December 28, 2007 (1) Comments

Dear God,

Even though I don't really believe in you, I have a favor to ask. Now that Lily Allen is pregnant, please let her write an entire new album about pre-natal care, having to pee all the time, wanting to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee but hating her doctor cause he won't let her, the lack of cute taffeta maternity dresses, the fact that none of her nike trainers fit anymore cause her feet are swollen into a size 40 (UK), her Chemical Brothers baby-dad wanting to fuck her but her feeling super not into it because there is a frigging watermelon weighing on her bladder (hence making orgasms feel like peeing), the awesomeness of having boobs that are two sizes bigger (but still not wanting to do it), how bouncers are super anal about letting pregnant chicks into nu-rave shows, the idea of a baby being a lot like an alien-parasite (come on u know u think about it), "baby tax," puking up mushy peas, early onset vericose veins, and walking around like a duck. I think it would be the best album ever.

P.S. Please do not let me get pregnant, ever.

Your Friend,
Julianne

December 27, 2007 (0) Comments

Bossip endorses Barack Obama.

Iowa Caucuses, Jan 3. Fucking Hillary Clinton. She can't win, she can't. She's just awful.

December 27, 2007 (0) Comments

Hilarity! Perhaps there really is a baby Jesus only he is more like the tooth fairy and at christmastime, he grants all your greatest schadenfreudinal tabloid-culture wishes! I LOVE YOU WISH-GRANTING JESUS-GENIE! BUT ONLY BECAUSE MISCHA IS SUCH A SNOBBY PRISSY VOGUE IT-GIRL AND NOW THE TRUTH IS REVEALED - SHE IS NOT AS BORING AS SHE ACTS! IRREDEEMABLE SOCIALITE BITCHES STAY GETTING BUSTED! TRU LIFE!

December 26, 2007 (0) Comments

KELSIOGRAPHY: In which I make my brilliant 14-year-old fellow writer sister-cousin Kelsi Rivera review albums of her choice for this blog. I pay her $0, in an attempt to give her a real-world experience and acclimate her to the music-reviewing lifestyle. Edition 1: The Devil Knows My Name, third album from former Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5. - JSHEP

above: kelsi as john 5, wearing the pink plastic diamond ring i gave her when she was visiting

John 5
The Devil Knows My Name
(60 cycle hum records)
Another metal CD may seem like another snow flake in Alaska, but I can promise you this CD is worth buying, and not just downloading for free off the internet.

John 5 really shows off what he can do on this album, but did you expect less from ex-Marilyn Manson and Rob zombie's (current) guitarist? The first track, "First Victim" might seem hard to get into (unless you have true passion and respect for everything metal), but by the second track I guarantee that you will be shredding on your air guitar, not only with John 5 but Joe Satriani. The third track, "27 needles," is bound to impress and thrill. You can expect the rest of the album to do the same.

The guest guitarists on this CD make the album all the more ear candy. John made an awesome choice having not only Joe Satriani, but Jim Root and Eric Johnson, guest guitarists. On the track "Black Window of La Porte," Jim Root and John play together and truly make the song magnificent. John 5 also does an instrumental version of Guns And Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle," showing off how he can make even a cover of a song sound so original he could claim the whole thing to himself. I must enlighten on how I love the way "Harold Rollings Hymn" (track 7) and "Dead Art in Plainfield" (track 8) blend together so well they sound like they could be the same track. This album definitely will delight not only all you metal and / or heavy guitar fans, but heavy drum and computer programming fans too. However, if you're not in the mood to thrash to any face melting guitar, but still crave something that will impress and please you, "Bella Kiss" and "Young Thing" will undeniably hit the spot. These bluegrassy songs - compared with some of the heavier and amazing riffs like in "The Washing Away of Wrong" featuring Eric Johnson - show off not only this album's versatility but worth. John 5's unique guitar style, like his behind-the-nut bends will supply you with music like you have never heard before. The CD closes with beautifully with "July 31st (the last stand)". Try to hold back from putting it on repeat and wearing out the CD the first day. John 5's "The Devil Knows My Name" Is certainly not another snowflake in Alaska. By the end of this album you will want to BE John 5. - KELSI RIVERA

By the end of this review, you will want to BE Kelsi Rivera. - JSHEP

December 26, 2007 (1) Comments

My sister-cousin Kelsi, 14, texts me with her Xmas take: "A cool Lumberjack coat and new shoes and a poster of Kat Von D!"
I text her back: "Me and my mans are eating cake and watching bloody Japanese horror movies"
She texts: "Gory ones I hope! I wish I was with you!"

