it takes less focus and commitment, and let's face it I'm being a little lazy anyway in a distracting-myself-with-learning-is-a-justified-procrastination-because-it's-in-the-interest-of-self-improvement kind of way. What the fuck am I talking about?

Sparknotes-ing The Myth of Sisyphus is probably better for you than actually reading Camus. It's all, "Facing the absurd does not entail suicide, but, on the contrary, allows us to live life to its fullest," and that makes plenty of sense to me.

Then I'm on to relearning Italian because someday I might need to eagerly speak Italian to an old pizza slinging paisan with a dark mustache in front of a girl on our third date; just in time to reveal the breadth of my worldliness in addition to the already established height, questionable grooming, elusive charm, academic credentials, and moodiness (in that order).

Also, I like this. Nuttin new but an acoustic version sometimes has you really hearing a song for the first time.

Matt and Kim are Fun.

Back in March I celebrated my Bday by driving solo 1,700 miles from NYC to Austin, TX to cover SXSW. I made it in less than two days, pulling off the highway to nap in parking lots along the way. The plan was to meet up with The Gay Blades and take the best journalistic stab I could with the least amount of planning possible. It was a great bad idea, the kind dreams are made of. While there, we talked to Matt and Kim who told us about the new album they were recording.



Recording in your childhood bedroom is a good idea if judged solely by this zippy little number.

Matt and Kim - Daylight

follow up

speaking of Uncensored Interview, this makes me laugh.

The Gay Blades have super powers

The Gay Blades: Chopping The Olsen Twins.

On Second Thought

anyone remember my first post where I jocked the Vivian Girls? Then I saw this INTV and started cringing like when you see a torture scene in a movie where someone's fingernails are getting pulled out with pliers by a really clean and efficient looking German fellow.

Vivian Girls: Fish Out of Water...Sometimes.

I'm not saying they're shitty people, but they come across as kinda shitty. Just because you have a point that doesn't excuse you to be cunty.

Vivian Girls: Just Write a Good Song.

but seriously how good is this song?

Vivan Girls - Where Do You Run To? (not official video)

You know it's bad when

you get excited about commercials, but this Adidas spot is eating so many kudos


bars right now.


...even if it does have Katy Perry in it, at least they had the good sense to include Method Man and Redman. But I don't mind Katy Perry that much, I think she gets a bad rap. What's so wrong with Katy Perry? She's way better than average. What other MTV-famous attractive girl is as fun seeming as Katy Perry? If I'm going to consider my feelings analytically I think I have to defend Katy Perry. If it were possible for me to have an emotion that wasn't considered analytically, would I hate Katy Perry? I think I might. Not to be all Larry Summers (sweet Obama cabinet reference!) but I bet most women hate Katy Perry, and they hate her because most women are relatively irrational. That is, they base judgment of Katy Perry more on emotion than rational analysis. If they were to evaluate her like a baseball scout evaluates a left handed pitcher, they'd come to the conclusion that she's a valuable player with skills to pay the bills. I mean, most women aren't getting rich singing and dancing on TV, am I right? I'm not saying one method of analysis is better than the other, I'm just saying. Anyway, I like how that commercial was shot, dig the harsh camera flash look. If I knew how to do that I would feel the urge to do it on everything I touched for the next however-long I was preoccupied with it.

Ill Doctrine

Thanks to Ill Doctrine for spelling it out for us old folks. As an adult (cringe) I have never been more removed from hip hop. On paper that makes no sense because I grew up in Kansas and now live in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn (as in Jay Z, Biggie, Lil Kim, et al). The truth is, despite NYC's diversity the city is fairly segregated culturally. Too many niches, too little time. For better or worse I'm pretty steeped in indie culture these days as are most white media professionals who are still poor. Topeka, KS on the other hand is not very big or culturally diverse. As a consequence I interacted with black folks (and therefore hip hop music, slang, dress, etc.) on a regular basis as did many of my white friends, many of whom themselves listened exclusively to hip hop and/or borrowed a hip hop persona from time to time. For this Topeka is often referred to as ghetto, but that's beside the point. The point is that a white person growing up in Topeka has more opportunity to be a part of the hip hop community than the average white person in NYC.

Thank goodness Hip Hop and Indie crossover once in a while so that I can nod in agreement as Ill Doctrine drops science on subjects I'm already aware of...

...such as...


So the Indie/Hip Hop crossover is in full effect. A fine example is Ninjasonik who kind of do a experimental/punk/rap mish mash.


Ninjasonik are a strong voice for the Tight Pants Nigga movement, which really isn't a movement at all though obviously has something to do with black dudes who embrace indie fashion tropes like tight pants.

Ninjasonik - Tight Pants


more evidence of what I'm talking about:

Why is Kanye dressing EXACTLY like Axel Foley?

