And I feel like number one Yet I'm last in line [. . .] You get what you put in And people get what they deserve But [Adam Levine] ain't seen [his] [. . .] Take me to the river eh Wont you Take me to the river, hey hey heyeah
We thought we had victory, but it was mostly pyrrhic. Let's try this again next week. :'(
I type this missive from the Sacramento airport on a four-hour layover between Las Vegas, NV and Portland, OR. From Portland I will take a three-hour train (or, if necessary, bus) back to Tacoma in time to begin a shift behind the bar that will end at 1:00 a.m. (twenty-two hours from now). All sleep will be interrupted by the touchdown of landing gear and the grinding of wheels on rails.
This, of course, is how I designed this trip. Extended travel times, far from bothering me (as they do for many Americans and others), provide necessary downtime. One must account for changing scenery; traveling hundreds of miles takes time, and one ought to feel as such when embarking on a massive voyage.
Beyond that basic principle lies a yet-more-basic observation. What human, given wireless internet access and several interesting books, would truly regret having booked several hours completely alone (barring occasional vacuuming janitors) in an airline terminal? Sole possession of such a large piece of real estate, normally so possessed by other people, cannot help but soothe.
Perhaps the choice is personal. After all, the main pleasure in my day derives from spending hours in pensive solitude with little more to occupy me than a stolen internet connection. The free wireless available at most of America's airports is both more consistent and faster. Those who do not share my passion for hypertext will be excused for thinking my day-swallowing itinerary to be both insane and stupid. And they will excuse me for grimacing in annoyance when I hear gripes about being "stuck at the airport for hours." Do we really do anything so important or riveting with our time that some time spent in an airport terminal is automatically to be counted as a loss? At the very least, such periods should be regarded as the acceptable consequence of a transportation infrastructure that is the envy of much of the rest of the world.
As perhaps can be expected, what was anticipated as an invigorating weekend pro-blog retreat in Sin City, rife with stimulation and sensory experience has, much like a certain much more infamous trip made by then-successful butthead HST, unraveled into a desultory fury of substance abuse and missed deadlines. I am merely an aspiring butthead; the substance abuse of my own Vegas excursion was insufficient by comparison (see post below). However, the deadline-flouting made famous by Thompson's Gonzo steez has endured; self-imposed quotidian ideelz quota was abandoned as soon as I set foot in the jumble of Vegas's desert air.
Avid readers need not fear or loathe, however. In a more striking parallel to the 1970s travelogue on which this retreat aspired to model itself, the simple task of banging out several words per minute on the well-documented vagaries and hazards of America's most illicit city has spiraled into a project of far greater scale to be coauthored by Socialist (read: true ideelist) cohort and anonymous fabulist Xerxes Balderdash.
Between the animal ravings of yours truly and the principled party line of Xerxes - a man with honest principles - will hopefully lie a testament to the irrevocable scars incurred by a cast of wild-eyed youngsters who were too kind of heart to be anything but run into the ground by Las Vegas's too-much-too-fast sensibility.
In short, the dead air you've inexcusably been forced to bear with over the past several days will in the upcoming weeks yield a much denser and more intricate work than anything I could've tacked up in a typical matter of minutes. Should the complete Xerxes-Ideelz collaboration fail to entirely materialize in sufficient time, excerpts will nonetheless appear, God willing, soon enough.
Continue to tune in. All has not been lost to faded memory and rueful revisionism. The truth will be told, all in due time.
-A cute dark-haired girl was reading Nine Stories at the trolley stop this morning. I thought about cozying up next to her with my own hardcover, but thought better of it. This really happened.
Is this all a charade? Who are these Portlanders? The extensive set of hip gimmicks in this city is enough to make me reconsider the whole planned trip back East. Further investigation will have to wait until I get back from LV.
This sign welcomes people to Portland, TN, not Portland, OR, but still.
Day one of the pro-blog retreat, which negates on-time posting, meant provisioning myself with the basic necessities. These fall far short of HST's packing list, but at least I was on the right track.
- Six-pack Budweiser tall boys - Hard pack Camel Lites
The train ride involved sitting next to a sixteen-year-old girl with braces who quickly busied herself by coloring in a Barbie coloring book, mainly sincerely (which I didn't know teenage girls did, but that is one demographic I'll readily admit I have no connection with). So I fell asleep easily, having ingested three of said tallboys shortly before boarding the bus. Intermittent wakeups brought about the general impression that natural wonder abounds in Tacoma's environs, but that the gritty mud flats stave off any green infestation. The windows allowed, to my left, a glowing yellow light from flowering plants that must have been deliberately planted alongside the tracks, and to my right, the interrupted flatness of the Puget Sound. Mountainous islands jut out from the water like jagged rickety ladies - gray, hard, and beautiful in their hardened delicacy. A newborn waah'd from time to time. He was British and his name was Mitchell, but his mother insisted on calling him Mitch; his distress was, to me, certainly understandable. Only several months old and already named after David Hasselhoff's character from Baywatch. A double-edged sword, at best.
My main concern during my train ride was that I was snoring, but I couldn't do much about it since I was asleep, and so I kept right on sleeping. Waking in Portland meant an easy time navigating and plenty of eye candy. Compared with Tacoma's hardened bartenders, waifish meth addicts, and Mickey-D's-fed wo-men, Portland is a menagerie full of leopards and cheetahs (rowr!). My second visit confirms my initial suspicion that the town is expert in giving a utopian impression to the visitor. A high school immediately abuts a park in which thirtysomething dog owners play fetch and children merely hang out (is there anyone over forty in the entire city?). The one homeless man I saw there kept to himself on a park bench, too at ease (poetic license, perhaps, but bear in mind this is an impression) to even ask me for a coin. The sun shone through the leaves onto the deep green sidewalks, and cars were smart and rare.