I love her. Hope everyone had a good xmas. The television was showing the burning log program all day, which is the best reality show ever - OG reality show: a fireplace - which I already pointed out in my all-friend xmas text, but am repeating here cause Sasha requested that I put it in print. Manfriend gifted me The Plugz's 1981 album "Better Luck" - the cool punk en espanol group whose LA soundtrack songs made Repo Man what it was, whose "El Clavo y La Cruz" is the best- it's all Spanish ska-punk but has some fake banda flava, with that "ay, hai hai hai ahaaaaaa" falsetto man-squall at the beginning - so classic - and guess who plays bass? Gustavo Santaolalla, who also produced and is billed as "Gus" - you may know Gus from being in the first-ever rock en espanol group, Arco Iris (formed in 1967), and from being the charango fanatic that bestowed Brokeback with its emotional mountain doomed-love sounds, not to mention the breezy and beautiful joints for your fave flicks Amores Perros, 21 Grams and The Motorcycle Diaries (no dis to Garcia Bernal Che but mega-word to del Toro Che).

So Annie came over with a lasagna and I baked apples and salmon and the old man sauteed some spinach which he does so well and we gorged ourselves and talked all sorts of Xmas shit. Annie had to work in the morn so we walked her leftovers home a block away, greeting everyone we met on the way - I love holidays because it's a sanctioned time to talk to strangers, to greet people on the street, rather than all the other times when you are a creep if you try to say hello to someone you don't already know by sight. A creep or, worse, they turn out to be creepy and your friendliness is rewarded with stalking or public indecency. This is also why I like the Jehovah's Witnesses - they are always sweet and say hi when I walk by them on my way to the subway, all older ladies in hats and gloves - and they never try to solicit me, even though they are for some reason constantly in my neighborhood.

So after that we lied around in bed and watched Tracy Morgan's Best-of Saturday Night LIve and I got my manfriend faded on Christmas-issue Hennessey VSOP and made him tell me all his secrets, which actually I may end up regretting. Sometimes you don't want to know everything, even if you think you do.

I do want to know everything about Tracy Morgan, though. It was really interesting seeing his audition tape on that VHS - did you all know he used to weigh like 4 times what he does now? - and then seeing Conan try to figure him out like 7 years later on his show... white talk show hosts do not know how to deal with Tracy Morgan, by the way, even Conan who seems like he'd be semi-the most down out of any of them. They all act like they have never met anyone from the projects, while still trying to act like they actually get what he is saying to them, while still being funnier than they will ever hope to be. Also, he will like give people a straight answer often, but - and i have seen Conan and Jimmy Kimmel do this - but they will think he is making a joke, and laugh or joke back, so when Tracy realizes they don't get it, he will just turn it into a joke and take it way out there, so far out there that they are like WTF, like telling Conan his son is going thru puberty and masturbates too much. It's really intense.

Today I'm going over to the man's and watching the director's cut of my favorite movie バトル・ロワイアル on the projection-screen television, which his roommate "borrowed" from his work. I can't wait to watch teens off each other in people-sized proportions. Nothing gets me in the holiday spirit like wall-scale unadulterated gore. Word to my sister Kelsi.

December 23, 2007 (0) Comments

One of my favorite blogs this year was What About Our Daughters, well known for being the blog that started the effective boycott against BET's "Hot Ghetto Mess," (and winner of "best blog - judge's choice" in the black weblog awards). It is an unfalteringly inquisitive critique of how modern media portrays black women and inspires me to question - everything - every single day. This post is a perfect example of why it's so amazing - the whole thing is about finding and exerting political and consumer power, and as an equal vestige of that, finding and using the power within. It's about change - and that's why I'm extra excited to see what happens with the newly launched Black Women Vote!

