October 2006 Archives
Flea's new NBA Blog (yes, that is Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea) reads like a teenager's internet prose-poem/ IM conversation. Is he totally biting my style? Will I have to fight him to retrieve my stee? Film at fucking eleven.
Excerpt:
burly rebounds!
smooth george gervin finger rolls!
bodacious chocolate thunder darryl dawkins style dunks!
laker victories!!!
speaking of laker victories
i am just really thinking alot about the lakers right now
and i am thinking some great thoughts
Chris has allowed me to borrow Forever Freestyle, a two-disc compilation of freestyle classics and, by his account, "the only comp I ever felt compelled to purchase off a television commercial." Made by the same company that perhaps erroneously titled another comp Tha Down Low. The cover art of Forever Freestyle is a photorealistic depiction of two hot boricuas standing, sweatily, along the NYC horizon -- illuminated in red, presumably from the heat off all that trebly synth. It's one dude in a white fluffy shirt and a lady w/doorknockers and a gold lame disco dress a la Donna Summer, both looking like they're finna find a good time, out here, tonight, in 1987. Oh yeah and the lady has Giant Bangs.
More importantly: Freestyle: You Will Never Die. I mean, okay, I have spent nights in 2006 at the spot when DJ Ayres delves deep into his mind-crest and drops Noel or Stevie B, and the dancefloor clears except for me and perhaps five others, among a crowd waiting for the next reprisal of "Hustlin," or waiting, perhaps, for a super-exclusive Baltimore refix of the Golden Girls theme song, or some other such cross-conversational wacky-tude. But seriously: "Point of No Return" followed by "Bad of the Heart" followed by "Can You Feel the Beat" followed by "Together Forever" = a mindful and unfuckwithable selection of dance CLASSICS. Few of these cats could really sing like church-sing, but it didn't matter so much because you could tell they felt it. And it's relevant today, I think, because newer non-singing minor dance-pop singers (i.e. Cassie, Amerie, and lesser-known ladies like Paula DeAnda) are "in the spirit of" freestyle, or at least similarly hitting the right moment (and the right production) to bestow them with a coupla hits. Tho freestyle's purpose was always a little more chaste, depicting love or dancefloor politics and sometimes drama but rarely sexual fortitude, explicitly or otherwise.
I have a video of myself in 4th or 5th grade doing a choreographed dance to Expose's "Come Go With Me."
Memo to Sofia Coppolla: after the 52nd minute of watching dainty Kirsten Dunst try on Manolos, eat petits fours, and NOT do it with Jason Schwarzman, I was ready to storm Versailles, too. I mean, I feel where you're coming from on the teen-sympathy defense (though you were a little untenably mushy about it) but like... comment-dit "narrative arc"?
Maybe if this asshole's dad hadn't set up that human-rights/economy-decimating NAFTA crap so many people wouldn't be trying to leave their country --their home, their families -- to earn a living wage? Okay, that's only one aspect of a complex issue, but I guarantee that capital-F "Freedom" is not the reason so many Mexicans are risking their lives to come to America, land the lowest-paying jobs (unprotected by labor laws, I might add), and live their lives in fear of the notoriously egregious INS, only to send back most of their income to their families. And a 700-mile fence is only going to cause more preventable deaths.
But hey, at least this country is finally becoming isolationist in the literal sense, no?
I am presently enjoying Tag Team's "get nasty," a song about dance-freaking with a dirty live bassline and, possibly, a beeper sample (1993 we are loving you). While Tag Team are no A-Town Players, they have been underrated since "Whoomp (There It Is)" became the flagship song for three-pointers-- a group more commonly associated with Washington's fluffy G-Wiz than Atlanta's flourishing booty scene. But they had some real live jams -- "Bobyahead," "You Go Girl," "Kick da Flow" etc -- and as head of the Tag Team Preservation Society, I'm here to deliver my annual reminder: Do not relegate our friends DC and Steve Roll'n to the jock jams graveyard. Please, revisit your Whoomp (There It Is) long player.
Need advice on effective mouse traps. Don't say "get a cat" -- we had one before and, as previously reported, it escaped our apparently oppressive regime. Would like an effective trap that does not involve touching or looking at said mouse after if it is dead. Am ok with non-killing mouse trap, as long as it has a very lengthy chute to set it free, so that my hands and body do not have to get within 5-10 feet of live mouse. Otherwise, I cannot emphasize how much I do not want to look at or touch the dead one. Yes, I read the New York Times Magazine piece on elephants' emotions. And the one before that on octopuses' personalities. I realize there is a possibility that mice have feelings. But so do I. and I really fucking do not want to get rabies.
here are some pics from VMA interview day, back in August, wherein Piotr and I interviewed 48 people in six hours -- including two cast members of Fashion House, which had not yet aired, so our questions were like, "Uh, soo.... are you into music?" (Honestly I thought they were from that "Girl, Fix Your Nasty Wardrobe!" show on E):
Remy & Monica = BFF!
We were too busy being total fucking Stan'rons to focus the camera on Lil Wayne and Baby
When I was eight I was rhymin' Not backyard game playin
Kelis watched the video in The Ring
Thou Shall Not Have Impure Thoughts
(also, go see Half-Nelson)
question: why do so many poets read in ginsberg voice, fake rhythm, flattening out their tone at the end of lines? as if anything other than monotone will threaten the impact. or that, if they sound like they don't feel it, we will do it for them.
no!
more nikki giovanni - more drums!
This may have some impact.