Kanye on Letterman looking EXACTLY like Axel Foley circa 1984, mini-fro mullet included.


I guess technically Eddie Murphy wore the mini-fro mullet in The Golden Child, but still...

Holy Fuck watch this!

Follow this link then meet me back here.




That was Sophie Muller's live music video for The Raconteurs. It's awesome, approaching transcendent. Also, how brutally kick ass is Jack White's guitar playing? About as kick ass as what he did to stab


It's another example of why live music is best captured like a documentary, a collection of cool little moments within the broader performance. For instance, there's a moment amidst White's crazy nasty solo when he pauses and kind of smirks and mouths the word "whoa" at Brendon Benson. American late night TV sucks at producing live music. It always looks boring and lame. British talk shows do a much better job...

The Kills on Jules Allison


...as opposed to this which is a great performance that was directed in the safe, old fashioned customs of every American late night TV show that has ever existed with the occassional exception of Jimmy Kimmel.
Robyn on Letterman


Feist on Kimmel


On the topic of Feist and American late night TV's crumby looking live music, there's this performance that is one of my favorites. Of course it was produced in France.

She punches her guitar.

The Perfect Conversation

Was riding the fung wah back to NYC from Boston, reading Hemingway, not in a wannabe literary way, just reading Hemingway and came across the following passage:

"I want to be useful and a good partner."
"You are. You won't mind if I get restless and mix it up with being lonsome?"
"No. We'll take good care of each other and have fun. We can have a lovely time."
"All right. We'll start to have it now."
"I've been having it all the time."

I hope proposing marriage goes something like this.

This is something I made

This was born out of me reading a lot of New York-centric magazines and blogs. I found that I couldn't get away from this word hipster but that its buzziness as a term seemed to attract people's interest, including my own. You hear it conversationally a lot too of course, but its use in legit pieces of journalism really says something about the word's functionality. For me it's more annoying to hear the term hipster than I could ever possibly be annoyed at a hipster or hipsters in general. It's annoying because the connotation is usually so spiteful. People hate hipsters. Yet in the census survey of life no one checks the hipster box. Hipsters only exist in the eye of the beholder. So Gavin McInnes is exactly right when he says that the word hipster says more about the person saying it. This truth is made even more interesting by the fact that the word itself has trouble finding an agreed upon meaning. What we have is a word with no clear meaning that confers a lot of meaning about the user (in this case who he/she considers to be a hipster). Another good point Gavin made - a point that was sacrificed during editing - is that all too often, identifying a hipster is like admitting you think that person is cooler than you. BUT interestingly enough a lot of the people in this video described a hipster as someone they consider to be much UNCOOLER than themselves, ie. a poseur. To add even more to the interesting column, 3 different people compared the word hipster to the N-word. Can you believe that? Is it crazy that I think these people aren't completely crazy?

To be fair, one of these people was Mr. McInnes who said that banning a word or having a ridiculous symbolic funeral for it just gives the word more weight. He also said that analyzing it and debating it is pointless and stupid, to which I replied that some of us wouldn't have jobs if we weren't allowed to. I was talking about myself but I think he thought I was talking about him.

Thumbs Up America!

Thumbs Up is my favorite show to come out of the generally sucky world of serialized web video. It's social anthropology channeled through the vessel of oddball truth that is David Choe. It's great viewing for anyone interested in America. Is it Toquevillian? I don't know, but it's good. It reminds me of different times, which is to say it reminds me of a time when I didn't live in NYC, which is a bubble and not nearly as racist as the rest of the country. Also, I'd bet per capita way fewer people get punched in the face in New York than in the rest of the country.

What it is? That's what it is.

sorta apropos of Obama, sorta

How many kids do you think will be named Barack in the next year?

My Obama victory celebration took place on Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The people took it to the streets and it was belly-warming, especially considering this is a crowd of people constantly derided for their feigned apathy and supposed ironic distance from genuine enthusiasm. I figured similar celebrations were going on all over the country and the rest of the world. But being isolated in a young, drunk and very liberal neighborhood of NYC, I wondered aloud what the scene was like in Lawrence, Kansas.

Lawrence, KS celebrates Obama victory


Granted, Lawrence is young, drunk, and (relatively) liberal too, but still, it's like a belly full of flapjacks. No word yet on Topekans taking to the street.

*Nov. 10th addition --> See what I'm saying:
Barack Babies

The Jerkiest Letter in the World

Dear You,

Do you know what solipsism means? It’s ok, look it up. We’ll wait.

Oh, hey! You’re back. What took so long, dummy? We were talking about you while you were gone.

