The Verbal Calorie

Obaby

2009-02-09T15:53:00.005-05:00

It was only November when Barack Obama was ensconced in the bliss of not yet being President. Pre-bailout, pre-botched inauguration oath, pre-the already fulminating cries of "same old, same old," there was only victory.

There was late November, when the world rejoiced in Grant Park, the site of the music festival Lollapalooza, in a fashion heretofore reserved for rock stars and the Berlin Wall's deconstruction.

Seeing the masses whooping and hollering immediately after Obama had been declared the next President, it was difficult not to marvel at what this person meant to his fans. Election victories are usually celebrated with saccharine parties in stuffy hotel ballrooms, but this was something else. A massive block party, outdoors, in the cold of a Chicago November. This was the electorate getting its funky on to celebrate an electoral outcome. This was passion meets politic. Parlor meets party.

It was the full extent of that moment, and to be self-evidently metaphysical, that was all we had.

Obama's celebrity had been burgeoning for months, like steam billowing from a gurgling volcano. During the long campaign, remarks like, "If Obama walked into a club, he'd blow the roof off," were commonplace. Street cred was bestowed upon a candidate for the first time since Kennedy, and it quickly replaced race as the cultural superdelegate. Cachet defeated color.

How Obama fares in the crippled economy will help dictate his legacy as President. His reputation as a candidate, however, was cemented in that frigid blowout in Grant Park.

The Executive cool, rebirthed.

Stay Smitten, America
DJ Delegate

Room With a Viewz

2008-10-12T15:31:00.007-04:00

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in late September on Nextbook.]

“Michael Jackson takes himself so seriously,” said Jonathan Dagan, leafing through a salad in a Mexican restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Over dinner, the Haifa-born producer and frontman for J.Viewz, an electronica and trip-hop project from Tel Aviv, was explaining the inspiration behind his cover of “Smooth Criminal,” a down-tempo lounge treatment of the Jackson classic.

“Our version is a parody of that seriousness. It’s honest,” said Dagan, energetic and talkative in a sweatshirt and jeans. “It shines a new light on Michael Jackson.” Although it may sound paradoxical, Dagan’s description is right on: the song is an honest parody. In replacing Jackson’s frenetic elements with a slower tempo and sweet, loping vocals, the song is both irreverent and straightforward, a minimalist send-up with an aesthetic that characterizes most of the J.Viewz catalogue: smart, edgy, and altogether engaging.

J.Viewz, founded by Dagan in 2002 while he was in the band Violet Vision, functions mainly as Dagan’s one-man studio creation. He recruits a full band—guitars, vocals, trumpets, an MC, and even a laptop—for live performances, which include Dagan’s own work on the turntables, guitar, and computer.

Dagan lifts a heavy studio load in between tours. The Besides EP, J.Viewz’s most recent release, proved a stripped-down follow-up to its 2005 debut, Muse Breaks. Besides (so named because it consists entirely of b-sides and other one-offs) leads in with “Smooth Criminal” and includes other remixes, live tracks, and singles.

J. Viewz’s sound is an Israeli-flavored blend of beat-heavy rhythms, multifarious instrumentation, and computer-generated timbres. Haunting effects and subtle textural changes evince the influence of groups like Massive Attack and Sphongle.

The music suits its creator. Dagan is like a human remix, an amalgam of styles and source materials wrought into a clever, easygoing whole. He is humbly cosmopolitan, as eager to admit what he doesn’t know as he is to offer information. His J.Viewz material is similarly balanced, with a mood that remains simultaneously relaxed, danceable, and uplifting.

The variety of cultures and genres reflected in the music is a testament to what Dagan described as his lifelong struggle with Israel’s artistic shortcomings; he had to work to cultivate his tastes.

“I think that Israel has a lot to do with how my music sounds today, even if it’s the lack of cultural profundity I found in my hometown which had me searching for interesting music underground,” said Dagan. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have found [the same inspiration] if I’d lived in a place that satisfied my artistic needs.”

Having found more fertile musical ground in the States, Dagan—who said he developed his unhesitating English by watching TV as a kid—is thinking of permanently relocating to New York. Despite having produced ’s number-one Israeli radio hit “Adam Tsover Zichronot” this year and despite J.Viewz’s burgeoning success at home, Dagan took a rental in Manhattan this month and is exploring the Big Apple’s musical prospects.

“Something in New York City just feels right,” said Dagan, who will soon celebrate his twenty-seventh birthday. “Today we had rehearsal in Brooklyn, and we saw break dancers in the subway station, people just doing their art. I love that here…I have a hunch I’ll stay.” Still, there are things he’ll miss about his home country.

“I’ve been going in the streets and whispering to myself, ‘ch ch ch,’” said Dagan, mimicking the guttural friction the letters “ch” produce in Hebrew. “I haven’t used it for a while.”

Happily Ever After?

2008-09-25T17:03:00.010-04:00

Speculation abounds regarding whether the media’s influence is positive or negative for our collective psychology—the day has long passed since anyone of repute has argued that television, cinema, radio, advertising, et al. are epistemologically impotent. Indeed, the New Millennium meteoric mass packs a convoluted, dense punch, and unpacking the hazy penumbrae around the impact zone would take a very long time.

This much, however, is sure: we recognize patterns in popular culture and begin to anticipate what will happen next. We extrapolate from movie to movie, from song to song, and Western media being as homogeneous and formulaic as it is, we develop expectations. We know Jason Bourne isn’t going to die. We know the lost dog will find its way home.

We parse out heroes and villains, comedies and tragedies, and figure the good guys from the bad guys.

Most of all, we’ve come to expect the happy ending. And therein lies the problem.

We’re so bombarded with positive outcomes — inconceivable, unrealistic, and insultingly fabricated conclusions — that we’ve come to accept them as not just realistic, but as a given. Think about the Jason Bourne example: so many thousands of movies have reinforced our confidence in the hero’s right to a happy ending that we know what the end holds for Matt Damon. And we assume, extrapolators that we are, that we in the real world have the same right, are virtually assured a sublime epilogue.

We all expect a glorious resolution to our personal conflicts, believing each moment to be the penultimate frame in an inevitably feel-good reel. We believe in change being just around the corner. We believe in big breaks. We believe in magic. We believe in miracles. We believe in the majestic climax that awaits each of us. We have a brand of one-way consciousness that deludes us into categorical hopefulness.

Just one manifestation of our misguidedness is the way we characterize drug rehabilitation. Many call rehab a gateway to a better, warmhearted future. Others, including many who have gone through it, label rehab a stultifying entrée into bleak, temperate incompleteness. Likewise, we tie our relationships and jobs to the happy ending paradigm. We orient our expectations towards a consumer relationship with swooning songstresses, script-trapped actors, and cloistered authors fathoming redemption from the misanthropic generators of literary minds.

Are we delusional? Have we all lost our minds, intent on piquant delusions and reverie? Our echolalia is frightening: the Tourettic insistence on mimicking the media can only portend disaster. Whether we curate a calamity or merely end up severely upset is a matter of degrees, or perhaps courage. How willing are we to turn off the television of our lives, to set down the remote and go outside?

Stay Safe, Bourne
DJ Damon

Lost Tribe Finds Itself

2008-09-14T23:56:00.009-04:00

[Editor's Note: This article originally appears in the 09/04 issue of The Forward.]

In the Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, far in the northeast near the Burmese border, some 7,000 people observe the Jewish Sabbath, kosher dietary laws and rules of family purity. Already, 1,400 of these people, known as Bnei Menashe, have immigrated to Israel. The remaining 7,000 wish to join their brethren as soon as possible in relocating to the Holy Land, the act known in Hebrew as aliyah.

Their ambitions are proving more complicated than they thought, however, and so they have released a CD of their music. Titled “Aliya, Aliya…” it is intended to help make the case for their quest and, not incidentally, to help fund the move.

The Bnei Menashe claim descent from the ancient Israelite tribe of Menashe (Manasseh), one of the storied 10 Lost Tribes exiled from the land of Israel by Assyrian conquerors 27 centuries ago. The Israeli Chief Rabbinate affirmed in 2005 that these people are, indeed, of Jewish ancestry, but required that they undergo formal conversion before they can be deemed Jewish under rabbinic law — and thus qualify for immigration rights, in such areas as subsidies and citizenship, under Israel’s Law of Return. In the meantime, they must manage their resettlement on their own.

“Aliya, Aliya” features a collection of 15 songs, performed in Hebrew and in the Bnei Menashe’s local dialect, Thadou-Kuki, and is mostly devoted to Zionist and religious themes. The CD was produced and published by Shavei Israel, an organization that helps descendants of Jews from all over the world to reconnect with their Jewish roots.

According to Shavei Israel founder and chairman, Michael Freund, the Bnei Menashe are “a lost tribe of Israel. They live and practice Judaism, they keep Shabbat, they keep kosher, they keep the laws of family purity, they wear yarmulkes and tzitzit. They have built over 50 synagogues across Mizoram and Manipur.”

“Aliya, Aliya” combines Israeli and Indian styles, and, as its name implies, is a spirited plea for emigration. Some songs, like “Shokhen Ad,” are from the traditional Jewish prayer service, while others, such as the title track, echo the group’s attachment to Israel.

Although the disc showcases some exotic instrumentation, most of the songs are accessible and Western in musical style, with strong hints of modern Israeli music. In fact, though the expectation for a geographically far-flung disc may be a similarly unfamiliar style, the truth is just the opposite: The Bnei Menashe have produced a work that not only pines for the Holy Land, but also emulates Her sounds.

The result is pleasingly familiar, a percussion-heavy interpretation of Western fare. Not nearly as experimental as George Harrison’s famed Indian-style compositions, nor as traditional as the country’s classical raga style, “Aliya, Aliya” is surprisingly mainstream. With much of its material borrowed from Scripture and prayer, the album hits surprisingly close to home.

Shavei Israel is selling the CD through its Web site, www.shavei.org, and has been instrumental in assisting the Bnei Menashe. In addition to facilitating the aliyah of the 1,400 who have already moved to Israel, the organization has assisted with the building of synagogues and mikvehs in India. Shavei also operates two educational centers, one in Mizoram and one in Manipur, that instruct the Bnei Menashe in Hebrew and Jewish culture.

“I first learned of the Bnei Menashe over a decade ago,” said Freund, who served from 1996 to 1999 on the staff of Israel’s then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “I made contact with members of the community who’d managed to make it to Israel. I was very taken by them on a human level, with their sincerity and commitment to living as Jews.”

In 2004, at Freund’s urging, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate sent a delegation to India to try and determine if, indeed, the Bnei Menashe hail from a lost tribe.

“The rabbis spent time interviewing members of the community and meeting with some of the locals, learning more about their history and traditions and customs,” Freund said. The delegation submitted reports to Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, who in 2005, Freund said, “formally recognized the Bnei Menashe as being descendants of Jews — ‘zera yisrael’ [the seed of Israel] — and [said he] would do what he can to facilitate bringing them to Israel.”

Since the Jewishness of Bnei Menashe is not recognized by Israeli government officialdom, Shavei Yisrael has often had to navigate through layers of bureaucracy to get them to Israel. A typical strategy has involved obtaining permission from Israel’s Interior Ministry to bring groups of Bnei Menashe to Israel for the purpose of conversion and resettlement.

“I think the Bnei Menashe are a blessing for the State of Israel and the people of Israel,” said Freund, who made aliyah himself from New York 13 years ago. “They are honest, decent, hardworking people; they serve in the army; volunteer for combat units, and raise beautiful Jewish children. As much as we try to strengthen them, ultimately they strengthen us.”

Stay Sonorous, Bnei Menashe
MC Manipur

Age Rage

2008-09-02T17:03:00.008-04:00

Aging is a process, and aged is a state, but real “age,” at least as it’s depicted on a driver’s license, is a vast artifice. You see, chronological age is only as relevant as its implications: having a physical body that has withstood thirteen corporeal years is one thing, but the assumptions, generalities, and social constructs that go along with that amount of time are what are truly meant by, “Oh, he’s just thirteen.”

So calling one of those Harvard-bound preteens a “twelve-year-old” is just as misleading as calling him dumb, or unmotivated. Sure, it’s accurate so far as the calendar is concerned, but attaching all the trappings and beliefs normally assigned to people of that birth year is preposterous.

So twenty could be thirty, thirty could be eighty, and ninety could be fifteen. Each moment of the present is a shared commodity anyhow, a common “now” of which we all equally own a part. Our interconnectivity makes our ages something of a wash, or at least interchangeable. If one can share a moment with someone else—or, really, share every moment with someone else—then surely the amount of days one has been here is inherently less valent than one's humanness, and one's ability to transcend age and into something more captivating—perhaps one's science, or credulity.

We are transported on jagged floes of time, afloat on embalmed menaces irreversibly destined for later destinations. Thusly oriented, we presume these swaths our rightful carriers, and align our self-concepts by the blurry way-stations of days past. We pivot our stories on crowded platforms pockmarked by strewn birthdays and heeded demarcations. There are none more tortured than us, time travelers resigned to ride, freezing away our virility on age's piked glaciers.

But is chronology not simply a candle, a votive resonance with a wick, a body, and—most vitally—an extinguishable quality? Like an hourglass than can turned on its side and halted, age is a conflagration that can be smothered, muted, and mutated into inertness. Whereas some might believe the floes too mighty, these sheets can be stopped and stowed, made stationary against the rhetorical cross-examination of “But I don't feel very old.”

Belief is time’s lone arbiter—perceptions of youth and elderliness the vales in which age resides. It is from these hamlets that classifications arise, glutinous and damning like the summer haze. Twenty, thirty, and all the rest are viscous crags, plucking victims from time’s beneficent streets.

Stay Specious, Age
DJ Derider

The Java Jeremiad

2008-08-24T19:34:00.008-04:00

Coffee shops have long represented a certain culture, a Bohemian, B-Type liberalism associated, more or less, with screenplays that never get finished and scrawled notes that never get formalized. The bean brewery is home to the diurnal diuretic and estival beret—shelter to a fueled, fledgling artisanship.

Starbucks is not the traditional coffee shop. Starbucks sells John Mellencamp records. Starbucks sells first-person narratives driven by canine protagonists. Starbucks attracts more corporate shills than it does dowdy writers. Starbucks charges Benjamins and does not give free refills.

Like a dance club, Starbucks charges for a tony aesthetic. The acerbic, inky coffee is a high-priced hand stamp, a token of inclusion in an odd, pretentious party. The in-speak and latte lingo are the native patois, the jargon of dispossessed coffee drinkers with more insecurities than taste receptors. It is with an ingratiating smile that the counter clerk takes your order, and it is with a dismissive wave that your drink is served. Tired minions huff through Starbucks every day, wanting to tread in the shallow fraternity of Mint Mocha Chips and Caffé Americanos.

The question, “Would you like a little foam on your macchiato?” is supposed to be pathetic. It’s supposed to be asked of a faux installation artist by a faux barista, both—male or female—with unclipped body hair and idealism that slightly exceeds their respective intellects. It is a question that should, by café noir standards, evoke a round of mordant anti-Frenchism. It should not be asked in a central business district and should not be posed against an exclusively licensed John Coltrane recording. Thanks to Starbucks, macchiato foam flipped from freak to chic, its hilarity dissipated like so much steamed milk…err, soy milk.

What does Starbucks want? Not your money—they got that long ago. Not your loyalty—they snared that, too. What they’re really after is approval, a collective affirmation of the way the chain has hijacked coffee culture. Starbucks abruptly maimed the organic coffee shop experience, a fact that has become a mammoth elephant in the room. Instead of resolving the elephant, Starbucks has marketed it past innocuousness and into fashion, and desperately needs its customer base to help prolong the fiction.

Instead of addressing high prices and low roast, Starbucks is prospering by having us all participate in a farce. The knock-off paintings on its walls reek of wannabe, but we ignore that. The music it plays is teenybopper swill, but we listen anyway. Its heinous lighting and assembly line embrace violate everything quirky and sacred about coffee houses, but we forgive. We relent, yield, and sip.

