April 2007 Archives
Mark Anthony Neal writes a very cogent piece about hip-hop attacks vs. hip-hop voters over at my summer home. (So does Ben, for that matter. And Murph, too.)
William Jefferson Creeley, who is fighting the good fight even when he is talking in hockey slang, forwarded this piece about female bloggers fielding sexual threats. And how it makes some women quit - not because they are scared of the blog comments, per se, but because those threats have real-life implications. And women who are acutely aware of day to day power dynamics between men and women aren't trying to invite dudes who cross the boundaries visibly armed and aiming.
I forgot to tell you about my dance class last week with a new teacher - a class which was basically an hour of glorified freaking said teacher, who was allegedly gay - gay, perhaps, like the new man fashion designer character on ugly betty, aka "not gay." All I'm gonna say is, he took off his pants to "I Need a Boss" and there was hand-to-abs contact. Haven't yet decided if I will go back.
What is this post about? Body and soul, friends. I am 50 mind, 50 flesh. Also, free association. I'm an insomniac. Can't sleep. Somebody slip me a scrip.
Dear Nick,
Thank you for recognizing the synergy between the chorus of this
and the chorus of this
and putting them together while I am on the dancefloor. YOU ARE THE BEST.
Sincerely,
JSHEPPIN U SENSELESS
p.s. here is an indicator of last night's funsanity: Nick, just before playing Boyz II Men's "Motownphilly," said into a microphone,
"THIS NEXT SONG IS DEDICATED TO EVERYONE WHO EVER GOT A HAND JOB AT THE EIGHTH GRADE DANCE."
God knows I love Al B. Sure - I choreographed a different dance to every song off In Effect Mode in 6th grade. His voice is like an oil massage in a featherbed. If you listen to this shit too much you'll immaculately conceive. But why does he appear to be mean-mugging through this entire video? Or is that screwed-up look his 1988 interpretation of orgasm face?
"What, you think you dope on a rope? Nope. I'm just supposed to sweat you?" His rap on the bridge to "Off On Your Own" sounds like something off Sex Packets. Further. How hot is his denim jacket, wayfarers and monobrow stee? Pleasure P's shaved pecs got nothin on you, B. Tight pants are what's good.
And... someone's karaoke / lip sync video to Al's Roberta Flack cover:
FUCK JAYCEON TAYLOR. THIS IS WHAT I CALL GAME.
2007 summer jam: it's already been "Get it Shawty" for like eight months.
Been finally hearing shit from cars, weather what it is, and it's like digging up treasure: Lloyd's baby-oil hot voice is pure steam slinking in and out the outer space bell synths in a car stereo. The bass pops, drops, locks: the weight of thrum in the spring air. BUT SCREWED?!?! Pure mango chutney and a klonapin, a brain mash. LOVE THIS.
THE SYRUP HAZE... THE MALE GAZE...
Do you live in NYC? Do you know an amazing tattoo artist? Who, why and where? I'm leaning towards NY Adorned cuz they come w/recommendations but I want to be sure. Looking for ppl who are adept at fonts. (Yes, I'm getting Lloyd's name tattooed w/a heart. duhhhhh)
"You will cold-cock a bitch. That's why I like you."
"You know I will slice a razor into that puta's eyetooth."
Not two hours after having the above IM conversation with my Powerbroker, I attended a party for a book about the magazine that introduced me to third wave feminism. What can I say - you can teach a shark a dolphin's tricks, but at heart she stays a shark. Nevertheless, grrrrl power was in full effect: your new bedside tome How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time by Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer has dropped. The party was in a Lower East Side bar, populated with well-heeled, well exfoliated magazine chicas and post-grunge literary dudes. The DJs were playing all '90s classic rock - Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Sonic Youth, Chia Pet. Some fellow I briefly made out with in the front seat of a Honda Civic in 1999 was in attendance. IT FELT LIKE HIGH SCHOOL. This fact was both comforting and uncomfortable. But more importantly - in addition to Kara and Marisa, who looked radiant (and adorable in accidentally matching ensembles) - Sassy staffers were in the building.
