Thursday, October 2, 2008

Thoughts on Stuff

I. I was listening to the Faint earlier today (whom I absolutely love) and realized that this song has developed an eerie relevance viz. the Looming Financial Crisis:


Some lyrics:

as i lay to die the things i think
did i waste my time, i think i did- i worked for life

all we want are just pretty little homes
our work makes pretty little homes

like a cast shadow
like a fathers dream
have a cut out son
what's a worse disease
to get that pretty little home

...

all we want are just pretty little homes
our work makes pretty little homes
agenda suicide, the drones work hard before they die
and give up on pretty little homes

(Caesura mine, lyrics from here.)

Oooh...I've been thinking a lot about the Faint's weird puritanical streak recently, after listening to them in the car-ride home from D.C. last weekend. Sasha pointed out that they kind of hate sex; listening to their corpus, they seem to generally be repulsed by physicality in general. Cf: "Casual Sex," & "Worked Up So Sexual from Blank Wave Arcade; "Glass Danse," "Your Retro Career Melted," & "Posed to Death" from Danse Macabre; and "Erection" & "Birth" from Wet From Birth.
Interesting. They also hate on hipsters (passim) and the pharmaceutical industry ("Symptom Finger"). One could definitely locate them in some sort of thematic and/or moral space close both to the Roman Satirists and to 16th- and 17th-century (and beyond) Christian writers, which is funny, cause they make dance music.


II.
Watching last night's Daily Show just now (on my computer), I was struck by some stuff:

First of all: does Peggy Noonan talk like that all the time? I feel like that'd be kinda draining.
More importantly, Jon at one point accuses McCain (/some abstraction of Modern American Political Discourse) of talking to voters as if we were children. Stewart asks Noonan why McCain can't say "I'll won't let gays get married and we'll try to overturn Roe v. Wade" instead of "I'll pick judges who'll strictly interpret the constitution and won't legislate from the bench." See, Jon: That's how it's ALWAYS BEEN. Appealing to the Founders (in whatever form: Protestantism's doctrine of sola scriptura, Roman emperors appealing to the principles of Augustus, &c.) is one of the most powerful political tactics. And it's hardly a tactic, really. It's really just practical manifestation of the human tendency to advantageously alter the past to suit current situations. "I'll do it the way we used to do it!" is intimately connected to the equally pervasive "Golden Age" meme (which I once heard is generally established as approximately 50 years earlier than "Now," whenever "Now" was. In retrospect, this seems like not far back enough [relatively speaking], and may have possibly only applied to ancient peoples with little established history [nor anything really resembling modern history whatsoever] and very short life spans, but whatever.) The thing that really frustrates me about partisanship is that it blinds people to the bigger picture: the hierarchies and interrelationships that exist between the Haves and the Have-Nots, the Rulers and the Ruled; and the discourses and praxes that maintain and strengthen those structures. McCain has absolutely no need to be forthright about his agenda, that's simply not how it even works. Nobody, except possibly nymphomaniacs with Asperger's, would ever say "Hey, wanna go fuck in my room?" And yet you don't see Jon Stewart criticizing anyone who uses the decades-old "Wanna get high in my room?" line.

III. Who else is excited for the Palin-Biden debate? It's gonna be like watching a puppy running into an electric fence, over and over and over, for 90 minutes. Schadenfreudey!

IV. Yo, it is cold in Brooklyn.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A Shockingly Good Point


It's like a really bad Disney movie. You know? The hockey mom, 'Oh I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska,' and she's the PRESIDENT, and it's like she's facing down Vladamir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It's absurd, it's totally absurd, and I don't understand why more people aren't talking about how absurd it is.



It's true! How long until the Internet produces a video of Palin hunting terrorists with a plane? (BONUS QUESTION: Considering the McCain camp has already compared Obama campaign workers to wolves, will the McCain camp make that video first?)

The most shocking part? The quote's from Matt Damon.

Celebrities offering cogent, accurate political opinions? What's next? Dogs and cats living together?


(P.S.: Go watch Ghost Busters)

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Yay Britney!

Britney Spears won 3 VMAs tonight, delivered 3 brief, coherent, charming acceptance speeches, and looked great.

