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the french touch

hey while I'm Chris-blogging, I would be totally remiss if I didn't repost his link to this epic-if-interrupted-by-boring-interviews (actually I just skipped the interviews, let me know if I missed anything) recording of a recent DJ Falcon and Alan Braxe set at the Viper Room in LA, bringin us all back to that magical night in mid-October at Studio B -

pretty sure I've recently referenced that night as as 'the last really good time I can remember having,' which is regrettable but almost definitely true. looking forward to escaping this wintry shell, fearing that I'm not ready for it - real glad that we get that extra Feb day this year, March seems intense, and April a world away

top ten crazy asian pizza crusts

speaking of the wide world web of food, Asian tastes continue to amaze and impress - via Chris Co's google reader shared items, check out these insane fucking pizzas!!! mayonaise-injected shrimp nuggets, cookie crusts topped with shrimp with blueberry dipping sauce, "abalone sauce cheesy lava stuffed crust pizza"... you can't make this stuff up! the awesome thing is that most of these are offered by major, even international chains like Pizza Hut, this is considered totally mainstream behavior for far eastern pizza! instead (ok, maybe alongside) of creating a American-influenced McGlobal food culture, globalization et al keeps fueling new ways for different cultures to express how really fucking different they are

the girl with the most cake

speaking of internet pleas - Andrea, author of what is shaping up to be one of the greatest blogs of all time, cake-time, needs your help finding a recording of a piece called "Three Dances" by John Cage. art-music loving bros, I know you are out there, anyone have this?

I also have a plea, which is for you to read Andrea's blog on the regs if you are interested in valuable and totally approachable personal finance tips, mouth-watering descriptions and great photos (courtesy of Grace natch) of amazing-sounding restaurants like this Korean fried chicken place, delicious-sounding recipes that even I might be able to cook, kittens in the bathtub, kittens getting adopted, etcccc - as those of you that know Andrea know she a great person to know, one of my very favorites, and it is awesome that she now has such a robust and true-to-life internet presence to know - do not miss!

time eroding, the long night passing

thx Hanx for drawing attention to this gem from the aforementioned 1993 Steely Dan bootleg - a previously unknown-to-me Walter Becker solo song, "Book of Liars," that I've listened to 39 43 times so far today - come with me, this is a gorgeous, subtly swinging, quietly soulful ballad with really fucking heartbreaking and poetic lyrics and sax licks all over the fucking place -

steely dan - book of liars (live)

from Becker's 94 solo album "11 tracks of whack!"  seriously!  listen to how fucking sophisticated yet emotional this is!  listen to the ache in Becker's voice in that last verse!  goddamn this is good does anyone on this internet have the mp3 of the album vers, or the rest of whack for that matter??

spring fever

highlights from the past week of the indispensable LoHud Yankees Blog by beat writer Peter Abraham

- Spring training is a lot like LOST

- Carl Pavano gets totally pwned by a clubhouse kid after having the fucking nerve to show up at camp for free food, rehabbing, and a per diem etc (see comments) on top of the $40m he's stolen from the Yankees over the past 4 years. has any Yankees player ever been so universally, openly, and basically deservedly hated before?

- A-Rod on Joe G's new running regimen - “It’s a track meet. But I really welcome that. I like that. I’m kind of psycho myself.” no seriously folks he is! I can't help it, his utter dedication to his own weirdness is starting to grow on me

- Tony Peña's crazy new catcher drills! "At one point he had Jorge Posada, Jose Molina, Francisco Cervelli and Jason Brown all lay on their stomachs in a row. Then Pena shot four pop-ups into the sky at two-second intervals. The catchers had to get off the grass, find the ball in the sky and catch it while avoiding each other..."


- Mike Mussina indulging in some cheesy ass decoration - "Mike Mussina’s locker is in a dark corner of the clubhouse, up against a cement wall. To brighten the place up, he hung a poster of an open window overlooking the ocean. Then somebody else hung a curtain over the window and added a little shelf..." the Jack Shepard of the pitching staff! I can't really explain it he just is. update, photo!



- and, in the Times - talk about burying the lede! Joba "walks among the lockers bare-chested, displaying his big tattoos and his little gold nipple rings." Just when you thought this guy couldn't get any more fucking awesome n.h.!