I have spent so much time doing, and thinking, things this year I have not been able to chronicle on this blog - for time constraints, for brain constraints, for the mere fact of being a single woman struggling through the drama both personal and careerical and, fuck, just trying to make rent in an increasingly affluent, decreasingly interesting [as a result] New York City. My friends who have kids? Forget it. Pope Rottweiler should anoint them as saints just for attempting. One of my closest new friends is about three years younger than me and has the most adorable baby girl - she's two and a half and was a little ballerina for halloween - and she's lucky her baby's daddy is in the picture but let me tell you, that shit is difficult. But I digress - the whole point of this is, I have the next 9 days off, so maybe I will actually get to blog in a way that is in full sentences, rather than three phrases and a link popped off and published with no punctuation in between editing or tryna meet one deadline or another. Regardless, my point is I don't have it bad, at all, but in 2008, the luxury of locking myself in a cabin in Maine (shout to my peoples in Vinalhaven) or on a Barcelona beach towel and jamming out all the compacted contents of my brain in a black spiral notebook is gonna happen, trust. Only four more years til the Mayan apocalypse, babies. Live it while the living live.

December 22, 2007 (5) Comments

Here's some shit i loved in 2007 that didn't make my top tenners

T2 f. Jodie Aysha, "Heartbroken"
Too Crunk Missez "Shake Dem Dreadz" (shout to nick catchdubs for realizing this song is basically my entire life steez-sthetic and putting me on)
the album Lil Mama made and played for me in her uncle/manager's Astrovan outside the studio where they were editing the "Lip Gloss" video, before Jive Records stepped in and made her do shit like "G-Slide," which was totally wack and not really her natural style, which is much harder than you think but still purposely family-friendly with super original flow and beats by non-famous people that still knocked. P.S. RIP Lil Mama's mama.
Lil Wayne f. Nikki Menage, "Can't Stop Won't Stop" (special mention cause Nikki Menage is dope, borrows her hook from my man-4-life Heavy D, and namedrops Hermione from Harry Potter)
Ciara "Addicted"
Ludacris, "Ludacrismas" (not really but it's my favorite xmas song since Mariah and Jermaine Dupri's rhythm & quad carol "All I want for Xmas" - shout to the xmas episode of "30 Rock")
Strategy "Future Rock" (album)
Keri Ann Hilson f. Snoop Doggy Dogg-Dogg "Henny & Apple Juice"
Turf Talk's West Coast Vaccine (album), specifically "Popo's," "Rippah," "Minnie Minnie (f. Freeway!)" and "I'm Ghetto"
50 Cent "I Get Money"
Swizz Beats' beats
Nikki Flores "Suffocate"
Lloyd f. T.I., "Shook"
R Kelly "Leave Your Name"
Dream f. R Kelly "Shawty is da Shit (RMX)"
R. Kelly "Real Talk (Darkroom Productions RMX)" [w/regards to sean fennessey, who put me on to this]
R Kelly & Ciara "Promise RMX"
Lil Wayne "Promise Rmx"
Mario "Kryptonite"
Outkast/UGK "Int'l Players Anthem"
Three6 Mafia/UGK "On Sum Chrome"
Rihanna f. Jay-Z, "Umbrella"
Cupid "Cupid Shuffle"
That 2007 Barr album that is like being in a talk therapy mind spiral and/or being injected, Innerspace-style, into Brendan Barr's brain matter
DJ Unk f. Andre 3000, Jim Jones & Big Boi "Walk it out rmx"
Zigmat!, Zigmat! (album)
Track 7, i think, of the "Beyond Hamsterdam" mixtape, the crazy hype slowed-down bmore club track w/raps by the Get 'Em Mamis, who do not fucking have a myspace page!! ARGH!
That J. Holiday Album. Also, Lil Mo's entire "Pain & Paper" (album)

PS PET PEEVE VENTS OF 2007: T.I. vs. T.I.P. is NOT a good album and "Lil Wayne: The Carter 3 Mixtape" is NOT a real mixtape! And the mass amt of ppl who like VAMPIRE WEEKEND as a band is totally confusing to me. I feel like their whole stee is, in execution, a revisionist glorification of the Reagan '80s, devoid of self-awareness or awareness of the times, and I can't believe ppl think their boringass "'African' music via Paul freakin Simon's 'Graceland' but without the Africa" is good - also they are PAINFULLLY devastatingly boring live. In fact listening to them kinda motivates me more politically than any other band this year, in my reaction towards their music, and said conjuring of '80s feelings. They also make me want to listen to like, Minor Threat, because it would be the only decade-appropriate response. So in that sense, I am glad they exist.