Stay Scandalizing, Starbucks
DJ De Leche

The Phelps Phenomenon

2008-08-19T02:24:00.015-04:00

If you Google Michael Phelps—at least as of 1:20am EST on Tuesday, August 19th—you’ll turn up 9,080,000 results. Just two days after the flagellar phenom took home his record 8th Olympic Gold Medal in Beijing, Phelps has a bigger online presence than Stonehenge (8,630,000), the Queen of England (7,790,000), and LeBron James (7,150,000). He carries about eight times more virtual weight than Mark Spitz (1,190,000), the swimmer whose gold medal mark Phelps bested. Granted, Phelps is no Kobayashi (11,500,000), but is in a different stratosphere than Joey Chestnut (636,000), the vacuum who out-ate the Japanese hotdogger.

Sportswriters the world over are hailing Phelps as the greatest athlete of all time. In a feature called “Phelps’ eight gold medals makes us rethink greatness,” ESPN.com’s Jemele Hill says, “Forget your previous notions. Forget other things you've seen from the other world's best athletes. What Phelps has done is as remarkably different as God giving us the sun one day and the seas the next…Phelps has changed the way we think about sport. Phelps has redefined athletics, and athleticism.”

Want to claim home-country bias? Understandable. But then there’s the Canberra Times, an Australian newspaper that published a piece by columnist Daniel MacDonald entitled, “Forget Tiger, Jordan, Federer…Phelps is now the greatest ever.” When the lauding comes from a rival country—as MacDonald notes, “It was hard not to be disappointed with some of Australia's narrow misses. World record-holders Leisel Jones, Libby Trickett, Eamon Sullivan and Grant Hackett all failed to shine in their pet events”—and a country that won less gold collectively than Phelps did personally, it is time to stop and smell the chlorine: Michael Phelps is the bomb diggity.

The Olympics are one of our last romantic bastions. Modern facts like Wi-Fi and space travel are immaterial, and, more to the point, each event has a definable result. Someone wins, someone finishes second, and then another third. Swimming is especially platonic, since it is so simple—like wrestling, it involves no high-tech equipment, and like running, it is a race in the truest sense. Just a bunch of dudes/dudettes swimming through a bunch of water, each hoping for a glory that rests in hundredths of seconds. What makes Michael Phelps so accessible, so easily celebrated, is that one can sum up his achievement in a single sentence.

He swam faster than everybody else.

Michael Jordan had teammates; Phelps swam alone. Tiger Woods uses a club to hit a ball into a hole; Phelps used only his body. Lance Armstrong had teammates and rode the best bicycle money could buy; Phelps did not benefit from superior engineering, as he shared a pool with his competition. Muhammad Ali competed once every few months; Phelps swam every day, sometimes twice a day. And obliterated world-class competition each time.

It is very tempting to label Phelps the best ever, especially in the immediate afterglow of his achievements. It is even more tempting since Spitz, whose mark of 7 gold medals stood since 1972, already called Phelps “the best Olympian of all time.” But is Phelps better than Ruth, Thorpe, Federer, Woods, Ali, Gretzky, and Rice?

It’s nearly impossible to say. But one thing is clear: Phelps has to swim a lot faster to catch Justin Timberlake (39,000,000).

Stay Searchable, Michael
MC Medal

Lolla, Part 3: Alarms and Surprises

2008-08-18T14:20:00.020-04:00

[Editor’s Note: This is the third and final installment of The Verbal Calorie’s Lollapalooza diary. Like its two predecessors—“Lolla, Part 1 and Lolla, Part 2”—the finale is mostly an exposition of hazy memories, and at points boasts almost no connection to reality.]

[Editor’s Note 2: In regards to the comments in “Lolla, Part 1” about Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com wrote an excellent article on the same topic. Wojciechowski, a native Chicagoan, specifically mentions Lollapalooza.]

Somewhere between the maverick anti-label glory and the depressed public posturing lies the truth about Radiohead: they are a very good, very successful rock band. They long ago slid into the top-tier ranking—along with bands like U2, Dave Matthews, and Pearl Jam—that guarantees sold-out tours, excellent sales figures, and universal adulation. Like those other bands, Radiohead is largely mythologized, but they are also misunderstood.

The group’s legend roots in an absurd four-album run spanning 1997-2003. “The Bends,” a monumentally gorgeous record, came out in 1995, but, as has been noted repeatedly, it was “merely” a good pop record. Two years later, though, Radiohead released “OK Computer,” an experimental concept album that made unprecedented aural sense. Rock radio listeners were treated to daily airings of “Karma Police,” and “Paranoid Android” made the late-night MTV video rotation.

Radiohead released “Kid A” in 2000 and then “Amnesiac” one year later. In 2003, they submitted “Hail to the Thief” for public consumption.

Deservedly, these recordings lent the band a certain infallibility, a categorical assumption of genius that so few artists ever merit. Mythologized though they might be—their first album, “Pablo Honey,” is unremarkable, as is their latest, “In Rainbows”—the purpose, at least for the band members, was never to be a big, snotty rock band. In fact, what makes Radiohead so vastly misunderstood is that their music is hardly rock star fare. Much of it is quirky, electronic, and loping. Much of it is low-dynamic and hookless.

Much of it is completely indecipherable to a person brought up on U2, Dave Matthews, and Pearl Jam.

Which brings us to Lollapalooza: since there’s nothing cooler than professing to a) love Radiohead, and b) know all their songs, dozens of thousands of people jammed the main performance area for Radiohead’s performance on the festival’s first night. Body to body traffic spanned 200 feet from the stage, making passage impossible. At a festival like Lollapalooza, where neophyte listeners are as prevalent as diehards, it is difficult to say how much of the elbowing mass might be the genuine, Radiohead-addicted article.

For the initiated, the 24-song set was a Pantheon recital, with a few new tracks mixed in with the greatest hits. Glorious oldies included “Airbag,” the oddly apocalyptic “Everything In Its Right Place,” and “The Bends.” About half the audience knew the words to most songs, and a handful demonstrated the fixated geek information: track names, guitar patterns, historical context, etc.

At the set’s midway point, with the night just having stolen the last bits of sunlight, the Chicago skyline shone like a million small diadems. Fireworks exploded in curlicues just beyond of Grant Park, teaming with the skyline and Radiohead’s stalactitic light show for a seraphic gestalt.

Since the show ended at 10pm, there was time for a considerable spiritual debriefing afterwards. Radiohead-sated hordes flanked the streets, seeking food and further drink. Many coalesced at a small diner with a dance club in the basement, eager to either sit at a booth and reflect or get more boogie on. As we recounted the ways in which Thom Yorke's cadre had just reorganized our pleasure sensors, one benevolent truth stood accented above the rest:

For one night, Radiohead was understood.

Stay Seminal, OK Computer
DJ Diary

Lolla, Part 2: Perry, Perry Good

2008-08-11T00:57:00.010-04:00

[Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of The Verbal Calorie’s slightly impaired, still unnamed Lollapalooza diary. See the last blog, “Lolla, Part I: You’re Not as Bad as You Think,” for a complete intro.]

I assume, as an ardent theist, that my deceased ancestors are either in heaven or hell. Hopefully heaven, but it takes temerity to posit where a given man or woman is situated. Since it’s been a very long time since various religions’ sages claimed to have temporally passed into the next world, maintaining faith in the heaven/hell construct can be a bit trying. Is the concept of a binary destiny merely an appeasement, a chimera shaped by terrified theologians and opportunistic feudal lords? Are heaven and hell the netherwordly parallel to the tooth fairy and tax rebates? Is the image of DJ Bloggers past enjoying a cup of ethereal tea simply too pleasing to be true?

Thank goodness I went to Lollapalooza.

No less an authority than Lollapalooza founder and Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell sermonized on our post-dead destiny. Performing on the Kids’ Stage on the festival’s third and final day—and accompanied by Guns N’ Roses/Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash—Farrell echoed my long-held suspicions about the afterlife.

“Well, kids,” he said, walking the length of the stage, “some of you might have a grandfather or grandmother who died. That means they’re in heaven right now.” There were some kids, even some borderline toddlers, in attendance. Farrell’s own 4-year-old son, wearing a pair of oversized red earphones, stood to stage right.

“And so that’s what this next song is about. It’s called ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.’”

And with that, the band launched into a semi-spirited rendition of the Dylan standard, its basic chord structure easing my cosmic doubt. With Farrell’s philosophy restoring my forebears to their rightful resting place, there was time to enjoy his music (see below for video of the almost rockin' "Knockin'").

The set closed with a less-than-inspired rendition of “Jane Says,” the original version of which remains history’s most jaunty song about heroin addiction. In that moment, however, after Farrell had spoken so definitively about Eternity, the song sounded ominous: where do heroin addicts go when they die? Farrell, a dabbling Kabbalist, could surely opine on the question, but that was not to be at this Lollapalooza.

Instead, the 49-year-old’s focus was more immediate.

“There are a lot of cute girls here,” Farrell told the kids. “You’ll understand that when you’re older.”

Stay Spiritual, Perry
DJ Dylan

Lolla, Part 1: You're Not as Bad as You Think

2008-08-08T03:33:00.008-04:00

[Editor's Note: The Verbal Calorie attended Lollapalooza in Chicago this past weekend. This is the first of a multi-part retrospective that, despite The Verbal Calorie's best efforts, does not have a name.]

Chicago is not like New York. So I was told over and over this weekend, by both geographically yielding locals and adamant out-of-towners. For all that Lollapalooza had to offer—Radiohead and Rage Against the Machine, an extensive wine selection and homely joie de vivre—its greatest shortcoming was location. “Sure, Grant Park is really nice,” someone would say, referring to the festival’s home base, “but it’s not like New York.”

Chicago’s Trump Towers, watering holes, subways, and intellects were offered on a pyre of sub-Manhattanism. According to residents, the country’s third-largest city has pretty girls, but the really pretty ones move to Manhattan. The bars in Lincoln Park, Chicago’s ritzy hot spot, don’t make drinks like the bars in New York. You can see live music every night, but not like you can in New York. The skyline is nice, but can’t hold a scaffolded candle to the Big Apple’s.

Los Angelenos do not suffer from the same inferiority complex. Neither do Miamians, Clevelanders (although they should), or even the genial folks in Akron. But Chicago, the unrivaled Midwest monarch, is terribly insecure. Midway through Blues Traveler’s set, the girl standing next to me eagerly offered that, if she were me, she’d leave Chicago and never come back.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Because Chicago isn’t as good as New York.”

Trouble is, she’s right. Chicago isn't as good as New York, insofar as in all matters urban, economic, and demographic, the latter easily outstrips the former. Chicago, like many cities, is a scaled-down New York, and although the Sears Tower could cast a shadow over any building in Manhattan, the perception along Lake Michigan is far more defeatist. For four days, people of every creed, color, and political persuasion aggressively denounced their home city, simply on the grounds of its not being exactly as they imagine New York to be. The attitude is not just deferential, but reverential: masochistically, the people with whom I spoke celebrated how incomparably better my city is than theirs.

Theirs is a worldview borne not of particulars, but of outsized fantasy. It wouldn’t matter if a Chicago sports team were to beat a New York sports team. Hosting the 2016 Olympics wouldn't loosen the city's fatalistic grip on second place. “Chicago is not like New York” is so ingrained in their cosmopolitan conscious that Chicagoans assume it to be true on all levels. Their trees, thoroughfares, and traffic signals are dingier. Their lawns, museums, and pavilions are shoddier. Their residents aren’t as smart and their jobs aren’t as good; their food doesn’t taste as good and their money isn’t worth as much.

Our contingent at Lollapalooza was particularly targeted for praise, as all five of us live in various boroughs of New York. Chicagoans felt silly around us, like a group of poseurs who walk into an Armani and suddenly feel less fashionable than they once thought themselves. It was only in the small moments, when our zip code was incognito, that we got a sniff of Chicago's civic pride. Its residents desperately want the Olympics, and even more desperately want to celebrate the outlandish riches of Millennium Park, Wrigley Field, and yes—Lollapalooza.

The diary to follow will recount the thrills, oddities, and rapid-fire milieus of the latter. In just one weekend, we met an ex-dominatrix, heard Perry Farrell lecture about life and death to little kids, and saw fireworks cascade behind Thom Yorke.

Not surprisingly, Chicago proved to be very much like New York.

Stay Similar, Cities
MC Manhattan

Miles of Piles

2008-07-29T01:33:00.015-04:00

"Do you want to come upstairs?"

I was 12, and though I’d arrived somewhat late to the pheromones party, I’d seen enough movies to know that a question of this ilk was Admission: Granted in the dating game’s application process. Besides, I had almost expected the invitation for ascent, for earlier in the day I’d made a not-so-disparaging remark about ballet, which for preteen males is radical progressivism.

"Yeah. Let’s go upstairs."

This being one of my first solo forays into the female habitat, all the anatomical differences between boys’ and girls’ rooms frightened away my mojo. Soft pastel colors. Incense sticks in incense stick holders. A pink computer. Real furniture. Posters of bands I hated. An embroidered army of throw pillows.

There would be more girls’ rooms in my future, and somewhere along the evolutionary way, there would be womens’ rooms, in different countries and belonging to different economic communities. At that moment, however, on the literal threshold of what I thought would be my Man-itiation, the Crate and Barrel aesthetic was impenetrable. How can I impose myself here, and on this person, whose living space is more meticulously arranged than a mile of dominoes? This girl, all seven grades of her, was made of tougher stuff.

Beset by macro concerns about sexuality, gender, and where to sit if the bed was made, my immediate fate was determined by the room’s lone unordered element: clothing. Heaps of all styles, shapes, and identities—shirts, pants, dresses, socks, underwear (well, at least that was cool), skirts, tubes, tanks, and everything else—lay strewn about. The collection on the floor was quickly bloated by a cascade of garments from the dresser, which my friend was emptying with gusto.

“Sooo…I have to make piles,” she said, tossing handfuls of tees across the room. “And the thing is, I don’t really know what’s small on me and what’s not, so I’m just going to make piles of what I think I don't want anymore, and I’ll go through them with my mom tomorrow.”

It’s a scene that would replay itself dozens of times, and I read it correctly right away: Naughty stuff was not about to go down.

Indeed, piles of clothing are a disappointingly clear part of the male-female cipher. If they exist on or around a girl’s (or woman’s) floor, sex is not the offing. Luckily, men don’t have to participate in the ritualized folding, collating, and decision-making. This is probably because women realized long ago that, in all things couture, we have no idea what the hell we’re talking about.

Our sartorial sense never develops, even after years of watching our friends, girlfriends, and wives do the exact same thing over and over. Last night, I sat not five feet from two girls while they separated apparel into piles. I did not help, did not offer to help, and did not learn anything. Generations of men have had the same MO, and, barring heterosexuality's extinction, it will remain so.

The lesson in all of this?

Have a girl over to your place.

Stay Sorted, Piles
DJ Dresser

Put That Kid On a Leash!

2008-07-23T01:38:00.014-04:00

Memo to anyone attempting to cultivate an even more belittling application for the term “love handle.”

Your work is done.

It was done for you, actually, by Liberte Apparel, a Long Island-based company edging us one dimension closer to hell.

Behold: "The Love Handle."

The issue of child leashes is contentious, or at least would appear to be so based upon the amount of stand-up comedy that addresses the subject. Central to the discussion is a single observation: putting your kid on a leash makes them look like a dog. Especially in urban centers, it takes a double- or triple-take to determine which species of creature is housed within the shackles. Seeing a child leash in action is psychedelically horrifying, a sight so scary, dehumanized, and outlandish that it should only exist in Hunter S. Thompson’s posthumous flashbacks.

Liberte Apparel’s site offers a fantastically flimsy defense for The Love Handle. To wit:

“The Love Handle® gives today’s multi-tasking parents (and grandparents!) an extra hand, and allows children to express their independence outside the confines of a stroller, while safely within arm’s reach.”

The essential question is, how much more multi-tasking do today’s child-toting adults perform than they did 20, 30, 100 years ago? We might live in a multitasked world, and professional lives might employ more gadgets, but when you actually have a child in tow, the basic setup is the same: one hand for the kid, one hand available. If a child is already walking, then it makes no difference whether you use your non-smartphone hand to hold the child’s hand or to grab the end of a leash.

As for letting children “express their independence outside the confines of a stroller?” To quote Cartman, I hate hippies. I wanna kick ‘em in the nuts. What does "expressing their independence" mean? What kind emancipation are we talking about, and how, exactly, does canine-level treatment let kids express it? I may not be a child psychologist (or a hippie), but perhaps a more expressive form of outside-the-stroller freedom would be…um…regular walking.