- Phil "Franchise" (expectations much?) Hughes is also fucking awesome! and he's got a blog! online Q&A comin up! this is gonna be a great year, I really fucking love this team again for the first time in a minute. 502mates we definitely gotta get cable for real by April

snow ii

yessssssssssssssssssssssssssss, working from home on a snow day is indeed the ultimate perk -

[insert picture of snow falling over the yard as seen from the lodge window]

this extremely budd + eno + max/msp album "cendre" by fennesz + sakamoto has been a constant companion this winter and is so very app, every song a field of shimmering, slowly-falling digital snowflakes -

fennesz + sakamoto - cendre (album)

see also the previous julee cruise/snow vibes post -

lost iv

so fucking pumped for more LOST tonight, last week's was nuts!! this show is really working on all possible levels of satisfaction right now, wowowowowow. for in-depth and on point analysis to get your juices flowing, try this recap and this analysis on darkufo, via the continually on point Alexis

caps and trades

sad to see J-Kidd go but haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to the Nets since K-Mart left and they kind of got gradually, steadily shittier... but between having been kind of out of the loop and not knowing much about esoteric NBA trading rules, I was pretty shocked when I heard the trade was going to include Keith fucking Van Horn - who is kind of intrinsically funny as a shitty overrated non-European white basketball player with admittedly good cheekbones... but more importantly I thought he had retired etc!?

well, he had, basically, but NOT officially - and, due to the insanely convoluted trades teams have to make to comply with the NBA's apparently retardedly-designed salary cap, the Mavericks actually had to sign Van Horn out of his unofficial retirement for $4m and trade him to the Nets, after which he suits up and sits on the bench for a month and then retires again, $4m richer!! "It's like hitting the lottery" - Slate explains all, as it so often does -

sooo anyone want to riff on the structural similarities between these wasteful distortions and trades for Russian and former Soviet 'hot air' under the Kyoto cap and trade system? no? well, they're there pretty obvious I guess. game on! hoops and carbon markets, where else are you gonna get that kind of blogging twofer?

full circle

hillary clinton bragged about not owning a TV

(sources: 1, 2)

totallywiredttttotallywired

worth reading, fellow caffeiends - coffee, like so many of the best things in life, is best enjoyed in small doses and frequently -

the fall - totally wired

whitey

via linky wayne, a blogging tour de force: stuff white people like - or, more accurately, stuff that bourgey liberal Democrat cosmopolitan hegemonic elite whites like!! barack obama at #7, hello!

despite the high rankings for coffee etc and despite the obv problematic nature of a list like this if you want to be 'serious' or whatever it is actually striking how many of these things I actually explicitly despise and/or publicly denounce on a regular basis, never thought of it as sublimated race self-hate before but who knows? then again honestly most of this stuff is genuinely fucking bullshit! I'd like to think of my hating as colorblind, or at least as motivated by my own unique deep-seated personal failings and fears and no-one else's - I want to live in an America where people of all races can freely loathe 'travel', global 'awareness', yoga, non-profits, going outside, bragging about not having a TV, organic food, film festivals, 80s nights, natural medicine, lawyers, Juno, snowboarding, architecture, the Daily Show/Colbert Report, breakfast places, plays, Netflix, Arrested Development, renovations, difficult breakups, hating your parents, Mos Def, standing still at concerts, expensive sandwiches, Wes Anderson movies, dogs, knowing what's best for poor people, etccc!

PS - don't worry, friends of all races that like any of these things, I do not 'loathe' 'you', was kind of riffing on Alec T's eloquently misanthropic Facebook 'interests'

first viral president first rasta president

btw here's yr perfect soundtrack to vibing out on the increasingly funny viral life of the Obama candidacy - check out the indispensable True Panther blog's MP3 of a new jam from Ghanian uh dude Blakk Rasta, called BARACK OBAMA (CRUNK MIX). it is crunk indeed, with a generous side of trance-hop, an addictive, fun-to-sing hook as well as an intriguingly heterodox ideology from the US perspective - look out for the racists, end poverty in Africa, also America burn in hell for legalizing abortion!* as discussed with link-sender Steev, it'll be interesting to see if this kind of intensely international, rainbow-colored support freaks out whitey if dude makes it to the general. as Steev said, rastafarianism has no concept of 'tacking to the center' -

also of random note - Obama doesn't have a 'campaign theme song', he just randomly picks an appropriate song from his iPod before each campaign event! this is what I was talking about before - the reason the internet has adopted him as its own is because it actually seems like the guy knows how to use computers and internets and iPods etc. that's kind of the secret slogan of the Obama campaign - Barack Obama is the only candidate that is not your parents! with all due respect to my respectably internet savvy mom and dad (read: they know how to find this blog!), natch. it's a generational thing - he's one of 'us', loosely speaking.

