i should be so rad

Things that happened today – I exchanged some passive-aggressive catty emails with my landlord, Belissa Cohen.  She only recently figured out how to use email – or so it seems, as she previously had not ever mentioned its existence.  Her address?  Belissa@Belissa.net.  Of course.  I mean, I guess when you’ve been gifted the rare jewel of a name that is Belissa, you wanna floss it out as much as possible.  Also, I suppose it is possible that her first choice, frazzledgingerwithstomachtattoos@manipulativeacidcasualty.com, was taken.

Anyways, it’s been a low-level skirmish of her complaining about some minor issue with the house – some chalk drawing remnants on my door, for example (formerly a tombstone reading R.I.P DAN SIEGAL w/lots of blood – thanks, Sam Cantor.  It was a birthday present).  She is sending a painter.  I say that’s great, but it better not be coming out of my deposit, and that I would be more than happy to clean it.  She says it should have already been cleaned.  I mention she failed to offer us a preliminary move out inspection, which is our legal right.  She says that we are all adults (patently false in this case: I am a 23 year old retard and she is a 30-50 [it's seriously indeterminate] year old space case), and I should have known anyways.  I mention that it just slipped my mind, much like it slipped her mind to offer us the inspection that was our legal right, or like it slipped her mind arrange pick up with the city of the massive mound of decaying tree trimmings currently annihilating the side of the house, despite promising to do so 3 weeks ago.  She does not respond.  So it goes.

I honestly have no idea if I’ll be able to get her to roll over my entire share of the deposit, but I’m enjoying actively engaging her on the field of battle over it.  I get to feel like I’m playing hardball.  It even made spackling over nail-holes in the living room enjoyable, as I got the smug sense of satisfaction of her coming in with the painter tomorrow and finding the walls smooth and unblemished. WHAT NOW, BITCH?  Ain’t gonna charge no damages for wall repair up in this humpty bumpty.  Booya.  Further updates as the information rolls in.  Oh yeah – I’m not on the lease right now, so there is the nuclear option of peace-ing out and using legal recourse to get the deposit from her, as it’s already been days past deadline and she definitely violated enough tenants laws to make it a worthy gambit.  I really like my new roommates, Jonah and Kristen, however, and I do love the house, so I’m making an effort to stay in it and get this all sorted so I can get another lease signed with Belissa.  Bellissapocalypse2k11 rolls on.

Other things that happened today:

My editor said, offhand in a discussion, that I was a really good writer, which meant a lot.  I’ve been feeling mostly like I’m fucking up in my job – not necessarily in writing quality, which is the least of my worries as an Associate Editor (oooh, fancy).  Rather, it’s been the organizating, idea-generating, PR-person-networking, omnipotent-knowing-of-events-and-situations aspects of my job that I need to work on.  Probably because that’s always been stuff that was ancillary to the writing before in my life – things I did just enough of to have some raw material to write about.  But my current job pushes that stuff to the forefront actually – I’m not a reporter, and that kind of blows.  However, it definitely made me breathe a sigh of relief to get a compliment from Krista (ze editor) for once.

I finished my Kinect hacking article on time, and it came out ok.  It actually didn’t need that much of an edit job – most of the changes Krista suggested were actually fixing things that I had changed when I cut it down to the final draft back to how I had originally conceived of the piece.  Which was gratifying – now I know to trust my first instincts a bit more when putting the piece together, rather than cutting everything up just to meet the exact 1-2 sentence blurb structure.  Writing a punchy, yet accurate, lede still escapes me, but I’m absorbing.  I hope.