"The Love Handle® is fully self-adjusting and fits children of all sizes from the time they take their first steps as toddlers, and for years to come."

How many years, exactly? Evidently, Liberte Apparel intends for parents to use The Love Handle for years untold; perhaps even decades. If my parents put me in a Love Handle back in 1985, would I still be in it now? Moreover, would it not be humiliating for a child to amble up to pre-school in a Love Handle? Is that not psychological abuse? And if you're in that kid's class, you have to kick his/her ass. Schoolyard laws dictate it. By direct causation, putting your child in a Love Handle is tantamount to physical harm.

"With The Love Handle® adults look hip, and kids keep their dignity intact."

Really? Like, really really? Did you see the video? When the woman puts the handle through the shoulder loop, it looks like she is about to string up that poor little girl like a birdhouse. There is no dignity—repeat: THERE IS NO DIGNITY—in wearing a leash. That’s why dogs wear them, and humans do not.

While it might be nice, furthermore, for parents to think they’ll look hip with The Love Handle, it is very difficult to look voguish when you're walking your kid like a pet.

It doesn’t matter that The Love Handle comes in a variety of designs with post-modern names. Carnival Candy, Raspberry Tie Dye, Sunburst, and Robin Stripe should all be renamed “Subhuman Idiocy” and eliminated from the global marketplace.

We’ve let this tyranny go on for too long.

Stay Strollered, Kids
DJ Dog Leash

Seeing Bread

2008-07-21T12:14:00.026-04:00

I saw an erect penis poking out of a pair of shorts while its owner casually asked a group of guys if they had a condom. I saw a Porta Potty with one type of human waste on the walls and two more in the toilet. I saw a dreadlocked girl scrunch her face and wonder how it came about, at this same festival one year ago, that she statutorily raped a high school student. I saw the beating sun cook up a toxic miasma of hippie sweat, body odor, and septic overflow. I saw Snoop Dogg.

I saw a lot of things at this year’s installment of Camp Bisco—the seventh, if you’re counting—but what I mainly saw were white people. Nearly everyone roaming the Indian Lookout Country Club’s sprawling grounds, from the Hells Angels security detail to the thousands of scared-to-death-of-Hells-Angels attendees, was woefully Caucasian. So Caucasian, in fact, that during his performance, a bewildered Snoop repeatedly asked the crowd if we were ready to hear 311—despite the fact that 311, currently touring with the estimable Dogg, were not there.

Camp Bisco was not unlike its myriad counterparts dotting the neo-counterculture summer landscape. Music and camping events, typically held over weekends, have sprung up everywhere from Masontown, West Virginia (All Good), to Lawrence, Kansas (Wakarusa), to piney Mariaville, New York (Camp Bisco). The format, by now, is wonderfully formulaic. Organizers mash a few famous acts with a buffet of no-names, place the concert stages in the midst of vast dirt fields, and then make sure that it rains. If you’ve been to any of the summer festivals, you’ve already deciphered these answers for yourself: yes, mud comes out of leg hair fairly painlessly; no, I would not like to purchase the drugs you’re selling; yes, you’re better off peeing in the woods than anywhere else; and, actually, what drugs are you selling?

While the specter of a drug-addled, sound-tracked vacation should be universally appealing, the reality is a bit more antebellum. A festival is where Whiteness goes to regroup and have a self-affirming experience before returning to its one-bedroom apartment above Mitt Romney’s house. The pasty crowds don’t dance so much as they get rickety and throw glow sticks at people several rows in front of them. Glow stick culture, moreover, operates along a quirkily white hierarchy, wherein people who wear many of them are almost as cool as people who fashion spinning glow stick wheels, while both groups look up to the Glow Stick Kings—the luminescent lords who sell the toxin-filled tubes to other white people for bizarre prices.

And where would any concentration of Whiteness be without some better-living hypocrisy? Not at a festival, that’s for sure. Drug dealers, after failing to sell you MDMA, ask if you’d rather sassafras, an all-natural alternative to MDMA that is better, they say, since…well…MDMA is bad for you. Birkenstockers preach Green while ingesting a series of chemicals and foods more inorganic than Angelina Jolie’s immediate family. It’s all hilarious (and a lot of it’s on videotape), and about as swarthy as the American picket fence.

Camp Bisco is particularly egregious, since its eponymous band, The Disco Biscuits (who both organize and headline the event), are the whitest band of all time (if you can stand the anti-Motown pallor, click on the Biscuits picture above, snapped on CB7 premises by photojournalist extraordinaire Robust). I have seen the Disco Biscuits on more than a dozen occasions, including two Camp Biscos, and have come up with the following bio: they are four white dudes who dress like each of the four archetypal White Guys (punk, prep, slob, and skater, respectively), play music with no groove, and have an almost exclusively white fan base. The Disco Biscuits are so white, in fact, that they were recently awarded their own genre: “Jamtronica.” Doesn’t sound too bad? Consider this: most non-white musics—funk, jazz, blues, soul, rap, rock—have one syllable.

“Jamtronica,” besides for sounding ridiculous, has four.

Conclusion: The Disco Biscuits are four times whiter than they should be.

Let there be no misunderstanding—festivals, Camp Bisco included, are completely egalitarian. Anyone and everyone is welcome, from tatterdemalion vagrants to RV-rearing VIPs. That they’ve become the Whiteness War Room is simply a sad, weakly pigmented aside.

But I can only report what I saw.

Stay Sassy, Frassy
DJ Dogg

A Sea Monster Surfaces in New York

2008-07-13T21:04:00.004-04:00

In a large oblong room with raised ceilings and a faded brick veneer, Shmuel Levy was picking up the pieces of his scattered songbook. “This is terrible,” he muttered, crawling along the floor, examining more than 100 three-hole-punched sheets that just a moment before had spiraled from his black music binder. “This is a really terrible thing.”

An Israeli by way of Casablanca, Morocco, Levy cut an odd prostrate figure. With a silver-burnished beard, foot-long sidelocks and incandescent spheres for eyes, the singer-songwriter who goes by the stage name “LevYatan” — homage to “leviathan,” a biblical sea monster — looks half-beatnik, half-Bible.

To see Levy sprawled and stammering in an office-cum-rehearsal space in Brooklyn seems all the more strange after realizing that he isn’t much of a stickler for organization. Though, at the time of this interview, he has a number of shows scheduled at Manhattan’s Sullivan Hall in the coming weeks, Levy only recently (May 21) started auditioning backup musicians.

“I have no worries,” Levy said, “and anyway, I have an acoustic set that I can play by myself.” Not sounding totally convinced, he added, “But I will get a drummer and bass player.”

Levy’s search for musicians was still on in late May. The band from the week before didn’t stick, and he hasn’t yet explored other options.

“[God] is taking care of everything,” he said. “Everything has its purpose. You just have to be aware of His wisdom.”

Religiosity is a recurring theme in Levy’s two Hebrew-language albums, “Yismah Moshe” and “Wisdom of the Stream,” and in the English-language album he released in 1998, “Mystic Heart.”

Levy’s music is notably dark and melodic. Deep, loping bass lines and straight-ahead rock beats counter hypnotic guitar patterns and haunting vocals. The result is a heavy, blues-tinged answer to most Jewish music of the day.

The music on “Mystic Heart” is particularly urgent. “I’ll Hate To See You Go” is a stripped-down arena rock number, reminiscent of such groups as Iron Maiden and Megadeth. The acoustic guitar and vocal arrangements on “Wooven,” meanwhile, call to mind Soundgarden’s more laid-back work. The disc's craftiest cut is "Wise Eyes," a cyclical multi-rhythm mover with glutinous themes and incalculable drama (see video below).

A Los Angeles resident since he married in 1990, Levy alternates between performing as LevYatan and as a sideman for various California-based projects. He sees this stint in New York as something of an East Coast coming-out party, so he planned accordingly: In mid-May, he packed his guitar and effects pedals, bought a plane ticket and left his L.A. life behind for what stands to be well over a month.

All signs point to Levy being comfortable on the road. Before settling in L.A., he did a fair amount of traveling. He left Morocco in 1965, at age 8, and moved to the northern Israeli coastal town of Nahariya. It was there that he first picked up a guitar. Levy learned to play rock, jazz, fusion and a number of Israeli styles, and later fulfilled his obligation to the Israel Defense Forces by entertaining the troops.

After completing his army service, Levy moved to Paris, where he formed a group called The Rail. He stayed in France for most of the 1980s and then immigrated to America.

Along the way, he picked up the name LevYatan.

“A friend and I were speaking about the sea lion and the fish of the sea and trying to get a name that was close to that,” he explained. “We came to ‘LevYatan.’”

The moniker had the added advantage of containing his last name, Levy.

LevYatan, Levy pointed out, also includes the Hebrew words “lev” and “yoten,” which together mean “the giving heart.”

“I want to open the heart to play music,” he said. “If you truly play from the heart, the other person will feel it.”

With a number of new songs in various stages of completion, Levy plans to record another album when he returns to L.A. One of the tracks — not yet named — sounds like a synthesis of Israeli artist Idan Raichel and indie-rock trio Dispatch. As with his previous recordings, the lyrics are very metaphorical, and there’s a lot of talk of hearts: giving ones, free ones and joyful ones.

Perhaps Levy’s road warrior mentality or his Hasidism, or both, serve as catalyst for his obscure lyrics. Still, for a guy who already looks a little out of this world, Levy doesn’t want to give concertgoers another reason to fancy him alien.

“I don’t want to confuse anybody,” he said. “I just want to sing songs.”

Stay Spiritual, Shmuel
MC Mystic Heart

Kobe Beef

2008-06-19T11:36:00.019-04:00

In securing their 17th NBA championship, the Boston Celtics continued New England’s ho-hum (if you don’t live in New England) reign of post-2000 sports dominance. If the Patriots could have salted away the New York Giants in this year’s Super Bowl, we’d be looking at a Boston whitewash—and the truth is, we still are. The Red Sox shattered the Bambino’s curse in 2004 and won the World Series again this past year, the Patriots have won three Super Bowls this decade (and came up a touchdown short in February), and now, the Celtics capped the greatest regular-season turnaround in league history with an unabashed disembowelment of the Lakers in the clinching Finals game.

Unlike virtually every other red-blooded New Yorker, I do not detest our chowder-happy neighbors to the northeast. I am a Mets fan, and entered long ago into the Red Sox-Mets anti-Yankee fraternity. I am also a Jets fan, so the Giants-Patriots subplots were largely uninteresting; in fact, I watched the Super Bowl mostly to vet for a) debilitating hits, b) long touchdown passes, and c) good catered food.

Last, and most important, I am a Nets fan. Though the Celtics may be a default “intra-division rival,” and although the two squads met in the playoffs a couple of times in the early 2000’s, it is an onerous task to hate the likes of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Eddie House. Much like the Super Bowl, the 2008 NBA Finals pleased me for a reason having nothing to do with my hometown rooting interests.

The Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, whose best player is Kobe Bryant.

I hate—HATE—Kobe Bryant.

I hated him before he’d played a moment in the NBA. Years ago, a local paper profiled the country’s five best high school players. At number two, just below Tim Thomas, was Bryant. The petulance, pretension, and egomania were evident even in that grainy black-and-white: here is an asshole, I thought. Better hope he never makes it.

But, of course, he made it. What’s worse, in the post-Jordan, pre-Lebron’s prime that is our current NBA era, Kobe is undoubtedly the league’s best player. Most talented, clutch, motivated, fearless, and exacting—these are Kobe’s truths, and they are self-evident. He is also, LeBron aside, the game’s most recognizable face.

By all accounts, Kobe is a deplorable teammate. He nixed a dynasty by forcing Laker management to deal Shaquille O’Neal (only one the best 20 best players of all-time) and to disown coach Phil Jackson (only one of the two best coaches of all-time) after Los Angeles lost to the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 championship series. Bryant then ushered in the self-righteous-ball-hog period, a personal three-year hiatus from sportsmanship, professionalism, and accountability. He hoisted a historic number of shots en route to recording a historic amount of points, culminating on January 22, 2006, when he scored 81 points, the second-most ever in a regular-season game, by jacking an unconscionable 66 shots.
That’s 13 three-pointers, 33 two-pointers, and 20 free-throws. Yes, the Lakers beat the Raptors that Sunday, but something far greater was lost: the last shred of Bryant’s already-withering integrity.

Three years prior, just before the Lakers were to embark upon a suicide-blitz on the championship with Shaq, Bryant and the newly-acquired Karl Malone and Gary Payton, a woman in Eagle, Colorado accused Bryant of rape.
While the charges were dropped, and virtually no evidence of forced sexual contact ever surfaced, Bryant copped to having slept with the plaintiff—albeit consensually. Reportedly, Bryant made comments to investigators about Shaq's infidelity, widening the distance between the two embattled teammates.

They didn't stay teammates for long. The next off-season, after losing in the Finals, Bryant’s bedwetting PR nightmare from the rape trial only worsened. According to most inside sources, he demanded that ownership cede him the franchise, and encouraged them to export Shaquille O'Neal to Miami. Phil Jackson, who later called Bryant "uncoachable" in a book, quit his post. When the season started, and with the ink still running off Bryant's $136 million contract extension, the Lakers performed woefully and missed the playoffs.

Before the 2007-2008 season, after a run of unremarkable campaigns in which the Lakers couldn’t navigate beyond the first round of the playoffs, Bryant publicly demanded a trade. Then asked to stay. Then demanded a trade again. Los Angeles brass was appalled, incredulous at Bryant’s claim that after the team had mortgaged their present, their superstar, and their sage to clear the path for Bryant’s ascension, Bryant accused them of not working to assemble a more talented roster. Ignoring the obvious irony—that if Shaq and Jackson had stayed, the Lakers likely wouldn’t have been mired in mediocrity—Bryant’s backstab raised another curious conundrum: how do you trade the best player in the league?

It was a query, ultimately, that Los Angeles owner Jerry Buss never answered. The Lakers opened the season, Bryant in tow, on tenuous ground. Kobe was unhappy; the team kinda sucked; although Jackson was back as coach, not even the man who shepherded Michael Jordan and Co. to basketball Olympus could make topiary out of the weeds.

The Lakers hemmed and hawed, unsure as to whether they were a team or Kobe’s team. Teammates lived in fear of the mercurial, condescending superstar, who never thought it in bad taste—not in practice, not in the media, not during games—to scream, tirade, and tantrum in anybody’s, everybody’s direction.

Then, the pinnacle of unjust: the Lakers’ young players started clicking. The Lakers started winning. The “Kobe is a dog” conversation became the “Kobe is a leader of men” conversation. Finally, the Lakers traded for Memphis star Pau Gasol and got hotter than Bryant’s hotel room in Eagle. The “Kobe is a leader of men” conversation became, unbelievably, the “Kobe for Most Valuable Player” conversation. Indeed, the man who tried with all his might, just a few months earlier, to bail on his team, who thought nothing of dressing down and mortifying his teammates, who threw under the bus the organization that gave up everything plus $136 million to keep him, who flouted the coach and conducted himself with horrifying impunity, was the likeliest candidate to be coronated the league’s “most valuable” person.

TNT, ESPN, and ABC broadcast the rest. The Lakers marauded through the playoffs, hack-sawing through the Nuggets, Jazz, and defending champion Spurs with an incandescent offense. In the midst of all this, Kobe did, as predicted, win the MVP, a move that still represents a stultifying blow to the principles that ostensibly underwrite the award.

Doe-eyed broadcasters and analysts sucked at the Kobe teat, championing everything from his leadership (ha!) to his commitment to “team” (ha!) to his similarity to Jordan (triple ha!). The Lakers advanced to the Finals, where they were to take on an uninspiring Celtics team whose playoff run had been every bit as unimpressive as the Lakers’ was dominant.

Jesus Christ: Kobe Bryant was about to lead his team to the NBA championship. A pompous cancer was about to earn inarguable propers for pompous cancers everywhere.

As we know—and as the greatest proof that God exists—Kobe did not win. Instead, he played well, but not exceptionally well, and was out-performed by the Celtics’ Pierce. In the deciding Game 6, Kobe’s cadre got outgunned by a surreal 39 points, a record margin in a clinching contest. The Kobe schlock, disposed of by the Celtic mystique. This, for once, was the universe aligned.