Spent several hours in a (gay?) bar watching beautiful (gay?) men and women cavort about. Drank about six Mirror Pond Pale Ales (recommended), slightly hoping to get picked up on by someone so I could embark on a night of betrayed fantasies (theirs) and ribald adventure (mine). I would have had to stay longer for any such eventuality, however, and I still needed to figure out how to get to PDX - my excuse for spending time at the bar was to solicit this information from the bartender (it worked!) - so I cut it off there, and retired to my friend Jeffro's newly acquired apartment, which I must add is an incredible find. Way to go Jeff.
Tomorrow means a relatively early wakeup, some breakfast at one of Portland's many Brooklynesque (if I may venture the comparison) diners, then a hop on the trolley (west coast is crayzee) to the airport for the real fear and loathing to begin.
In backup to the thesis advanced yesterday about the #1 "Shawty Snappin,'" lyrics to Lil Wayne's version of La Dolce Vita, a paean to Ciara that breaks several of the rules of Rapmanship governing man-woman relations. Witness "Promise" from Drought 3:
Submission of one's will to a woman who is not one's mother
You Can Be My Judge Baby..Yeah I'll Do Life
Willingness to change with a nested presupposition that the speaker is not perfect
I Hear You Want Somebody You Can Call Boo I Will Change My Name To Boo And Fukk Around And Call You [. . .] You Dont Need A Superman..You Just Need A Man Likk Weezy (cf. Jay-Z, "Never Change," The Blueprint, 2001 et. al.)
Willingness to do domestic duties (if you, like me, choose to take this line literally)
What You Know 'bout Having Syrup Poured On That Pancake?
Admission of a trait often perceived as weak, and the ultimate violation, admitting that one is shorter than one's lover
C I Just Want To See If Your R Taller Than Me.
The remaining lyrics include several allusions to hip-hop's reigning couple, Jay-Z and Beyonce, whose "Crazy in Love" tore up the charts mostly due to its point-laden horn line and words that included "I don't care." In "Crazy," Jay-Z talks exclusively about how awesome he is and only mentions "B" as a fixture in the song in which he is rapping. Weezy's main line about being awesome, "and i also got that street credit.. i got more work then any dude.. u .. knew" appears at least partially to show C that Wayne can support her if necessary. Basically he's submitting his resume. When viewed against the backdrop of lady-doth-protest-too-much "Do we love these ho's / NO!" the song illustrates where rappers are in relation to women: Scared, awed, and vulnerable. T-Pain inadvertently acknowledges this power relationship in "Shawty Snappin," but it's no surprise that Lil Wayne has the courage to forthrightly admit it.
I would be surprised if the "Promise" freestyle were ever used successfully as dis-track fodder. It's too real, right?
As promised, the big-time return of the charttopper shebangabang.
As mentioned, "Shawty Snappin'" is the name of the game, the beats have snaps in em (Snap!) and there's more corny jokes to be made about that, riffs about the "timbre" to hash out, but the real issue is not nested in the beats or whether this is a "bangin song" or anything like that. Today we're going to talk about form and content, ideelz and forms, and most important, what R&B shit that appears uninspired and boring can tell us about where rap has really been all along.
Ready? Good! Watch this carefully first (yes an embed that is actually needed):
The whole of this screed hinges on the chorus. T-Pain does a RoboCher thing, sounding more pitched than Anthony Kedis. This is prima facie bad, but the Painster does a lot of catchup work by selling his lines, hinting that the song's boozy club encounter, empty fun that it is, leaves Yung Joc and T-Pain wanting something more, something beyond typical next-day Myspace friendship.
Social networking technology, although not specifically mentioned in the lyrics, plays a key role here, as it represents the encroachment of digital reality on our humanity. For the sake of my argument, it's a good thing T-Pain's voice - so reverbed up that it sounds like it was shitted out the womb of a Fender tweedface amplifier nine months after unprotected sex with Peter Gabriel - has been digitized just enough that one starts to think he might really want to be friends with Shawty. What's more, there's a humanoid desperation behind all that binary-encoded button-pushing on the vocal track that makes a listener want to go Asimov/Radiohead philosophy on the whole thing and wonder if the essence of humanity really is best expressed when reduced to robotic, crass calculation. That is, once we are nearly machines, as T-Pain has nearly become, what makes us truly human will shine through the mechanized perfection and the human soul will finally reveal itself in all its imperfect and insecure glory.
"Shawty Snappin'" points to a reverse of the hippie "friend" who sits up late at night waiting for my neighbor to pass out from too many Blue Moons, then fondles her breasts, contemplates doing a Casper-from-Kids but is too scared and so just peeks at her panties for a minute and does the rest of his business in the sink, Clinton-style (true story). A schmuck like hippie friend pretends human warmth by padding a wristcutter chick's ego with "genuine friendship" then goes roboperv on her the minute she trustingly passes out on the couch. Human on the outside, robot on the inside, contemptible to the core. "What if God was a her?"
, e.g.
Rap is full of gangsters who go to great lengths to make themselves appear, on the exterior, as robotic as possible. Most rappers, except maybe Common, hate that hippie kid and would beat throw him out of baby girl's apartment, wait till morning (when the lady is conscious), then hit it with consent, condoms, and not a little bit of fury. Much better than the true-life hippie scenario; in fact, I hope there's a rapper around the next time I see that dreadlocked groper. Remember the high-tech Shady/Aftermath training facility where 50 Cent ran on a treadmill for the "In the Club" vid? It was no accident; 50 was the king at playing with this "I love you like a fat kid love cake" / "I swear man there's something really wrong with these ho's" dichotomy, trying to come off tougher and more mechanized, but crooning to the ladies to show them that underneath that steel hull there is a warm soul, and the muscles and guns are for your protection, baby. Robot on the outside, human on the inside. Bishop from ALIENS.