I'm so relieved. She's become imbued with a certain cultural significance by her meteoric rise and very public meltdown. Her mental health has become res publica, and her rehabilitation will do us all some good.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Más 106&Parkblogging!

Now with me saying nice(-ish) things about V.I.C.!
Specifically, "Wobble"


I)The video's dedicated to Cab Calloway. It's a classy touch (since they bite his style the WHOLE TIME), and also, it's nice to see ANYONE in contemporary music making any mention of anyone who made music before 1955.
II)I don't know how much V.I.C. does in the production room (although I cannot imagine him having all that much to do with the 3-man "Package Store" production team), but in the video, he does almost nothing. In the Collipark mode, there's a multi-part hook that accounts for most of the actual song. Introductory pre-song skit aside, V.I.C. is like the 4th person you see. It's almost as if he's smugly emphasizing his novelty status.
III)Is this the first time the word "vibrator" has appeared in a song on 106 & Park? 'Cause it's pretty awesome.



ALSO: the reaction of the Livest Audience to Robin Thicke (Alan Thicke's son, he looks like this [for the record]) is BLOWING MY MIND. He's looks (and, to a great extent sounds) like the second coming of Barry Manilow. And they (=mostly girls in the front) are EATING THIS SHIT UP.
SLIGHTLY RACIST FOLLOW-UP ESSAY PROMPT: Compare and contrast Robin Thicke and Barack Obama, placing special emphasis on transcending racial animus and cheekbones.
UPDATE: Now Terence J and Roxie are comparing Alan Thicke to Barack Obama themselves!

[BONUS ADD VIDEO:

Cab Calloway + Betty Boop = FUCKING AWESOME. Props to my dad for playing shit like this for us when we were kids.]

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

I <3 This Video

And it's even a T-Pain song! [Embedding disabled by request (but seriously, watch it)]

My favorite parts (OMG SPOILERZ!): "Welcome to WISCANSIN" and the pantomime bear with a top-hat.

There's a really excellent air of whimsy here, which I REALLY appreciate, especially in hip-hop videos. Despite the fact that there is just as much weed being smoked in your average rapper's abode as in your average rock band's—if not more—the videos tend to be relatively formulaic, at least in comparison to rock videos. (Which is not to say rock videos aren't formulaic; cars, girls, and [artificial-]wind-swept performances are now wholly cliché, largely thanks to the '80s. But it is precisely because rock videos had the 80s, in all their leather-clad overabundance, that such formulas have had the time and exposure to become cliché in the first place. The format's been given time to breathe a bit, I suppose.) This could be because of the smaller corpus, but I suspect at least as much credit has to be placed on the lack of wide-scale involvement in hip-hop videos by over-moneyed white boys with film degrees. I would point to Sabotage by the Beastie Boys as an example of what could have been.

I suppose some consideration could be given to the possibility, over time, of the more marginalized "indie" rap genres coming to prominence as a percentage of the overall cultural share of "hip-hop," in a way comparable to the progress made by "indie" music over the years. But I have to go pay rent now.



[BONUS ADD EMBED:

Pantomime Horses! It's a cold world.]

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A Happy Accident

Gov. David Patterson knocking John McCain:

Gov. David A. Paterson, continuing his oratorical assault on John McCain as Democrats gather in Denver for their national convention, used a phenomenon known by physicists as the “Parallax Effect” to slam the presumptive Republican nominee.

...

“When something is so far away that you cant even measure it, you take an object that’s a little closer. And by knowing the distance between you and that object, you can now assess how far away the third body is,” Mr. Paterson told New Jersey delegates in a speech on Wednesday morning.


Astronomy metaphors from a blind guy!

David Patterson: Awesome Governor, or the AWESOMEST Governor?



[Hat Tip: Wonkette]

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

AAARGH!!

There's a commercial for Wendy's stupid new artery-clogger wherein a girl offers a guy a bite of her salad, and the guy responds that he's a "Meatatarian." He then takes a bite of his sandwich which has CHEESE AND BREAD ON IT. He also has french fries, which are (technically) made from POTATOES!

I'm sorry. This commercial comes on ALL THE TIME, and it really INFURIATES ME.


It's so infuriating as to not even be on stupid YouTube for me to link to. God damnit.