* actually not so heterodox at all - as we were reminded this week, Bush has probably done more than any US president to help healthcare poverty etc in Africa, aaand while abortion (and homosexuality, while we're discussing the rastagenda) are obv still legal I feel like Bush probably made a pretty decent effort to curtail them or whatever, or at least they I'm pretty sure he pandered a bit to the anti- groups when he could/had to. first rastafarian prez, anyone?

spirit of competition

lest you think I've been doing nothing but lying around weakly listening to ethereal girly ambient music and melodramatic new agey Lynch soundtracks these days - which is definitely mostly true - after dark the soundtrack is generally switching back to the hard-as-fuck new Clipse, which, predictably, is great and getting better with every listen. I can hear jaded friends and bloggers etc saying 'oh it's not as exciting as vol. 1 and 2' and 'the beats aren't as good' etc but I am definitely into and definitely feeling the deepening notes of grimness, determination, and increasingly insular hatred of just about everybody else. this is motivational music, in other words. notes and zshares -

- so yeah, new emotional vibes, also more depressed and disillusioned esp Malice - see Breihan's accurate vibe-reading

- also, relatedly, more just really fucking ANGRY - the dominant vibe is still ice cold, but there are these terrifying interludes on the exhilirating "re-up intro" and "show you how to hustle" where they just fucking yell at you through this megaphone-style distortion, you can really hear their eyes popping with rage, "lookin down at you and with the conviction of God almighty / telling you your crew ain't shit, that's right!!! your crew ain't shit!!!!" , sneering megalomania, "you see it's the natural instinct of man to have this competitive drive!!! to want to be the ELITE"

- the screaming vitriol over the previously mellow Pharrell solo joint "hustle" is utterly sick and kind of a mindfuck besides given their apparent bitterness towards him

re-up - show you how to hustle

- "haters try to block the shine like the clouds / but I Will Wallace scream "freedom" through the crowd" !!!

- seriously one of the best and most insanely balanced rap crews ever, the awesome symmetry and complementarity of the two short, nasally needling Clipsebros alternating with the two gravelly-soft giants of Sand and Liva kind of reminds me in a weird way of ZS in the old days where they had two sax players, two guitarists, and two drummers, and they each sat across from each other and had similar haircuts. everyone fucking brings it on Roc Boys no doubt but check out fucking Sand killing that last verse!

re-up - roc boys

- "ski for all / I said ski for all / Sonny Bono the slopes until the reaper calls" !!!

- so awesome to see these guys totally fucking own Dey Know, and so satisfying to hear this sick beat really done heavy justice to. also, so illustrative to compare it to Wayne's verse on the mostly-shitty remix with Luda, Jeezy, etc, where he audaciously and brilliantly uses auto-tune for, sorrrrry, typical Weezyish free associative rambling bullshit and poop jokes. Sand kind of owns this one too, no?

re-up - dey know yayo

villianaires

check out this great video for lil wayne's "love me or hate me," courtesy of the impeccably styled and multiply talented Sam Mickens (from amazing Seattle band The Dead Science) and the Villianaires Academy - this is just really super fucking well done, great staging, lighting, wardrobe, tasteful use of blood, subtly funny in parts (huuuuge dollar bill!) but never anything other than a sincere and totally successful attempt to make an awesome video for an awesome rap song

laura

as far as I'm concerned sheryl lee's performance as laura palmer in fire walk with me is w/o a doubt the best performance by any actor or actress in movie history, it is fucking insane that she wasn't nominated for a million oscars. you should probably not bother watching this if you aren't already familiar, but for those that are - the ending, with laura in the red room with agent cooper, is just devastatingly powerful, this seriously makes me bawl my fucking brains out when I'm in the 'right' mood, as I am this cloudy sunday -

it's her reaction when the angel appears that really fucking slays me, that heartbreaking mix of absolute joy and shocked disbelief - the intense, laughing/crying revelation that, despite all the evil clouding her life, and despite the darkness and self-destruction in her own heart, she is still redeemed