Rappers fool us into believing they can't be hurt by anyone, but especially by bitches - even that they hate everyone, especially bitches. Sometimes, though, a man slips up, lets his guard down, and shows his power to love. The more unintentional it is, the more it reveals that all those other lines about "ho's" are really just macho posturing. This is the territory T-Pain hits on especially well in "Shawty Snappin'," because the entire lyrical content has "Let's Get Drunk / Forget What We Did" written all over it. But form doesn't mirror content, and in the hook's anguished whining we get at what might be the little unloved orphan underneath rap's purported "misogyny."
The question worth asking about the whole woman-hating thing is: Which is worse, a passionate man who feels so deeply about his lady that, yeah, sometimes he gets angry and has to say mean things about her, gets frustrated and wants to have promiscuous sex doggie style - or a pervy dude who if he were midaged and white would have a ponytail, who slinks into bed with girls who consent only because he has appeared so harmless so far? Maybe the question is unaswerable given the most objectionable of rap's woman-hating lines (including Cam'ron's too-frequent shit about rape), but at least the passionate angry rapper is honest.
A hip-hopper can transcend Snoop-Dre, hard-edged automaton gangsta "We don't love them ho's" by acting like he can seduce women but with this girl he's really just a lonely (let's not forget poetic) dork who actually always wants to take ladies out on picnics, share deodorant when his runs out, go to Brunch, even go paddleboating sometimes. With the hook to "Shawty Snappin," T-Pain is getting at the club-casualty double-agent romanticism that draws people to R&B-rap collabos and illustrates why they work so well.
I checked up on Billboard with high hopes today, estimating that the Maroon 5 tenure would last no more than a fortnight based on big-time gains by a runaway hip-hop track called "Shawty Snappin' by T-Pain ft Yung Joc.
Unfortunately I am blogging from the quiets of the Tacoma Public Library sans headphones, so an exegesis on the Snappin' phenom will have to wait for another moment By the looks of the muted Youtube vid, though, Pain and Joc are on point; there's fingers thoughtfully pressed to chins, massive bags of money, and honeys with massive bags (fun bags).
So until my travels land me back in the Post-Edison era, I leave you with Youtube's misguided apprehension about my spelling ability:
Yesterday I was going to tell a story about how I threw up at my place of work the night before, but instead I made another appearance on Gawker, which is always nice.
In the meantime, here's a rejected piece from Gawktown, in draft form, didn't make it because it's not super relevant and the thesis about making things happen and calling them trends or going back in history for journalism pieces isn't really as groundbreaking as I thought (I thought it was as groundbreaking as a shovel). Anyway here it is, stripped of hyperlinks and most formatting because, hey, it was rejected: Old is the New New: Big-Time Rags Go Back to the Future
The age-old problem of acting and thinking fast in journalism (known as timeliness) appears to have been resolved this week. Shrewd reporters at respected institutions can now fill column space on Saturdays - which are always razor-thin news-wise - with a new technique I like to call "Mining the Past." The lead spelunkers in the caverns of time are two NYT pieces - one on retrofitting the 21st century with the Summer of Love, the other on lo-fi toys for kids - and a WSJ article about the Beatles changing rock music, like, forever. Get your Deloreans, kids, because we are about to preview tomorrow's articles about things that happened decades ago.
In a newsflash (not breast-flash - regrettably, the article neglects to cover everyone's fave angle on hippies, aka promiscuous and gratuitous nudity/sex) John Leland riffs about how hippies are aging and the Summer of Love happened forty years ago this June.
The word-count function must've been broken, because the piece goes on at length, including some pomo theorizing about the Summer of Love as a brand, the lost idealism of the era, and of course the parallel between Vietnam and Iraq.
If only we had truly been granted the article's presupposed reprieve from wasteful suburban teeners playing acoustic guitar and skeezily trying to grope on girls passed out from too much grass. Tune in to the Times next week for a piece about how people are doing cocaine, listening to hard rock, and going out to dance clubs; the 70s are happening again. They could interview me about it, I'm an expert.
Meanwhile, over in the toy department, some kids are playing with balls again (no homo). Alex Williams talks time travel, and the picture is one of a grim struggle for vintage clean fun; kids have gotten so Nintendoed that they have to learn playground games by watching their immature parents indulge in some juvenile nostalgia:
"Larry Betz, of Benton, Ark., founder of the Little Rock Kickball Association, said that his adult league was an instant hit when it started in 2004. Meanwhile, most of their children found this old playground staple as foreign as a mortgage application. "The irony of adults playing a kids' game was lost on them," Mr. Betz said.
But after spending a few seasons on the sideline, watching their parents have fun, many children are suddenly showing interest in the game, Mr. Betz said. This year, he expects at least 150 children to turn out for a new youth division."
Dr. Geoffrey Godbey, a professor of recreation at Penn State University, said the idea that parents can revive old-fashioned play is contrary to the spirit of play. He blamed "boomers who want to do it themselves again because they never grew up."
The fogies aren't going to get unstuck in time that easily, though. Or at least Russ Smith at the WSJ won't help them by reviewing an album that was released before cassettes. Apparently, Sgt. Pepper was "a triumph of packaging."
Gotta run; cooking up some pitches for the bigwigs at the major papers. Thinking aloud here, but maybe a cultural piece on long hair and blue jeans, something about a new board game called "checkers," and a review of some hot wax by this hipshaking new hunkachunka named Presley. Should be working for the Times by next week (aka forty years ago).
Am I the last guy to get in on this shit? Don't matter...
Chapter 1 - The Stall and the Failed Result
So I pumped the lil sis for some info on what the flatland college demographic is pumping through their speakers, and she mentioned a lil' big chick named Amy Winehouse.