Oh yeah, I got this Benoit + Sergio XLR8R podcast and it’s the fucking bees knees.  So smooth, it’s like oxycontin-butter pate, rubbed on a supermodel’s ass.  Heh.  Beware, Ryan Mac, I might just throw that line into a blog post on Treeswingers this week.  But seriously, check this shit out.  It’s got a mid-tempo techno/tech-house beat (medium-heft kick, tech-y hi-hat, probs 110 bpm if i had to guess) running underneath everything, and then runs through some uber-lush sounds on top – at one point going from a gem of a Talking Heads cut into Round & Round by A.P’s H.G. into I Can Change by LCD Soundsytem, all with that beat connecting them like a spinal cord, like they’re one animal, like you have to question how you ever listened to these songs separately before when they so clearly fit together.  Good shit.  Of COURSE Benoit & Sergio are on DFA.  Midas touch over there, Messers Murphy and Goldsworthy, keep it up.

I skipped the gym, but felt ok about it because  i actually got errands done like going to Home Depot and Trader Joe’s.  INTERESTING STUFF.

The Lakers won, but I didn’t watch, because I don’t have a TV.  Gamecasted Though.

Final thoughts/prognostication/navel gazing: Pretty good day.  Handled business, didn’t feel overly sleepy or need to rely on re-caffeineition during the day.  Actually wrote this here shit.  We’ll see how it goes, but, day at a time, step by step, cliche by cliche, platitude on top of platitude, my march to world domination goes on.  Bold predictions:  Andrew Bynum wins NBA Finals MVP this year, and I will find true love before I go bald.   Huzzah.

I WAS AMAZED.

Facebook Party Invite: 3/5/2010.  Copied Verbatim
DISCLAIMER: IT HAS COME TO THE MANAGEMENT’S ATTENTION THAT THERE IS A SHITLOAD OF WORDS IN THIS PARTY DESCRIPTION. PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A NORMAL PARTY. WE ARE GOING TO GET DRUNK, PLAY LOUD MUSICS, AND MAYBE STUMBLE TO A BAR TO CONTINUE GETTING DRUNK AND GETTING DOWN TO LOUD MUSIC. DON’T WORRY ABOUT READING ANYTHING BELOW THIS, UNLESS YOU WANT TO.

THANK YOU, THE MANAGEMENT.

that said, for those of you who might consider themselves slightly more literarily (is that a word?) inclined, please, indulge your frontal cortexes, relax your ego, and wallow in the delicious buffet of English language writings currently available to you, in relatively chronological order (as per which said writings sprang from my brain.

We want you to come to our (at this point not particularly) new abode in echo park and rage it. We’ve yet to have a proper situation, so let’s do this while our upstairs neighbors are moved out and before some unsuspecting family moves in and starts calling the cops on us every weekend.

RETROACTIVELY RESTORED ADDENDUM 1: P.S.
Steven Babst, Esq., C.P.C., D.D.S, M.C., O.M.F.G., Phd, B.B.Q., has created a wonderous invention not seen in the greater regions of the civilized world in the heretofore brutish times known as the 21st century. This delightful contraption, his patented “Combination-Refrigerated-Keg-Storing-and-Serving-Device-for-Well-Being-and-Lucid-Thought,” or “Obamacare” for short (also known as a “KEGERATOR” by those classes of being restriced to the lower orders of thought) is a devilishly complicated system of levers and pulleys by which you may, with a simple pull of a tap handle, dispense fresh, cold, home-brewed malted-beverage (i.e. BEER) into your serving vessel of choice. Please take heed of the DELIGHTS provided by this wondrous device – which include, but are certainly not limited to: restored vim & vigor, increased sexual performance, oxen-like cardiovascular stamina, the infamous “strength-o-ten-men,” rapid mental performance able to best even the most advanced of that crackpot Steve Jobs’ so-called “computing machines,” devastating visual perception, and emotional perspicacity on par with the greatest sages of our time, which shall permit you to stride through life leaving behind naught but a flattened path of demolished foes, moaning sexual partners of countless number and gender, screaming townsfolk, and eviscerated livestock*. We most cordially invite you to come and evaluate these fantastical claims for yourself.