angelo badalamenti - the voice of love

(also, LOSTies may note the, ahhh, extremely direct similarities between this piece and that recurring (though recently rare), stirringly romantic musical theme from LOST)

lulz

it's what you do things for aka the ultimate currency

barack obama subscribed to your feed

update: on further reflection, I think I've realized why I love this so much - while my generalized, reflexive cynicism about politics prevents me from really feeling the more earnest variations on the Obamamania 'change' etc vibe, these are all smaller and way more accessible, yet awesome and often genuinely moving examples of everyday heroism that have emotional content I can actually connect with. I mean, I have a hard time imagining what 'change' really could be tbh (though I have an easier time imagining what it's not), but I can totally imagine Barack subscribing to my blog feed, leaving a comment here and there, checkin out the Aa myspace, etc, and yeah maybe he was already making some coffee and made an extra cup for me knowing I would need it, etc. and tbh it is really cool to have a candidate that you can have those kinds of chill fantasies about

via wayne via the secret, non-cheating google console, awesome and weirdly compelling meta-Obamamania net-art -

barack obama is your new bicycle
barack obama listened to your mp3
barack obama left a comment on your blog
barack obama smiled when I mentioned your name
barack obama e-mailed your dad and told him how great you are
etc

half heart

oh yeah, why not - I was rewatching Fire Walk With Me last week, and finally figured out (maybe figuring out is too strong a word here) what scene this song is from -

angelo badalamenti and david lynch - half heart

- it's from the scene early in the Twin Peaks High part of the movie where Laura meets James in that locker room or wherever and they make out and have that distractingly retarded dialogue about how turkeys are really stupid and she is too or whatever. a little disappointing tbh (though also tbh you also see her boobs for the first time, which is kind of intense - like, not only do we finally get to see the fabled Laura Palmer alive and in action but it's R-rated action! on the whole the beginning of the Twin Peaks section of the movie esp is so fucking satisfying, as Tim so accurately put it) but it's still such a beautiful, schmaltzy, richly melancholic, and endlessly relistenable song, reposted in honor of your val-day, whether it's annoying, pointless, frustrating, terrifying, sad, lonely, aimlessly bummed out, or even just happy - or maybe totally unremarkable and in need of a nice, soprano sax-enhanced vibe, as in your humble author's case -

postscript: OK, why not, I'm watching Fire Walk With Me again, I didn't finish it last time! - the "Half Heart"-scored locker room scene is like this, and typically for Lynch I guess, it seems to get less stupid and more weirdly compelling the third time through:

laura: just kiss me
james: it does matter we're in love
laura: james you don't know what you're talking about, quit trying to hold on so tight... I'm gone, long gone... like a turkey through the corn
james: you're not a turkey... the turkey's one of the dumbest birds on earth
laura: [tearing] ... gobble, gobble... [tremble] gobble
james: laura don't ever leave - I will never leave you
laura: [boobs]

postscript update: jesus wtf why the fuck did I fucking decide to start watching Fire Walk With Me at 2 in the morning this movie is fucking terrifying, that first Bob scene just fucked me up bad and this is only gonna get worse, Leland is PISSED about the cleanliness of Laura's hands

postscript update etc: oh right this is why


full circle: for the record 'Half Heart' appears again towards the end of the movie, at Laura and James's last meeting

bacharach

Pitchfork, typically ripping off my content without giving me credit much as they give rave reviews to bands that blatantly rip us off in various ways without giving us credit*, has also picked up on the McCainette playlist stuff and a), seems, charmingly, and multiply revealingly, maybe slightly confused that such solidly Pitchforkian taste could be held by a Republican, b) helpfully for sure adds a link to this weighty bit of McCainformation - he's got the endorsement of green lodge music icon BURT BACHARACH. huh! but didn't he put out some kind of schmaltzy anti-war 'what is this world coming to?' or something album recently?? what's his vibe on this? gonna have to wait until I hear what David and Warwick have to say, will try and do some more research on this

* I am just kidding I mean they don't read the blog obv we both just read slate whatever and I am not that salty about their goddamned reviews anymore I guess!

truth

"I have to tell you all the truth... I have to live with myself. And one day I have to give an account to God and not to nobody else of what I've done in my life. And that's why I've said and shared the stuff with y'all that I've shared with y'all today that I wouldn't like to share with y'all.''

