June 2005 Archives

AND WE'RE BAAACKK!!!! Soothing Websites Beta was such a glorious success you knew we would have to hit you up with some more Soothing Websites. A recent trip to Anacortes, Washington coupled with an evening of truly amazing weather in Portland has provided us with enough ammo for Soothing Websites 02: Still Soothing or as some like to call it Soothing Websites 02: Double Soothe. I don't like "Double Soothe" as a name as much because I think this video/website is actually a bit less soothing than previous ones. The shot is not as still, the weather is at times violent, the music is additional and powerful. This effort is a bit more sincere in its artistic attempts but also still under the Soothing Websites ethos. We hope you enjoy. There will be more soothes to come. (Click on image for video)

This is the new interview segment here on Uncle. From time to time we will feature an interesting personality. Who could be more interesting than The Ultimate Blogger himself, James. We were lucky to have James in Portland less than a week after his crowning, and he is a fine fellow indeed. (Click the image for video)

James is awesome. Totally mellow and nice and kind and mild mannered and funny and has an awesome hidden wild streak. Whenever he had a free moment without anyone looking he would find a spot to spray paint one of the awesome stencils that he had hidden in the trunk of his rental car. The interview was actually much more in depth and mostly about The Ultimate Blogger contest and will be featured in full on the forthcoming DVD release. Here is a Hello Kitty stencil that James left me right out front of my home.

Portland summer is now happening. The last few years summer time has been unofficially referred to as "festival season" here in Portland because every night there are like 3 awesome shows going on and every one is bouncing around town and hitting the spots. It's been like oh The Badger King is playing over in the Desert Tent (Meow Meow) and in half an hour Panther will be making babies cry over on the Beer Garden stage (Holocene) and White Rainbow is rocking the Chill Room (Dunes).

Well, it's happening again. The last two evenings I have gone to rad non traditional awesome shows that have both begun while the sun was still up and that has added to festival positive vibration. On Tuesday evening I saw Thanksgiving and P:ano at the The Artistery, which is a house/artist residence that has this amazing big geodesic dome in the backyard that they are having shows in and it's absolutely beautiful. Last night, it was Andrew Kaffer's new all inclusive band Dance Movement Music Contest or wait, maybe the word Party is in there as well, as well as this very cute 2 peice acapella band from Michigan called Catch A Wave at a clothing store called Retrospect.

After the show standing on the sidewalk talking to pals the air was crisp but warm enough not to worry about what you are wearing, and unexpected friends rode by on their bikes and stopped to talk.
Thank you, summer. (Click on the image for a video!)

I totally feel like that guy. You know, summer time, getting nice out, busting through walls with pitchers full of kool-aid. OHH YEAH. In accordance with summer, I have been taking in a good amount of MTV Jams recently. I don't know how they keep that station on, because they legitimately only show like 1 commercial every couple of hours. It used to be more random and awesome, but nowadays they are repeating the same videos every hour. LAME!!! To make things worse the crop of videos on there right now is pretty crummy. The station is still mostly dudical to watch because of the lack of commercials and the watchability of rap videos.

Ludacris "Pimping all Over The World" - More like Ludacris is phoning it in all over the world.
Fat Joe ft. Nelly "Get It Poppin'" - Boring, not a big Fat Joe fan.
Nelly's song for The Longest Yard "Errrtime" - We get it with the rrrs, dude. It's alright. Nelly is still slacking
Gucci Mane ft. Young Jeezy "So Icy" - This guy is so 1996 No Limit Records vibe. He is only getting played because of his murder charge. The video is just one of many these days with a terribly serious plot involving a very boring white man in a suit trying to shut a rapper down for illegal activities.
50 Cents "Jus' a Lil Bit" - Open your mouth, dude. This guys only hot verses recently have been on The Game's(the great beef between Game and 50 is back on, BTW) songs.
BG ft. Homeboi "Where They At?" - BG is mildly weak. Will never have another song near as good as "Bling Bling". Sorta into Homeboi though.
TI "ASAP" - This dude is hit or miss. He can be so likable and cute with a hot track ("Rubberband Man", "Bring Em Out") or mega boring without one (like this song).

