Dead Milkmen

Best song by The Dead Milkmen ever with a crappy animation. Honestly, the animation is fitting to the song. But, I digress. The name of this song is Bitchin' Camaro! (without the exclamation point)

Blame Entourage

Turtle's love for the early 90s hits led to this getting stuck in my head.



Also, for future reference from that episode of Entourage, chiba hawking is alright. I did it for a while, and I know people who did it. It is a totally acceptable habit to partake in. But, there are ethics to such manoeuvres, the most of basic is which don't act like the shit is yours. You are in a privileged position. You didn't bring shit to this party, but you're getting it for no cost to yourself. By being in such a position, you are already doing better than before. It is important, and probably one of the few rules of smoking conduct, to remember that while your presence as a free smoker is cool, acting like the shit is yours is not.

I'll use an example, actually where this issue raised itself in my mind: the same episode that reminded me of Snow in fact. Anyway, Turtle picks up some girls in the grocery store. Some blonde in a tight t-shirt. Very generically pretty girl. She has friends. Turtle's got friends. A Grand plan ensues. The girls that Turtle has picked up are two types. There are two of the girls who are chill about the whole situation. Then, there is this brunette who is just so siced (read: hyped.) on this dude she doesn't know's stash. They are driving along. The girl just panics not about nay incident but because she would lose the weed. In fact, he did lose the weed; the police cop made him throw it down a storm drain. Turns up, that storm drain was shallow because Turtle could pull the stash back out. As expected, the brunette was mad siced over this dude's stash.

Such overenthusiasm for someone else's stash reminded me of the fine balance of being a chiba hawk. Just because you are a woman doesn't mean that I have to smoke you out. I do that out of generosity, and that generosity can be abused by all genders, races, and creeds. It is very much a privilege not a right to get the free smoking. A Public Service Announcement.

Afternoon Notes

Hello, hello. First things first, English Premier League is in full effect. This means that I get months upon months of Arsenal Goalkeeper Jens Lehmann fucking something up. First game back from recess, Lehmann fucks up a simple clearance. What happens? Fulham scores a goal. Luckily for Arsenal, they put up two in reply and won the game. Today, I watched Arsenal take on Blackburn. Along with being chippy, I'm proud of the Arsenal defense for actually standing strong and shutting down the Rovers. That said, Lehmann made this game into a tie.

During the second half, a player from Blackburn hits a strike from about 23-25 yards out. For the non-soccer folks, that's a bad shot unless you are one of the greatest players of all-time, which this guy clearly was not. I mean, let's be serious here. He wouldn't be playing for Blackburn if he was one of the best players of all-time. But, I digress. This hard but totally saveable shot comes in and what does Lehmann do? Fuck it up. The ball hit him in the hands!!!!! And he still didn't make the play. In fact, it bounced past him. Luckily for him, the game ended in a tie. Blame should also be heaped upon the strikers who missed a couple golden opportunities to put themselves ahead and put the nail in the coffin of Blackburn. If this is going to be the stride of the season, I'm in for a very long season.

After I stopped being mad about the failure of the Gunners to get the three points from Blackburn, I decided that I wanted to watch a movie. I couldn't find any terrible action movies on although The Fly II was playing on Cinemax. Deciding against my better judgment not to watch either Sahara, the fiasco involving Penelope Cruz that wasn't Vanilla Sky, or the aforementioned Fly sequel, I decided upon Proof, a film version of an award-winning play. I'll say that I decided to watch this film because Gwyneth Paltrow is one of those actresses who is lauded by everyone. She is supposed to be the great actress of my era, putting in memorable bids that people are supposed to fall in a tizzy about.

After watching this movie, I'm wondering if these people are smoking crack. I won't go so far as to say this movie was terrible, but it's definitely mediocre. And that mediocrity stems from Paltrow's performance as Catherine, a depressed young woman who is the daughter of a fictional John Nash. Hope Davis, who played Catherine's sister Claire, and Jake Gyllenhaal, who played Hal, a student of Catherine's father (Anthony Hopkins), were standouts. Claire could have easily just been a bitch, but she showed some humanity and decency although I thought her efforts were misplaced. Hal was a considerate person who was trying to do what was right. Unfortunately, Catherine didn't see it that way.