I actually heard of the 'House from a Riff Market (can't link to duke, don't know him like that) post a while back but it was mostly a jigajag about how there is a Lily Allen-Amy Winehouse axis in which the Winehouse gives better than the Allen gets.
Needless to say, reading breathless blog posts about the latest singles choppers does little to expand one's chops, so a quick perusal of YouTube's "Rehab" low-res made me realize that I'd been listening to this full-voiced, horn-infused retrocool for a couple weeks on XM Cafe in the tavern. The tune is remarkable mainly because there isn't a lot of jazz - jazz as in music writ large - out there (if we bar former American Idol contestants and late-nineties holdovers like Xtina) that showcases some chicas with mad notes in their lungs and not some child-like coyness (see below) or country-fried reediness (Neko Case - where is she these days?).
In short, the song was alright but didn't necessitate a blog post (don't ask me what actually does - it's not knowable, all about feel, the groove, ease).
So all went blanks for a while, and I even had saved a draft on Blogger that was titled Amy Winehouse and that had no text in the body. On one particularly hard-up-for-content day I even thought I would do a joke about how many bloggers have a draft saved on their accounts with the title "Amy Winehouse" and no text in the text box. But now I don't have to, because Jay-Z spit a verse over "Rehab." Which brings us to . . .
Chapter 2 - Grizzled Minor Leaguers Show the New Talent How to Keep a Streak
A rap remix of a pop tune ain't really new. Think "mashups" and whatever. But the thing about Winehouse that's really appealing is that she sounds old-school with a draggy groove and lets the timbre of her voice do the talking. Think about it - the main lyric that attracts you to it, that worms its way into your skull is "No, no, no." Which let's just say isn't exactly David Antin / Susan Howe - level of academic achievement. Of course it's still brilliant in its minimalist directness, but the point is that "Rehab" is a 21st-century song from after 1980 that can be sampled by rappers without a "mashup" novelty button tacked on and without any P-Diddy-at-the-helm "too easy" controversy. That is, "Rehab" goes with rap the way James Brown and Ornette Coleman do - with pounds of style and ounces of soul in the remainder column.
In that respect, putting Jay on "Rehab" appears obvious even to the point that one wonders if "Rehab" was the teaser for the remix, but honestly hearing Winehouse on XM Cafe threw me enough that I wouldn't have thought of it myself. Whoever's responsible (Was it Amy? Was it Jay? Do they get together over coffee and talk this kind of thing over?), the track is nicely pressed for all its apparent blasitude. Not a club banger, not even a hot verse, but it's nice to see that there are still places that producers can go for stuff that just sounds like hip hop from the moment the ball hits the bat.
Chapter 3: Bring it Home
As any Mariners fan will tell ex-Brewer Richie Sexson (Batting Average < .200), you don't always gotta swing for the fences to make a great play; sometimes a hit will suffice. If the trend continues, 40 will soon be the new 30. In the upcoming dry-spell, you're gonna have to show a few wrinkles and shorten up the swing.
What "Rehab" illustrates perfectly is this: The "Show Me What You Got" Budweiser commercials during Sunday football games were necessary for Jay-Z's survival, even if he didn't know it then. A shortened song means shortened swings means more solid hits; "Show Me What You Got" is fire when it's a minute long and there's beer involved. When you're not in the coke game anymore, you got to get into people's living rooms the way John Cougar Mellencamp does it. Trying to gloss over your age with "still fly" garbage is a mistake. People will shoo their toddlers out of the way.
What we have here is rap's answer to adult contemporary. I'm picturing Norah Jones collabo's, maybe even some Wynton Marsalis shit. Yeah W's arrogant but I mean it's Jay-Z we're talking about here. Remember Erykah Badu? Yeah me too.
Summer's coming, and the babysitter will soon be rolling the kids (yeah if we're in the new Jay-Z demographic we're gonna have to have kids - sorry ladies) to little league for the day. New parents will have the house to themselves for once, and you know what that means ;). After a rough week at the office it'll be a godsend to throw in some "Rehab," and bring sultry back. It's time to pour ourselves some iced tea get our swing on. Let's get a little loungy, a little hot, a little sweaty.
Jay's just the messenger, let's not sacrifice him just cause he's the first one to come to terms with his age. Remember, we're all gonna get there eventually. It's only bad if you're afraid of it. Buy no rogaine and listen to more Amy Winehouse. Monogamy is not so bad.
Elissa Steamer's part from Bootleg 3000. Note the indie nosepick back over to three-flip at about 1:23, one of the coolest lines I've seen.
The connection between skateboarding and a traditional sport like figure skating is worth exploring. Both involve judged competition in which speed and brute strength are not the sole criteria for success (X-Games:Olympics). Both center around movement as an end rather than a means, (rotation, aerial maneuvers, keeping one's balance as opposed to "getting a first down"). Decisions regarding who is the best skater (in either sport) are highly subjective. This raises several questions.
? # 1
Figure skating is one of the few sports in which women and men appear to have achieved parity (in terms of popularity and respect). Given similar criteria for success, why hasn't women's skateboarding taken off? Will it later? It's possible; according to Wikipedia's history of figure skating, International Skating Union competitions didn't include women until 1902, a decade after the organization was founded. When Madge Syers finished second in one such competition, women were quickly banned from competing with men, and a ladies' event was established four years later. It's been a long, hard battle for equality ever since, and even if the men's and women's competitions are about equal in popularity (according to my assumption), there's still a big old sexist discourse about the women's outfits being pretty and male figure skaters being fem, the comps themselves remain segregated, etc.
It is likely that skateboarding started out gendered; streets are dirty (masculine), and a fall on concrete means getting scrapes, whereas a fall on smooth ice does not yield such blemishes (thanks to indoor rinks and perfectly zamboni'd ice, plus a general acceptance of falling on ice as "not that bad" i.e. feminine). As such, street skating doesn't conform with many gender norms about girls, but ice skating has recently contorted itself to do just that (think tutus and leotards versus jeans and t-shirts). If it is the case that skateboarding started as a gendered activity, it is amazing how quickly it has been cemented as such.