Because I remember 4th quarter 2005 better than I'd like, it's time to bring back the "spam as random-language generator" meme with some choice cuts from the inbox. Today I received spam from "Daphne Butts," subject line "He is clarity"; "Salvatore Baker," subject line "You'll Love the New, Non-Obese You"; "Wat Holland," subject line "Yonder Friction"; and from young "Jess Berry," an email entitled, simply, "Insane." My life is like all those things, really.
We love you Frankie, we'll miss you.
I discovered my winter wrap today at the flea market in the school playground in Park Slope, a black and white vintage swing coat in Shepherd's Tartan, with three big black buttons the size of tea saucers. I also purchased a charcoal and pastel surrealist rendering of what appears to be either Mussolini, naked, or a crazed and disgruntled matador, also naked, and wearing an eye patch. I bought the portrait from a woman who couldn't bear to see it go (I promised her, "I will display it prominently in my home"); the jacket came from another woman who had set up a cardtable along the wall of the school. We cultivated an amiable rapport while discussing another swing coat I own, a brilliant hot pink velvet number I bought for $6 at a Value Village in Phoenix, Arizona in 1996. As I bent over to fish my dollas from my gym bag, the woman who sold me the coat posed the question, "When is the baby due?"
The baby is due in nevuary.
"There is no baby," I told her.
The baby does not exist.
The sunlight shifted; wind gusts kept track of the seconds as they trampled by and we looked at one another. "Oh.. the way you bent over... it looked like..." she stammered. Like I was pregnant? A logical conclusion, I suppose, because everyone in Park Slope is pregnant. No, seriously. I know the strollers trope is a Slope stereotype, but it's fucking true. Whether they get pregnant there or the pregnant simply flock there is none of my business. All I know is, Maggie Gyllenhaal, the moment she knew she was carrying a fertilized zygote, purchased a brownstone just off the Q with her baby-daddy Peter Sarsgaard. Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger? Not pregnant. Boerum Hill.
Along with "poor," one of the things that is not fun (or acceptable?) to be in New York is "fat." I work out six or seven days a week, but I have a ponsa, as my abuela christened my round belly from the day I was born, and I will always have it. My modern dance instructor is constantly telling me "close your ribcage." But I cannot close it, even when he tells me "press your belly button to your spine" and I do it. I do not have rock-hard abs, but I do have book-hard abs. And right now, for me, I would definitely rather be fat than pregnant.
The winter coat, by the by, is a class act.
A hilarious mini-talent show/ reality video by Wm. Steven Humphrey, the man who was my editor, boss and mentor from 2000-2004 at the Portland Mercury in Portland, Oregon. People always ask me and I give them the same answer every time, yes, he's really like that in person. Way focused, looks great in tube socks.
"A pizzazziola, or a pizzazzthe...mum."
current events-pertinent: the latest, deeply ironic scissor sisters video, a pastiche video where many things are happening. I became obsessed with one part, at about 2:01, where two people are tied to a chair and dogs run by, paper-doll scissor sisters playing and mushroom-clouds clouding behind them all the while. I asked Jake Shears and Babydaddy about it a couple of weeks ago, and they answered. Cryptically.
Me: "In your video, there’s that part with the man and the woman and then a couple of rottweilers run by. Does that come from your interest in film and symbolism?"
Jake: "It’s all nonsense. With that video, we are suggesting a greater story, but it’s up to one’s imagination to figure out that story."
Babydaddy: "Like what you would see on a movie poster. The greatest moments from a film that would end up on a movie poster."
Jake: "There is a story that links the whole video. There is a vague plot. It has to do with The Man Without a Face. But it's up to you to figure it out."
lily allen is dean martin
starring Michael Mayer and Sasha Frere-Jones. I explained the experience to Mo's Mom, visiting from Washington, as follows:
"Imagine a German DJ sampling a ping-pong ball. When he switches the sound from a ping-pong ball to a pepper-grinder, the whole crowd goes 'WOOOOOOOOOOOO!'"
It was pretty fantastic time, all things considered. Outside, as we were leaving, we overheard a man grouse, "There's too much Festival and not enough New Yorker in this dance party." Swear to god.
I have just interviewed Felix Bunton, producer of Basement Jaxx. Contrary to the pasty-dance-producer-in-bedroom stereotype, he was very tan from vacationing in Cypress. Ha. He said that when he was younger, his father could never listen to one station on the radio; he just kept flipping through the dial, trying to find something that suited him. Sound like a production style? Full transcript TK.
This morning, on the way to The Lodge, Viacom's ski-resort-themed luncheon hall, a talking cardboard Mr. T, life-sized, told me to "quit" my "jibber-jabber."
per the WAM listserve, donors choose is raising money for back-to-school books for kids, and particularly the Student-Run Book Club for Middle-School Girls, which helps girls at the Future Leaders Institute Charter School in Harlem with money for their book club. Right now I feel like child advocacy is one of the most important things I will ever do, especially at the educational level.
nothing says
"I'm keeping you at arm's length"
like a letter signed "best"
I mean, realistically, what club is already jumpin by 11:30?!
By Piotr and I on the occasion of DFA's fifth anniversary, up now at Urge.com. Click here to read if you are Urgeless. We went over to their studio/office and sat at a silver table on the "veranda," an indoor balcony overlooking--- something, I now realize I forgot to look and see what we were overlooking. Regardless, their office is nice, clean lines and pale oak of the modern decor look you'd expect, with every vinyl release framed and hung on their walls. DFA: just below 14th.
TV on the Radio's David Sitek: "People think that we wear monocles and take bubble baths and read The Great Gatsby, you know?"
Best quote about fans' expectations of artists since Macaulay Culkin told Spin in 2004 that "Some people think I sit in a closet eating peoples' souls while doing heroin and pissing on Christmas trees."