During Game 2 in Boston, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling (quoted in my previous blog, “The Un-Sport”) sat next to the Lakers’ bench. In an NBA Finals column, ESPN writer Bill “The Sports Guy” Simmons points to Schilling's post-game reflections, which serve to further eviscerate Bryant.

Writes Schilling:

“Kobe. This one stunned me a little bit…what I got to see up close and hear, was unexpected. From the first tip until about 4 minutes left in the game I saw and heard this guy bitch at his teammates. Every TO (time out) he came to the bench pissed, and a few of them he went to other guys and yelled about something they weren’t doing, or something they did wrong. No dialog about “hey let’s go, let’s get after it” or whatever. He spent the better part of 3.5 quarters pissed off and ranting at the non-execution or lack of, of his team…Watching the other 11 guys, every time out it was high fives and “Hey nice work, let’s get after it” or something to that affect. He walked off the floor, obligatory skin contact on the high five, and sat on the bench stone faced or pissed off, the whole game…He’d yell at someone, make a point, or send a message, turn and walk away, and more than once the person on the other end would roll eyes or give a ‘whatever dude’ look.”

It is my sincerest hope that losing these Finals will forever tarnish Bryant’s legacy. I am not a sadist, nor am I a purist—I am, however, a member of society. I’ve met Kobe Bryants, and they are all the same—destructive, self-obsessed, insufferable, and thoroughly unlikeable. They know right from wrong, yet knowingly operate to the contrary. Kobe Bryant—the Kobe Bryant—is wonderfully talented, but he’s hidden his malevolent persona behind virtuosity for far too long.

Here’s to another Boston championship.

Stay Second Place, Kobe
MC MJ

The Un-Sport

2008-06-16T04:43:00.016-04:00

Earlier tonight, New York Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang sprained his foot while rounding the bases. Wang, who had to be helped off the field, came up lame while trotting at three-quarters speed on a meticulously maintained field of play.

Hearing this news after watching the Celtics and Lakers maul each other for 48 minutes only reaffirmed a gnawing suspicion:

Baseball players are not athletes.

The dictionary, of course, roundly rebuffs the previous statement. According to dictionary.com, an athlete is “a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.” And this point I will concede—baseball players are extraordinarily gifted, blessed in all manner of throwing, hitting, and going to salary arbitration.

Something is wrong, though, when a player can’t run—nay, jog—without getting hurt. Something is askew when a sport can sport an obese vegetarian. In professional basketball, football, hockey, soccer, or just about any other institution inhabited by bestial, sculpted automatons, running is merely the prologue to a story built of jumping, cutting, checking, dunking, blocking, tackling, scissor-kicking, and fouling. Even golfers, whose “athlete” status is heavily disputed, can walk 18 holes without heading to the disabled list.

Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a luminary of the sport and future Hall of Famer, describes himself on his blog as “not having one ounce of athletic ability.” Imagine Tracy McGrady, Randy Moss, or Sidney Crosby saying the same of themselves—not only would they be incorrect, but the very nature of their work would inherently disprove such a claim. Professional basketball (McGrady), football (Moss), and hockey (Crosby) demand a masterfully integrated skill set, wherein speed, power, and agility (and in hockey’s case, skating)—in other words, athleticism—are paramount.

Baseball does not demand the same prowess. The sport’s tasks are markedly linear and distributed: someone throws, then someone swings, then someone runs, then someone catches. Only one athletic act is performed in any given moment, and a different person performs each task. Forget an integrated skill set—baseball players only enact one motion at a time, and often, a player only possesses one skill. Pitchers in the American League, for instance, do not hit. Designated hitters do not field.

The result? A nominally agile, semi-out-of-shape guy who can nonetheless throw a ball with unusual velocity—say, Curt Schilling—can become a sports legend. In Schilling’s case, his skills, or lack thereof, could never translate into a career in another sport. Baseball is the only place, in other words, where a person without athletic ability is called an athlete.

If baseball players are to be considered athletes, then so are bowlers. And billiards players. And, for that matter, master carpenters—they, too, excel at a particular manual task. If baseballers are athletes, then by equivalency, so are musicians. One might argue that performing a Bach cantata takes more adeptness, accuracy, dexterity, and agility than throwing a baseball. If baseball players are athletes, then virtually anyone with a honed, individuated skill must be classified so.

Chien-Ming Wong hobbling off the field rang with inevitability: hurlers can’t be expected to run, just as a master carpenter can’t be expected to paint the house he builds. Just because two tasks happen in proximity to one another does not mean the same person can perform both.

As the Celtics-Lakers series slowly morphs into a classic, one can’t help but wonder how Wang or Schilling would fare in a machismo-laced battle with Kevin Garnett. Not well, no doubt, but no matter: they’re paid to throw a ball, and Garnett is paid to be an athlete.

Stay Sprained, CMW
DJ DH

The Clown Car Cartel: Indie Rock Hits the Small Stage

2008-06-12T13:08:00.008-04:00

In a place where the climate flips from frigid to searing in a matter of days, the month of June, like a full moon does to werewolves, signals the amnesiacs to emerge. Those who bemoan the frost from November to mid-May forget the cold and abhor the heat. Tortured chants of “It’s so hot” arise as predictably as the sun.

It was in the nascent stages of the Manhattan furnace that Joe’s Pub, the most urbane of the city’s semi-haute music houses, hosted the CD release party for KaiserCartel, a Brooklyn-based indie duo. The pair, Courtney Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel, celebrated the birth of “March Forth,” their stripped-down debut, to what must have been a record-setting crowd for a Tuesday night.

Folk-clad and spare, with elements of T-Bone Burnett and KT Tunstall, KaiserCartel proved themselves something of a clown car cartel, with anywhere from two to six musicians crowding Joe’s Pub's diminutive stage during a given song. The crowd sat patiently as the Cartel worked out the spacing: before most tunes, tambourines, guitars, and xylophones were maneuvered to make way for personnel.

An unfolded accordion, in full plumage, stood behind glass to stage right, mirroring the graceful serenity throughout. With sweaty bodies in every seat, couch, and standing space—and near-tropical condensation on every glass—the Cartel’s easy listening calmed the folks inside. Without a bassist, and reliant on mostly airy instrumentation, the subways rumbling underfoot thundered more significantly than anything produced on stage. The band played through “March Forth” in its entirety, their coda a well-timed serenade, with Cartel following Kaiser through the crowd with an acoustic guitar as they harmonized one last time.

The evening’s most unpleasant turn was the venture outdoors following the performance, at which time most bars in the area were broadcasting David Cook’s rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the NBA Finals in Los Angeles. This season’s American Idol winner, Cook embodied the gaudy bombast so spurned by KaiserCartel. The contrast was striking: inside Joe’s Pub, both temperature and troubadour were cool; outside, the climate and Cook were overwhelming. As Randy Jackson might say, they were, “Hot, dog. Really hot.”

Stay Simple, Folk-Pop
MC March Forth

A Hungry Artist: Jamie Lidell on Food, White Noise, and Relocation

2008-06-08T15:20:00.013-04:00

Of all the vices in which musicians famously indulge, food is often overlooked. Luxe dining is almost never grouped with promiscuity, intoxicants, and the sinful miscellany that comprise the "Behind the Music" motif. For Jamie Lidell, however, victuals are paramount--in the most recent issue of SPIN, Lidell is pictured with what appears to be a moldy pumpkin, and the opening paragraph speaks of Lidell wiping food from his face.

Lidell (jamielidell.com) is passionate about his three squares a day. Recalling a recent stint in New York, the first thing Lidell mentioned (to me, not SPIN) was that, "I was eating the fucking best food, man. From fucking sushi to baccala pizza."

Lidell moved to Berlin more than eight years ago for a purpose he revealed in the title track of his 2005 album, "Multiply." In the song's chorus, the electronica-pioneer-turned-soul-child laments, "I'm so tired of repeating myself/ Beating myself up/ Wanna take a trip and multiply."

Yes, Lidell, a native Englishman, moved to Germany for "a lady that lured me there," he said. He took a trip, but the pair didn't multiply — luckily, since he's no longer with that lady.

"I admit, it's kind of freaker," said Lidell of his relocation. Speaking by phone from a café in Regensburg, Germany, he added, "But freakier things have happened. I never thought I'd be sitting here in Regensburg eating sausages and sauerkraut. Mysterious things happen every day."

Lidell released his third album, "Jim," earlier this year. Like "Multiply," it is 10 tracks long and cements Lidell's metamorphosis from outlaw DJ to soul crooner. His fuzzy, honeyed vocals equip him for virtually any style — Lidell sounds like a cross between Otis Redding and Jamiroquai — and the mainstream is starting to notice.

Target used "A Little Bit More," the fourth selection from "Multiply," for an American commercial. And the international tour for "Jim" will take Lidell through the world's archipelago of music hubs, including Los Angeles, Austin, Vienna, Montreal, London, Paris and New York.

"You've got a limited window of time, you've got to milk it," he said. "I don't want to do this when I'm 50."

By "this," Lidell means the all-consuming business of recording, touring and all the accompanying obligations — interviews, video shoots and the like. Having toiled for years in the underground, Lidell knows exactly how much work goes into forging a career.

"The record companies want cash so they're hassling me every other minute," said Lidell. The music business is an industry in which "everyone wants everything at the same time. It's difficult."

Plus, Lidell already knows what he wants to do next.

"I might want to be making musique concrète," he said, meaning music made from non-musical ingredients, such as environmental noises. "I always thought that was a dignified way to get old. It's a real labor of love — making white noise in a loft."

Recording avant-garde compositions is where Lidell began. He collaborated for many years with Cristian Vogel in Super_Collider, a group that used ambient and computerized elements to create deep, pulsating tracks.

"I'm really about the craft, that's where I'm coming from. If I lose that, I'm just going to be a guy that I hate. You can manufacture success in a very cheap way, but to maintain that craft [is hard]."

As Lidell's pop career blossomed, though, he became drawn out from behind the mixing board and found that his devil-may-care attitude was suited to the stage.

"I read something by Thom [Yorke, of Radiohead] that was kind of revealing. Radiohead are very comfortable, they have their lives, they do what they like. But he was driving about and listening to something on the radio about how Radiohead was the people's favorite, and he was like, 'Man, I should be rocking the stage right now.' A part of you says I can give it up when I get rich, but performing is kind of an itch."

Stay Salty, Baccala
DJ Delectable

Damn, But Oh Well: An Epic Record, Post-Epic Records

2008-06-04T01:41:00.020-04:00

It started with a bathrobe. Sorting through the mail, robe-clad, I found a flat first-class envelope addressed to me but otherwise unmarked. The CD within, moreover, was burned, with no writing. Owing to the bathrobe (and proximity of the neighbors), I didn’t venture outside to sling the disc towards the trash. So, into iTunes it went.

Two years later, that disc, “Air Stereo” by The Damnwells, is the single most-played album in my collection. Literally—iTunes says so. Inquiries with PR folk, label staff, and friends remain fruitless, and no one has any idea whence the record arrived. Like a lacuna in a manuscript, this mysterious manna begged a maddeningly simple question.

Who, or what, are The Damnwells?

With a name that reads more like an exhortation than bravado—the latter evident in appellations like Metallica, The Arcade Fire, and Return to Forever—The Damnwells might be the most aptly titled group in music. The alt-rock-country-pop foursome (myspace.com/thedamnwells) was initially the brainchild of singer/frontman Alex Dezen and then-bassist Ted Hudson. To make a very long and dispiriting story short—a story chronicled by the award-winning documentary, "Golden Days"—The Damnwells (questionably) enjoyed their incipient days in Brooklyn, where they self-recorded their first album, “Bastards of the Beat.” They secured a record deal with Epic Records in 2003, and subsequently began recording “Air Stereo” (the full-length which subsequently landed on my doorstep).

Midway through recording, however, Epic dropped the band. Suddenly without a deal, they scurried through the album's final stages, and eventually released “Air Stereo” on Zoe/Rounder Records, a veritable non-entity in relation to Epic. Still, with minimal distribution and heavy touring, the band managed to scrape together a modest following.

The ordeal was awash in corporate imprudence and bad timing. It was also—and remains—a shame. Dezen is one of music’s dulcet winners, an old soul who, in a more antiquated time, might have eloped with a lyre, some papyrus, and a quill. “Air Stereo” brims with cheeky pain, and the lyric self-effacement in songs like “Shiny Bruise” and “I’ve Got You” is coupled with perfect production and relentlessly appropriate instrumentation: sparse piano here; strings there; a spoonful of homophony.

The tunes experience genesis in Dezen’s chordal guitar, and the heartrending pop layered above echoes, eerily, the trauma surrounding the record.

With equal doses winsomeness and earnestness, the turmoil-laden group indeed chose a perfect moniker: their legacy is something between “we play damn well” and “we damn well make some money before we starve.” Making contact with Dezen was (surprise!) rather easy, and through email correspondence, MySpace blog stalking, and Wikipedia, the following facts came to light:

1) At one point, Dezen—who will soon begin an MFA program in fiction writing in Iowa City—had just $100 to his name.
2) Hudson, a slinky-haired scholar, broke away from The Damnwells to compose a book on Freemasonry and sundry Oddfellow-related topics.
3) Dezen aside, all the members from the band’s most recent tour had left the group, and were replaced by Adrian Dickey (bass), Andrew Ratcliffe (drums), and Freddy Hall (piano/guitar).
4) In March, The Damnwells completed a new, as-yet-untitled album, which will be available some time this summer.
5) Some of the new tracks are on YouTube, mainly as acoustic performances. Notable selections include acoustic versions of "Like It Is" (see the video below) and “It’s Okay (Hey Now),” both featuring Dezen and his wife Angela.

It continued with a bathrobe. Sorting through my e-mail, robe-clad, I found that The Damnwells will play at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge on July 25.

They damn well come 'round here again.

Stay Suspicious, Media Mail
DJ Damnwells

Memories of the Summer

2008-05-28T22:01:00.009-04:00

It’s very hot in here.

It’s 2:00 on an early-June afternoon, and a generously sunny day is being filtered to impotence by this building’s obstinate windows. The sparse rays that make it into the room quickly find they have little for company—some cubicles, a couple of printers, computers. The cubicles are small, like shirt cuffs wrapped too tightly. Everyone is playing music at bewildering volumes, a virtual staple at every music label’s corporate headquarters. Guys with names like “Oliver” and “Kevin” are wearing clothing with names like “American Eagle” and “D&G,” but playing to a hip-hop sensibility. They are fist-pounding (often missing) and trading barbs about Kanye West.

There is an oversized poster of The Bravery on the far wall, and as I begin to abhor my very existence, someone offers coffee. I follow her past enclave after enclave of Olivers and Kevins and arrive at the kitchen: a frugal collection of utensils, a severe-looking fridge, and a coffeemaker. “Allie,” she says, extending her hand. “The coffee here sucks. Sorry.”

I take her hand, then the coffee.

The coffee sucks.

“Is it OK if I don’t drink it? I feel bad. You made it.”

“No, it’s fine,” Allie says. “Actually, you’d be insane to drink it.”

The coffee swooshes down the tiny sink. Allie empties hers, as well, perhaps for moral support. I follow her to the reception area, where she finds that an artist due to arrive any minute for an interview—the reason I am here—is still not here. Moreover, nobody knows when the air conditioning will be fixed.

A rotund, polo-shirt-clad man approaches. “Allie, what’s up baby?” he asks, employing the half-hug, half-butt-bump that is so popular among music-label types.

“Nothing,” she flirts back. “Just looking for some air conditioning.”

“Woo-wee!” he exclaims, as if she suddenly reminds him of the copious sweat holding court along his hairline. “Yeah, it’s hot as a mofo up in here.”

There are few certainties in New York City. One is that you will not get a seat on the Queens-bound F train between 6 and 8 in the evening if you get on after 34th Street. Another is that people complain about the weather—admittedly, New York has deplorable climactic behavior, with about five hot months, five cold months, one nice month, and around 30 days, collectively, that serve to transition from one undesirable weather-type to another. New Yorkers have legitimate claims, but that the former air the latter so frequently is something of an anomaly.