ALSO: WENDY'S. YOU ARE NOT NOT FAST FOOD. YOU ARE AN ESTABLISHMENT WHEREIN ONE IS SERVED 'FOOD' FROM BEHIND A COUNTER IN A RAPID FASHION. GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELF.

Again, I realize it's just a stupid slogan and I'm a worse person for getting riled up by it, but still: I AM FUCKING RILED.



Also also: Bangkok Dangerous looks like the most retarded movie of all time. Seriously. The marketing campaign is literally: "ACTION MOVIE! EXPLOSIONS! ASIAN CHICKS!" Towards the end of the trailer, since it's an action movie, the time comes for the gravel-voiced announcer to make a pun based on the title. So he says, "Things are about to get...Dangerous." That's not a pun; that's a fucking crime.

I Love Theoretical Math Articles on Wikipedia

LOVE them:
An approximation algorithm is called a c-approximation algorithm for some constant c if it can be proven that the solution that the algorithm finds is at most c times worse than the optimal solution. Here, c is called the approximation ratio. Depending on whether the problem is a minimization or a maximization problem, this can either denote c times larger or c times smaller, respectively. For example, the vertex cover problem and traveling salesman problem with triangle inequality each have simple 2-approximation algorithms. In contrast to that it's proven that the traveling salesman problem with arbitrary edge-lengths can not be approximated with approximation ratio bounded by a constant as long as the Hamiltonian-path problem can not be solved in polynomial time.


They're like those embedded 3-d Magic Eye posters for your entire left hemisphere! If you look hard enough, you can see a sailboat, travelling the shortest route between several islands that are various fixed distances from each other.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Addendum:

Kim Kardashian just said that this year she wanted to "do things that make [her] uncomfortable" and "step out of [her] box."



...



Buttsecks?

The Dream Is The New T-Pain

"Feat." in the Number 7 AND Number 6 videos on today's 106 & Park? GTFO.

Where ARE you, Nate Dogg? Truly, the world mourns for thee. Please, come back and Regulate all over these inferior fools who have welled up in your absence like feudal states after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

David Brooks Is an Idiot

"Barack Obama has decided upon a vice-presidential running mate. And while I don’t know who it is as I write, for the good of the country, I hope he picked Joe Biden.

Biden’s weaknesses are on the surface. He has said a number of idiotic things over the years and, in the days following his selection, those snippets would be aired again and again.

But that won’t hurt all that much because voters are smart enough to forgive the genuine flaws of genuine people."

(Emphasis mine)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

You WISH, Brooks. Voters are petty and borderline amnesiac.



Like, who gets PAID to write shit like this? I was doing an OK job of not being upset earlier, but now that I'm drunk, I can say it: Joe Biden was a fucking STUPID CHOICE. Sorry, Barry, but Biden means you're playing McCain's game. Biden's a complete and utter toolface who, by virtue of being a slimy career politician, has believable foreign policy credentials. Woo-motherfucking-hoo. Ugh. Hype is most of what Barry had going for him, and, by picking Biden, he acknowledged it as such, and, in doing so, deflated its power.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Politics of Drafting

At a town hall meeting in New Mexico today, John McCain endorsed the draft, telling a pro-draft question-asker "I don't disagree with anything you said."

The question is:
1)Will enough of the right kind of people (i.e. people who don't spend their days writing "Moulitsas" after their first name all over their notebook) will notice/care about this to put it on the teevee tonight/this week/ever?
2)IF (and, obviously, only IF) this does become an issue, and McCain is forced to address it in some way, will he back out of this statement? Sure, it's on the internet, but he's a politician, and the draft issue actually comes equipped with a really handy escape-hatch: "I respect the bravery and heroism of the men and women of our volunteer military..." &c, &c. Yay troops! Yay military! Yay [Apologizing politician]! Points are scored with the right demographics, the end. But McCain is also pitching himself on his "straight talk," such that actually being coerced into repudiating his own statement in a relatively short time-frame would potentially do some damage (consider Obama's recent polling woes against the background of the "moving to the center" meme that's been percolating all summer for the general idea.) The thing is, a lot of people (NOT just THE MSM [boo! hiss! off with their heads! &c], but real, genuine, vote-casting people) completely buy into McCain's honest maverick schtick, because he sells it hard, and it makes sense to people—McCain plays on the whole Rambo/The A-Team locus in the American popular consciousness. The net effect is why I wonder about 1, above.