? # 2
Why don't figure skaters perform on icy "street courses" or vert ramps like skateboarders? A double axel is basically a 900, arguably the most famous trick in the history of vert (the ollie is up there too, but let's not split hairs / parse follicles). Skates on ice probably have a lower friction coefficient than ball bearings on casings, so ice skaters would definitely get pretty gnar on a ramp pretty quickly.
And in a double-reverse-side-of-the-coin closer, I would also love to see skateboarders of all genders start wearing sequined outfits in competition and also during regular street sessions. If it will help women fight for their right to hard-charge and barrier-barge, I'm all for it.
Jerry Falwell died. Is this funny? Would it be 'funny' if not "funny" if he'd died in the 9/11 attacks? That wasn't a joke. This is making me uncomfortable.
To sum up, from Gchat with a friend in a prominent news organization:
me: jerry falwell died weird Sent at 10:59 AM on Tuesday friend: i know things are crazy around here me: i bet i'm sure you're very busy
Gawker celebrated. Is this just a necessary part of being journalism affiliated and having certain views (namely that some people deserve to die)?
It is possible that today a man died and a large portion of the media said "Too bad journalistic ethics forbids making a story happen, or I would've had a big scoop a long time ago."
Cake Bake Betty appeared to Water and Vegetables compadre Puffy Shoe via some Bloglines Vlog trolling and he sent me a one-liner email containing only some http, namely the http that reads http://www.unitedvloggers.com/2007/04/26/64-little-white-things/.
Lyrically, the chick resembles a cross between stream-of-convo undergrad poetry workshop kids who just read howl and are mad excited that DISJUNCTIVE IMAGES GO TOGETHER IN INTERESTING WAYS and Craig Finn from The Hold Steady when he's big-upping Rhymesayers.
Example of the former, from the "Bio/Love" (I know I know stay with me) section of her homepage:
She hears, upon that water without sou[n]d, A voice that cries: "The tomb in Palestine, Is not the porch of spirits lingering; It is the grave of Jesus, where He lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable.
Pretty Elizabeth Bishop, right? But don't worry it gets better (although it doesn't have to by much because Bishop:poetry contests::Eminem:Rap Olympics); all of this is tempered by some Big Daddy Kane shit, but instead of "birthday" with "first place" it's "ate me," "hate me" and "tasty." Elementary by rap syllable standards, maybe, but the thing is the chick is singing in a Lil' Orphan Annie style, which brings up a new contention [of mine] that if diction-wise everyone just tried to sing like rappers and/or Craig Finn, I'd be a lot more up on a lot of the melodic, sparse, hip, grip-and-rip soft rock going down the YouTubes of late.
A friend of mine whom I retain on my buddy list but with whom I rarely actually communicate has taken to placing song lyrics in his away messages. However, rather than leaving the quotes out of context as a sort of clue for friends/crushes about his emotional state, my friend explicitly uses these quotations to test his buddies' musical knowledge.
For example, from the current away message: lyrics game #5. name artist/song. "Y'all be frontin. Me give my heart to a woman. Not for nothin' never happen' I'll be forever mackin'. If one can simply Google these lyrics, thereby reverse-engineering the song title, then this isn't really a test of one's musical knowledge as much as it is a test of one's desire to know/free time (or, perhaps, one's desire to communicate with my friend). In this way, it would seem the internet has functioned as something of a great equalizer for people seeking expertise on any kind of information that is easily organized, categorized, and Google searchable.
I'm hoping we are reaching a moment when expertise in subjective aesthetic fields becomes so diffuse that no one really listens to anyone's opinion anymore, because there are no more experts and there is no more credibility/objectivity, and music journalism becomes what it is first and foremost - a place for talented and funny writers to make puns and share anecdotes.
I once read a review of a middle-of-the-road skate video in Thrasher where the reviewer conjectured that the measure of a good skate video is whether or not it makes the viewer want to go out and skate. The measure of a good piece of writing, journalistic or not, might be whether it sparks further interest in the topic at hand, regardless to its truthfulness or integrity, terms that, in a sea of readily accessible information exposing lies and plagiarism for what they are, are quickly losing relevance.
I've been wanting to do something about NOFX, specifically about "Linoleum," a perfect little bit of wankery that lasts only as long as it should. During my research on the subject, I came across the YouTube top search result for NOFX, which happily is a rendition of "Linoleum" for a festival called the Bizarre Festival:
Perhaps as important as the performance itself is the typical Fat Mike asshole Tracy Bonham joke at the beginning. I remember loving "Mother Mother" when I was thirteen, during the years of Weezer, when Nirvana videos were still all over MTV and it wasn't quite certain that the earthquake was really over and these were just aftershocks.
It appears at first that Fat Mike's joke at her expense has been nothing short of devastating - as we never got served an obvious "Mother Mother" sequel ("Daughter Daughter"), and Bonham had joined the Blue Man Group by 2003 - an act known to insiders as "Going Blue, big time."
Fortunately, going blue big time isn't as bad for you musically as you might think, especially if you only go blue small time. If the collaboration yields soft-quiet-soft on a throaty chromatic-sounding percussion track (must be those big plastic pipes the Blue Men use) with big bang electric choruses pending in the background. Tracy ("Tracky" to her friends) still sings like an unhinged teenager with a trust fund and a drinking problem who hits on you in a bar then tells you you're disgusting. I could see someone like Mark Appleyard skating to this (hey, he skated to "Sucker Love" in Menikmati). That, and Apples kind of looks like a guy who would skate to a Blue Man Group song while dressed in blue latex, catching marshmallows in his mouth while he nollie flips the Leap of Faith. It could be metrosexual, or it could be gnarly. Apples has always walked that line, and for good reason. If he didn't, I probably couldn't admit to liking Placebo. Or Tracy Bonham:
Steve Carrell (or his writers) has (or have) a habit of developing his characters by implying that they enjoy certain forms of entertainment.