the offspring

of note - McCain's daughter Meghan's blog, correctly noted by slate etc as refreshingly 'normal', unpolished, and almost completely apolitical (other than a brief note of Johnny Ramone's Republicanism wrt "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down" aka "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg"...!). mostly check out her playlists, which a) seem to be the most prominent feature of the blog so far, b) include really, ah, accessible commentary like "What does it feel like to win the Florida primary? It feels like the Doors song "Break on Through"...", "I've also included some of my favorite songs from classic artists like Led Zeppelin and The Smiths; like my life, wardrobe and approach to this campaign, I love to mix it up,", "this song always makes me want to drink a martini," (whoa-uh!) etc and c) well actually a lot of these playlists are like pretty OK! like she could DJ a night at any random bar in the LES and no one would know the difference. lots of standard indie and hip-hop fare plus some mildly intriguing surprises (Pulp's 'Like A Friend'!, 'Mambo Sun'!, 'Search and Destroy'!) -

and - she's apparently a CC'07 art history major?? news to me. any yung CU readers know her, have vibes to share? I can only guess that she's a big vampire weekend fan

meanwhile, her dad doesn't use computers...?? wait, seriously??

why don't you come over to my house... please

since apparently all this snow is turning to shitty rain in like 7 hours, and who knows if these are the best snowy vibes we'll get all year?, I would also like to take this opportunity to demand that you take advantage of the opportunity to really fucking deeply feel Julee Cruise's "Floating into the Night" album, amazingly available for free track by track here. without a doubt my #1 obsession of the winter, and an utterly perfect soundtrack for a snowy evening. these first two especially, seriously seriously mandatory:

julee cruise - floating
julee cruise - falling

bonus chiasm flashback!
"a beautiful, tranquilized hybrid of new age textures and vaguely '50sish pop melodies stretched out into ethereal sighs, lyrics by David Lynch, music by Angelo Badalamenti, and otherwordly singing by Ms. Cruise... it's kind of like an enigmatic, melancholy, xanaxed-out Hal David/Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick situation, three amazing talents complementing each other perfectly to create a TOTAL VIBE "

snow

hey this is a decent little snow vibe we've got going here in the lodge, it's about fucking time

pleease please treat yourself to this short and unbelievably vibeable youtube of a recent performance by Julianna Barwick, via PTW, which has utterly transfixed me for much of the past 18 hours, kind of post-Animal Collective vocal looping but stripped down to just the vocal looping and really clean, plus ethereal, enya-but-better-esque melodies that really compliment the wintry vibe in their gauzy iridescence - seriously, could anything be more obviously my shit than this??



myspace etc, interview + songs on a portuguese radio show etc, I think we're playing a show with her early next month, stay tuned!

as if this show couldn't get any better

speaking of alumni from 'yacht rock' which I hear is back or something but haven't bothered checking it out yet let me know if it's good or whatev but anyway more importantly re: LOST -


doesn't the new pilot dude remind you of a certain


???

10 high quality steely dan bootlegs for download

right here, it is exactly what the subject says it is, that is to say truly glorious. I saw an awes vid of Fagen in the early 80s playing a keytar wearing a cutoff t-shirt and sunglasses (obv) at a show, it just gets deeper

anyway these links also include a fucking 4GB of video direct from the jumbotron or whatever feed from a show from their summer 2006 tour, which I have such fond memories of seeing more or less TOTALLY SOBER with matt andrea mike nate steve phil lis chris jenna rajiv hank... who am I forgetting? what a great show. I will work on downloading this over the next couple of days and try and have a screening here sometime soon!

michelle o

nice WSJ profile on official green lodge feminine icon Michelle O, noteworthy just for that but also for

1 - the semi-implication in the article and in the 'interview outtakes' posted online that Barack maybe still hasn't totally quit smoking (update: might be reading too much into it, but the tenses seem a little cloudy...), which is unfortunate from a health perspective but also humanizing and kind of interesting. I've been curious, both b/c I feel bad for the guy to have to try and work on ending a stress-coping addiction in the middle of the most stressful time imaginable and because the (well, almost) total non-mention of his smoking in the press is a nice and weirdly old-fashioned reminder that there are still some lines, albeit totally random lines, wrt personal privacy and respect that they generally don't cross. did you know that Laura Bush is a smoker, too? but there's some kind of deal, spoken or unspoken, where the press never takes pictures of her smoking or asks or writes about it. I'll give 2:1 odds that if dude becomes president, that'll be another barrier that gets broken

2 - the WSJ's casual and totally gratuitous use of "vibe" in a supposedly serious article - not to be too blatantly carrying the torch for the much-missed and obviously ahead of the curve Internet Vibes, but I feel like this sentence would be unthinkable for the Journal in, say, 2005 or 2006, no?