RETROACTIVELY RESTORED ADDENDUM 2: IN WHICH A JOKE RETURNS, AND CONTEXT IS PROVIDED: P.P.S.
Please take yet another note (I assume you are frantically taking comprehensive yet in-depth notes on this invite on your Smith-Corona style mechanical typing device or traditional papryus and quill “Mead 5-Star” “Note-Book,” [the first "Note-Book" designed specifically for the needs of the discerning Scribe]): One does not create an Obamacare (a.k.a. KEGERATOR) out of thin air, nor do they grow on grotesquely over-burdened branches on hideously large trees. Which is to say: it’s hard fucking work. E.g: Steven Babst, inventor extraordinaire, has put his sweat, blood, and tears into this project, both literally and figuratively, and thus, were you to carelessly enter our house and, like a swine, glug down pint after pint after pint of the delicious ale from the Obamacare, it would be akin, from a legal and ethical standpoint, to simply PUNCHING STEVEN BABST IN THE COCK AND ROBBING HIM. This will simply not do. I am sure you would not wish to punch Steven Babst in the cock, nor to rob him. Please partake of the Obamacare in moderation – this is known as “Death-Paneling.” That said, if you DO desire to, literally, PUNCH STEVEN BABST IN THE COCK AND ROB HIM, that is your own decision, and I trust you will do what you know to be right.

P.P.P.P.P.S.S.S.S. – Steven Babst is frequently renowned for throwing knives: i.e., both his legendary skill with said deadly weapons, and for the astonishing number of them which he secrets on his person at all times. Therefore, attempts to punch him in the cock and rob him MAY be ill-advised.

END DISPATCH.

I’m a Lakers fan.  This is pretty evident to anybody lucky enough to get trapped in a room with me for more than fifteen minutes, as there’s nothing I enjoy more than discussing the fortunes and latest feats of the NBA’s greatest franchise.  That said, recently the Lakers have been giving me a hell of a lot more heartburn than happiness, due to injuries to our two best Spanish speaking players, Adam Morrison’s sore throat (never underestimate the locker-room-morale impact of a silent, incompetent white man), the apparent decision that defense should be played when the mood strikes, and you know, them not winning every game by 20.  That said, even when the Lakers were rolling, in that ancient era now known as November 2009 (back when people were less worried about terrorist undergarments and such), there was a glaring deficiency in our play.  That deficiency was 7’2″ tall, longer than a pterodactyl, with soft hands, softer touch, and a level of focus yet more soft, to the point of pudding-like incontinence.  For those of you that don’t delight in deciphering obtuse metaphors:  Andrew Bynum wasn’t paying any fucking attention when he was on the floor but not going up for a shot, to the point that I compared his focus to flan-like-shit.   Now, I’m no paragon of razor-honed intensity -after all, the first draft of this post was created back in that November era.  That said, it’s kind of sad that by the time I got around to actually finishing this damn post, Bynum has yet to show that he can maintain focus for a full game.  Now it’s just more evident, as the injuries to Pau y Kobe (but especially Pau) have opened up more shot attempts for young Bynum, which has the double-edged impact of both highlighting AB’s strength (he will get buckets on your face) with his weakness (when not getting said buckets, he drifts).

So what’s at work here?  Entitlement?  The aftermath of signing a (then) 21 year old to a $55 million contract?  I think it’s less about the contract and more about the fact that Bynum is, like myself and most of my peers, still a child.  Despite our respective ritualistic adulthood reaching ceremonies (getting drafted in the lottery/receiving first big contract vs. graduating from college), we’re still in the “now what?” phase.  Honestly, Bynum seems incredibly well adjusted, intelligent, polite, and just generally like a chill dude I wouldn’t mind hanging out with – which makes sense, given our shared ages, middle-class upbringings in 2-parent homes, and the fact that we’re both 7 feet tall.  That said, I also wouldn’t rely on myself to win a professional basketball game, despite my gargantuan height, because, honestly, I’m just not hungry enough.  The problem with being well-balanced is that you have the ability to keep things in perspective – the sort of perspective that reminds that basketball is, after all, just a game.  Which is great for avoiding certain competitive-disorder related issues (*cough*koberapecharges*cough*), but not so great for becoming an All-Star center.  Instead, you get a center with All-Star talent who seems content to float along when he’s the 3rd option, playing solid defense, rebounding the balls that fall in his lap, running the floor for garbage buckets, and then stopping said floor-running as soon as he is overlooked by the guards once or twice, not battling for offensive boards if he’s not getting post-up touches, and generally giving off a vibe of “if you don’t scratch my back, you can go fuck yourself.”  It’s made more frustrating by those brief moments, like the first ten minutes of yesterdays Dallas game, when Bynum is our offensive focal point, and responds with a concerted rebounding effort, brutally efficient scoring, and intimidation along  the back line.  Of course, as soon as he picked up 2 fouls and had to sit down, the magic ended – upon reentering the game, Bynum seemed content to float once again, as Lamar Odom, Jordan Farmar and Kobe took on larger roles. Yes, he was unfairly overlooked at times, but like they say, you make your own post touches.