At this point in my capacity as a journalist, I am in general unfazed when it comes to talking to musicians, artists, writers and actors I greatly admire - but I can honestly say Christina Kelly, brain-genius of Sassy magazine, the person I looked up to most in the 10th grade, made me totally nervous. Not in a famous person way - it was more like the nervous you get when you are adopted and on your way to meet your biological parents. I felt like when my cousin came back from her first trip to Mexico as an adult and was like "I FINALLY KNOW FROM WHENCE I CAME."
Like getting a really good look at who you once were, with the perspective of time and registering: "Oh. Here is a gauge." Stand back, stand back. Maybe because in 1992 I was reading her words from the middle of my room in Wyoming and going "She is the only person who understands." I was like, "IF IT WEREN'T FOR YOU I WOULDNT KNOW ABOUT LOS BROS HERNANDEZ. I WOULDN'T KNOW I COULD MAKE A FANZINE." My cultural options were SO limited (to Herb Alpert and Esther Hobart Morris, basically) and Christina Kelly's "What Now" section was the world unfolding to me. In a very subtle way, it helped me to know I had options.
(DISCOVER HOW COMMON THE ABOVE ANECDOTE IS (i believe that is called "cultural impact") AMONG A CERTAIN STRATA OF FEMALES IN THE BOOK "How Sassy Changed My Life" by authors Marisa Meltzer and Kara Jesella.)
ANYWAY. I have not yet read the final version of the book, but I know that Kara and Marisa are true about their love for Sassy magazine, they are feminists, they are both excellent journalists, and I can't wait to get to it. You should buy it now if you have any interest at all in:
MAGAZINES
JOURNALISM
THE '90S
FEMINISM
GOSSIP
INTRA-OFFICE POLITICS
IAN SVENONIOUS' HAIRLINE (SEE "THE '90S")
ummm... what else? SPIKE JONZE? check. TRIBE CALLED QUEST? check. CHLOE SEVIGNY'S FIRST INTERNSHIP? check. LEARNING HOW TO MAKE A CUTE DRESS OUT OF A PILLOWCASE? say word.
In my dance class today, against the clang and din of Panjabi MC (instrumental), I fixated on the concepts behind Jona's new album, you are magic because magic is magic is hot (and so are you). This fixation was a violation of "LIVE IN THE MOMENT," tenet five of Russell Simmons' motivational tome Do You!, but I have a problem with daydreamy other-elsewhereness - that is just my thing - and it is but one of many reasons why I will never be Russell Simmons. So I was half concentrating on the choreography and half concentrating on the open-ended idea of Jona's magic, or Jona's magic thesis: that magic is everywhere and everyone is making it -simplistic enough but something I generally believe to be true, that is when i am not losing sight of it somewhere between "reckoning with massive lifelong trauma" and "downloading R&B mixtapes from the internet." (whee!) But shit, let me try to problematize this without being too trite:
SEEING THE MAGIC FIRES BURN INSIDE YOUR HEART. ENACTING ARTISTIC IDEAS. I presume Jona can do this (as an artist) more than your average 10-8er because he is surrounded by a supportive ensemble of people whose every idea does not necessarily have to be monetized from a basic survival perspective - c.f. "New York City" - which I think is why i found some of the lyrics / sentiment on the Yacht album luxurious - his ideas about art and choice, with no subtext or motivation other than "INTEGRITY" and "IDEATION" I think, are a sociological luxury. Not everyone in Portland can afford it, but I think it's more easily borne in an inexpensive city. BUT. It is admirable. And not impossible elsewhere. In New York its speed and its motion just change. c.f. Graffiti (before "graffiti" became a shitty t-shirt line). c.f. Making people gifts out of supplies from your kitchen pantry. [shoebox diorama / photoshopped digital JSHEP onslaught TK]
GETTING BUSY WITH YOUR OWN BAD MAGIC. I'm so just feeling more wide-eyed than I have in a minute. It's partly the sun, I know, the warmth heating up my wings, glistening along the Brooklyn promenade among the stacks of red bricks, empty buildings and cement. Not yet humid or too hot. Sunday, so happy, looking across the East River onto Manhattan's mirrored sheen, some lovely small party having a wedding on the boardwalk among the casual sunning throngs from Brooklyn Heights - the bride clad in sheer leopard print and stunting as the photographer snaps, heads in the ice cream line streaming into the aperture. Or maybe it's reading Cormac McCarthy The Road, approved by Oprah and Pulitzer, a spare cold and terrifying apocalypse novel but one that's having an opposite effect on me - nudging me into true and profound appreciation of "right fucking now" cause that's all we get is right now. You know that but sometimes it needs to be said. I am cradling it all in my two hands, curled up like a cup so I don't crush it.