"Friends and campaign aides describe them as a high-powered team built on contrasts: She's the heart to his head, the enforcer to his lapses, regimented to his laid-back, critic to his ego, details to his broad strokes, sarcasm to his sincerity, toughness to his cool vibe."

fuck that w00t bullshit maybe I am just too like not a total fucking internet nerd but I feel like 'vibe' was obviously the true breakout word of 2007

thoughts re: fight club the musical

uh, via the New Yorker blog, David Fincher is apparently finta do a Fight Club musical? book by Palahniuk, music by Trent uhhh Reznor? sounds totally fucking stupid in a potentially awesome way

as discussed w Wolfgang/Cleary Inc and others the other night, I def think of FC as an 'epochal' movie, maybe I was just young and impressionable (remember vividly having my mind blown by it during the first week of college in 1999, Liz Greene represent!) but I think it really marked a hinge in US popular culture - it was kind of like the official end of not only 'political correctness' in the wider culture but its reflection in the righteous, refusenik, ideologically-policed DIY/indie/etc culture of the 1990s.

Fight Club, in both its content and the form of its presentation (gritty, artsy, yet undeniably slick with an obviously non-DIY budget) was an axe chop through the door between popular and 'alternative', a door that I think was later totally blown off its hinges by 9/11, after which getting hung up on ideals like authenticity and artistic purity/integrity et al seemed not only old-fashioned but totally insignificant in the face of the terrifying present and a lot of people's desperate need to just have some fucking fun. hence electroclash, hence coke rap replacing backpacker rap, hence the vaguely gross feeling you get (or at least *I* get, as a hinge, 1980-baby myself) 7 years later reading Pitchfork watching Juno going to Coachella or whatever et al and seeing all the aesthetic signifiers of music that you used to think had some deeper meaning beyond how it sounds playing in the background while you read blogs being harnessed to such well-marketed, cheerfully corporate endeavors. I think FC was really emblematic of this shift, and its aesthetics and its vibe also really helped to pave the way for the 00s in a lot of obvious as well as not-so-obvious ways -

- and, while I've had a lot of fun over the last few years, I can't help but notice that it's 2008, and we're probably (over?)ripe for another cycle of cultural creative destruction. what's next? I feel changes coming, looking for signs

mothertongue

worky weekend, given powerful vibes of purpose and spiritual uplift by the music of occasz-mentioned CC'03mate yung Nico Muhly, subject of a lengthy and perceptive profile in this week's New Yorker - between dude and the dynamic Ros/Tomson VW duo, it's really been an acclaimed year for the Columbia music program, no? the article's nice and worth a read, but the part I'm really gonna keep coming back to is -

"In the classical world, it’s, like, bad, or too popular, to produce a lot, but you learn such a lot by listening to a piece and, literally, not being able to stop it,” Muhly told me. “It feels to me more like food, in that sense. People need to eat. You may as well make them something to eat."

- so true, and inspiringly modest! and unlike my generally ambivalent feelings about actual food I'm always hungry for these kinds of pieces, beautifully constructed, emotionally stirring yet pleasingly complex compositions with strong roots in the Christian choral vibes that resonate so strongly with my own experiences with the sacred growing up. all the tunes up on the New Yorker player are pretty great, but the "Mothertongue" "Sanctus & Benedictus" "Keep in Touch" troika is particularly felt -

someone left the cake out in the rain

via WFMU via PTW, this video of Three Degrees' mesmerizing, beautifully shot, intensely performed, well choreographed (check out the awesome 'whirlpool' move around 6:45 as they transition from the vaguely silly but vaguely sick instrumental break into the epic and sublime coda, camera tracking their hands arching up etc) and wardrobed (sweet green icing dresses) etc big band version of "MacArthur Park" is fucking blowing my mind, as is the song, which I haven't thought about inna minute -



the lyrics are so fucking incredible, I guess they are easy to kind of make fun of etc but come on who has ever combined the totally fucking heartbreaking (the cake is their relationship, a rare and hard to make recipe that baked something beautiful but is suddenly all melty and kind of gross, so poetic and true) with the totally fucking tripped out (wait seriously, what??) like this? it's like the Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' of pre-Jim Steinman pop disco epics!! highly highly recommended, plz remind me to bust this one out at an appropriately vibed (??) karaoke sesh one day -

spring was never waiting for us, boy
it ran one step ahead
as we followed in the dance
between the parted pages and were pressed
in love's hot, fevered iron
like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
all the sweet, green icing flowing down
someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
cos it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around my knees
the birds, like tender babies in my hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees etccc