The winter in Montreal is so cold that the residents live in an underground civilization half the year, replete with supermarkets and transportation. The humidity in Miami is wringing, as torturous and inescapable as a first date. New Jersey abuts New York City; most days, the two share a forecast. Whatever the reason, NYC’s moaning quotient is greater than those other locales’ combined. Although New Yorkers endure work more hours than anyone else, the sun scandalizes them.

Holding a cell phone to her face, Allie winces and apologizes. “Sorry, she’s not going to be here today,” she says, referring to my interview subject. “Maybe you wanna come back later this week?”

“Sure,” I respond, a little dejected. “Maybe when the A.C. is fixed.”

“Yeah, we’re all dying. You better come back later.”

In the elevator down to the street, a saturnine fellow wearing a double-breasted suit, a gold watch, and designer sunglasses clutches a handkerchief against his nape.

“Goddamn weather,” he exhales. “Goddamn weather.”

Stay Sweaty, New York
MC Muggy

Riot, Then Quiet: To and From and To The New Deal

2008-05-24T06:06:00.013-04:00

Moans and caterwauls ululate in the undergrowth, and while cars and trucks zip up and down the Pennsylvania Turnpike nearby, a single pedestrian stops to listen. The young man lowers his sneakers into the grass behind a rest-stop convenience shop and examines the noise. He lopes further, the green sod underfoot checkered with fenestrate dirt patches, and locates the culprit: a small cat, beleaguered and gaunt, is rummaging for food. The pedestrian cedes the cat a Sunny Doodle, and the recipient unfurls a whimper and retreats to deeper reeds.

This small, eminently quiet moment happens at 3 am, a similarly small, eminently quiet time. Vehicles are passing only intermittently as the night wears on, and the convenience store clerk, wielding a broom, is the only other sign of human activity. To be fair, it is late at night, and this is a forsaken stretch in northern Pennsylvania, and the cat is situated in an abandoned thatch, so the hush is concomitant with the context.

The pedestrian, pleased with his generosity, wants to get back on the road. “Two more hours till New York,” he says to his two companions, who exit the store with a candy-and-caffeine haul. Suddenly, the pedestrian is pedestrian no more, as he torques the key in his SUV’s ignition. The car is rife with the evidence of travel—wrappers, empty Snapple bottles, old receipts, and an iPod hooked directly into the car stereo. The GPS flashes a northbound route as the driver exhumes a long-ago road trip.

“I was down in Asbury Park, south Jersey, for a Jimmy Eat World concert,” he says, lips perched above a coffee cup. “I came back up through Staten Island and got two tickets on the way home. I was about 17 or 18, and it totally ruined my life. I was in car insurance hell for years.” Now 23, his spell in hell is long over. But he still hates Staten Island, and so, “we’re not going that way. It’s probably longer the other way, but I can’t go back.”

The purpose of this trip is relatively straightforward. These three friends live in New York, and The New Deal, a band that pseudo-broke up and rarely performs, played in Philadelphia tonight. Two hours down, two-and-a-half hours there, two hours back. About seven hours in all, rest stops included. They’re on the way back home now, content with the The New Deal-inflicted abuse (“That pretty much rocked my face,” one of them remarked earlier, which seems to echo the general sentiment), but the damage is considerable—show-going is a taxing business, what with the drive, the sweat, the jostling, the dancing, and, of course, the face-rocking. The return trip is, for lack of a better word, sloppy. The three road warriors, all about the same age, rehash their favorite moments from the night, venture into guy-territory tangents (girls, boobs, LeBron James), then trail off into silence. There’s only so much to say at this hour on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and with The New Deal slated to perform in New York the next night—“which is huge,” the driver says—they’re probably contemplating how it might be possible to get home at five in the morning and still manage to present their faces, for rocking, a few hours later.

The driver figures it out first. “I’m going to sleep ‘til about 4 in the afternoon tomorrow,” he announces, “have myself a late breakfast, get ready for the concert.” He mulls over abandoning his traditional front-row spot for something farther back. “I stand front row. I AM front row,” the driver barks, lowering the stereo's volume. “But maybe I’m too distracted by watching the band to really listen to the music.” He may have a point—The New Deal, like a high-octane combustion engine, burns brightly. Watching the dance/trance/electronica trio from a front-row perch and listening to them from the bar are two different animals.

“You should meditate beforehand, get yourself really centered and focused on the show,” the front passenger responds to the driver. “That would take the concert back up a notch.”

The highway is dark, and the few drivers we pass are using their brights, as are we. The iPod is gently streaming another New Deal concert, from a festival in 2005. The car steadies at five miles per hour above the speed limit, an excruciating pace except for the serenity it engenders. It is already past 4:00, a full hour after the driver fed a stray cat behind a rest stop, but neither driver nor passengers evince any sign of being in a rush. Philadelphia was a victory for them, a cool thing to do. They are soaking in the win, knowing that tomorrow night—later tonight, really—brings another contest.

Stay Sleepy, Pennsylvania Turnpike
DJ Dance

Craigslist: Saving Monogamy, One Cheater at a Time

2008-05-09T17:49:00.009-04:00

Cheating happens. Some of us do it, some do it to us, and the rest know people who do it. With divorce rates so high and caustic break-ups at their peak, cheating has become love’s dark handler. Disloyalty is an ancient fact—the Ten Commandments proscribe adultery—but only recently have we embraced technology that, among other functions, makes cheaters more visible. They’re caught on videotape, spied on surveillance systems, and exposed on YouTube. Cellphones, PDAs, emails, and instant messages are all potential evidence.

Now, it seems, technology is not just facilitating apprehension, but also punishment. My friend Rivas, while perusing the Craigslist apartment listings, discovered the following solicitation:

Punishment for cheating - mw4m
Reply to: pers-673395383@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-05-08, 7:21PM

The worst thing imaginable has happened. My wife caught me messing around and she is the breadwinner in our home. Like everyone I never figured I would get caught- but I did.
So she gave me 2 choices. Pack my bags and split(that won't work and she knows it) or I have to run this ad and recruit 3 men who will let me service them on my knees while she watches! I have never done this before, but if I want to stay I have to.
I don't care what you look like- I just need you to show up at the hotel room at the appointed time and let me do what I have to do. Then leave- I would prefer if you didn't even say a word. The first 3 guys who answer are the ones.
It would be this Saturday night in the Upper East Side.

[Original post: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/cas/673395383.html]

For anyone genuinely interested, this is an unprecedented windfall: free gratification, no strings attached. More importantly, though, this post (and others like it, if there are any) should change the paradigm for how we handle infidelity. Millions of users log in to Craigslist every day, virtually guaranteeing that fetishists of all sorts are merely a post away. This is greatest possible deterrent to cheating: if you know that your partner could instantly access two hermaphrodites, a horse, and a ring of fire, you might not cheat in the first place. With technology increasing the probability that cheaters will be caught (as mentioned above), and with Craigslist making possible even the most perverse revenge schemes, not only would you have to be verminous to cheat, but you'd have to be idiotic.

Plus, there's an added bonus: we, the Craigslist community, will get to read about the whole thing. And, like three individuals will this Saturday night, we'll even get to participate.

Stay Single, Everybody
MC Monogamy

FU, Bro

2008-05-06T16:19:00.007-04:00

Perhaps sports fans have not taken an anti-establishment stand because Sports Rooting, as an institution, indulges our primal indolence. Enjoying a sports contest is inextricably linked with sitting—on a couch, in a bleacher, in the stands, in the grandstand, on an inflatable seat cushion. “Spectating” and “Rooting” share a referent: lazy boys in Lay-Z-Boys.

In response to a previous post's conviction that fans are being priced out by sports franchises, a reader named "Pete Rose" offered the following proposal:

“Good point. My friends and I came to a similar realization a while back. We did not decide to strike but wanted to create a big FU, by that I mean a fan union. As you mentioned the players have done it. The highest paying outdoor job in the country is baseball player, because the players union for baseball is not only one of the strongest unions in sports, it is one of the strongest unions in America. A large fan union would give some power to the fans, they would be able to have some leverage and barging power in terms of the price of tickets and merchandise.”  

To which we say: Good point. The FU (an all-time acronym) would transfer some leverage to professional sports’ consumer sector, which would potentially affect a seismic reduction in the cost of fandom. Given that we, the fans, inexplicably remain at the mercy of everyone else’s avarice, it only follows that we exercise a little frugality and organization.

However, the rub lies in the axiom cited above: sports fans are shiftless. To be any other way is almost antithetical to being a fan. The most active role a fan serves is maintaining the integrity of The Wave. Some fans took another step, though, and created We The Fans, which advertises as “The Official Sports Fan Union.” Its tag line announces, “Activism For The Rights & Demands Of Sports Fans Since March 8, 1999.”

Its raison d’etre, the site professes, is combating the exploitative owners and overpaid players with a well-oiled fan coalition. We The Fans pleads with the public to form “A union to fight the MADNESS of the outrageous concession prices, the outlandish cost of tickets, the ‘obscenely overpaid,’ ‘team mentality-challenged,’ ‘psuedo-entertainers,’ playing A GAME in an arena or stadium that increased OUR taxes! The MADNESS must stop! The ONLY WAY it will be stopped is by YOU.”

Noble, indeed, but for how long did We The Fans exist? It’s hard to say, but the website for this underclass uprising was last updated on October 1, 1999—less than seven months after it formed. It seems that even the most motivated of us, the ones sufficiently outraged to build a website, devolved back into inactivity after just over half a year.

Seems like we’ll be overpaying for beer for a while yet.

Stay Slothful, FU
DJ Devolution

The Butcher from Brisbane

2008-05-03T18:13:00.012-04:00

"Hi. I'm Mick, and this is my brother Rick. He's a carpenter, and I'm a slaughterer."

The sizable Australian is gesticulating with his half-quaffed beer, amusedly lamenting his inability to end lives more effectively.

“I kill about 209, 210 animals a day. It’s a nice round number. It should be more,” he roars, undulating to the prospect of upping his slaughterhouse's output. With sharp-crested brown boots and a to-the-scalp buzz-cut, the Brisbane native is in New York with Rick—who, by building houses by hand, occupies an equally masculine realm as his brother—and is full-heartedly singing the enthusiasms borne of killing animals for a living.

“I love hamburgers,” he says, addressing whether or not butchering has changed his culinary habits. “I also love swine—do you call swine ‘pig’ here?” He interrupts the taxonomy questions with a blunt promise. “Bring me a bird right now and I’ll kill it.”

Mick’s job consists of shooting cattle and swine with a captive bolt pistol, firing into the front of their heads to stun them before slaughter. His sanguinary occupation notwithstanding, Mick is genial, loquacious, and engaging, and, according to cell-phone pictures, in possession of a very hot girlfriend.

He says that he rides the swine while they’re still alive, that he mock-milks the cows, and that he generally loves his work. Mick doesn’t seem so cut-throat by nature, which makes all the more stupefying the thought of condemned beasts subject to the insouciance of this man, whose oversized hands must make difficult the hanging of his one stud earring on his right lobe.

Mick is a paradox: an eminently simple man with a self-concept that spans a thousand fathoms. From his tone and comportment, one gathers that Mick pseudo-aggrandizes his station, envisioning himself as natural selection’s assassin, the animal kingdom’s Darwinian enforcer. He stands increasingly upright at mentioning his slaughterhouse exploits, and seems to think, magnanimously, that everyone does something as carnally blue-collar as him and his carpenter brother.

It is rare, especially in Manhattan, to meet somebody from the old guard, the type of industrialization-era laborer who isn’t helpless with his hands. Instead of droning over spreadsheets or dissecting affidavits, he enjoys the immediate fulfillment of task completion: he stuns, he slaughters, he goes home. His job description is terminally simple, yet—for Mick, or someone so constituted—endlessly satisfying.

As my friend Sarah observes, “In New York there are guys. Those people (Mick and Rick) are men.” Indeed, the down-under twosome are somehow fuller, more virile, even more contented, than the mere “guys” in their presence. They are this generation’s Paul Bunyans—folk heroes without the slightest inkling as to their own immensity.

Stay Sizable, Slaughterer
MC Mick

We, the Punk'd Proletariat

2008-04-27T20:51:00.011-04:00

It’s become impossible to watch a professional sports contest without developing a molecular distaste for money. Especially in our recessive economic climate, resentment for professional athletes’ salaries is accumulating an ever-more-acerbic argot: Unconscionable. Unjustifiable. Obscene, disgusting, revolting, and criminal.

The only way to makes sense of athletes’ salaries is by looking at how much revenue they produce. A 12-man basketball team can sell 20,000 tickets to 41 home games each year, not including the playoffs. More popular players (the better-paid ones, almost without exception) sell oodles of merchandise, from jerseys and bobbleheads to basketball cards and posters. Autographs can go for hundreds, even thousands, and when you toss in multi-gajillion dollar TV and radio contracts, appearance fees, and ESPN exposure, the windfall is even more handsome for the billionaire owners than the millionaire players.

And beers cost $7 each.

Who sustains the whole thing—the salaries, prohibitive grog, new arenas, posters, sneakers, and even the workout facilities? Two groups: the players and us.

Without players, there would be no games in the first place. Sports have always been big business, and it wasn’t until a few decades ago that players started clueing in to their own importance. Once they realized that they could hold the game hostage by refusing to play—which has happened in the case of various lockouts and strikes—the players started demanding otherworldly sums of money. They coalesced into unions and upped their labor savvy. What’s obscene and criminal to some is fiscal pragmatism for the players—they bargain for a fair share of the money they generate.

It’s us, meanwhile—consumers and taxpayers (in the case of new arenas)—who underwrite sports. Without consumers, there would be no leagues, no teams, and no money. It would seem that, with the owners and players both drowning in dinero, the fans are getting screwed: the drudges who shell out big money simply to watch the players play; the plebeians who pay extra for sports television access.

Yes, it is true that even with all the money they make, athletes are unduly restricted. Players must operate within a demarcated court/field/rink and abide by a lifeless rule set. No taunting in basketball? Please. No excess fighting in hockey? Come on. No arguing with the umpire in baseball? Babe Ruth is regurgitating in his corpulent grave.

However, whatever the players suffer is miniscule compared to the fans' victimization. Just like the players realized, once upon a time, that they could demand huge money because they were indispensable, so too should we fans embrace the same reality. Sports cannot exist without us.

If we stop going to games, stop tuning in on TV, and stop grab-assing merchandise—if we strike, in other words—the owners would have to lower tickets prices. The extortionate prices on beer, sneakers, posters, DirectTV, etc. would deflate.

Sports would become affordable, and psycho-economically, way more fun. In an age, additionally, when all my favorite teams either suck (Jets, Nets), habitually break my heart (Mets), or are in the process of losing (Rangers), I must go on strike.

I cannot afford to root for them anymore.

Stay Savvy, Sports Consumer
DJ Deflation

Putting the "Lez" in Klezmer

2008-04-26T01:20:00.012-04:00

It was a tale of two genres: one, the saucy backbeat that fueled generations of pizzazz and overblown wardrobes, a style so alien to my life experience that I’d resigned to fandom from afar. The other, the downtrodden soundtrack to a tyrannized people, long ago banished to obscurity and disregard.

In the most unlikely of marriages, funk and klezmer found a way to coexist. Perhaps it was inevitable that David Krakauer, the virtuosic clarinetist and klezmer artist, would team with Fred Wesley, a funk patriarch who played trombone and arranged for James Brown in the 1960s and ’70s. After all, Wesley rose to stardom playing on such hits as “Super Bad,” and Krakauer continues to garner equal helpings of adulation and derision for his outré compositions.

In resuscitating classic shtetl progressions with new-age rhythms and exotic treatments, Krakauer proved himself an oxymoron: a dangerous klezmer artist.

In 2006, Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness! released “Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me,” which included “Moskowitz,” an incendiary romp one part shtetl, one part speakeasy, and two parts Moulin Rouge. The title track, meanwhile, includes a rap section that lists about a dozen bubbemeises (grandma’s tales):

“Stay away from all the witches who live at forks in the road…. Don’t cross your eyes or they’ll stay that way…. These are lies my Gramma told me, superstitious devices, urban mythological rules and bubbemeises."

[Click here for both "Moskowitz" and "Bubbemeises."]