Top 10 most-played songs on my home laptop, from which I spend only a little time time on itunes, and where generally my downloads are confined to Philly rap mixtapes and 1990s Atlanta bass musics:
1. Yoyo "Can't Play With My Yoyo"
2. KP & Envyi "Shorty Swing My Way (Carl Mo Remix)" [first raps Ludacris ever wrote, thank u to BFred for putting me on]
3. Lil Wayne "Upgrade U freestyle"
4. Al B. Sure "Ooh This Love Is So"
5. Chico DeBarge, "Virgin"
6. Big Boi f. Bun B & Big Gee, "808"
7. Nicole Wray f. SAS "Back Up Against the Wall"
8. Baby Huey "Pop Lock & Drop It"
9. Lil Wayne "Back on My Grizzy" ("i got gasoline comin out my pores, i'm a torch/ i got glasses like that whiteboy scott storch / and a porsche / i got a license for the scorch / snipers at your porch/ rifles by the forts/ and we shoot up courts.")
10. Reed Dollaz, Joey Jihad & Gillie Da Kid, "Ring the Alarm (freestyle)" WHAT UP PHILLY
11. Raheem Da Dream, "So So Def Bass Contest"
12. Mary J Blige f. DMX & Nas, "Sincerity"

December 19, 2007 (1) Comments

But you can see where I was last night if you tried calling and I didn't answer. Or got a text from me that said "STRINGER BELL IS HERE SHOULD I HOLLA"

December 18, 2007 (3) Comments

I was just totally reading one of those extra-self-referential, high-horsey cooleyhighharmony l'academe d'forever "end of year round-up" thingies, and a stream of drool literally began trickling out the side of my mouth from boredom. I apologize if posting my own top 10s was too narcissitic (though to be fair it was requested; additionally, it was already typed out). Dear everyone, I promise when I write my year-end essay I will try not be sanctimonious or "omniscient narrator."

December 18, 2007 (3) Comments

Shout to Maltese Rubble, here are my top tens/tenners, also available and coming soon in a poll near you:

ALBUMS
1. The-Dream, Love/Hate
2. Keke Palmer, So Uncool [p.s. YES, AKEELAH FROM AKEELAH & THE BEE RELEASED THE BEST CHICAGO JUKE-POP SONG OF THE YEAR, SORRY KID SIS]
3. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3
4. Lloyd, Street Love
5. Freeway, Free At Last
6. DJ Drama, Gangsta Grillz the Album
7. Tank, Sex Love & Pain
8. MIA, Kala
9. Soulja Boy Tell'em, souljaboytellem.com
10. Rasheeda, Dat Type of Gurl ("first things first / I, 'Sheeda. / Mess around wit no man who won't eat 'a!" LMAO)

SINGLES
1. Mariah Carey, "I Feel It"
2. Lil Mo, "Just LIke That"
3. DJ Unk f. T-Pain, Jim Jones & E-40, "2-Step Remix"
4. Tiffany Evans f. Ciara, "Promise Ring"
5. Santogold, "LES Artistes"
6. Teyana Taylor f. Young B, "Boy You & Me"
7. R Kelly f. T-Pain, TI, "I'm a Flirt RMX"
8. Kanye, Tallahassee Pain, DJ Toomp "Good Life"
9. B.O.B. "Haterz Everywhere"
10. Usher f. Ludacris "Dat Girl Right Dere"
11. Lil Spreezy "Bitch I'm Lil Spreezy"