NJ reppin

1. just a friendly reminder that the NY Giants are 'really' the NJ Giants

2. take a photograph 'of' New Jersey from anywhere contest - I guess it's a cool idea? creative NJ-centric photogs check it out, via Das Stencil

3. cool NJ t-shirts via Vice, I'm gettin 'NJ ALL DAY' in maroon (not shown) w gold lettering

4. Hillary takes NJ despite the best and somewhat unexpected efforts of certain members of the fam! wish they could just settle this in a game of horse or something at this point for all sorts of reasons (inc LOST-related vibes obv... can't wait for tomorrowowowow)

super tooz

can we talk about how amazing she looks in this picture and is in general (been meaning to link to this vanity fair profile for a minute)?? man I wish there could be a first-mate debate, Michelle needs to get Bill-level airtime, glad to see the campaign's working on this. I don't think Obama was joking when he was said she could beat him if she got into politics - whatever JFK vibe he gives off is at least doubled by her intense Jackie O vibes, or like Jackie O if she went to Princeton and Harvard and met her husband cos she was his fucking adviser at his first law firm job, so fucking badass and glamorous

also, on a totally different vibe, man McCain is also great how can you not love this awesome picture from drudge yesterday, imagine him as prez! personality goes a long way even/esp when the personality is like lovable foul-mouthed irascible semi-deformed former POW maniac, hard for me to ever really root against the dude, even if he were running against Michelle or like David Tyree etc

also fwiw, this Mitt Romney GQ piece hints at a hilariously American Psycho-esque vibe of incredibly sincere and deep-seated blandness that I could also see growing kind of weirdly entertaining. I know I'm a cheap date, but am kind of proud of us America for finding four fucking reasonable, thoroughly centrist, generally qualified, and basically likable candidates this year. let's do dis!

update for cheap

UPDATE: "tower of pisa / leanin / in that late-model somethin / lookin for life's meanin"

"treehuggin ass bitch please"

"who fucking with my golf swing / eghk"

"we ain't worried bout nothin / hakuna matata"

"like pearl jam I kill my peers like jeremy / and here I am with open arms like journey" [insert PTW-style snark about how much blogs will love this couplet + added irony of this actually being a blog more or less]

"we the wire season 2 bitches / back to the docks"

"I apologize for the destruct and decay / that was brought upon by my liberace key-play"

"cos I can't wait for skateboard to save me / my house in default / his house paisley / he's not at fault / no not vaguely / he's on a yocht [hilarious British pronounciation] / somewhere with Jay-Z"

[this one reminds me of the last uncompromisingly hard, post-celebrity producer rap album I really loved, Free At Last, ''back without a Just track / tried to reach out and work / but he ain't chirp back" etc]

"pad / a fly bag / a must-have / the porsche / jimmy choos / nice calves / I typecast my broads"

"and the lord don't understand our truth / we gon' never say shit / we the blue man group"

"ginormous!"

it's the natural instinct of man to have this competitive drive

what a fuckin historic night - perhaps you'd be interested in listening to a little mixtape called 'we got it 4 cheap vol. 3'?? stream (DJ Drama-less!) via re-up gang or download via an enterprising blog that's wasted no time rippin it. shit is pure, icy fire so far, nobody does it better or keeps it realer - the virtuosic and relentlessly hard rapping, intense focus, awesome bravado on full display as usual cut as always by bracingly bitter vitriol, inspiring on so many levels - really appreciatin how well Liva and Sandman complement and set up Clipsebros on these, this gang is tiiiight

a victory for new york sports

fuck yeah so proud of these g-men, was so fucking satisfying to make Brady and those New England babies look like the overrated little bitches they are - seriously, dude was on the verge of tears towards the end, I'd modestly like to take credit for leading the bar in a big chorus of 'awwwwwwww'. there's no excitement like sports excitement and no non-gay bar situation in which you get so many shots of tequila and hugs from dudes you've never met before and it's totally OK like a triumphant sports bar situation!