Ciara ft. Luda "Oh" - All of Ciara's singles have been really good, and this might be my favorite.
Pitbull ft. Lil Jon "Toma" - Not the greatest song, but rad energy, and a good video. Feels pretty good.
Young Gunz "Set it Off" - Dude. Swizz Beats has a big honker (you know, schnozz)!!! This video is the cute tale of the young and hungry Gunnerz in the studio. They battle such obstacles as spilling soda on the mixing board and emerge from the studio with an cool new CDR!!!!
Ray Cash "Sex Appeal (Pimp in my own Mind)" - Oh man. This dude is fonky looking. Huge ears. He sorta looks like Sam "Alien" Cassell. He is from Cleveland, and the chorus of this song is weird and cool with echoed vocals and stuff.
Mike Jones "Back Then" - Everyone knows I like this dude by now. I think Adam and I figured it out. He's kinda like the Andrew WK of rap. Like from this indie scene and totally nice and cute but has this really digestible sound (repeated catchphrases and stuff).
Paul Wall ft. Big Pokey "Sittin' Sideways" - The People's Champ! I just saw this video for the first time. So many weird phrases written inside the trunks of candy coated cars in Houston. I love the Houston videos for their everyday life but awesome locations. This video takes place mostly in the parking lot for a Value Village.

BUT! WAIT!!

The undisputable summer jam has to be Da Backwudz "You Gonna Love Me." (5.0MB MP3)

Reasons why it is totally summer jam caliber: 1. It is totally feel good positive melody stylee 2. I want to listen to it over and over and over 3. The dudes have an awesome mimi pogo bounce at the end of the video 4. Has my favorite lyrics of any recent rap song including amazing lines like; "I'm rolling through oakhurst/Coated like starburst/Candy pain glisten/Lookin' greasy like bratwurst" or "The Dude on my jersey is great and deceased," or "Smoking earth tones/chong and cheech". 5. An Urkel reference that isn't stupid, but in fact quite awesome. 6. In Sho Nuff's verse he ends with a section that really reminds me of Eminem's weird staccato flow, which is really weird and cool. 7. It sounds like a Kanye jam but is produced by a dude named Milwaukee Black

The song is tremendous. The true epitome of a summer jam!!

The Ultimate Blogger has just ended, and boy are my wings tired. It was the UrbanHonking home crew posse's biggest project to date, and it was a great success. Great contest, great contestants, we got lots of great feedback, some good press. It crushed traffic records for UrHo and we hope that it boost UrHo's already rapidly rising readership. It totally crushed my life, while it was going on. We pulled somewhere around half a dozen all nighters and were up till about 4 am the rest of the time I bet we all (Jona, Mike, and I) put in around 200 hours each into it. So now, I'm in deep recovery mode.

This evening I caught up on some lingering Netflix DVDs including David Gordon Green's first film, George Washington. I had recently seen Gordon's second film All The Real Girls, which really blew me away. All The Real Girls is totally one of the best films about the subject of love i have seen in a long time. I would put it somewhere up there with Punchdrunk Love. It's totally interesting and different than other films about the sticky subject of love, but not in the same ways as Punchdrunk. George Washington has a very different vibe than All The Real Girls. It's mega ethereal but also somewhat dark. It's really beautiful and sorta trips me in a similar way as a Terrence Malick film (Badland, Days of Heaven, A Thin Red Line).

I'm stoked to see Gordon Green's other film he has made so far, Undertow, and have fast tracked that to the top of my Netflix queue (which will take years to get through). I was also looking up info about a David Gordon Green film version of the book A Confederacy of Dunces, which was slated to feature Will Ferrell in the lead along with Drew Barrymore, Mos Def, Lily Tomlin, and Olympia Dukakis. Needless to say, I was totally stoked about that movie because of my blinding worship of Will Ferrell (I recently saw Kicking and Screaming and absolutely loved it, am I losing touch with reality?). I come to find out that the film has just been cancelled!!!!!!! NOO!!!! Man, I thought this film was sorta crucial in making sure Ferrell isn't just known for his lovable family films, but also for a darker edgier somewhat dramatic deepness that I know he is capable of expressing.

Is my concern and love for Ferrell getting creepy?

* Photo is of Ferrell doing a reading of Confederacy of Dunces