My problems with this movie were many. I thought that the timing and organization of the movie left a lot to be desired. Joel Madden, who is best known for Paltrow's Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love, spliced the film with flashbacks and other things that not only made the movie confusing to watch but actually took away the suspense of the movie. For example, he explains the plot twist fully. The plot twist was the one thing that could have saved this movie, but Madden ruined it by explaining it, leaving nothing to the imagination of the audience as it most likely was in the stage play.

Also, Paltrow's turn as Catherine was terrible. She played the role of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown as plainly and uninterestingly as she could. She just sulked through the film, displaying no changes in emotions or demeanor. She just sat there to her detriment. This led to the sympathy that we were supposed to have for her character (Catherine is supposed to be a genius) being thrown completely out of the window. While other films have had protagonists who lacked sympathy (for me, this was The Squid and the Whale), those protagonists had some redeemable characteristics. The positive aspects of such a negative character were erased by the vacant acting of Paltrow. But, I think that her vacancy was more maddening because Catherine was a character on the verge of a mental breakdown, spending time by herself in a house with a crazy man. The effects of that on her mind, I think, would be greater than what Paltrow lets on in her performance. There was no edginess to her character. Instead, Paltrow just displays a lot of malaise and no signs of being a tormented genius.

Aside from Paltrow's terribly vacant performance, the other primary problem that I had with the movie was the fact that it still played like a stage play. It was very stiff and formal. Everything was overly dramatic and scholarly actor. The natural aspects of the characters were lacking in translation from the stage. I understand the stiffness of the characters on stage because you don't have the flexibility allowed on film. But, when going to film, the characters have to become well-rounded, showing off many aspects and using the camera and surroundings to the advantage. None of the characters effectively did this even though opportunities abounded for such work to take place. All of the characters fell into this trap, taking away from the more realistic aspects of high quality cinema.

Now that I have vented about Jens "Faulty Boot" Lehmann (Faulty Boot is what I will call him until he is replaced in goal) and Proof, I think that I can leave now. So, I will.

Red Skies

There was a lot of news. In fact, Merv Griffin, the inventor of Jeopardy! aka the best game show ever, has passed at the age of 82 from prostate cancer. Abstract artist Elizabeth Murray has also passed. She was 66. Death aside, I'm not going to post because I forgot what I was going to post. I think that it was a rant about how the bathroom is the best place to get work done. But, as you can sense, it wouldn't have been worth my time to make the rant.

Anyway, I'm going to post a video that I continually see on the VH1 Classic broadcasts of 120 Minutes, the seminal underground show from the days in which MTV actually played non-payola music. This is a video for Red Skies by The Fixx. I'd like you to note the bassist.



I'm back in the morning. Also, realizing that I draft my fantasy football team in a much geekier way than people who do it in person, I'm canceling that rant.

A Fan Favorite

Six Finger Satellite is one of the best bands no one's ever heard of. Period. This is a video of them playing in Cambridge in '98.



I'm barbecuing.

What I Think About On Sundays

I've had this song in my head literally all day for no other reason than the fact that I was thinking of crappy 80s and 90s romance movies where this song was always played.



The Cars- Drive

Being Literate

I've been trying to read Irresistible Empire this weekend. I am going to continue with that goal in the vain hope that I can finish it today. So, I will keep this post short for that reason. The book's a good read, but it's long. And I haven't been able to give it my full attention. Plus, I want to read some Updike now and I need to finish this so I can do that. I'm back in the saddle tomorrow, especially because the mid-Atlantic is getting that old fashioned heatwave now.

Just on a personal note, I'm sick of people in the D.C. Area complaining about how hot it is all the time. It's like, what? You think I don't know it's hot? My shirt's stuck to my back and I've been outside for 1 minute! Give me a fucking break. Additionally, I actually kind of like the hot days. Yea, it's humid and gross, but it's nice in a certain way. As long as you stay hydrated and wear some light colors, it's no worse than any other day. But then again, this is D.C.; everything is a huge fiasco.

Anyway, I've been slacking and I know it. So, I will start out this week tomorrow with guns blazing. Til then.

Weekly Check-in With Myself

I usually read through this blog for quality reasons. While it has been up for about three months, I'm still getting the hang of it. I'm used to doing a lot of editing while writing, something that I can't do if I want to post frequently like I do. I'm going to start using simpler sentences and fewer commas. That should help me a lot since that seems to be where a lot of the problems are. What will also help me is finishing ideas that I start in paragraphs. The response to the racists is a good example. I name check a lot of people, but I don't explain why they are important (They are important to the social sphere AND Black). Or, in an older post, I talk about other forms of football but don't explain why they are better than American football. In short, every other form of football is more exciting than American football. This is coming from someone who likes American football.