Leave it to Jona to bring back Boat Rock. (The Crystal Dolphin! THAT IS A FAKE NAME!)
May 5th 2007
Portland, Oregon
PART 1: YACHT on an actual yacht.
Vessel name: Crystal Dolphin
Boarding time: 6pm (SHARP)
Boarding location: http://www.portlandspirit.com/map.php?loc=cl
His new album, i listened to it last weekend and I liked it. My overall impression was that it was sweetly idealistic (i.e. songs about needing to love what you do - very Jona) w/crazy beats that betray his "Portlander who idolizes Timbaland" status - overwhelming feeling of posicore "rain" beats and caffeinated uninhibition. Lots of sunshine and hot pink. Allusions to magic = right on.
PS IF YOU MAKE MAGIC (any, all kinds) HIT ME UP jawnita@gmail.com I WOULD LOVE TO INDULGE / ENGAGE / LEARN
including but not limited to:
PS DEAR CORY ARCANGEL I AM NOT BITING YOUR STYLE - I AM SIMPLY TRYING TO ILLUSTRATE A POINT or a feeling
Reluctantly, we hit the barren wildes of Greenpoint cause A-Trak was DJing and ya collective hilween, aka my posse, we all wanted to dance. The man driving the car we called was very certainly drunk. He told us he didn't know where he was taking us so we would just have to come over to his house, while zipping between Brooklyn bridge traffic like Frogger (but twas we who were finna be squashed). Slow down we said, all three of us in the backseat row calling our moms, sisters and friends to look up the directions to the club on the internet. Because if not, we were surely going to end up at some seedy bar in Jersey refusing tequila shots and bra-feels from this dude.
Rachael's sister saved it. We took two left turns and ended up in this Polish-meeting-pub-ternt-cavern with a bunch of girls dressed up like Lily Allen. A-Lines and Doorknockers. Man. A guy was rolled up in a carpet under the bar, under a sign that said "step on carpet." We couldn't decide if it was performance art or if he was gonna get off on our heels piercing the tender flesh of his belly. Then this band Steed Lord came on (No Klaxons.)
STEED LORD had 27 or 38 trance-length songs, all of which they played, all of which sounded like track 14 on MTV's Jock Jams 1999, the CD you bought from the $1.99 cut-out bin because it featured that one gay Cher anthem with the vocodor - but that the rest of the tracklist was booty or kitsch at best. Steed Lord got the nu rave memo. It was 9 am ecstacy hangover after the actual party died. Twitches, phantom hairgrowth. The works. Their music, hammering with jacked-off techno spirit-chords and sub-triumphant one-note chainsmoker melodies - like they got the right KLF cassette, but learned all the wrong lessons from it. Anyway its central tenet was not the music, but more the necessity of recreating an assumed "feeling" brought on by an era - it was more than aggressively retro, though. Not nostalgic. They were no Nas Hip-Hop is Dead. They were wearing neon glow make-up and yelling at us. In between every song, they played the dancehall "guns being shot" sound effect, which had nothing to do with anything except the hype dude's dookie ropes and a Dipset fetish, maybe, and bummed me out in a serious way - like DUDE YOU ARE FROM ICELAND. Your nation believes in water sprites.* Why must you go to the glock with it? Rhythm is a dancer, people.
Then A-Trak rescued the evening with shit we loved and Rachael and Sarah and I tore up the floor for hours and some dude stuck a camera in our faces** and I danced with Nick and I think he invited me to a barbecue but I don't really remember so if I missed a barbecue, sorry Nick. I totally would have gone.
** despite my new year's resolution "do not attend parties where you will be photographed and distributed on the internet" ***
*** unless it's the rub
soldaderas of the mexican revolution
Gettin ya cash like 'em, fast like 'em: Oh say can u see, the connection between this story about Enedina Arellano Felix - the lady Stringer Bell of the Arellano Felix drug cartel, which recently killed four people in a hospital over a drug-gang rivalry - and the rise of women running, and dying in, mexican drug gangs. Not to mention the overall rise in Mexican drug gang violence, period. Connect the dots. Everybody's fucking poor. But hey. This is where you get that yayo.
