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.]

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.

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)

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.

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]

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.

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.