So what’s the point?  Well, obviously, Andrew Bynum reads my blog, and I wanted to demonstrate to him my dissatisfaction with his lackluster play.  Basically, I just want to see Andrew put his (huge stacks of) money where his mouth is, and show that he can be relied upon for a consistent effort, regardless of how many touches he gets.  It’s somewhat ironic that Bynum should have this problem, as the two other Laker big men (DJ Mbenga and Josh Powell only count as Laker big boys), the wily vets Pau and Lamar, who AB17 should be learning from, are two of the best in the game at bringing it not matter how few offensive touches they get.  Young Andrew Bynum, you’re our only hope.  So please, start being more of a mensch.

It looks more and more like rain, the sky an endlessly expansive witch’s cauldron, roiling and spurting in shades of unhealthy gray.  What little light manages to break through the morass could hardly be confirmed as coming from the sun – it’s more like shitty office lighting, empty-hallway-discarded-toy type light, the kind of light that gives friends’ faces a ghastly pallor.  So there they stand, X’s friends, a scattered semi-circle of bored corpses whose eyes look not at but through him, past the torn, filthy shirt, past the shotgun nestled, child-like, in his arms and the sack-cloth covered mound at his feet, which sack-cloth is soaked through with near-black stickiness in several distinct spots.  Maybe they’re looking at the trail of broken bramble and boot-flattened rivergrass behind X.  A noticeable ellipsis of aforementioned near-black sticky substance trails out behind his overlarge leather boots, an answer that begets a question…

It’s a good thing I’m not more popular.  There’s only three of them.  I was worried this would get out of hand, out my strict and exacting control, after the Woman showed the Brother my letter.  That was private.  The Brother’s here now, ostensibly as a friend, with former friends, here to find out what’s wrong with me.

“X…   X.  What happened?  W-why…why did you… where did you get a shotgun?  Mom showed me your letter…”

He’d never understand, anyways.  It’s been months since anyone understood anything I said with my mouth.  The last one who understood didn’t really listen anyways, but I’m bringing her with me anyways.  Just in case she was right.  I’ll found out soon enough – but right now, I’m standing on the cold bank of a river which has a name I’ve forgotten and is reflecting the sky or is it the other way around it’ s been too long since anyone listened. I unlock my elbows, and feel the polished wood slide into my waiting palm.

“X, look, I know I haven’t been the best brother, and like, you know, I’m here – we’re here, see, James and David are here, just like old times, just like before.  It’s gonna be ok – I talked to mom, you know, we’re talking again, because of you, so I guess you proved your point.  Now, just be cool, little bro, because I-”

Still talking.  But less than that – vocalizing, but there’s nothing there.  Just a bunch of syllables, his empty eyes showing how he really feels.  James reaches into his jacket, his movement slow, his eyes distant.  Has it really been so long?  Does he understand?  No matter.  My peripheral vision is better than he thinks, and it’s my turn to make myself heard.