In The 40 Year Old Virgin, Carrell sees the Ultrasound of his friend's child and asks, "Is this the movie about babies that are geniuses?" The reference is to Baby Geniuses, recognized among film reviewers as a movie without a conceivable audience. The joke works on three levels, at least. First, the rephrasing, "Babies that are geniuses," is funny because one would expect someone who knew that much about the movie could also remember its obvious title. Second, confusing an ultrasound with a movie about babies is funny. Third, the movie is sufficiently bad that one would not expect it to be shown to a group of adults.
This final reason appears in similar iterations on NBC's The Office. The joke has a pretty simple structure. Someone mentions the idea of doing something funny, and Carrell or another buffoon mentions an example of something they consider funny but that is actually quite corny. From my foggy memory, the example ran something like:
Jim: We're talking about something funny. Dwight: Oh, you mean like Dave Barry?
Steve Carrell himself delivers a similar example in another episode.
Jim: We're going to do something funny. Michael: Oh, you mean like the Jamie Kennedy Experiment?
These jokes appear to function purely on the premise that the comedy discussed is not actually funny, and the characters are fools for thinking otherwise.
In another way, the jokes imply a set of preferences held by the writers of the show and presumably shared with its audience. It's the old business about allusions flattering the audience.
The joke doesn't work (yet) with shows or performances that are widely acclaimed. It might be funny, however, if a character on the American Office made a joke about the British version. This kind of dialog could actually function to reinforce the idea that Jim, Pam, and the gang actually inhabit a real office in the same world that we live in, and go home to watch a show about the annoyances of office life. Or we could wait until the sarcasm of liking bad jokes becomes the reverse sarcasm of liking good ones.
Tacoma Water recently mailed me an advertisement titled "Drinking water - and people - you can count on." I found this quite hilarious for the (perhaps) obvious reason that, at first glance, Tacoma Water appears to suggest that one drink people in addition to water. Furthermore, the wisdom of drinking the very people one "can count on" should evidently be questioned.
Typographically, there ought to be a way to more accurately convey the intended message ("Tacoma Water provides reliable drinking water by employing reliable people").
When copyediters are in short supply, the o-dash, (actually, according to em- and en- convention it should be spelled oh-), immediately conveys the idea that "I'm splitting up this phrase in an awkward - perhaps even hilarious - way, but you know what I really mean - business." Start using it, Tacoma Water.
From the body of the document:
Brown Water: This is often caused by disturbances to the main, such as main breaks or fire hydrant use, that stir up the sediment that has settled at the bottom of the main. While it may look unsafe, the sediment is harmless river silt particles from our unfiltered water supply. If you experience this problem, avoid using any water for two hours. If the water does not clear, call Tacoma Water. If brown or yellow water occurs frequently, it may be caused by corrosion in you home plumbing.
There appears to me to be a contract surrounding facebook profiles. That is, "Do not change your profile too often." For some reason a mutable profile conveys instability and insecurity, and I've even witnessed a wall post hating on someone for always having "updated recently" (this was back in the days of "Profile Updated Recently," pre-news feed [news feed kind of a 9/11 for facebook in terms of turning point, community not really knowing what to do with new communication structures, etc.]).
Anyway, it strikes me that part of the wonder of facebook is its mutability and frivolity. The real reason for the outcry over the news feed was its potential to convey damaging or semi-private information to people who are not frivolous--that is, people who are employers, or worse, people who do not have facebook profiles.
I propose a new facebook-blog mashup wherein people feel at liberty to change their profiles without fear of sanction, where people can lose interest in reading, cease participating in the activity of "sleep," and remove Coldplay from their favorite music category without fear of repercussions. In short, I would like to see a facebook that is exclusively a joke on facebook and makes no effort at sincere communication of the lasting and integral parts of any given person's personality. Either that, or I would like everyone to start liveblogging their identities in the language of facebook profiles, continually updating with cleverness and humor the minutest details of their favorite movies, their complications, their about thems.
In the Tomorrow Zone, no one is afraid to change themselves.
A comparison occurs to me as I listen to "Makes Me Wonder," the doughy flapjack Maroon 5 have served all the way up to the top of the stack of foodstuffs that is the Billboard Hot 100.
Maroon 5 : Disappointment :: Babylon 5 : Dilgar.
That is, Maroon 5 the band is as full of an aggressive species of disappointment determined to spread throughout the universe as Babylon 5 the TV show is full of Dilgar, the aggressive species of alien determined to spread through the universe.
The song starts off with 1 (one) quirky bass line filtered through what sounds like a Boss SBY-3 Bass Synthesizer pedal. Just when I'm starting to rock back and forth in the comfortable chair next to the pillar in the Tacoma Public Library (the only place where I can plug in my laptop), Adam Levine comes in with a scratchy whine. He repeats the same word (anymore) several times, and whatever boner I was developing over this song booked a direct flight to Droopsville.
What I mean to say, of course, is that Maroon 5 pack no surprises. If it were my fifth birthday and I invited Maroon 5 to my party, they'd give me a Maroon 5 CD. And from then on I would not invite them over to my house for apples and peanut butter.
On the bright side, I left the headphones in while trying to figure out something to say about "Makes Me Wonder" (not much obvi). The following playlist, generated by Yahoo! Launch's randomizer algorithms, ensued:
"Never Again" - Kelly Clarkson (even after Breakaway, the girl has still got a mad set of pipes). I wish I were attracted to Kelly Clarkson. She's kind of like the girl in high school who asks you to the dance and keep thinking while you're slowdancing about the girl who you always mention among your friends by both first and last name ("Jane Galloway is so hot!") In other words, Kelly Clarkson should be known just as Kelly. But "I hope when you're in bed with her / You think of me!" is a great set of lines.