TOP TEN MOST PLAYED SONGS IN MY iTUNES AT WORK, 1/07-12/07
1. YoYo, "Can't Play with my YoYo"
2. Dream, "Shawty is the Shit"
3. Keyshia Cole, "Down & Dirty"
4. Lil Mo, "Just Like That"
5. Nivea, "Okay (the-Dream remix)"
6. Rasheeda, "My Bubble Gum"
7. Mariah Carey, "I Feel It"
8. Megan Rochelle, "Let Go"
9. Nivea, "I Can't Mess with You f. The-Dream"
10. Freeway f. Mariah Carey, "You Got Me"

SIX PRODUCERS/SONGWRITERS WHOSE CATALOG I NERDILY COMPILED IN iTunes MASTER PLAYLISTS THIS YEAR
Carl Mo
Gamble & Huff
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis
Keri Hilson/The Clutch
Terius "The Dream" Nash

Elaborations, honorable mentions, and links to published year-end shit laterz....

December 17, 2007 (2) Comments

Of course I love the Sartorialist's chic photos of fashion plates on the streets of NY, Stockholm, Paris and wherever... but way more my speed are Fashion Bomb's round the way chicks from the boroughs - especially BK, especially Havana Outpost in Ft Greene which is where I try to spend every weekend in the summer. CUTE CUTE CUTE real fashion on cool girls.

Still busy, just wanted to share.

December 16, 2007 (4) Comments

I despise Hillary Clinton. If Obama does not win the nomination, I am going to choke, then move to a Spanish-speaking country that is not Mexico (not because I don't love the motherland, but because Mexican politics are too intricately tied to the States). Maybe I will move to Argentina, where Cristine Kirchner can be my spirit guide - another strong political woman who succeeded her husband in the presidency, but who got there by integrity and popularity, not her own perceived entitlement.

Also, fuck anyone who is still saying Obama has "relative inexperience." He has spent his career helping poor black denizens of Southside Chicago, which is better Presidential experience than Hillary Political-System Clinton will ever dream of having. Plus dude watches, and enjoys, The Wire, which is a from-the-streets handbook of how fucked we are by the institutional underpinnings of this country. I will never NOT vote for a president who watches, and enjoys, the Wire. (which by the way begins its fifth and final season January 6, yay my life begins again)

December 16, 2007 (2) Comments

Kelsi Rivera is the coolest 14-year-old I know. She also happens to be my cousin, but really she is my sister in soul: I am constantly floored by how smart and strong she is, how creative and cool and inventive and empowered and observant. She writes in her journal every day, she loves Wendy O. Williams and Francesca Lia Block, and when she grows up she either wants to be a chef or a writer of music, and she is currently the leader in a band. Whenever I see her I always want to give her little presents: this time I gave her a pink plastic ring with rhinestones in it, and my copy of "Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop and Rap," because last time I gave her the Trouser Press from like '99 and she read it cover to cover... then loaned it to her English teacher.

Anyway, she's going to start doing music reviews on this blog. I cannot wait - she is a shiny sparkling diamond.

December 15, 2007 (3) Comments

I put up this old article from a '98 VIBE on Ike Turner and it's essential reading, for real. The writer, Anne Marlowe, examines how Ike was transformed in the public eye from semi-heralded musical genius into mythological "ultimate dangerous black male" almost singlehandedly by the cartoonified Tina biopic What's Love Got to Do with it. Now, of course she doesn't gloss over any of the parts where he actually was, indeed, abusive to Tina, because he was, and he was clearly a grade-a, hands-on misogynist. But she points out the double standards - how Elvis's similar transgressions never get mentioned, and chronicles how his mythic-proportion public persona overshadowed and overwrote his place in music, as a national treasure. In the standard tradition of America's music historians burying great black talents beneath their personal ills, of course - of holding black musicians to greater and more stringent personality litmus tests than their white counterparts. It's what is happening to R Kelly, it's what has happened to Michael Jackson, it's what people tried to do with Mariah Carey. And with that, I leave you with my favorite non-Tina-related Ike Turner song, "Funky Mule," which has the illest break I can think of - the bassline and the drums spar with the guitar in a singularly massive moment of, um, funkiness. When you listen to it your face will funky-mule right off. PS Who has sampled this track? Seems like something breaks freaks would go right in for.