Together with Wesley — who moved on to Parliament-Funkadelic and then a solo career after leaving Brown — and Canadian multi-instrumentalist Josh Dolgin (aka DJ Socalled), Krakauer recently formed Abraham Inc. The 10-piece group (abrahamincmusic.com) is a polyglot mash-up of several styles, but most notably klezmer, funk, and hip-hop. With its debut record set for a fall release, Abraham Inc. will perform the album material for the first time at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater on May 3.

“David came to me with the idea for Abraham Inc., and I didn’t really see how it could work,” said Wesley, who lives in South Carolina. “But the more I got into it, the more I realized that all music was the same; it’s just where you put the emphasis. Funk and klezmer are very much alike if you slow it down or speed it up, and it’s worked really well for us.”

Listeners can sample the unlikely cohesion on the video section of Abraham Inc.’s web video section. The first clip, a live performance of “TweetTweet,” is a vibratory klezmer standard layered on top of a merciless funk foundation. Instead of compromising either style, Abraham Inc. simply welds the two together.

As with all interdenominational projects, there is the obligatory temptation to honor the human interest aspect. Indeed, Wesley said, “On a philosophical level, I hope it would bring some people together who never thought they’d be together.”

For music geeks like me, though, Abraham Inc. is less cross-culture than outright miracle. “A Funky Miracle,” as The Meters might title it, that legitimizes a part of my heritage that I’d written off to antiquated Eastern European plaintiveness.

Finally, we have the funk.

Stay Super Bad, Wesley
MC Madness

Passover 2008: The End of Reason

2008-04-22T21:28:00.011-04:00

In search of noetic peace, of a worldly understanding that might quell the distance between what I see and what I understand, I started reading Freakonomics. A 2005 bestseller co-authored by the economist Steven Levitt and the journalist Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics is a 207 page eugenic purge against conventional wisdom, classic economics, and just-plain-dumb culturalism. With a healthy dose of data crunching, simple psychology, and manic curiosity, Levitt and Dubner answer such pressing questions as, “Why do drug dealers live with their moms?” and “How is the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real-estate agents?”

The answer to the first—mainly, that except for a few top-tier crack-cocaine “executives,” most pushers and corner-hawkers subsist on less than minimum wage—is revelatory. The solution to the second—that both groups manipulate information to create advantage and fear—is less gripping.

Yet, neither addresses the vicious water upon which these questions are floated, the primordial foundation upon which people might think that real-estate agents are always honest or that all crack slingers sit on fortunes:

Why do people think what they think?

Sure, Freakonomics susses out reality from illusion, but it doesn’t speak to why people think those illusions in the first place. Mysteriously, maddeningly, well-educated individuals with access to the Internet and a host of didactic tools bury their heads in the factual sand, relying on a bizarre combination of folklore, hunch, and rumor.

For instance, there is an e-mail circulating in Orthodox Jewish circles (typically very well-educated and hyper-informed) indicting Barack Obama in anti-Semitism and virulent anti-Israel-ism. Far be it from me to politic—I couldn’t care less about elections and I’ve already derided Obama for the vacuous hole that stands where most people have personalities—but both these accusations are wrong. Obama’s Congressional record is actually pro-Israel, and the anti-Semite claim roots in the talk—also untrue—that Obama is Moslem.

So, Steven and Stephen failed to ease my mind—they merely confirmed that people often think erringly. However, the true intrigue lies in deciphering why they do this.

So, I celebrated Passover.

Passover, like no other holiday, is rife with ritual and neuroticism. The two don’t necessarily overlap, but they often do. With a don’t-or-die ban (literally) on leavened bread—and attendant Sabbath-like restrictions—the first two days of Passover are a fine window into why people believe what they do. Faith? Family? Tradition? Trepidation? Bullying? Belief? Love? Lethargy? Perhaps some concoction thereof—but certainly, two breadless days could provide a representative sample for delineating root causes in rationale. Also, I like the Seder. So everybody wins.

After 48 carefully monitored hours, it seemed that some stupid beliefs germinate in a forced soil: faced with a potential conflict between faith, reason, hope, and communal/familial obligations, some people simply adopt the precious few philosophies that accommodate all of those pressures.

Freakonomics addresses this in passing. It quotes the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who invented the term “conventional wisdown:”

“We associate truth with convenience,” Galbraith said, “with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem…we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding.”

This issue is infinitely complex, and is essentially epistemology—the philosophical field dedicated to knowledge, its methods and validity. However, what I could glean from Passover is that people aren’t the arbitrary victims of insularity and ignorance—rather, they are the perpetrators.

They make the cocoon so that they can live in it: though they have a butterfly’s physiology, they live as worms. I will never understand this.

Unless, of course, I’m just fooling myself.

Stay Seductive, Seder
MC Matzoh

...And On the Eighth Day, God Hired a Marketing Team

2008-04-18T14:53:00.010-04:00

As the New Jersey Transit bus accordions into an exit off the New Jersey Turnpike, Teaneck’s religiosity comes into full view. With its suburban burnish and perfectly manicured small businesses, Teaneck is a sleepily tolerant religious ecosystem, with Catholic, Jew, and Muslim perfunctorily resigned to one another. Up the hill from a major park is a Baha’i log cabin temple, cast inside a forest veil.

Though I rode this route hundreds of times in the 16 years I lived in Teaneck, I could not recall the church off the Turnpike advertising as it does now.

A large placard promises, in avuncular bold, that “GOD ALLOWS U TURNS.” The next side shows itself as the bus pushes forward: “DON’T GAMBLE WITH ETERNITY.”

How convivial, even playful. But…the NJ Turnpike; a bus; gambling; a u turn; hometown dread…suddenly I feel like hightailing to Atlantic City to do the exact things that might endanger my eternity. Still, the sign swears that there’s always time to repent, so I figure that pushing off my prodigious U-turn until after a weekend of roulette and self-loathing is perfectly within reason. The only way to truly gamble with eternity, after all, is to deny the possibility of repentance. So long as I remain somewhere between conscientious and contrite, I will remain in good stead with the Almighty.

Despite all the misgivings about rolling through my hometown (Teaneck and I have an icy, adversarial relationship, dating to the time it removed the mailbox on my family’s block), there is something unfailingly comforting about being back. The houses never change, the people always walk slowly, there are two 7-Elevens, and the religious institutions try their best to save your soul as you careen onto Teaneck Road. “Make a U Turn,” they beseech. “Your fate is worth it.” I may not care for Teaneck, but Teaneck cares for me.

Meanwhile, in New York City, the Church is far more unfeeling. When the Pope visits, the Powers That Be stage him at Yankee Stadium, home to more spit, urine, and profanity than R. Kelly’s diary. Religious communities are marred by infighting and turf wars. The fratricidal air even extends to the outer boroughs, where fragmented worshippers splinter into countless synagogues and cells, content to pursue the afterlife with an irreconcilable distaste for fellow pursuers.

During my early childhood (late 80s-early 90s, approximately Michael Jordan’s first reign of dominance), I succeeded in finding every reason to hate suburbia. Most of those reasons had nothing to do with suburbia itself, but rather with its maddening inability to be a major urban center. I complained often that being seated in an uneventful picket-fence universe imposed an artificial ceiling on my opportunities. I told my parents and teachers that Teaneck was the ambition graveyard, and that the only way to try at superstardom was to migrate to New York City.

Now that I am in the city (in the aforementioned outer boroughs, at least), my original claim still rings legitimate—city life affords manifold routes to success that northern New Jersey simply cannot accommodate. I don’t miss the snail’s pace, either, and there are more 7-Elevens here than the suburban child in me could ever imagine. What I miss, though, is the caring air, the way that people build a cohesive community and protect their families in its structure. A monolithic and homogenous structure, yes, but (I like to think) well meaning.

The bus continues past the sign-bearing church and the Dairy Queen and the hospital and both 7-Elevens. I disembark at a shopping complex and confirm its intertia. Blockbuster, Walgreens, and Dunkin’ Donuts are still there, as are the same sundry shops that always lined this shoehorn-shaped stretch. I spy three people I haven’t seen since high school, and they look exactly as they did years ago.

I turn around, away from the impending “hey-how-are-you-what-are-you-up-to” conversation. After all, God allows U-turns.

Stay Static, Suburbia
MC Manhattan

The Funk Hierachy

2008-04-14T21:49:00.013-04:00

We consume a constant stream of music, television, conversation, books, sights and sounds. The difficulty with writing is that it is a reversal of the process—it constitutes and demands a one-way conversation that vests agency in the writer. It is a far less passive than most things, and in that way is uncharacteristic of usual interaction.

Once the direction is reversed, however, it can be hard to allow oneself to be mindlessly entertained. Initiating brain function is addictive, and lends clarity to an ironic koan: ‘tis better to think than to be thought for. Whereas The Simpsons used to perform much of my cognitive function, I now traverse an altogether more active realm, pent up in my room as I am with a laptop, a stack of unopened albums, and a string of thoughts awaiting expression.

Irradiating this exercise is the only time in recent memory that I turned my brain off. Marcus Miller, one of the great bass heroes, came to B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square with his funk cohorts. Not only is Miller a Queens College dropout (why else would I matriculate there?), not only is he a veteran of ensembles belonging to Miles Davis, Luther Vandross, and David Sanborn, and not only does he always wear a fedora, but he brings the funk very, very hard. Almost illegally hard. Were music likened to basketball, Miller would be half-superstar, half-dunk contest, with pyrotechnics enough to mute Marv Albert.

Articulating exactly how hard the funk was laid down is a sheer impossibility, but a few excerpts from my friend Rivas’s diatribe come closest. I came a few minutes before him, and secured standing room in front of the bar. Miller opened with “Blast” (the hummus-flavored sass that plays when you load his website), then worked into his cover of “Higher Ground,” in the middle of which Rivas strolled in, unaware that his loins were about to implode.

After 30 seconds, he said, “This is completely irresponsible. I am far too stoned to be listening to something this funky.”

A pause.

“I’m not going to survive this concert.”

But survive we did, and as we hobbled out onto 42nd St. our faculties began returning to us, albeit in pieces. We quickly devised a funk vocabulary—we’d long ago termed extremely funky things “irresponsibly funky,” but Miller demanded a whole new set of adjectives.

In ascending order, the funk hierarchy.

1. Sufficiently/Pleasingly Funky
Standard, assembly-line funk. What my funk band would sound like, assuming I permed my hair and moved further south. A 2-4 out of 10.

2. Cooperatively/Flippantly Funky
When a band coalesces into a deep, rhythmic unit, showering you with funk rain, but forgoing brilliance. A 5 of out 10, perhaps.

3. Unnecessarily/Offensively Funky
Unnecessary not in the pejorative, but in the way that one might emerge from a threesome with two Swedish wet nurses and say, “Wow, that didn’t have to happen.” A 6-7 out of 10, with a strong push towards greatness.

4. Irresponsibly/Recklessly Funky
For most, this is the pinnacle of funketeering. Seeing NYC bass legend Shyndigg use his elbow to solo actually birthed the qualifier “irresponsibly funky”—if I recall, Rivas is the term’s etymological father. And 8-9 out of 10, and capable of scarring for days afterwards.

5. Conspiratorially/Debilitatingly Funky
The Marcus Miller level, inaccessible to most mortals, demarcates the point at which sensory experience is incomprehensible and bowel control is dubious. In my experience, only Miller has funked as such. Not just a 10 out 10—this stage transcends numerics. “It's as conspiratorial as the assassination of Benazir Bhutto,” Rivas said, contemplating Miller's performance. “If I had to directly compare the assassination of a world leader to Marcus Miller, that’s the one I would choose.”

Stay Sufficient, White Funk
MC Marcus

Top Seth

2008-04-09T16:55:00.005-04:00

At the outset of a recent sleepless night, I suddenly recalled Cal, Seth Rogen’s character in The 40 Year Old Virgin. He sponsored an ex nihilo appreciation for sedative subversion, demarcating downers’ rightful station in silver screen mythos.

[Click here for YouTube clip]
“You know what's a fun game?” he offered the virginal Andy (Steve Carrell), poised to lay down the IQ.
“You take three Excedrin PMs and you see if you could whack off before you fall asleep.
You always win, is the best part about the game.”

Earnestly, perhaps too earnestly, Cal litigated for the pseudo ne’er-do-wells, the indulgent but not quite objectionable among us. In Knocked Up and, more emphatically, in Superbad, Rogen’s merry men continued to make the mediocre American more sexy, couching him/her (mostly him) in a benign, endearing framework. Rogen’s cadre helped create the comedic middle class, a race of casually self-deprecating, white, not so poor, not overly privileged smartasses. People, in other words, with empty pools in the backyard and boozy fraternity memberships.

Average becomes vogue.

And so it was that I, an average white male, popped two sleeping pills and tried not to summarily pleasure myself, but to make it through an entire episode of Top Chef. Saddled with an inane, droning insomnia, I have an emergency stash of saccharine grape flavored sleep-well tablets that work every other night. Since I can’t remember the cycle, I am often surprised by being laid pathetically low or remaining curiously unaffected.

On this particular night, Cal’s game dogmatized the evening: Get in sweats. Brush teeth. Set alarm on phone. Plug in laptop. Take sleeping pills. Wait 5 minutes. Pour three fingers of Jameson. Put on Top Chef. Await destiny.

Somewhere in the middle of an apple-brie flambé, concentration became a chore. Jameson emptied, I guessed, with incipient gratitude, that the pills were going to stymie the string of insomnia-riddled nights.

I was wrong.

In the absurd throes of medicated sleep deprivation, the battle for everlasting wakefulness launched its opening salvo on my couch. Accustomed as I was to sleeplessness, my survival instinct engaged as soon as the first wave of numbness careened down my being. I memorized recipes, formulated a pneumonic to remember the chefs’ names, and even started Googling ingredients. Anything to keep my mind alert, I told myself—anything to ward off the frightful specter of sleep.

A few more hours passed, enough time that I could have won Cal’s game many times over were I not preoccupied with all things trivial—arcane break dancing contests, environmentalist poetry, old NY Rangers highlights from when they won the Cup. Only in abject exhaustion does one encounter the Internet in its manifest function, its nimbus in the dark: the definitive portal to infinite uselessness.

I begrudgingly yielded to sleep after sunup and awoke for class two hours later, only to vouchsafe the details of my sleeping troubles to a relentless classmate who wanted to know why I was so tired. I explained about Padma Lakshmi, Jameson, selectively effective sleep aids, and all the rest.

She looked at me, incredulous, and asked, “Really? That’s what you were up so late doing?”

“No,” I said. “It really has to do with Seth Rogen and a fun masturbation game, and that’s all I’m going to say.”

Stay Satisfied, Seth
DJ Dosage

Pregnancy and its Discontents

2008-04-05T17:34:00.006-04:00

I’ve never been pregnant. As a relatively young male, I also have limited experience with death, bankruptcy, 401(k)’s, mortgages—the (mostly fiscal) trappings of adulthood. I derive from a tribe that weds early, so I’m well versed in matrimony, but pregnancy is another of the institutions that escapes me. The all-holy embryo only exists in two contexts: one, that at some point I was a fledgling fetus (and, according to ultrasound imaging, appeared slovenly even in utero); and two, it’s something I desperately want to avoid creating, especially if I join the National Basketball Association.

As an identity-forging enterprise, parenthood is the most indelible. Marriages can dissolve and businesses can capsize, but babies are biological facts that cannot be reversed. Quotidian though it may sound, the concept of, “Oh God, this is for real,” didn’t synapse completely until I was walking through a Barnes & Noble with my friend Elle, who is unavoidably pregnant. Yes, she craves Godiva chocolate and describes her morning sickness, but she’s only unavoidably pregnant because no one can shut the hell up about it. Store clerks ask her when she’s due, strangers stare at her stomach, and people she’s never met impose themselves on her gestation.

“I was in a public bathroom the other day, and some woman came up to me and said, ‘You look like you’re about to pop,’” Elle told me, laboring along the check-out line. “Complete strangers come up to me, unsolicited, and rub my belly.”

Well-meaning or obnoxious, oglers and tummy handlers never seemed so obtrusive to me. Feeling a bit reprehensible, since I’ve been known to pepper pregnant women with thoughts on Weebok baby shoes, I told Elle that we all mean well.

“It’s just that people are always so positive about the whole thing,” she said. Walking back to her apartment with a bag full of books, she covered her face with a scarf while two men smoked cigarettes two feet in front of us.