* Other thoughts: Imus controversy trajectory has been pretty fing typical: old white cowboy makes racist comment; blame shifts to hip-hop; previously enraged white media quietly tip-toes away while black leaders, rappers and heads deal with aftermath. Hip-hop searches its soul. Racism structure stays unthreatened.
*Mi old PDX dun-ette / b-girl inspiration Kumari Singh is bringing her organization Dance for Peace to Nueva York! They are a "cultural exchange program that uses urban dance to elevate underprivileged aspiring dancers across the globe. In 2007 Dance for Peace will introduce its program to Cape Town, South Africa (March 07) and Lima, Peru (December 07). With future projects in Uganda, Brazil and The Philippines."
Kumari is fierce and the best dance and she helped me perfect my freezes. (What, you didn't know? I used to be kinda nice in the cypher, LOL. This agile body does more than just rock yo hips.)
* OBLIGATORY LLOYD SHOT:
(just to remember the love)
"The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman," wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said this decision "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."
UnforgettabLe: "Gabe said" chronicles what it sounds like when your heart stops beating. TRAGICOMEDY. If I had liner notes I might put dude before God and my mom. Well... maybe not before my mom. (sorry dun)
"You remind me of someone in those glasses. Who's that chick from Scooby Doo"
"VELMA? She is SO nerdy, dude."
"Nah, you look real fly. If you played guitar and danced, I'd sign you in a second."
"Where's my contract? I'll be on it straight up all day. If you really want me, I'll come down to the A."
"I THINK PEOPLE THINK THAT PEOPLE LISTEN TO TRIBE BECAUSE IT INCUBATES SOME LONG-LOST NOTIONS OF A LIFE MORE BOHEMIAN. ROCKING JEAN SHORTS AND CROSS COLORS. BACKPACKS WHEN BACKPACKS WERE BACKPACKS. PRETENDING TO LISTEN LEE MORGAN ALBUMS.
BUT I SMOKED THOSE LEE MORGAN ALBUMS, DUKE. WORD TO GATOR PURIFY."
I am cleaning and found this hilarious ancient diary entry:
Stuff I need to purchase before tomorrow for Prom:
black nail polish
rhinestones, glue
black tights
hair thing (chopsticks, black paint)
cool glitter make-up.
This rad substitute teacher we had today for speech let me go to my car and get my board and skate inside the school. There are some gnarly stairs I want to conquer but I don't know how yet. Oh well, I will improve in due time. Gotta go work on the zine, now.
MY SHIT WAS SO COOL EVEN IN THE 1990s.
THE POPE IS 80 YEARS SCARY TODAY.
If my corporeal terror of God's Rottweiler at all corresponded to an ephemeral fear of a vengeful new-testament God, I might invoke revelations about the fact that I cannot leave my damn house. Alas, I simply do not believe in Jesus like that. Damn the wind, the downpour for fucking up my deal anyway. But if my plans had panned out, I might've been later on this piece about France's immigration policy. Marisa and I wrote a similarish piece for Spin about a year ago, just after the riots, and a lot of the French rappers we interviewed - mostly Muslim immigrants from Africa and the Middle East- have been expressing anti-Sarkozy sentiment for years and years and years. We spent real time at Clichy-sous-Bois - the place for mixtapes. Outside the marketplace, it was squalor and poverty and oppressive architecture. I've posted it before but still think this track and video from Tandem, a rap crew from the 93rd arrondissement (hence "93 Hardcore") shows the situation as it is - cops and poverty and crazy unemployment. No guns, really, cause of French rules, so fist fights and dog fights. Not a woman in sight. Halal McDonalds. Lyrics are about the shithole, the maze.
BUT ONLY TWO OF THEM
- First and foremost, ya hilween ("sweet one" in Arabic, word to Sarah) Rachael has begun blogging! She is a dear friend, a crazy-intelligent PHd candidate (but no nose-clamped academic) and a better writer about music than she will ever take credit for. Blog roll, si? Si.
- McDreamy came thru, Tiny (!) and concept album in tow. (Is it fair to comment on the record so early in the game?) Charming as fuck. He was wearing boat shoes which, for me, neutralized the fact that I have his face plastered in poster form on all four walls of my bedroom.
- Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East" in paperback. Just bought it for a mere $20, nothing for such a tome. To my knowledge, Fisk is one of the finest English-language journalists reporting on the Middle East - someone who understands the situation, having lived there for 30 years, and beyond that, whose prose on tragedy is so vivid and beautiful it kills me. No, I haven't yet cracked it (also picked up like 42 other books - new McCarthy, Jorge Amado, David B., Natsuo Kirino - and currently deep in Aimee Liu's excellent Gaining) but I'm just putting it on your paper plate. Do it to it.
-Has anyone read the new Jonathan Lethem? Is it good? Lord knows I love my neighbor but this book's not about Brooklyn, it's about LA, and LA is full of heathens. (Not counting Ritchey!!!, Josh and Pete, O-Dub and Ann, Pentacostal Mexicans, and/or any extended member of the Escobedo/Velazquez ensemble [unless they have been born again w/o my knowledge]). Oh and Flea, that dude is pretty legit.*
- speaking of, BONZI WELLS, WHAT THE F? What kind of after after after after party was it, and why didn't you invite me, baby?
You knew I couldn't go one day without blogging about 30 Rock. Just re-watching "Jack Meets Dennis," the episode where Liz is dating the only beeper salesmen left in Manhattan, and realized the entire opening sequence is a long spoof on sex in the city, down to the "walking and talking frankly about sex on a busy new york street," jane acting savvy and distanced a la kim cattrall.
Jane: So when did this happen?
Liz: Well, last week was my birthday, and everyone forgot except Dennis, and he called and we went out and it wasn't too weird!
Before this blog turns into Right On, complete with fold-out posters of all your fave rap celebs, let me point out this long overdue frightening profile of God's Rottweiler and the oft-jacked style of Joan Didion, with regard to her genealogy. I read Run River and thought the prose was great but having had western expansion shoved down my throat from birth in wyoming history, I found the topic less than invigorating. Anyway, interesting point:
Because Didion's later reporting on politics, often for this magazine, took a turn generally more critical of a reawakened American conservatism— and critical, also, of paralyzed Democratic accommodation—it's sometimes been said that at some point in the decades after these first two books she was radicalized, or at least nudged toward something more like traditional liberalism. To argue this is to ignore how much the writing life has always been her central concern, and how much politics has always been a secondary, if all too gift-giving, subject. All along her aimed-for target has been behavior that is in error, above all behavior that resists—and therefore demands from the observing writer—irony.
Yesterday was Zach Braff's 32nd Birthday.
Related: Last night a gang of us went to this bar up the street. They were iPod DJing pretty good old hip-hop (somehow Ghost Town DJs got played twice in a half hour?), the bartender was a dead ringer for DJ Drama, and the crowd was 70% people who seemed interesting, chill, and who I would actually want to talk to. The other 30% were yuppies. Unfortunately, as I was getting my designated one glass of wine, some dude bumped into me and I ended up splashing 1/4 of the glass across this woman's back, accidentally. Wine was red. Shirt was white. Woman was a yuppie. I apologized profusely, as it was an accident, but she was weird and paggro about it, effectively squashing my first inclination to buy her a drink to make up for my clumsiness. Instead, I apologized a few times, offered to get some seltzer to wash it out. She seethed and stared at me from under incredibly well-coiffed brows. I could do nothing else but walk away. And I realized that weird, stifled, passive-aggressive behavior is the reason yuppies can only express anger through road rage.
Then some obviously wealthy, 40 year old South African dude tried to wife me by saying, "CIAO, BELISSIMA," holding my arm proprietorially, and asking me if I'd ever been to Italy. I was like, "I AM JUST TRYING TO GET DOWN TO JERMAINE DUPRI! AGAIN! THANKS FOR THE RING, I'LL BE GOING NOW!" Earlier, Yaisa and I were discussing how wack it is when NY Times always reports on the "marriage crisis," that career women in NY cant find dudes to date unless they quit their jobs, based on some bullshit faked statistic that is meant to coerce us into paranoia. If anyone is truly sweating this, I can hook you up with South African Ciao Belissima and he will totally take you on vacation.