I'd like to think that reinstating the draft is held so abhorrent among the general populace that McCain's support for it would significantly decrease his popularity. On the other hand, there are a lot of people whose bellicosity has survived (if not increased) in the face of the senescence and/or obesity that has long disqualified them for military service, but not for voting.

I still don't think it'll ever get brought up effectively, though.


[Hat tip Queerty]


(Totally ADD BONUS LINK: NAND)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Onion Is Just So Great Sometimes

From an article about Obama's secret hillbilly brother:
A statement issued last week by Obama's top adviser, David Axelrod, claimed that the two lived together only for a brief period in 1981, shortly before Barack left to attend Columbia University and Cooter had to drop out of chicken-killing school because an air conditioner fell on his head.


Brilliant.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Work is Gonna Be SO Much More Tolerable

The Daily Intelligencer says the Yankees might not make it to the playoffs. This would be AMAZING. I've always considered the Yankees to be kind of evil, and when they STOLE JOHNNY DAMON from the Red Sox after the Sox beat them for the first time in forever, their status as the Evil Empire of baseball was cemented in my mind. Plus, I'm not a Sports Guy by nature, and it's REALLY HARD to care about baseball (I like to say it's the reason they invented SportsCenter.) So, people (=New Yorkers=my coworkers) not talking about baseball this fall will be really pleasant.

NOTE: I sort of like the Mets, in as much as the only things I know about them are that they're underdogs and from Brooklyn. So if they do well and people talk about them, it'll be substantially more tolerable.

Good Stupid

The New Yorker, that most ivory of aesthetic towers and highest of Critic-with-a-capital-C dudgeon, loves Wipeout, the absolutely amazing summer throw-away "competition show" (as TNY calls it) on ABC. Somebody (Gawker? Mollie? I just can't TELL ANYMORE!) once referred to it as "Guts for grown-ups," which is EXACTLY what it is, except in the water, and (obviously, in these oh-so po-mo times), 300% snarkier. I think the final obstacle in Wipeout is way less hard than that final huge chaff-and-boulders-and-shit-spewing mountain at the end of Guts.

I first caught it at the beginning of the summer (maybe the 1st ep, even) at Mollie's, cause she and Rach don't pay for cable. Which is to say: Mollie and I (especially I) are fucking BLEEDING EDGE cultural mavens.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

RIP Isaac Hayes

OH NOES!

"Why are so many good people dying?" -Roomie Rachel*



*Quoting friends/roommates on your blog copywright Julia Allison

Thursday, July 31, 2008

It's Stuff Like This That Prevents Me From Being Too Worried About November

The f'ing WALL STREET JOURNAL OP-ED PAGE DOESN'T LIKE MCCAIN.

It's funny, because the editorial actually accuses McCain of acting like his opponent will lose the race on his own; in fact, it seems like Obama is the one who could be resting on his laurels right now. Hopefully (see what I did there?) he doesn't.


[Via TMN]

Monday, July 28, 2008

Barack Oblogging

Radley Balko basically captures all my quibbles with Obama in his latest Fox News column (yes, he does a column for Fox. Get over it.)

The thing is, every single one of these are politically easy positions. Willie Nelson has earned my everlasting ire (despite his absolutely amazing collabo with Snoop Dogg [SPOILER: IT'S ABOUT SMOKING POT]) for his free memetic PR on behalf of the Farm Lobby; similarly, nobody who is interested in getting elected to anything and is not either a certain crazy elf from the Midwest or a certain web-popular Texan Obstetrician dare oppose the War on Drugs or expanding federal powers. Needless to say, a Democrat who goes against the Teachers' Union has all the chance of a Republican who hates Jesus.