“I mean, they’re always smiling and saying things like, “Ooh, it’s a baby, that’s so much fun!” she cooed. “But really, it’s like, I’m nauseous all the time, I’m huge, my back hurts, there’s really nothing fun about this.”

As she and her husband Yosi led me into their apartment building, an older lady ambled up to Elle's midsection. “Oh hello, mommy,” the lady said, eyeing future mother and future baby all at once. The three of us sighed. She continued, “You know, you should really look into new nursery rhymes. My son’s daughter loves it when I give her a pacifier and sing her these new nursery rhymes.” Elle and Yosi nodded politely, their disdain almost palpable.

When we got in their apartment, Elle said, “You have to be polite. You can’t yell at someone who’s genuinely excited that you’re pregnant. But everyone has something to say, everyone thinks they’re entitled to tell me how to be pregnant, and I just want to tell them to shut the hell up.”

Intrigued by the pregnant plight, I did a little web browsing. On pregnancy-info.net’s discussion board, a reader named Teresa (fourth comment down) echoed Elle’s grievances.

She wrote, “…mostly it really, really tires me being asked if I'm having twins, being told that I am so big, being told what a big baby we will have, being told I look like I'm ready to pop. I mean, are all these people without sensitivity? Don't they know we, preggers, are self-conscious enough about our weight and do not need any "reassurance" in that aspect?”

Shauna, the next poster, was more pithily pissed. “I am so tired of all the stupid advice people are giving me just because they already have children,” she said.

Perhaps I will continue to humor pregnant women, and perhaps I will have a retirement fund before I learn some sensitivity. For one night, however, I watched while a friend weathered a maternal maelstrom, and I reaffirmed my most solemn promise to myself.

I will never play in the NBA.

Stay Celibate, Athletes
MC Milk Chocolate

Crossing Over

2008-03-30T19:44:00.009-04:00

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Turns out the answer is age-dependent: if you’re older than 14, the typical response is either “to get to the other side” or “because it was stapled to the car.” However, my seven-year-old cousin recently provided two new reasons. First, he said, “To get to the alien headquarters database.”

Then, not convinced that extraterrestrial HQ would warrant a jaunt across the street, he said, “Because [unintelligible Pokemon person] needed to go to [unintelligible Pokemon place] to [unintelligible Pokemon action].” Startled that the joke had changed so much since I was a kid, I asked him where he’d heard all that.

“At school,” he said, organizing his Pokemon cards in a binder.
“Who told you the joke?”
“All my friends tell the same joke. Everybody knows it,” he said, annoyed.

The pedestrian chicken's evolution has been swift. The factors that compelled it to cross the road 15 years ago are no longer relevant, replaced by ultra-sci-fi and cartoons. My generation grew up with the Power Rangers and Sonic the Hedgehog, but we segregated our humor and entertainment. Even the fortunate few who had Duck Hunt guns in first grade never cross-pollinated their joke repertoire and their living room amusement. Yet my cousin—and his friends, apparently—are bringing life experience into their jokes, incorporating stumpy little Pokefreaks into chickens who cross roads.

Sorry to say, but a chicken crossing the road lacks the cognitive power to discern a special purpose in its sojourn—an ambulatory chicken is probably thinking about nothing at all, and, at best, is thinking something like, “Cross. Now. Poop.” That otherwise intelligent kids could suggest that a chicken would go to an alien headquarters is indicative of the chief difference between kids today and kids yesterday—kids today believe the video game universe is real. At heart, my generation knew that Sonic was a fantastical creature, and though he amused us, he remained illusory, a figment of Sega’s imagination.

Kids today, however, are born into a technological landscape so interactive that differentiating between real and delusional is very difficult. Imagine being four years old and being able to instruct your TV what to show you, seeing your parents conduct most of their lives through a computer, and listening to music through a wafer-shaped doohickey with a track wheel. Most people’s online friends outnumber their real ones by a 10:1 margin, and social lives are organized on the Internet. Breaking up on Facebook is as ritualized as actually breaking up, and having MySpace fans is as vital to a band as having fans at a show.

So is it really such a stretch for a four year-old, seven year-old, or even eleven year-old to assume that Pokemon characters are really their friends? Or that chickens coexist with aliens? No wonder their humor reveals a certain belief in the non-real; indeed, their lives are orchestrated in the gloaming between actual, corporeal reality and virtual reality. Is Pikachu any less real than a Facebook friendship? Or, put more pointedly, is a TV that does your bidding any less real than the person next to you in class?

What’s so wrong with supposing that a chicken and an alien and a Pokemon all exist? In this new child’s world, where television and computers dictate reality as much as reality dictates reality, jokes must reflect the ever-broadening definition of what could possibly be.

So, why did the chicken cross the road? I don’t know. I’m too old.

Stay Seven, Kids
DJ Dodder

Mount Mariah

2008-03-27T15:29:00.005-04:00

Quick: what are Mariah Carey’s greatest assets? If you said anything other than humor and wit, you’d be wrong. Well…debatably wrong. But wrong nonetheless.

With the release of her video for “Touch My Body,” Carey artfully wedges into the Superbad/Napolean Dynamite geitzeist, trading love strokes with “CompuNerd” Jack McBrayer (of 30 Rock fame). While Mariah performs the requisite video seduction—lolling in lingerie, showing a zip-code’s worth of cleavage, etc—she and a smitten McBrayer battle in Guitar Hero, play laser tag, and jump on the bed while McBrayer sports a bow tie and red “love rocks” wife beater.

Carey sells the role entirely, never breaking the steamy motif. McBrayer, meanwhile, is all geek. In other words, replacing Carey with Will Ferrell would yield a comedy smash, while keeping Carey and replacing McBrayer with a male model would result in a fetus.

With the public sure to be split between two defensible reactions—“What?” and “That’s funny”—let this entry cast a ballot for the latter. With Carey inexplicably reclaiming the diva mantle (if not the vocal throne) and McBrayer remaining calm enough to act while mere inches from Carey’s Special Places, the success of “Touch My Body” is undebatable. Well…debatably undebatable. But undebatable nonetheless.

Stay Technosavvy, Mariah
MC McBrayer

Best Bragger Alive!

2008-03-21T22:58:00.002-04:00

My name is Hov', H to the O.V.
I used to move snowflakes by the O.Z.
-Public Service Announcement (Interlude)

VH1 Classic ran a Jay-Z special a few months ago, around the time I silently committed to sacrificing my first-born son to the self-proclaimed “best rapper alive.” Predictable and obsequious, the documentary chronicled Jay-Z as cool (rapper, driver of cars, dater of women) and commendable (rags-to-riches, brilliant, enterprising). The show was a 60-minute failure, in that it omitted the salient characteristic that elevates the New Jersey Nets part-owner above all others: he is honest.

While pedestrian rappers bluster about bullets and bitches, Jay-Z is a stripped-down newsman, the embodiment of a man, a microphone, and his turmoil. His concerts are stripped-down affairs, with the audience charged to cling to every couplet. Jay-Z is rap’s most austere artist, an amalgam of truth and street.

The Black Album, his 2003 release, introduced the hit “99 Problems,” an overstated rap-rock mash-up that leaves more than a little to be desired. “99 Problems” is a good song, yet easily the album’s worst. It’s certainly the least honest, and it drips the faux machismo that Jay-Z typically forgoes.

“99 Problems” aside, The Black Album is a case study in badass. 14 tracks long, it says dozens of way cool things about growing up on the street, drug dealing, and—above all—hustling. Jay-Z may be honest, but he is hardly modest, and the man who corralled Beyonce nary misses a chance to toot his hustle horn.

From Bricks to Billboards, from grams to Grammys
The O's to opposite, Orphan Annie
-Dirt Off Your Shoulder

He doesn’t have Biggy’s flow, or Tupac’s fire, or even Eminem’s articulation (as Chuck Klosterman said, Eminem’s greatness lies in his ability to clearly enunciate his words), but Jay-Z has what none of them ever did: more than half a billion dollars.

And that can buy a lot of bling.

Stay Serviced, Public
DJ Dirtless Shoulder

I Left My Dignity at Yom Kippur

2008-03-18T18:45:00.008-04:00

I have a vague recollection of twisting into an unintelligible heap, fixing my posture just long enough to accuse G-D of ruining my pants, and passing into a troubled sleep, fully clothed and bandana-clad. As the most vivid of my three (or so) surviving memories from last Purim, this recollection is indicative of why organized religion still wears the pants around this psyche: sometimes the powers that be demand that we inebriate ourselves.

The next morning, the bandana had migrated to the coffee table, and I carefully dragged my dehydrated bones to the kitchen. With a veritable bounty at my disposal (granola bars, dry cereal, raw pasta, dubiously fresh milk and half a Coke), I opted for tap water. My pants were indeed torn, but G-D was less responsible than I thought—more probably, the holes were from making snow angels in the driveway. My shirt smelled like cat food, and the shoes I had on weren’t mine. There was writing on my arm: “To a very sexy boy xoxoxoxoxo.” No name.

Luckily, Purim wasn’t over yet, so I didn’t feel guilty about resembling a wheezing landfill. Purim begins again this Thursday, March 20, at sundown, and with the situation in the Middle East and global terrorism and America headed for a recession and the subprime mortgage crisis and Avian Flu and Ben Stiller movies and no Postal Service album in sight…well, it couldn’t get here soon enough.

Purim has four obligations:

1. To hear the reading of the Megilla, the Book of Esther, once at night and once in the morning.
2. To have a feast.
3. To send "mishloach manot" - two foods, to at least one friend.
4. To give charity to at least two poor people.

Number one is 40 minutes of love, deceit, conspiracy, wealth, revenge, and public executions. Number two is easy—eat food, get drunk, revel, hit on your friend’s 18-year-old cousin, etc.

For number three, “mishloach manot,” a can of beer and a Fruit Roll-Up suffice. Number four, meanwhile, is the cosmic reason why you don’t have to feel guilty for getting completely smashed and obnoxious. Alms absolve all. So, with costume drawn, alcohol purchased, and charity in hand, I am the picture of preparedness. When I swan dive onto the couch at some point Friday morning, I will be putrid, offensive, and despicable.

And G-D, Who taketh mercy on pants, will be happy.

Stay Supernal, Purim
MC Megilla

Rinse and Spitz

2008-03-14T12:32:00.002-04:00

[Editor’s note: I finally got around to giving this blog a proper URL and updated home page. Verbalcalorie.com is an idea I’ve been entertaining for a long time, and after working out a few glitches it seems to be up and running. The page loads well in Safari and Firefox, but looks like a pixelated schizoid in Internet Explorer—I’m building a Microsoft voodoo doll to deal with this. Please contact me with problems or suggestions.]

Now that he’s unemployed, what is Elliot Spitzer doing? The day after his resignation, Client 9 surely has few options. Now an ex-governor—and perhaps, soon to be an ex-husband and felon—Spitzer could be suicidal, or perhaps trying to reconcile with his family. He could be ringing up a hefty bill at the high-end whorehouse that started this ballyhoo. This is an anthropomorphic moment, when an object—Governor—mutates into a person—Elliot Spitzer, Disgraced Condom Spurner.

Spitzer’s is an unusually sanctimonious and pitiable case, since his was a public personality built on the moral hard line. As we’ve seen several times, however, even presumed saints reduce to flesh and bone. Stripped of so many identities—Governor, public servant, upstanding citizen, Conservative, law-abider, family man, model New Yorker—Spitzer has little left besides for philanderer.

Where does someone like that go?

My boss intuits suicide. “If I were him,” she says, feet up on the desk, “I’d be killing myself.” Or, “he’ll announce he has some other addiction that compels him to sleep with hookers, like alcoholism or painkillers, and he’ll disappear into rehab for three months.”

The decoy addiction could, indeed, prove useful. Blaming a stigmatized problem (in Spitzer’s case, pricey prostitutes) on something that garners public sympathy could partly salvage his reputation. Call it an evolved Twinkie Defense.

“Either way, he has to go underground for a few months,” she adds. “Maybe he should take that girl he was sleeping with for a long-term rental.”

The public outcry is bound to die out, since there is simply nothing more to write about. Spitzer will resurface in the tabloids if he gets indicted or divorced, but until then can rely on attrition and boredom to bail him out. Inevitably, words like “shock” and “disgust” will yield to generic alternatives like “unexpected” and “unfortunate.” Sex scandals and corruption are like bread—the older they get, the staler they become.

Stay Salacious, Spitzer
DJ Decoy

Dear Record Executives: Don't Sell Your Yachts. Downloading Can Help You.

2008-03-10T14:29:00.019-04:00

[Editor’s Note: The new Jack Johnson album, “Sleep Through the Static,” is so simple, beautiful, and pleasing that I wet myself.]

For whatever reason, the general consensus is that digital downloading is tearing apart the music industry. This is true, to a certain extent, and within certain arenas. Digital downloading hurts album sales, undermines the viability of the single, and somewhat detracts from the importance of radio play. If the criterion is access, then digital downloading has, indeed, rewritten the libretto for this corporate drama: being able to download songs means that we no longer have to spend money to access the music we want.

Still, what the “downloading is reshaping the industry” proponents don’t realize is that major labels actually control "the music we want.” Although every type of music is "out there," how does one know what to look for? Music consciousness, for 99% of people, comes from mass media—television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, radio, etc. Who gets radio play? Major music artists. Who gets the 1 spot on TRL? Not some unsigned psytrance DJ from Mumbai—hell, not even a minor label darling. It’s always a super-famous artist with a super-big record deal.

The “music we want” is just the music we’re fed, since what we want is inextricably limited to what we know. What we’re looking to download is usually the same thing that major labels want us listening to.

So, digital downloading can be looked at as the nefarious thorn in the industry's side, or merely as free advertising. Most downloading is not of the romanticized sort—it is not, in other words, hip people downloading hip music and thusly sticking it to The Un-Hip Man. For the most part, downloading consists in finding a KT Tunstall song on the cheap, or pirating an already-famous artist’s new album. More people than ever are in a position to own major label music, simply because it’s ubiquitously available—you can cull your favorite tunes in a bedroom, bathroom, or classroom. Digital downloading, in a sense, saves us a trip to the record store.

With its music so diffuse, record companies could, with just a little innovation, make a killing off of ticket and merchandise sales. Why not offer album downloads for free—or for pennies—from the label’s website? With so many millions of people hearing exactly what the record execs select, those same execs could track which locales download the most, and then plan huge concerts in those areas. Or, similarly, ship extra merchandise to malls in those counties. This could be the most effective method yet for manipulating the public wallet.

Everybody wins. The masses get free music, and, moreover, they gain unfettered access to trustworthy, high quality downloads. Also, if a particular artist proves popular in a certain region, that region gets the concerts and t-shirts it so desires. The poor record companies, for their part, can broadcast on an unprecedented scale. The resulting concert and merchandise windfalls would be so great that, if Reaganomics were still in effect, people like you and me might eventually afford grad school.

As convoluted as a marketing shift might be at first, Atlantic, Columbia, and Island Def Jam could continue to grow their global empire by giving fans free music. With prices that low, I'd gladly get ripped off for concert tickets later.

Stay Soothing, Sleep Through the Static
DJ Download

Tonight, Tonight I Will Slay a Tech Support Representative

2008-03-06T11:43:00.010-05:00

Do you have suicidal or homicidal thoughts?

You must. We all do.

Every psychiatrist and psychologist poses this query about five minutes into your first session, and then purports to gauge your sanity by your response. I’ve always thought this a tragically unfair, overly broad question, especially since psychology demands nuance. My response has always been, “I want to kill myself when I can’t finish a crossword puzzle. I feel very homicidal when I watch televangelists. I want to kill Shaquille O’Neal.”

Surprise: I’m overmedicated.

If you’ve never wanted to kill anybody, you’re lying. Take it from Chris Rock, who famously announced, “If you haven’t contemplated murder, you haven’t been in love.” And you definitely haven’t toiled on a tech support call, careening through layers of misinformation in a doltish stratosphere, wondering, above all, what you’d do if you had a gun with one bullet: off yourself or the person making you feel like you're being circumcised again and again? With outsourcing on the rise—and, therefore, unintelligible instructions becoming standard—and patience on the wane, a mass murder must be just a “Hold, please” away.

Do I have suicidal or homicidal thoughts? Fuck yeah.