afterwards everyone 'woooo!'ing in the street, cars honkin, bros everywhere, and Dav finds this nice fitted Yankees hat that fell out one of the cars, just my size too! I dunno, I took it, accepting it as a gift of fate, is that fucked up? what, was I gonna run down Smith street stopping every car to ask if they'd just lost a Yankees hat? I lost my previous Yankees hat last October while having one of those great drunken convos with Peter Wolfgang up at Columbia after an intense night at Cafe Havana or whatever the West End is now, and it fell somewhere over the wall by Riverside Park. it was obviously a bad omen and sure enough the Yanks lost the next night at that fucking Biblical-level fucked up loss vs. Cleveland with all the bugs etc. finding this way nicer hat tonight under these circumstances seems to augur v well for the baseball season, the new Yankees dynasty, the Chamberlain/Hughes/Kennedy era, begins in 2 months, v soon after Peter's wedding coincidentally! Dav is sitting on the couch recording 'Mossy', inspired by the language of Steev, 2nd album could be in the proverbial can by the end of the month or so? it's an aggressive target. I think that covers everything

maybe I'm still stuck on this whole david lynch vibe

but can someone please do a movie with a really fucked up and disturbing scene set to rod stewart's "tonight's the night"? is kind of creepy, no? "stay away from my window / stay away from my backdoor too / disconnect the telephone line / relax baby and draw that blind," uh, ok? you can really hear it spiraling into depravity from there, "tonight's the night... ain't nobody gonna stop us now," horrific screaming over the saxophone solo, etc

o holy vibe

one of the many many pleasures of working @home is being able to fully indulge my love of rainy atmospherics without having to actually leave my house and get wet. snow would be even nicer but I've been craving this kind of mellow gray ever since that tease of a Wednesday morning -

appropriately reverent soundtracks are a must, natch - lately, all winter long really, it's been this recent Robert Fripp live album recorded at a few cathedrals in England and Estonia in 2006, kind of standard frippertronica but with newer, luminescently digital textures and a truly cathedralic sense of space, what more could you want?

robert fripp - at the end of time: churchscapes (album) (YSI)

bowereport

if you're curious how the VW show went the other night, it was more or less exactly like this and this said

happily and somewhat surprisingly, I didn't even feel that bad for us wrt to the intense contrast between the fairly pathetic crowd and our frankly epic performance - tbh was kind of the shitty break I've grown to expect over the past year, and I'd kind of assumed this was how it was going to go as soon as I heard we were sharing the bill with another act that had, you know, multiple booking agents, management, etc - you know, the kind of professional legitimacy that demands respect in the biz! anyway, was proud of us for keeping it focused and real and musically killin it our first show back after a 3-month hiatus, our prize new jam was bangin and by the time it and the rest of the set was goin down the crowd had definitely swelled to somewhere closer to triple digits iirc. plus if I do say myself the new light show, which I will basically claim responsibility for designing (hint, not bug zappers) and rehearsing over the past week, looked great! pics from Tod soon hopefully

and, of course, regardless of the predictably misguided scheduling, it was tough to imagine anyone caring much about openers for this kind of headliner - having not seen dudes play in about 8 month or so, I was obv expecting but still blown away by the total screaming VW-mania. fun facts, #2 on iTunes album chart, catch them on Letterman tonite, upcoming Spin magazine cover?, etc! in an attempt to get slightly ahead of the 'how high?' curve, I'm gonna predict a Grammy nomination, will give you 1:2 odds if you doubt it. I can only guess at the inevitable backlash going on in some quarters but thankfully don't have time to read it -

instead, though, I highly highly recommend Mike Powell's recent piece in the Voice (via the Breihan post), which I'm pretty sure is the most perceptive, on point thing I've read about these guys so far. typical - I don't know if it's widely recognized yet but I think Mike is one of the best newish music writers in the game right now, definitely wrote the most perceptive, revealing piece about us I've ever read (not a lot of competition there, but, still), centered around his unplanned performance in Aa's most recent Roosevelt Island ensemble last spring, along with, yes, Ezra Vibes! Aa is a launching pad for greatness, what can I say