"Grace Kelly: Who's Next" - Mika. [I can't find this on YouTube but I'm sure it exists elsewhere, sorry I'm not in the business of tracking things down.] Mika does a deec Freddy Mercury impression, which of course is what we've needed since The Darkness disappeared (where are you Darkness? I miss y'all.) If the video'd had purple aliens and Mika had toweled himself off with them we might've had a new "I Believe in a Thing Called Love." But he didn't, so we don't. One thumb up.
"I Don't Need a Man" - Pussycat Dolls. This is not "Loosen Up My Buttons" but it doesn't need to be. I was mostly writing the last paragraph while this song was playing so I don't have any objections.
"Since U Been Gone" - Kelly. Straight fire since day one, always has been. I will never be disappointed that this song is playing, least of all when I happen to already be dancing.
If I can thank Maroon 5 for anything at all, it is that I only had to wait a couple minutes through "Makes Me Wonder" to get at some toons worth grooving to. But back to the rotation.
HAHAHAHA LIVE VERSION OF "GIRLFRIEND" BY AVRIL LAVIGNE. She has two backup singers to help her shout "hey hey you you."
"Hey Avril." "Yeah?" "'Girlfriend' isn't Number One anymore." "Oh no! What happened?" "Maroon 5." "Maroon 5?" "Maroon 5." "Shit." "Avril? Avril? Stop crying. Maybe people just got confused. If you read 'Adam Levine' carelessly, it kind of looks like 'Avril Lavigne.' And he is pretty. People just got confused." "I am going to kill that motherfucker Adam Levine."
Okay I have to admit I totally blew it on a post a couple days ago about Christian skaters by not really dealing with the videos themselves, so caught up was I in an "aw shucks" preoccupation with surface contradictions that don't really hold up against scrutiny noways. The Music
First off, it's difficult to deny the simple pleasure of listening to the music that plays in the background as Matt Beach and Chad Timtim gently shred the streets of America. Matt Beach's song is called "The Crayon Box Song" and was written by William V. Mason. This tune, gentle in its explanation of why Jesus is awesome, serves a striking contrast to music played in most skate videos (punk, rap). Although I love listening to metal while dudes like Dustin Dollin charge down inhumane numbers of stairs, Mason's little ditty about colors and Jesus more effectively captures the serenity that accompanies the best days of skating. Out in the sun, landing that flatland kickflip, just manualing across a pad, not stressing, just feeling the board under your feet.
The effect of the music on this viewing experience is hard to overestimate. It would be an interesting experiment to remix these videos with aggressive music to see if the serene skating still shone through.
The Style
Beyond the radness of the music, which for some reason I find it hard to admit, the skating itself appears informed by the holy spirit. These cats are skating for God, and damned if they haven't achieved some sort of spiritual calm on their boards. When Matt Beach falls, he doesn't swear; he says he feels like he got in a "motorcycle accident," then chuckles nervously. The unselfconscious sincerity of the declaration makes the skating appear all the more free and natural.
It's tough in today's skateboarding market to find pros who aren't straining at the bit to land the gnarliest trick out there, to one-up their competition by grinding a rail one stair longer. Say what you will about the lameness of believing in God, it sure helps these dudes' skating.
Slavoj Zizek takes a minute to dispel the mythical uproar surrounding the 300 film, reviewed by myself a matter of weeks ago. In his review, Zizek points out that the Spartans were the militarily inferior of the two fighting forces and, for this and other reasons, bear closer resemblance to Iran and Iraq than to the U.S.
Fine, fine. But this counter-reading brings up an interesting point about the assumptions people have brought to the film. What about the movie makes it appear to many journalists as a piece of American propaganda? Zizek doesn't go there, but maybe the answer is that Americans have so greatly internalized discussions of civilizational conflict that they believe Spartan society do be the ancestor of Westernism/Americanism and Xerxes' Persians to be the antecedents to some sort of Mid-Eastern bloc opposed to U.S. interests. One fears that Zizek himself may have fallen into the same trap by taking and legitimizing a view that, though it directly opposes much criticism heaved at the film, is trapped within the same dialectic. It is not really so important for 300's viewers to ask "Okay, who are the Americans? Who are the Iranians?" as it is to engage the many possible meanings of the film, be they relevant (or irrelevant) to America's and Iran's problems.
Perhaps Samuel Huntington casts so long a shadow that it dims the sight of America's best and brightest--that is, its film reviewers. This entire debate about 300's propagandizing, which has captured even Zizek to a small degree, might be more easily laid aside if one takes Amartya Sen's view of the condition of current global politics. From Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (which, not coincidentally, I just finished reading):
A uniquely divisive view goes not only against the old-fashioned belief that all human beings are much the same but also against the less discussed but more plausible understanding that we are diversely different. The world is frequently taken to be a collection of religions (or of "civilizations" or "cultures"), ignoring the other identities that people have and value, involving class, gender, profession, language, science, morals, and politics.
Despite the simplicity of Sen's idea (the entire book is largely devoted to fleshing out and illustrating the above-stated thesis), its reach is quite large. One might have a lot more to learn about 300 (someone should do a remake titled Three-Hundred) if he or she could take a less reductive view of the film and engage it along lines that don't merely address the civilizational argument. It appears clear to everyone that there are none-too-subtle overtones in 300, but there exists profound disagreement about what the movie actually means a posteriori.