Thanks to Professor Kun for sending me this mp3 with the subject line "To Be a Bossy Algerian in France." As bangers and mash-ups go, it's Tasty. (WAH-WAAAAAAAHH)
(PS I HAVE NO IDEA IN WHAT CONTEXT THIS WAS CREATED. JOSH?)
My ol boss M. Azerrad IM'd me recently and said, "When is your biopic starring Tina Fey as you coming out?" Recently, on the "Fighting Irish" episode of 30 Rock, I realized that my ACTUAL, REAL LIFE DANCE TEACHER was guest starring as Liz Lemon's dance teacher. Granted, she is one of many dance teachers I know, she is the real-life sister of The Flower Guy, and this is New York so shit like that happens all the time, but still.. it does nothing to assuage the creeping sensation that I may in fact BE Liz Lemon. She, too, is a a cynical, work-obsessed super-nerd with an addiction to Peeps and a predilection for colossal foibles. She, too, went as Princess Leia, like, four Halloweens in a row. Recently.
I don't want to be Liz Lemon anymore. From now on, I am Scarlett Johannsen! "I can wear whatever I want! I went to public school! Woody Allen and Philip Roth are collaborating on a "project" about me!" - SJ in latest issue of Vogue
Although to be fair I would never go out with 99.99% of the dudes either Johannsen OR Liz Lemon have dated. The Flower Guy? ZZzzzzzzzz. Josh Hartnett? ZZZzzzzzzzzz. Jordan Catalano? WHATEVER, STAY AWAY FROM MY BLACK NAIL POLISH, CLOWN!
This has been my personal crusade for about six months now: because there is nothing worse than a rapper contrasting the $10,000 worth of diamonds in his mouth with enlarged and clogged pores. You think I'm joking. I'm so, so not. I feel very passionately about this - I'd much rather see a dude wearing a regular t-shirt and no jewelry with a glowing, fresh epidermis than a fellow with Jacob's house on their neck and scales. The flash of those diamonds does not distract from your lax cleansing techniques, dude. St. Ives: $3.99 at the drugstore.
Many have laughed at me since I jumped on this wagon, but I feel vindicated knowing that Andre 3000 has a line extolling exfoliation on the OutKast track from Gangsta Grillz: the album. I can't tell you exactly what it is, because I fainted shortly after he said the line, but it's there.
Also, grills stretch dudes' mouths out like braces.
YOU ARE CRAZY FOR THIS ONE BOO
wowzers.
Prediction: the internet's joint of summer will be the forthcoming track by the above rapper which features
on the hook, cut a coupla days ago in NYC and overlaid with quippy, funny lyrics we haven't heard from our boy since yester-yester-year - pre-Be humor, that be. No, I am not a psychic, but I can spot a zeitgeist from 2 yards away (a mile if I'm wearing my seeing eyeglasses).
Handful of cowkrs went to the studio to hear the work in progress today. It was S-Feezy and six of us ladies like he was R Kelly, actually. Bearing in mind that I have only heard it once, I am of the belief that Mr. Sense's new album is much better than his last album, which was explosive on impact in a "thank you for catering to my feminist ideals" kind of way, but which flattened out after it became clear the whole thing was a little monotone. ("Faithful" is still my joint.)
Jury has reached an unfavorable verdict on that Gap commercial shit, true. But this one, it's called Finding Forever (a reference to Mr Sense's best friend and ex-roommate Jay Dilla RIP). So much of it was excellent, so much of it I loved. It's well-rounded - smart, political, funny, got some ole "MC with the fight in him" tracks, some Chicago tracks, some sexy shit. Mostly prod. by Black Jesus. Mr. Sense has realized, he said, that his humor was perhaps a bit lost on us over the last couple of albums, but it's returned (Kon has clearly rubbed off on him, both in spirit and in style).
Points of note: * Mr. Sense's shared hometown with our man Barack Obama is happily reflected on the album. * D'Angelo and Dilla reconvene on a refixed version of "so far to go" and it's eerie and beautiful - living on in the music, as it were. * Kon has a great verse about "something-something [feelin like the?] Phantom of the Opera/ wishin you were driving Phantoms to operas." * Mr. Sense spoke a bit about Dilla, emotionally and talked about coming home and he'd be there, watching Montel Williams or Maury Povich or whatever "talk show that comes on in the morning," and it was strange, now, to come back to an empty apartment.