It's not surprising, it's just a good reminder to certain people (like my father) that simply electing a youthful, charismatic, less-evil-than-most-other-politicians Black guy is going to magically change the world.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Sam Watches Silly Commercials

So there's a commercial for a "pancake puff pan," which is basically a cast-iron pan that's been divided into several hemispherical cups (if you will.) You pour pancake batter into said cups, heat on the stove, and you get...wait for it...spherical(ish) pancakes! OMG! Apparently, you can also use it to make round brownies! Any relatively homogenous baked good of your choice can be made vaguely spherical. It's one of the most pointless products I've ever encountered. Yes, you can do a fairly decent number of things with it, but every single thing it does can be replicated by preexisting equipment found in all but the worst-equipped kitchens.
So anyway, here's the commercial, in Spanish:

(I couldn't find an English version on YouTube, and the way the Spanish announcer pronounces it "Pahncayk Pouffs" is excellent.)

Monday, July 7, 2008

For Great J.U.S.T.I.C.E.


This song is apparently produced and/or released by some sort of musical entity named J.U.S.T.I.C.E League (it's unclear because they seem to be identified en masse after the lead guy and the hook-singer, which position usually falls to the producers. But it also seems to be the imprint under which the record was released. Whatever.)

1)It sucks cause Aquaman can only produce albums underwater.
2)C.f. (in your own mind, apparently, because none of them seem to be online) the commercials for the 2008 B.E.T. Awards, featuring rap stars (Lil' Wayne, inter alios) with superpowers. Is Irwin from Billy & Mandy the new face of African-American culture?


Also:
Consider me way charmed by the new Lil Wayne video:

(especially the part where he raps in the port-a-potty.)



Take of every ZIG!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The Glorious Return of 106 & Parkblogging



Nothing specific, really, I'm just charmed by this one. The homage to this Nike commercial from a few years ago is cute, and the video is chock-a-block full of the hypercolorful clothing that's sweeping "the streets" as of late, which I simply adore/covet (in particular, scope what Andre 1500 is wearing.)

In other news, I still kinda hate The-Dream. I just saw that his album is named LoveHate. Seriously.

BEEEEEEEES!

Bees!

I tried to find the relevant clip from Sealab 2021, but I don't think YouTube has it, the bastards.

Great Minds Think Alike

Just like I do, Billy Collins <3s Looney Tunes. I especially identified with this part:
As unsophisticated as any nine year old, I had never been to an opera when I saw Chuck Jones's Wagnerian parody in which Bugs sings Brünnhilde's role in a blonde wig stuffed under a helmet with horns. The first symphony orchestra I ever saw was a cartoon one with a fat man playing a tiny flute and a studious-looking dog with triangle duties -- plus, a conductor wielding a "baton" and wearing "tails." There I saw my first bassoon.

There are SO MANY great pieces of classical music that now serve only to evoke in me images of synchronized-swimming ducks, or highly choreographed routines with hammers, thanks to Looney Tunes.


[Via the almost-always interesting Morning News]

Monday, June 30, 2008

Ugh.

This is absolutely disgusting.

On the other hand, how can we possibly expect a human father to act rationally towards his son in a situation like this? Shit like this happens often enough to be a fairly significant problem. The only answer, to me, is to reduce the number of people with this kind of power, and reduce the power individuals have. The only other possibilities are this kind of miscarriage of justice or expecting/coercing a parent (or child, or spouse, or friend, or...) to act inhumanly towards a person they love. Not cool.


[Via Radley "The Agitator" Balko]

Hindu-Christian Syncretism in India

Awesome.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Panopticon

I guess there's only so much ambient Bill-of-Rights-support to go around, as hot on the heels of the Supreme Court's dismissal of the D.C. gun ban in Heller, comes this little gem:
PHILADELPHIA - JUNE 26, 2008 (WPVI) -- 44-year old Andre Moore is being held at the 18th Police District by the very officers he apparently wanted to kill.

At least that's the message he allegedy sent out to the world in a disturbing, hate filled rant on YouTube.

...

Moore faces a number of charges, including aggravated assault.

(Emphasis mine.)

Seriously? As the article points out, it's highly unlikely that any of these charges will stick. That's not really the point, however; the burden of proof needs to be on the State when it comes to exercising force against its citizens.

[Hat Tip Hit & Run]

Thursday, June 26, 2008

FLASHBACK!