James W. Solomon has tried to quit smoking 1,239 times, according to his extensive collection of diaries.  Stressful moments still stir up the cravings, however, and he bought a pack, Marlboro Reds, when X’s Brother, who even James and David used to call the Brother, told him about the letter.  The one from X, the one that led to him standing on a muddy river bank, getting shit on his shoes, praying for understanding and settling for the sad, small blessing of the first cigarette in a long time.  The letter he never actually got to read.  It is hugely surprisingly to James then, when the hand he inserted into his left jacket breast emerges without the pack of Marlboro Reds it was dispatched to retrieve, nor with fingers or really much of anything that could be used to identify it as a human hand, to be honest.  James hears someone screaming, but no one’s mouth is moving.

Do they know?  Did they listen?

More screams.  Thunderous questions and staccato, small-caliber answers.  An argument between brothers plays out.  Briefly.

The gray sky churns, inattentive to the tumult below.  In the pale, dying light blood looks black, like warm tar, paleolithic in its spatters, anachronistic as it pools on the ground, this sort of thing doesn’t happen here or now.  X pulls tight on his filth-encrusted shirt, now living a second life as a tattered and inadequate bandage, and picks up the shotgun.  David’s jacket, the nice leather one, is relatively dry, clean, and intact – almost miraculously so, considering the state of the eponymous David, who is decidedly none of these things.  The cold air bites at X’s chest as he limps on in the unzipped jacket, leaving an uneven trail in thickening grass, pulling a sack-cloth bundle that is leaking less and less as he reaches the tree-line.  X turns his head, quickly, then resumes his limp.

An hour later, night.  Colder, harder things than X come out of their holes, and examine his message.  It’ll be 4 days before any people see it, and a lot longer than that before anyone understands.

Because this isn’t a music blog, I feel the need to write something in this space.  Maybe I could write about London’s Hyperdub label can do no wrong.  Sure, if you’ve heard of them it’s probably because of the eerie, haunting dubstep stylings of Burial, or the R&B-brain-melting-lazer stylings of Joker, but there’s more to it.  Seriously.  Even this track by 2000f & J Kamata, two of Denmark’s finest, which could be only be categorized as, well, maybe like, robo-soul?  R&B (Robots & Beats?), the sort of thing Luther Vandrobot might come up with, turns out to be fucking fantastic.  I might be in love with a robot.  Or something.

2000F & J Kamata – You Don’t Know What Love Is

Pretty Much Amazing

Your Guess is As Good As Mine

Basement Jaxx – Scars – Album Review

Basement Jaxx – “My Turn (Feat. Lightspeed Champion)” – Track Review

My Gold Mask – “Violet Eyes” – Track Review

Max Tundra – “Which Song (Passion Pit Remix)” – Track Review

Hometown Pasadena

Pho #2.

The Reyn Pho – Restaurant Review

See you 12/02/09 brave readers.

Miike Snow – Black and Blue (Caspa Remix)

Such a simple formula to make me happy.  Catchy piano riff, soulful/poppy vocals and WAMP WAMP WAMP WAMP fat bass.  Great music for cruising slowly at night, or possibly playing on the biggest speakers known to man at a rooftop party at 2 am.  check it.

So, there’s a big to-do in the online community that reads the New Yorker and also likes hip-hop, all 12 of us are worked up because Sasha Frere-Jones, New Yorker staff writer, wrote that hip-hop was dead, or at least deposed from its throne as ruler of the popular music kingdom.

HIP HOP IS DEAD

Some people didn’t agree, and so (nominal) rappers and fast-food connoisseurs Das Racist were asked by flavorwire to offer a rebuttal.

SASHA FRERE JONES: STOP TRYING TO KILL RAP

Although I respect their tone, and they’re very smart guys, I felt like they were overly critical of SFJ and really discarded some valid points of his about the state of hip-hop as a genre without really justifying it beyond “there’s no point in talking about this, and if there were, you wouldn’t be able to talk about it because you’re not legitimate, because you’re white.”  Now, I think that’s probably true; it’s not as legitimate when SFJ says hip-hop is dead than when Nas said it in 2006, and honestly Frere-Jones is insulting in being so dismissive of that fact.

I posted this in the comments section, but thought I’d clean it up and expand upon it a little bit in this space.