Additionally, I'm going to tighten up the 5 A Day writing a bit. They aren't bad, but I think that I can get rid of careless errors like forgetting band names and repeating phrases. It's not a big deal, but it looks bad. And, I like to keep a tight verbal ship. Also, I'll keep my facts in line as well since I was called out on in with regards to a review of Howl.

Everything is going pretty well for the first three months or so. It started off as incoherent rambling. It is now grammatically unsound, but coherent, rambling. I can only go down from here.

Alright, that said, this is a video for Fade into You by Mazzy Star



And these are random songs:

Waiting for the Man - OMD
Decoration Day - Howlin' Wolf
Theme From Within - Blue States
Too Tired To Shine II - American Analog Set
No Complaints - Beck
Tell 'Em I'm Surfin' - Fantastic Baggys
The Hustler - The Sonics
I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore - Dusty Springfield
Concrete Seconds - Pinback
Everybody Knows This is Nowhere - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Don't Ever Get Tired - Tindersticks
Keeping You Alive - The Gossip
Karl Blau - The Microphones
Poppin' My Collar - Three 6 Mafia
What Can I Say - Yo La Tengo

Something I Haven't Done For A While

I realized while I was resting on the rainy day here that I hadn't posted some random tracks, showing a clear sign of laziness. I wouldn't let that stand. So, I'm fixing that today. Additionally, I'm posting a video from a band called For Against. 80's shoegaze out of Nebraska. A criminally overlooked band that still plays today! I hope that I can catch them out in Nebraska sometime in the near future. Since I already seeing myself being out that way, it might be a cool trip to go on their turf and see the masters in the old watering hole.



Also, consider this an epilogue to the earlier post about breast cancer awareness. I was sitting at our table, kicking myself for forgetting that I needed to wear pink (I have forgotten both times) and some family friends arrive. Everything's cool, we are looking over and notice that one of the men has brought his other. She was an alright looking woman, but that is a point that is somewhat immaterial for this story as it didn't involve the front of her face. As I am facing directly at them, I notice that she is wearing a bra. While wearing a bra is not a bad thing, especially for a woman as endowed as her, it is when you are wearing a shirt that is not supposed to be worn with a bra. Men, you might not know what I'm talking about, but the women in the room do. You go out and you see that girl with her bra straps showing or the back of her bra is exposed. That's this chick. I thought I was the only person who noticed this, but Gretchen did as well and swiftly commented. Another woman also came by the table and made another observation that the rest of us didn't notice. She said it's ok if you are going to wear your bra out, but you can at least put the tag down. These are the people that will cure breast cancer.

Random Songs:

Androids of Mu - Bored Housewives
The Cure - Play For Today
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Dang
M.F. Doom - One Beer
Janet Jackson - Escapade
The Sugarcubes - Motorcrash
Saint Etienne - Boy Scouts of America
Pink and Brown - Meter Reader
DJ Drama and Little Brother - I Need You
The Microphones - I Felt Your Shape
Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet - Harlem by the Sea
Some Velvet Sidewalk - Right - Wrong
Geoffrey Landers - The Ever Decimal Pulse
The Soft Boys - Black Snake Diamond Rock
Kylie Minogue - Better the Devil You Know

Sunday Night: It isn't Sunday Morning

I have some stuff that I am going to post tomorrow. While I was on vacation, I had some interesting thoughts and ideas come to me, especially regarding the difference in American and Jamaican television. Oh wow, Jamaican television is really amazing. Also, I have a colorful story about my trip to a strip club in the town over from my rental villa. It is a pretty colorful story involving a massage, live sex, and a midget. Oh, does it ever involve a midget. Anyway, random songs:

Start Together- Sleater-Kinney
Eyes Peeled- Pink & Brown
Messages- OMD
Living in America- James Brown
To Love is to Bury- Cowboy Junkies
Jackson's Club 'Sunspot'- OOIOO
They Forced My Hand- Cormega
No Sacrifice Too Great- Good Clean Fun
Let's Go Trippin'- Dick Dale and the Del-Tones
Nearing- DNA
Bitters End- Roxy Music
Dorothy May- Howlin' Wolf
Us Government- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
On Language- Julie Ruin
Somewhere- Brian Jonestown Massacre
Ventilator Blues- Rolling Stones
Aos Pes da Cruz- Joao Gilberto
Age of Consent- New Order
Wild Love- Chris Isaak
Computer World- Kraftwerk

And, to tribute to Jamaica and in waiting for my trip to Kingston in the following years, I'm going to post a video with some all-stars of reggae. Beres Hammond on the mike. Sly and Robbie, masters of the rhythm, on the back-up. All action. BIG UP!