So I'm so bored at work I just google image searched my own name, and found this little gem:




For those of you keeping score at home: that's me in the very upper left, in the brown jacket, and Nick "Nicky Cizzle" Crane 2nd from the right in the 2nd row (3rd, if you're counting from the top), in the bluish sweater.

I was so fat, and he was so tiny.

Anyway, the pic was taken at Eartha in Yarmouth. I was part of some sort of vague NASA-related earth-monitoring something-or-other. I dont' know. It was middle school...

Monday, June 23, 2008

@Workblogging: What 4th Amendment? Edition

So now, apparently La Migra are borrowing tactics from their drug-bustin' bretheren and harassing innocent people at home. The only surprising thing is that there is a concerted legal effort to stop the practices.

The money quote from the article:
"As long as we have people willing to flaunt the law, then the possibility of an innocent person having to endure wrongful arrest will always be there," said Jean Towell, president of the Citizens for Immigration Reform Dallas.

The thing is, it's really just incidental that immigration is the issue at hand. You could replace "flaunt the law" with any one of your favorite illegal activities:
"As long as we have people willing to double park, then the possibility of an innocent person having to endure wrongful arrest will always be there."

It's a scary look into the mind of the law-and-order types who are pointing this country in a worrisome direction.



[Hat tip Radley "The Agitator" Balko]

Thursday, June 19, 2008

IMHO

So I read Julia Allison's tumblr (or whatever)—voluntarily, so I get what I deserve, I guess. So today:
“He just doesn’t bullshit. And he doesn’t suffer bullshitters. Which is so rare that people think he’s being a dick. But he’s not. He’s just being honest.” - me talking to Ronen about Marco


She quotes herself. That's it. (Actually, the self-quotage is the title, and the post itself is merely self-attribution and name-dropping.)

I knew she was a fameball (to use Gawker's delightful neologism), and I'm fine with that. This, however, strikes me as just tacky. Look to Socrates: the point is to be witty, or insightful, or provocative enough so that other people record your words posteritati. Quoting something you said earlier IRL on your own blog is the equivalent of telling the same story to everyone you know, all the time, forever.

Not a good look, Julia.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Perhaps...Too Clever?

This week, the The Onion did their American Voices feature on Ron Paul's dropping out of the presidential race. All three people featured have the last names of people who work for Reason Magazine, including Radley Balko, the guy I interned for at Cato.

("Hat tip" Reason Hit & Run and Radley's blog The Agitator)

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Dear The-Dream,



the only thing I hate more than your ascot is your hyphen.


Fondest wishes,
-Sam

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

This Really Pisses Me Off

According to this CNN article about it, the children of the FLDS compound members in Texas will be returned to them, but:
Under the judge's order, the Department of Family and Protective Services will still have the right to visit and interview the children.

These unannounced visits could entail medical, psychological and psychiatric examinations, and the parents must not intervene.


This is ridiculous. The very fact the kids are being returned speaks to the fact that prosecutors didn't really find anything wrong or harmful.

I actually posted a pretty long comment about this on 23/6 when they covered it. Basically, the government is prosecuting parents for their religious beliefs. Like I said on 23/6, this is a frightening precedent for parents with non-traditional religious beliefs, e.g. atheists.

("hat tip" Reason Hit & Run)

Is It Just Me...



...or does 50 look really gay in this video? Maybe I just have Hiding in Hip Hop on my mind, but certainly the highly-toned black men in high-fashion military-inspired garb—not to mention 50's jaunty little chapeau—aren't helping.

Random @Work Stuff

I. This profoundly bitter-yet-accurate Ken Layne article. It's why people need not to spend too long in D.C. He is right, though, is the worst part.
(Via Gawker)

II.
DARPA's ("Immanetizing the Eschelon Since 1973") new "robot pack mule:"

IT STUMBLES AND GETS UP! NOT OK.
(Via PopSci, ultimately via Daniel)

Friday, May 30, 2008

Because we were listening to "Crush on You"

Just had to let you know here is a list of "Lil'" rappers & producers.

It's not an official Wikipedia list, but it's good enough.

I bet there are more. (Thoughts? Does anybody actually read this?)

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Who Let You In Here?