December 15, 2007 (1) Comments

In the wake of the writer's strike, ABC is putting back episodes of "My So-Called Life" on their website. It's nostalgia in a wave of plaid flannel and bad flower-print dresses and Cranberries soundtracks - in high school, i used to watch every episode - and it was the first and final moment Claire Danes was a decent actor, but it is a terrific show, and the pacing is so much slower and simpler than anything now. The Clinton era, pre Bush, pre bin Laden, seems now nebulous and impossible, like it was a dream. But then I feel that way about all my '90s memories.

The real reason I'm writing this is to let you know that in the third episode, up there right now, a young, pre-Moesha, pre-Federline Shar Jackson plays a minor role as a student whose locker gets shot open in a gun accident. She has great style - bomber jacket, huge loops, Left Eye cap. PS in 9th grade I fully had a bootleg cross colours 8-ball bomber, in black suede with multicolored sleeves. In retrospect, it was crazily hideous, and cost $86 which was a fortune then, both for the '90s and for my family, but I persuaded my moms to buy it for me one holiday - Xmas, I think, and I loved that thing and wore the crap out of it for like, 8 months, until someone stole it from my locker. What double-sucked about that - my fake Rayban wayfarers and Mariah Carey "Emotions" cassette were both in the pocket when it got jacked. True story.

December 14, 2007 (2) Comments

So FREAKING BUSY right now - VIBE work! freelance work! I do not even have time to get my eyebrows threaded - but here are some things that are making my day / life / fascinating this morn:

The US Accuses Venezuela of Secret Election Funding: I love Argentina's new PM Cristina Kirchner, I am on the fence about Hugo Chavez (formerly a fan, now unsure tho I think in general his for-the-people stee is admirable). BUT BUT BUT - the US government is so fucked, and I am feeling what Kirchner says about this all.

Wee Argentinian metallurgists: Gauchitos rock on.

Neil Gaiman handles a super-nerd's marriage proposal: I think Jason may be my soul mate

The Don Imus Recycled T-Shirt: via Racialicious

Obama leads Clinton in NH poll: Hell Yes

And, as ever, don't forget to tune into Faded Radio tonight from 6-8 pm. It's Wagz's last official run ever so it'll be super special and maybe she'll deliver a speech.

(PS If you haven't been reading Schnippz's The-Dream acrostics, you are sleeping. That Dream-Catcher photoshop is totally my desktop right now p.s.)

December 11, 2007 (3) Comments

GOSSIP GIRL HERE. ITEM! Last night at Lit, while doing the forbidden dance with Nick, a certain young, punky Brit supermodel sullied her gorgeous cream-coloured ostrich feather jacket when she fell, drunkenly, flat on her face (giggling). I am not casting stones, because I did the same thing three minutes earlier down Houston, but I'm just saying: flick yer bean, chica, or you finna Henry Holland yo'delf!

December 9, 2007 (0) Comments

_______ quit drinking and is translating his unattended-to psychological burning into unfettered sex obsession. Last night, before, during and after dinner, he referred to his penis approximately 548 times, in contexts I did not even know could exist, including the moment when, as I was biting into my tender sauteed broccolini, he began describing the physical limitations and benefits of being fully uncircumsized. Note: before last night, I had previously met him one time. My man-friend pointed out his topical fixation and timed him and he miraculously went a whole 14 or so minutes without mentioning his wang. Which goes to show addiction is an animorph until you plunge a stake through the heart of it.

December 8, 2007 (0) Comments

shit you guys are all so damn fixated on the main guy from deerhunter you forgot to tell me about MOSES, whose mugshot makes me feel like a Latina Larry Clark, all voyueristic and inappropriate and old and otherizing (because I am totally not that into his band). Good god.

December 6, 2007 (0) Comments

Bun B exclusively gave VIBE his first interview following Pimp C's passing.

Two fucking words. Spiritual. Jewels. Between this and that forgiveness novel I'm reading, my heart feels like an orchid. Delicate, precious and whatnot.

December 6, 2007 (1) Comments

I am a fucking nerd, and my joy factor is muted on account of the SSRIs and the prolonged absence of my special man-friend, but this is the funniest thing I have seen in like, six days.