If your wikipedia search (snicker) was successful you are probably very confused by the whole thing. Nevermind. People smarter than you all agree that solipsism is a preoccupation with one’s own feelings, desires, and perspectives. You might think that solipsism would be a good trait to possess. However, as usual, you’d be wrong.

“What’s so wrong with being concerned with my feelings?” you might ask in a whiny voice. Well, nothing in principle. However, because you are a selfish, deluded human being that has hornswoggled yourself into thinking you aren’t miserable and that you don’t hate yourself, your solipsism is a problem. Don’t take my word for it. Many scholarly texts say as much*.

So now you’re thinking, “Whatever. I may be solipsistic, but I’m not selfish. It’s healthy to believe that my way of thinking is OK and that I’m a good person.”

Riiiight. And let me guess, you want to continue living your life this way. And you want to teach your children the same values. And you’re thinking this is the one sure path to self-actualization sans narcissism (a combination so rare you might not know it existed if not for me).

Once again, wrong as raising a baby out of wedlock.

You’re just another Raskolnikov who thought you were special, that the world owes you something. Simply another self-absorbed also-ran with an over-reliance on your own way of seeing and too few hyphens, bashing in old ladies’ heads with a hammer for no good reason. Way to go.

Who’s Raskolnikov? Oh that’s right, my bad; you read the web not books.

Sincerely,
Me

*The Problem of Self Over Time suggests that as society has become industrialized, an individual’s energy and resources have become freed from the basic needs of physical survival, allowing us to be concerned with “personal fulfillment” and related nonsense. The problem is that emotional and psychological needs are much harder met than physical needs. This, then, inevitably leads to you dating and eventually marrying that girl you started hooking up with who you didn’t initially want to start dating, but who you continued having sex with until someone better came along, but no one did.

The Bees

I've been feeling this vid for a while, but now that I have a blog I'll post it on my blog. It's so good, I sit around all insecure thinking "What will my 'Listening Man' be?"

It also reminds me of something I saw scribbled above the john at hi-fi, a bar in the e. village: "No matter how pretty she is someone somewhere is sick of her shit."

The Bees - Listening Man


Directed by Dominic Leung who at one time worked with music video producing/directing team Hammer and Tongs.

excellent interview with Leung.

This blog is about hobos.

"Train of thought". It's a nice little turn of phrase that got sucked into the lexicon. We hear it all the time without appreciating how apt the metaphor is. Somebody smart came up with that line; probably some 1890s newspaperman. The way our thoughts seem to follow one another in some organic sequential forward motion is fo sho like a train. With your thoughts chugging along one after the other, you go from thinking about wanting to drink a coke, to thinking about cocaine, and then you think about Len Bias and then you think about Boston and then you think about college and then you're thinking of your ex wife again. Maybe there are 12 carloads in a row of coal, and then you have several cars full of gravel after that followed by wheat and then hobos. So it's a good metaphor.

"Balloon of the mind" doesn't make it into as many conversations, but it's just as apt a metaphor as "train of thought". Both phrases attach concrete, easily comprehensible imagery to the abstract notion of thinking. Balloon of the mind comes from a W.B. Yeats poem about trying to wrangle the ornery balloon of the mind into it's shed. Maybe it's a mixed metaphor because not only does he compare fluid thought to the flight of a balloon in the wind, but also compares the balloon to something you'd put in a shed, like a Model T. In any case, it's a great metaphor about getting your hands to channel the raw buoyancy of your free flowing thoughts. It's about the effort of writing. But I think anyone can relate to the frustration of not being able to reliably focus their mental energy on productive behavior. The good thing about all this is that Yeats seems to have been able to wrangle that balloon into its shed on more than a few occasions. He won a Pulitzer. So this blog is about me and my balloon. It's also about those hobos that stowaway on trains of thought; getting a free ride, jamming on harmonica and sardines, pissing in jugs. I can do metaphors too.

Good story

I'm digging Vivian Girls. Music blogs are slurping them these days with good reason. Aside from their music they have a good story: 3 chicks who play lo-fi, harmony heavy indie pop that also happens to throwback to Winehouse progenitor 60's girl groups. That's a good melange.

Vivian Girls - I'll Tell the World


They're super jangly.

Another part of their story is their name. It's a reference to the mythology depicted in the artwork of "outsider" artist Henry Darger, whose notoriety is in itself the result of a good story. Darger was a lonely old janitor whose landlord discovered his artwork only after Darger had passed away. The drawings and paintings depicted a thoroughly imagined fantasy land that resembled a cross between Disney and David Lynch.

The heroes of this crazy weird violent fairy tale were the Vivian girls, perfect looking little adolescent white girls in short dresses. It's probably pretty pedaphilic but nonetheless the artworld slurped this shit up in the same way that blogs are now jocking Vivian Girls. With good reason.

for more henry darger more Henry Darger