RE: This Rick Ross video:


Nelly's an easy, understandable mistake to make. He's putting out a new album, maybe there was label pressure, whatever. People used to like him, fine. (Apparently, he's actually more interesting and articulate [OMG NOT RACIALLY TRANSCENDENT!] when he's freestyling, or at least during this one freestyle he did on Rap City.)

ON THE OTHER HAND: WTF is up with the white guy with the nasty hair and trashy hat? He looks like Kevin Federline campaigning to get elected mayor of Margaritaville. Get him out of there.

Rick: if you're so desperate for a hook-singing-guy as to stoop to Beach Blanket Trailer Trash there, maybe think about giving Nate Dogg a call. I'm pretty sure he's available, and maybe a little bored and/or hungry.

Monday, May 12, 2008

MATCH GAME!

I fell in love with amazing '70s game show Match Game Sophomore year of college, when we had cable in the dorms and I spent HUGE amounts of time watching GSN. I loved a lot of the shows (in particular, the similarly-awesomely-'70s Richard Dawson-era Family Feud, in which our drunken host would just stick his tongue down the throats of female contestants in front of their fathers, brothers, and husbands), but Match Game was the BEST. Period. Subversive, winkingly dirty, clever as hell, full of in-jokes and weird sexual tension.

It's been off the air for quite some time now, although the Wikipedia says there's been a few efforts to revive it. I say the time is nigh. It was in SNL, for chrissakes!:



(BRILLIANT, btw.)

SO! BRING BACK MATCH GAME!

Clearly, there are some problems. It'd have to be on relatively late at night, OR on some sort of premium-cable-type channel (MAYBE GSN, maybe like, Spike? or Logo? something like that? G4?). The hardest part would naturally be people. I think the ideal host would be someone like Joe McHale or maybe Greg Proops...someone snarky but not angry (NOT like the people who do Root of All Evil). As for guests? All things considered, the show could potentially be a vehicle for post-reality tv stars, and could be manned on a semi-permanent basis by members of the same pool of c-list comedian-pundits who show up on Best Week Ever/I Love The.... Doug Benson is no Charles Nelson Riley, but it'd be a start.

So yeah!

Let's start a petition or something...

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Irony!

Isn't it funny that Florida and Michigan's tragic mania to influence the election by being the earliest states to hold primaries DIRECTLY CAUSED the chain of events before us, when the last 8-10 states to hold primaries may end up determining the Democrat nominee, and therefore the next 4 years?

HAHA.

I guess I'm ultimately glad my parents moved out of Florida when my brother and I were still young...(They could've picked a better state than Maine, though.)


In other news, I'm pretty sure that my recent trip to D.C. has caused me to fall impossibly behind in my RSS-reading. That I'm doing this doesn't help, but whatever.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

We're boned

From
Wonkette
:
More than 6 million homes will go into foreclosure before this housing collapse is finished, and the number of houses now sitting empty in America has reached a staggering 18.6 million — including 2.3 million currently on the market.
Imagine every housing unit in the entire state of California suddenly empty. That's about how many houses are vacant today.
...
Columbia professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz did an interview with CNBC on Friday. Guess what he said about the combination of food and energy inflation plus the housing collapse?

"This is going to be one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression."



Two points:
1)Wonkette adds, with typical snark, "And this is why we need to take a long, hard look at Jeremiah Wright's religious sermons about black people." I'm not so sure I agree with their implicit point (i.e., that just maybe there are more important things the candidates should be discussing.) The thing is, based on everything I've heard about the candidates' economic positions, the question really seems to be: whose underinformed, ill-conceived, special-interest-pandering-to economic policy will make the upcoming crisis the least worse?
2)My generation doesn't really have a work ethic, from what I can tell. There was a spate of trend pieces a few years ago about how people around my age joining the workforce for the first time were pissing off their supervisors by whining too much and expecting praise for their every action. Recent studies indicate that a vast majority of my peers want to be famous, and I'm pretty sure the percentages just increase as the kids get younger.

I'm making a prediction: in 2011, President Obama announces that he's rescuing the economy by nationalizing MTV and making everybody the star of their own reality show.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

I can't believe I'm blockquoting Bill Maher

But I am (apparently):

There's a seemingly dry headline this week that is a lot scarier than it looks: Bank of America's profit declined 77% this quarter. They're a big bank. They're a consumer-oriented bank. And it turns out their losses are not just coming from the subprime mortage crisis. They're coming from small business loans, construction loans, and simple credit card debt. Bottom line--people can't pay their bills.