That there are people in the room (Connie) who do consider Lil Wayne to be just plain "attractive," no qualifier.
We love you Weezy Baby. We love you for your mind. For your words. And for the hot hot heat that you bring.
SWAGGER CW 4/4/07
50 Cent renaming new album "Curtis" : 3.4
Actual first single from "Curtis" whose name I have forgotten since this morning: 1.1 (the stupidly horking haw haw chorus, ala the fat joe piggie squeal diss from that other album, is the nail in the coffin)
Lil Wayne saying "Damn right/ I kissed my daddy!" on "we takin over" freestyle: 9.9
Lil Wayne saying "young carter, darlin, understand i am michael jordan ballin'. i'm a dog, i'm a Hoya, homie, i'm a boss, your man's just an employer, mami" on "upgrade u" freestyle, in "new jay-z wheezing whisper" voice: 9.7
BONUS ROUND
Lil Wayne saying "u know i'm nasty. excuse my behavior/ let me just taste ya, we can fuck later" on "upgrade u" freestyle: WHOATHOUSAND! Brazen, flagrant, yet wants to please: why many women swoon over one of the uh, most "nontraditionally attractive" rappers ever
"DROUGHT"?! Ooh whatEVER (as we young tuff chiquitas scoffed in 8th grade)
When I move to Tokyo or Barcelona, my job is totally going to be selling Tohato's "Let's Order Some Bacon" strips from a cart on the street. I'll toast them and hand them out in little bags like those Nuts 4 Nuts dudes in NY, and I'll wear a cute hat so people know I am ok to talk to, and that my product is indeed delicious. It will be a parallel job w/my dear friend Sarah who, when she moves to Amman in May, has toyed with running a falafel cart to supplement her architecture duties. Maybe we can do cart-swaps every once in awhile just to switch it up.
Curious about the new Modest Mouse album cause they're old Pacific Northwest cronies, like fucking everyone, so I logged onto hypemachine to stream some of that wild Village Voice cover story shit. My first question is: what did eight years of hot dogs and scotch whiskey do to this man?!?! Ok, I can ask that because my brain's been burgered and my heart's the coal. I'm fine with this whole nu-Johnny Marr hair salon steez but I'm partial to their old stuff, when it was dirty, drunken, self-immolating peter-pan-at-23 man-boy music - maybe cause it came out when I lived there, maybe not. In an olde tracke, so says singer Isaac Brock:
"in this place that i call home, my brain's the cliff and my heart's the bitter buffalo"
- a lyric that could only be written by a man who has lived in the western states, and knows intimately the feel of the great lonely plains and the bloody history of the bison runs.
"i'm on my way to god don't know, my brain's the burger and my heart's the coal"
WORD LIFE, ISAAC BROCK - WORD LIFE.
To wit, Lil Wayne's verse on the "Throw Some D's" freestyle:
"touch my medallion and meet my baretta, leave ya looking like a burger with extra ketchup"
NEW POLL:
"In this life that we call home,
A. My Brain's the Burger and My Heart's the Coal
B. Ya Look Like a Burger With Extra Ketchup"
CHOOSE ONE OR BOTH
Fielding a craving, D Scott drove a fancy new Mazda to the nearest Sonic in rural Pennsylvania. I don't know wtf he's talking about wrt "Torque" and all those car-n-driver impenetrable slanguistics, but when he starts talking "bangin cherry lime aid," I can really, really feel him.
There is totally a gross cornucopia of chili cheese riding shotgun in this story.
Ok, I get it, I get it. I just didn't want to.
Still loving this song. Still think she sounds like Delores O'Riordan.
The new Rihanna song is indeed terrific, but reading the lyrics, I'm like - what are you even talking about? I do get the whole "rainy day friends forevs" stee, and appreciate/feel it, but Jay's no-occluded diamonds verse and Rhi's money-don't-matter subthemes make me think either old girl is not playing with a full deck, or that she is putting some loco subliminal on Beyonce that's gonna manifest itself in someone's blood spattered across the floor of the def jam bathroom before year's end --- or more accurately, somebody's harry winston necklace, busted, trillion-dollar diamonds rolling into the drain of the ladies' lounge at the grammys, as it were. but then, that's what they want us to believe. intra-label gossip narrative is part of the new hot multimedia marketing platform.
ok i love this song though