The Pitfalls of Youtube

While for the most time, and with this blog as proof, I can normally find what I want on youtube. There are a lot of interesting videos out there when they aren't miserably embarrassing or pointless (teenage girls: it's not cool to shoot videos of you and your friends dancing around in your house after school. get a REAL hobby, and that's coming from a blogger, so take that!). The unfortunate problem that I have is that I can't find songs sometimes on there that I really want to post. Today, actually for this post, I wanted to put up a song by this British electronica band called Laika. They are amazing, but no one seems to know anything about them. I have been trying to see if they are going to put out new music or anything, but I'm not sure if they are. Regardless, they don't have any videos. If you type in Laika, you'll be directed to the Arcade Fire song of the same name and montages celebrating the first living creature to enter space.

Anyway, this is only a slight technical problem. Also, revel in this next week of posting because this site is going quiet while I'm on vacation (I'm taking a break from being a tax-paying, red blooded, meat-eating, ass kicking, hell raising American). So, I will start the new week as I always do: with the random 15 and a video.

the video is "Traveling Light" by Tindersticks. If you don't know about this band, you need to know about this band. They are beautifully good. This song is from their second eponymous album. That's right. I said SECOND EPONYMOUS! Don't get confused either; the second album is much better than the first one.



Random 15-

The Build Up- Kings of Convenience
Calfskin-Smack- Cocteau Twins
Blue Moon Revisited- Cowboy Junkies
Let's Ride- The Game
Keep It Movin'- Young Jeezy & DJ Drama
Insight- Joy Division
I Won't Share You- The Smiths
Serefin I Jungelen- Jaga Jazzist
Krimi- Liliput
Bag of Spiders- Slumber Party
Escapade- The Wynton Kelly Trio
Super Disco- Etienne De Crecy
Heroin (Alternate Take)- The Velvet Underground
Redemption- Cormega
Feel The Bass II- DJ Magic Mike

Bonus- Everyone should listen to Kathleen Hanna and all of her projects. My preferred projects are Bikini Kill, Julie Ruin, and Le Tigre.

Sunday Night is Always Right

If you haven't discovered by now, I'm really into music. These are videos from the two genres I have yet to post anything about yet mean a lot to me: post-punk and noise. Noise music is argued by some not to be actual music. I wholly disagree. A lot of people think of music in such concrete terms with regards to verse-chorus-verse and hooks and melodies. Noise is just as musical as traditional pop songs. The main difference is its inversion of the traditional paradigm.

Instead of suggesting that music has to be palatable, saccharine, and easily digestible, noise has decided to test the format of music by doing everything in the opposite by making itself a very aggressive, grating, and heavily inaccessible form. The instrumentation changed as well. No longer was it purely guitars and drum kits. Those instruments are still used, but their fundamental cores are so drastically changed, they essentially serve as vessels for extracting different sonic waves and frequencies for processing. But, even within the cacophony and abrasiveness, there is a true musiciality as all noise artists, when not trying to maim their audience, want to evoke a feeling around their music, which is what music on all levels does. Some bands decide to use an intense backbeat as their structure; others wander through the sonic jungle. Regardless, each of these bands brings their own perspective and wishes through noise to the masses. Whether you choose to accept or not is your own choice.

It might not be your style. You could conceivably might not want to be scared shitless every time you turn on a particular record, but you must consider it as music. The artists are just as creative, work just as hard, and think just as much about their sound as the next artist. Yea, this was just my opinion, but I don't appreciate people calling things not music just because it doesn't please them. I don't like folk music, but I'll still call it music because it is. Noise is Music too! Don't hate.

That said, these are No Way Out- Love of Diagrams (AMAZING!)



and Hair Police live in London