The time for arguing over whether or not we're in a recession is not only past, it seems almost quaint now--a little math game that we had the luxury of playing back when things seemed like they might improve at any moment. Whether or not the eventual numbers reveal that this is technically a recession, professional and amateur economists alike can now agree that the economy is technically "in the shitter."



Wow.

I'm pretty sure that the Iraq war is significantly contributing to this recession. It's costing us hundreds of trillions of dollars, the costs to local governments and businesses to comply with various bizarre 'anti-terrorism' regulations is onerous, and the already-rising costs of health care are only going to be pumped up to incredible new heights by the demand from veterans—both military and civilian (in the form of contractors and volunteers)—who have been both physically and psychologically wounded by their experiences. It's a god-damned shame.


I'm pretty sure Frederique Bastiat is loling in his grave right now...

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I only talk about T-Pain

Apparently.

Anyway: T-Pain revealed on 106 & Park today that he has a moustache tattooed on the inside of his index finger, for the purpose of holding it up to his upper lip. I can't honestly say whether this makes me like him more or less.

He also out-shouted fingerstash.com, which he claimed was some sort of networking site for finger-stache enthusiasts. Or something. As of right now, it's a brief green logo(?), and then a redirect to a "page does not exist on this server" message.

This is as mysterious as it is silly and ultimately pointless. God bless you, 106 & Park.

Bonus ridiculous: watching various teams of either slightly-too-lanky or slightly-too-chunky high school dancers compete to music videos.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

106 & Parkblogging

It's on right when I get home from work. It's hilarious and depressing. And the best part is that the music videos AND the hosts interaction with the audience/the guests/each other are BOTH hilarious and depressing in equal measure.

Anyway: I just watched Terrence the Male VJ give Tracy Morgan a pound for not having to pay child support. And then they played the video for "Too Silly" by V.I.C., the latest terribly-rapping, silly-dance-relying-upon, bar-lowering nonsense consort of Soulja Boy. Apparently he, V.I.C., and Hurricane Chris (? I heard of him in like...Rolling Stone? or something? I don't know his song) are all on the same record label, according to the random older black man who did the shout-outy bit at the end of this "Too Silly" song. Now I know who to blame.
And then after that video, Tracy Morgan gave the least enthusiastic talk-up EVER for Superhero Movie. He definitely said something very close to, "The paycheck was good." Yeah. And then Terrence the Male VJ, and Rocsi (seriously, how her name is spelt in the titles at the bottom of the screen) the Female VJ asked Tracy Morgan a bunch of too-in-depth questions about the movie and comic books.

Also inspired: "New Orleans in the house!" [pan to 6 cheering girls] "Well, there's only 6 of them, but they're here!"

Monday, March 10, 2008

So everybody is sort of obsessed with Vampire Weekend (see: Spin, most of the internets.) I just experienced them directly for the first time, not counting their forgettable appearance on Stereogum's OKX: A Tribute To OK Computer (which is basically inferior in every way to Exit Music: Songs for Radio Heads, which is BRILLIANT), and, I gotta say: underwhelmed. Woo, dancy indie music. Great. Their music video is visually appealing (enough), in a way that reminded me of Etsy and makes me want to try and expand the semantic range of the term "lo-fi." Again: so very indie-as-usual. Again: underwhelmed.

Their playlist on MTV Hits is way better: Mariah Carey ("Fantasy," and the boys reference the Tom-Tom Club sample and ODB), Ice Cube ("Good Day"), Basement Jaxx "Romeo"), Kanye ("Good Life," which is a f'n GREAT video [although, T-Pain: VACATION. U NEEDZ IT. GTFO my tv. Srsly.]).

I think I'd rather see these guys dj than play a concert...

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

T-Pain is the New Nate Dogg

Dude and his vocoder need to take a vacation. Srsly.

I got a new Ipod. It's really good to be able to listen to my music all the time. I put that shit on shuffle while I was at work today. It was so worth it.