It could be that 300's shocking, unclear message resembles the garbled language of terrorism. By spreading an aggressive, deeply cryptic message nestled in visceral terror and violence, the film provokes, even among the intellectual elite, a blustering and confused reversion to ideas that appear sound and comforting, in this case Samuel Huntington's Clash. More disturbing yet is the notion that real terrorist acts of the twenty-first century have done little to disengage the media from the civilizational debate, even over the subject of something so comparatively trivial as a fictional action movie based on a comic book.
Finally and tangentially, k-punk's jargon-laden, hard-to-follow backlash against Zizek. The dude is too old! He's sloppy! Maybe I took my tact because I didn't get this. Anyway both k-punk and I at least agree that Slavoj is missing the boat.
I mentioned before that there was a fast-growing contingent of skaters in the U.S. who are probably just as mad that ESPN took the Christ out of the X-Games as they are that whoever it was took the Christ out of X-Mas.
Skaters and Jesus go back at least to the late '80s, when Mark Gator Rogowski converted to Christianity shortly before being convicted of the murder of Jessica Bergsten. However, whereas the Gator version of Christianity was seen as an insane move by an unstable man, current Christian skaters seem very well-adjusted, and some, including Chad Timtim and Jamie Thomas, are among the most successful in the sport.
For your viewing pleasure I give you Matt Beach's part from Kaleidoscope, a film centered strictly and exclusively on professional skateboarders who walk in the light of the lamb.
Note the force of conviction behind the closing monologue, as well as the references to the lecherous lifestyle that claimed many of the dude's friends. Note also that the skating is on par with most of the stuff you'll see on this blog in terms of creativity and smoothness.
Anyone who saw the eight-year-old blonde girl dancing to Christian metal in Jesus Camp knows that we live in an age where evangelical Christianity is willing to branch out into hip subcultures in an effort at rescuing more souls from Satan's grasp. It's therefore not much of a surprise or a shock that skating has its share of believers. Still, there exists some apparent contradiction between the often reactionary mores of Christianity and the devil-may-care (or even I-like-the-devi), punk attitude that characterizes much of skateboarding:
Thrasher Magazine Zoo Ministries
From 777 Skateboards' Web site:
What does “777” stand for? In the Bible, the number 7 stands for completion and perfection- 777 is the alternative to 666- and you don’t need to be a Christian to know what that stands for. If you are tired of skulls and crossbones, violent “cartoons” and messages of death- if you are looking for something different- check out what we have to offer.
Notice the up-front presentation of coolness as uncool and vice versa. The style is somewhat reminiscent of straight-edge (that is, convictions--and not just shocking lifestyles--are the true currency of cool).
The attitude is much less confrontational with skatepunk ideology than it seems on the surface. The smoothness with which these videos carry over is abetted greatly by the ease with which one can get over atheistic hoitytoit and just enjoy watching these guys rip it. In fact, the similarities between these guys and other pros far overshadow the differences, in terms of both interest and scope. The way Kaleidoscope's skaters talk about Jesus is very similar to the way most skaters talk about skating. And they rip just as hard. Chad Timtim:
Stoked, the documentary about Gator's rise and fall
Got a lot of sleeping to do today so before the logsawing session begins I thought I'd at least do some blogsawing and break off a little Google Chat 'twixt everyone's favorite 1LT (who, due to paranoia, will appear as 1LT and truly yours (who, due to Google Chat convention, will appear as me) re Memorial Day (not pictured), Vegas, Lupe Fiasco, Entourage, and Pat Dollard.
me: got any blog ideas? 1LT: word. yes me: yes? 1LT: yes i do let me formulate me: you could even do a guest blog post if you'd like 1LT: haha
[Ed: Guest blogging still laughable among military types] [. . .]
1LT: have you heard lupe fiasco's album yet? me: no man but i saw the video where a toy robot comes to life 1LT: you will love this album he's a native'tongue esqe hip hopper who also enjoys skateboarding me: yes i heard of him a year ago perhaps he had a song called "kick push" which was okay but just okay for me i admit he's got flows though 1LT: kick push is alright hurts me soul and american terrorist are amazing me: ah okay i'm checkin the youtube right now
[Ed: Hurts me soul is amazing, in fact here it is embedded]
[Ed: Check out his moves!]
1LT: one more vegas selling point, if you come, we'll have our fifth for the Entourage vegas episode re-do you can be eric or turtle me: haha is eric the samwise gamgee guy? aka rudy? 1LT: hahaha yeah me: haha okay who's the other guy 1LT: the dude who wears jerses ys me: oh ok that works i wear jerseys sometimes
[. . .]
okay i'm going to blog a fraction of this conversation 1LT: fair me: what is your mil rank? 1LT: 1LT me: 1LT? ok 1LT: first lieutenant me: yeah but at least i can hear the audio man he's just saying what white people do 1LT: yes, i believe indicating who the american terrorist is and has been me: ah oh btw did you ever check out patdollard.com? 1LT: wow now, i will now
[. . .]
me: are you seeing that patdollard shit? 1LT: right now me: thoughts? 1LT: [. . .] who the hell is this guy me: he's a former hollywood talent agent actually has been compared in VF to Ari Gold of Entourage Gould? 1LT: woooow me: anyway dollard got an embed position w/ marines and made this wacked out movie that is supposed to be the anti-farenheit 9/11
Although 1LT gave his two cents on the Dollard issue, you won't get more than this from me: "he is an instigator and a preventor of peace/a real douche." The stream-of-consciousness upshot from all this is conscious rap is still about (what to make of this, and Chris Rock, a little later in the week), Pat Dollard is obvi an American Terrorist who hurts me soul, and the bathwater complaints about Sean Hannity need to stop because it's just a silly game to all of them.
Wu-Tang is giving away 250 songs from the 2003-2005 era. This of course illustrates how prolific the Clan is, but what is the reason for this sudden generosity? A post about the songs themselves when I have time. Mostly just wanted to use that pic, though.