I hear what SFJ is saying – hip-hop, defined as a genre of music composed of syncopated rhythms and spoken word raps [+/- the bonethugs of the world]as epitomized by wu-tang, and nas, and snoop (pre-1996) et. al, was THE defining ‘mode’ for commercially successful/mainstream music for about 20 (i would say 15) years. And now it is not, in the same way that Big-band/swing, jazz, (what is now prefaced by ‘classic’) rock, disco, all had their own moments (of varying length) in the sun. I don’t think this is a pointless argument, nor do I think Frere-Jones fails to compellingly present it. In the mode that metal is ‘dead,’ to state one example given by SFJ. Sure, metal bands aren’t topping the charts, and you don’t often hear metal at a ‘mainsteam’ party or club or bar, or on mainstream radio, but at the same time the shit Mastodon and Between the Buried and Me, and Arsis, and Gorod, and Neuraxis have been writing and busting out have been fucking legendary, innovative, completely metal albums.

When you look at the state of ‘hip-hop’ today, OF COURSE there are still great rappers producing great songs (and funny, semi-surprisingly eloquent rappers making hilarious stoner jams about combination fastfood restaurants not present in the tonier areas of connecticut), but from my (admittedly white, middle-class, college-educated) experience, hip-hop (as textbook defined above) has ceded control of the airwaves, speaker cones, and earbuds of the mainstream for a decidedly more disco/techno/euro/whatever sound. I mean, ten years ago, ALL you heard at parties, wherever, was rap -juvenile, jay-z, wu-tang, whatever. And now, well, there’s a lot of Justice, Crookers, Lady Gaga, whatever. And just because Kid Cudi raps over a crookers banger or P.Diddles sponsors Felix Da Housecat mixtapes now doesn’t make those sounds “hip-hop.” They’re electro with someone rapping over them. There IS a difference. Would the verses of “Foe tha Love of Money” laid over an electro beat still be hip-hop? NOPE. not even close.

To conclude: could you see New York State of Mind topping the charts is it was released these days? Or blowing up in the clubs and whatnot? I mean it’s about as perfect a hip-hop song as you’ll find, but the mainstream’s tastes have changed. I doubt that matters to you (as you expressed) and nor should it. Metal heads couldn’t give a flying fuck that they don’t get airplay, and 5 years ago, pre-Cudi and pre-Cool Kids, neither did Crookers or the Bloody Beetroots. so it goes.

P.S. using Enter The Wu-Tang to justify the artistic merit of rap skits is kind of fraudulent, as the loose humor, introspection and easy rapport they have are by FAR the exception rather than the rule. You guys seriously enjoy listening to dramatic reenactments of a girl getting a cumshot in the eye (Chronic 2001.. or was it the Slim Shady LP?) or Biggie getting his dick sucked, or whatever the fuck is going on inbetween Stankonia’s tracks? Not saying skits and whatnot CAN’T be good… just that they generally aren’t, due to lack of effort. why defend that?

Today:  Excision & Datsik – Calypso (Original Mix)*

DOWNLOAD

Since, as previously noted, this is Not A Music Blog, I will not elaborate overlong on these tracks.  That said, you really should listen to this song if you enjoy music that makes you want to drive a Road – Warrior like deathmobile through the decaying, apocalyptic streets of a dark, rain-soaked metropolis, alternately pummeling zombies and stopping to crip walk.  Dirt McGirt.  There must be something in the water in the U.K., that shit like this just sounds normal to them.  Still, their dementia is our gain.  I can’t wait to hear this song in a sci-fi/action movie, seriously.  Peace.

*A brief aside – I have many mp3′s tagged like this – SongName (Original Mix).  I mean, wouldn’t it be assumed that a song is the ‘original mix’ if not otherwise noted?  I think remix culture may have gone too far.  Coming soon – artists releasing remixes of songs without ever releasing the originals.  At what point is a remix simply a new track that samples some short snippets of another track?  Philosophical dillemas of the laptop dj era.