December 5, 2007 (0) Comments

Gloveless in the biting cold, my mother decides to buy some bootleg DVDs down on Lafayette before we hop on the train for home and central heating. They are five for a dollar: American Gangster, No Country for Old Men, This Christmas, Enchanted and, for me, Why Did I Get Married. She deliberates for eons over whether she would really like to watch such a depressing film as No Country for Old Men. I am motivated by opinion and temperature and deliver an impassioned endorsement - it is the greatest film I have ever seen, it is quiet and sad but delivers beautiful truths about life, the Coen Brothers are a force to be reckoned with, the acting is fucking bananaicals, come on mama I am getting frostbite in my cartilege. Getting nowhere - my nose is of no concern to her delicate moviewatching sensibilites - I remind her Javier Bardem is the star. She loves Javier Bardem. Who doesn't. "I'll take it."
Home, we try to watch the family film "Enchanted," but must turn it off on account of it would insult the intelligence of an infant child. It would make the newborn baby Jesus, wet and mewling in a bale of hay under the north star, feel condescended to. We are glad we did not give Disney $22 to see it for real.
Why Did I Get Married, though, was the replacement, and deserves real paid-for-theater tickets, so Tyler Perry can continue building his black filmmaking empire in Atlanta and give Jill Scott, Janet Jackson, and the sublime Tasha Smith regular work until the Mayan apocalypse. I haven't seen a good relationship ensemble-drama like this since maybe Closer, only this one is far less nihilistic and has a realistically happy ending and is funny, because Tyler Perry is a faithful Christian who makes it his life goal to uplift, while Closer writer Patrick Marber is a Nietzschean Dr. Phil.

December 5, 2007 (3) Comments

Now that the Flux Capacitor is officially purchasable via interweb, I was forced to consider what year I would travel to, and why. Obviously my first choices are 2013 (so I can skip the Mayan apocalypse), and baktun 7 (approx. 435 C.E., which is when the Mayans first started time on their calendar). After that? Shit, no other time but now. I can't get very creative with it - I keep considering the 1968 Paris riots, but that's so obvious. Perhaps I'd journey back to a quiet day in an uneventful year on an island where time has no constraints, no power.

Or go to the library at Alexandria in the 3rd Century.
No where, no time but Mesoamerica and Egypt. And maybe Greece and China and Rome and Mesopotamia. No where but ancient.

Where would u go?

December 5, 2007 (1) Comments

Hollertronix is like SOOOO 1945, but Diplo* ain't, and the Fader has some exclusivo mix by him and Paul Devro with their commemorative H-Tronix feature for their 50th anniversary. Speaking of 1945, I am totally listening to Tribe's "Oh My God (REMIX)" right now on the iTunes. Senor Kick-Push, eat yr mumma fukin heart out. "My man from Al B Sure is in Effect Mode/ Used to have a crush on Dawn from En Vogue" PALEOZOIC THROWBACK SHIT!

*I got that new Bonde de Role EP in the mail and while I think for the most part it is reprehensible (that EDU K track is like, i know you are Edu K but wtf are you even talking about)
BUT
the Diplo mix of "Marina Gasolina" is the best thing I've heard from them since I fell on my face for the dance-party-grunge cheekiness of that Alice in Chains sample song, "Melo do Tobaco." Was "Marina Gasolina" on the album? I can't remember. Didn't stick. What's-her-face, the vocalist, is saying "Afrika Bambaataa," and I guess u can surmise it's like her way of tryna recognize, except she rhymes it with Caipirinha [my fave alcoholic beverage fyi], which in a phrase sums my whole overarching prob w/do Role. But I ain't here to hate. The way she's like "Whoa-Ha," is a singular moment. There is a rather transformative tuba sample that winds up my rumpshaker. What's-her-face should just stop saying words and do mouth-drum noises for good. heres the video

December 4, 2007 (1) Comments

Hope you're in a better place.

December 3, 2007 (0) Comments

NY Times does a piece on our neighborhood bodegas, coffee joints, bars. The amazing part is that the chick interviewed Ralph, our neighborhood barista/bartender, and his best friend Steve, the theater dude. Leading me to believe she's a local. Sigh. And.... sigh.