Yesterday, I encountered a cost-effective method for countering tech support tension: rock superstardom. After laboring through the incomprehensible penumbra that surrounds domain hosting, the woman on the line told me to hold. While I loaded a shotgun, Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” played in my ear, and I was soothed. “Tonight, Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins followed, as did The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony.” When the operator apologized for making me hold, I told her the waiting music rocked.

“Yes, sir, I know you’re having problems with the server.”
“Um…no…I mean…the music rocked. You guys played Zeppelin.”
“Sir, should I transfer you?”
More waiting music or more of her?
“Sure, transfer me.”

James Taylor started singing “Fire and Rain,” and the next operator interrupted the second chorus. “Piece of shit,” I said, right into the receiver.

“Excuse me, sir?”
“Nothing. Are you a James Taylor fan?”
The heavily-accented man, not wanting to insult my sensibilities—and presumably not a James Taylor fan—gave the only answer he could.
“Sir, could I have your customer ID?”
“Sure.” I gave it to him. “I just wanted to say that your waiting music is really good. Do you know anything about that?”

Three seconds of silence, then a deep breath.
“Sir, I’m not sure I understand your problem. You want to transfer your domain name?”
“Yes, but I’m just saying that the music you play over the phone is better than what other people play.” I was enunciating like a patronizing asshole, hoping to transfuse some modicum of humanity into this purgatory.
“I’m sorry sir, but you’d have to speak to my supervisor about matters like that,” he answered, in what must be construed as either a total misinterpretation of what I said or a gross dislike for singer-songwriters.
He waited for a response that never came. “Sir, I’ll help you with that domain transfer as soon as you give me your twelve-digit customer code.”

I hung up mid-call, rage coursing hot like a bruising desert sky, reduced to a misanthrope with a domain name problem. The next therapist who wants to know if I'm a potential threat to myself or others will hear about James Taylor, and they'll surely leave me plenty of psychotropics—with whose help I might wonder whether or not I'm crazy.

Stay Sonorous, Smashing Pumpkins
DJ Domain

The Many Faces of Tim Reynolds: Guitar, Guru, Goo

2008-03-03T10:21:00.003-05:00

Tim Reynolds spent the last eight years traveling the country by himself, acoustic guitar and effects pedals in tow, with only his thoughts for company. A guitar maestro best known for his work with Dave Matthews, Reynolds is now leading his own band, TR3, on a national tour.

Still, eight years is a long time to go solo, and all that solitude eroded his social barriers to the point of comfort, clarity, and cum.

“In the 80s I had a job where I was putting up shelves, and I made a band called the Loud Cum Band,” Reynolds says, speaking to me from the TR3 tour bus in Cleveland in late February. He starts gagging on his laughter, his TR3 bandmates—bassist Mick Vaughn and drummer Dan Martier—doing the same in the background.

“We had one song called ‘I am cum,’ one called ‘I eat cum’…this is a young man working at KMart being a little frustrated. The whole sound was the sound of clanging shelves at KMart with the little screws.”

When pressed for an sound clip, Reynolds growls slowly, one syllable at a time, “I AM CUM.” He stops to giggle. “It was a very mindless kind of thing.”

Reynolds is not all ejaculate. He takes Buddhist teachings seriously, noting that, “Bad days are always like the guru. In Buddhism, your most important guru is your biggest problem. Your bad day, a fearful thought, that is the teaching to how to control the thought. If you stop for a minute and hold it—that voice in your head is OK, if you don’t let it be a judger and let it go by.”

All that perspective has led to two prongs of interest, the first being his insistence that, “The future evolution of humans is a conscious decision to stay present and bring in love.” The second, meanwhile, is a distinct amorousness with music in a metaphysical dimension, with Reynolds asserting, “The present is an infinite moment, and music represents that. When you play live, that’s just the present. When you have a recording, that involves both things: a past and present. It can bring up a sense memory from childhood, like total recall. To me, music is all about bringing that love, as it were, into the now.”

Reynolds’ last album was 2005’s “Parallel Universe,” a solo effort. With TR3 back after numerous incarnations and an eight-year hiatus, one might expect his focus to be back on songwriting—which it is. But still, after so much time alone on the road, could you really blame Reynolds for appreciating the…err…benefits of company?

“TR3 psychically goes back to the 60s. We have things that are all kind of spewing out in real time, like a wad of cum.”

Like a wad of cum?

“Unlike most of my interviews, I have my clothes on,” he says. “We’ll do another one in the future, and I’ll be naked. I am naked underneath my clothes, and I’m aware of that. It’s very sensual, you know. My skin is busting through my jeans.

“We’re all naked in here right now,” Reynolds assures me, referring to himself and his bandmates. “We’re not touching each other yet, but we will be soon.”

Stay Seminal, Tim Reynolds
DJ Deafening Cum

...And Then I Went Home and Flogged My Molly

2008-02-29T12:17:00.000-05:00

“And the lesson here is, if there can be peace in Ireland, there can be peace fuckin’ anywhere!” Dave King, the knot on his Irish-green tie dangling almost a foot beneath his neck, proclaimed, angling his fingers into a peace sign. King, the lead singer for Flogging Molly, an LA-based Irish American punk band, imparted these words of wisdom to a boozed-up crowd at Manhattan’s Irving Plaza on Thursday night, February 28. Then, without a trace of irony, he cued the band into a stirring folk anthem, inciting a sweaty, drunken mosh pit that physically shook the venue’s floor. Tattooed Irishmen spilled over one another, elbowing and shouldering each other to the ground and just as quickly picking each other up. An odd way to celebrate brotherhood, but hey—it’s better than family dinner.

Bestial though it seems, the mosh pit is the least-understood rock phenomenon. Ostensibly, it embodies everything that parents and censorship boards and suit-clad politicians rally against. In reality, it is a fraternal, safe bonding ground for delirious celebration. There are rules—you can’t intentionally hurt or knock down your comrade. There is also order—certain sections, usually in the middle, are designated for heavy contact, while those further out on the periphery are reserved for lighter tussling. Most heartwarming is the procedure for when, inevitably, one guy goes down and three perspiring bodies fall over him. The action around them stops (on a friggin’ dime), and other moshers pull up the fallen revelers. Handshakes and head-nods are exchanged, and the beatings resume.

Outsiders just can’t get the sentiment. Most moshes (disclaimer: anything involving the words “Pantera” or “meth addict” is different) aren’t inhabited by frustrated bikers looking to wail on strangers. In fact, the craziest moshes I’ve seen—Metallica, Audioslave, and The Vines, to name just three—were full of smiling, hopping partiers. Not quite the enraged, chaotic mess you might imagine. Last night, while Flogging Molly blistered through a shamrock romp, a man and woman slow-danced in the violence’s vortex, flailing wrecking balls wreaking havoc all around them. They were the like the sun and moon uniting in a meteor shower. I think they started making out.

“You know, having three days off in New York is a bad idea for a rock band,” King said later, eyes wide. “You can get into lots of fuckin’ trouble.” The crowd roared its approval, in the way that only rock crowds can unequivocally agree with something they know nothing about. The guy next to me, shirtless and about three feet thick (metaphor?), was looking to the sky, eyes closed and eyebrows lifted. The girl he was holding, possibly the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, leaned softly against him. When the next tune started, he moved her behind him and threw himself like a missile into some poor schmuck in the middle of the pit. The schmuck went down, and then the missile fell on top of him. They laughed, picked each other up, and then teamed up on some other guy. The girl took it all in from just beyond the mayhem, and damned if I never saw someone look so in love.

Silly Republican, Trysts Are For Kids

2008-02-24T17:42:00.006-05:00

A woman, an African American, or a senior citizen will be running the free world next year. Bloggers and news reporters are curiously obsessed with this very simple, very unimportant fact. Not to downplay the victory for civil/womens’/crotchety folks’ rights, but regardless of who occupies the Oval Office, the policy initiatives will be the same. Issues like welfare, Medicare, Social Security, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, etc., have no sense of history—they won’t relent because the President looks different than any previous executive. So pardon me for thinking that all this “we are the world” hoopla is slightly misguided.

So where, exactly, do the candidates stand on the issues? You’ll be glad to know that I am a political science major, I own two televisions, I read the NY Times at least three times a week, and I am privileged with the company of sage professors and informed citizens. Naturally, I don't know a thing about any of the candidates. I didn’t vote in the primaries despite the pump-up “Super Tuesday” banner, mostly because I wouldn’t know what the hell I was doing. My ignorance, however, makes me uniquely qualified to speak for the rest of America, most of which is equally clueless. In the interest of discharging my civic duty this November, I’ve decided to break down the three remaining candidates in terms I understand.

1 The Collagen Candidate: Hillary “Not Bill” Clinton

Reasons to vote for her:
While the rest of us were obsessing over Monica Lewinsky’s blowjobs, Bill Clinton was busy…well…obsessing over Monica Lewinsk’s blowjobs. According to the Starr Report, Clinton would talk to Congressmen over the phone while receiving oral sex, somehow managing to juggle the phone, Lewinsky’s two breasts, and a coherent conversation. THAT is leadership. If Hillary has learned anything from her superhero husband, we can look forward to some combination of the following: a capable, intelligent stance on domestic and foreign issues, a sex scandal, a drugs/sex/rock ‘n roll brouhaha involving First Man Bill Clinton, and an influx of blogs tracking Hillary’s botox treatments over the course of her administration.

Reasons not to vote for her:
Despite my affinity for Bill—the best President of my lifetime—Hillary has zero administrative experience. She stretched our tolerance by carpetbagging the NY Senate seat, and is doing so further by claiming that her Senatorial experience, in conjunction with numerous terms as First Lady in Arkansas and Washington, qualifies her to run the country. In addition, she can't clap with the beat—a sign that she will alienate the musician/non-white demographic.

2 The Carcinogen Candidate: Barack "Don't Call Me Muslim" Obama

Reasons to vote for him:
Not only would “President Obama” be an intimidating title for a Commander-in-Chief, but Obama has displayed poise and stoicism during an unduly stressful period. A number of people can say they’ve run for office, but how many can say they’ve done it while quitting smoking? We haven’t lent enough credence to his leadership potential—after putting down the pack during a dead-heat nomination race, what could possibly phase him? Like Bill Clinton, Obama is blessed with an otherworldly ability to multitask, as well a similar predilection for vice.

Reasons not to vote for him:
The American President is the world’s most visible public figure. As such, a candidate must be dynamic and impressive in all arenas—public speaking, private conversations, in writing, and even on Comedy Central. Hence, Exhibit A for keeping Obama out of the White House is an August 22, 2007 Daily Show interview. If Jon Stewart can’t bring you out of your shell, no one—not even Monica Lewinsky—can.

3 The Cuckold Candidate: John "Can't Remember Where He Parked" McCain

Reasons to vote for him:
McCain's dubious affair with a woman thirty years his junior has vaulted him into the cosmos with the 18-35 Pervert demographic. Furthermore, his earnest denial that a sexual relationship took place should endear him with every other group, from those who authentically believe him to those who think he’s just trying to keep the campaign centered on the relevant issues. Of course, there’s also his honorable military record and years of public service. John McCain is the IHOP candidate—hearty, totally American, and a fixture on our cultural landscape.

Reasons not to vote for him:
At 71, McCain might more closely resemble IHOP’s geriatric clientele than the actual establishment. Apologists exculpate his seniority by claiming that his detention as a Vietnam POW makes him more durable than others his age. Boosters point to his continued vitality, maintaining that his chronological age has not impacted his ability to perform (we’ll leave that up to his wife, and maybe Vicki Iseman, but point taken).

Nonetheless, McCain will be 72 if and when he is inaugurated, meaning that he’d be 80 years old by the end of a would-be second term. This raises two issues: first, although he is currently of sound mind and body, there is no guarantee that his capacities will remain intact. Might world leadership adversely impact his well-being? It well may. Second, let’s say McCain is reelected in 2012. One year later, at 77, he passes away. The abnormal probability that something like this might occur makes it imperative to judge McCain’s candidacy based on his choice for Vice President. With the very real possibility that this individual may run the country for two or three years, America must be assured that he/she is capable.

I nominate Bill Clinton.

Stay Super, Tuesday
DJ Delegate

All Good? Perhaps Not

2008-02-17T19:25:00.003-05:00

[Editor’s Note: I recently found 4 crumpled-up pages with the notes I wrote at this past summer’s All Good festival. They were in my bedside table, underneath a book on the Auschwitz death camps and a pad of paper with notes on 50 Cent. I don’t know what the symbolism is, but if anyone has any suggestions, I’m listening.]

Dressed in a mustard-stained sweatshirt and frosted in two days’ worth of grime, sweat, and mud, I listen to the Sunday morning around me. Our much-abused campsite has to be condensed into a car trunk when everyone else wakes up—I haven’t yet gone to sleep. When the sun comes up we will have to pack up our stuff, chip in for gas, and drive the seven hours back to New York. Now, however, all is platonically quiet, and I am watching the sun raise its first sliver over Masontown, West Virginia. With the sun comes clarity on this All Good festival: a whirlwind of music, ersatz inspiration, and sleep deprivation, the nexus of fake and real verve, uppers, downers, iced coffee, and vocal vegetarians.

It’s impossible to spend a weekend with umpteen thousand hippies and avoid learning something profound. This festival's lesson: it takes a lot of faith to believe that everyone has cognitive dissonance. All indications suggest that not everyone has conflicting thoughts and feelings, and while it is generally postulated that everyone has a degree of mental discomfort, I no longer know that to be true.

There is a physiology and a psychology, a mind and a heart, a vertical collection of 206 bones and a spirit. These pairs are perpetually opposed, and the struggle within hurts. The distortion at the center of the skull, where forebrain greets eyes, is the physical tragedy that betrays this deep, human friction. Though it may be debasing to deny them the fissure between hedonism and peace of mind, some people don’t seem to struggle. These people sing pirate songs at dawn and smoke light cigarettes outside their tents at music festivals and curse like they mean it and talk like they don’t.

They are absorbed, apparently, by subsistence’s bare trivialities—what to eat, who to talk to, how fast to drive, how much beer to drink. Did parents teach them to live like this? Did teachers condone their one-dimensionality? Who taught them shallowness, and who reinforced it? Do they not have selves, or souls, or a voice inside that tells them shut up? What do they think they’re doing here? What do they think about at night, when they can’t sleep and the Dylans and Hendrixes on the wall maintain their silence? If only a glowing finger could come down from Heaven, point in their direction, and say, “Don’t worry, they’re just as confused as you are.”

The nature around me is beautiful. The sun continues to show itself, and brings along with it a stunning tree-lined horizon and the dawn-lit visage of thousands of tents, multi-colored canvases planted like buttons on a hillside. But beauty is not everything. Is nature reliable? No—it’s capricious, deadly, high-maintenance. What good is nature if it is merely beautiful? What good are people if they aren’t fighting themselves?

This is truly man in the state of nature, and, like Thomas Hobbes said, it is nasty and brutish. I don’t think I’m coming to All Good next year, at least not without more intoxicants. All this clear-headedness is getting me down.

Stay Sunny, Marvin’s Mountaintop
MC Masontown

Who...Does...Number Two...Work For?

2008-02-10T21:42:00.002-05:00

“No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks.” I can still hear the schoolchild cacophony ringing in my three-seater, intoning the close of a tortuous academic year. Soda, popcorn, cookies, and other contraband littered the floors and walls and windows of our school bus, as we prattled about luxurious vacations to come. “I’m going to sleep away camp,” one boy would say, spilling cherry Capri Sun on his shirt. “Both months.”

“Well, I’m going to Florida with my mom,” a girl might counter, while someone surreptitiously slipped a handful of crumbled cookies into her backpack.

Finally, before the first few kids got off the bus, we destroyed. Out came the aforementioned pencils and books, sharpeners, erasers, folders, assignments, old tests, and all the remnants of responsibilities past. In lieu of a bonfire, we tore, stomped, and threw out the window anything and everything scholastic, celebrating the year’s completion. Demolition, as it were, signaled success.

The other day, after I completed the last of the “Perfect Albums” pieces, I reached to the scrawled-on sheet that I’d used as a notepad. On it were the albums we’d chosen, a few notes, some asterisks, and a few 2’s, denoting the Number Twos—the albums that just fell short of perfection (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, see the three previous blogs). In my mirth at having gotten through the last blog, I crumpled up the sheet of paper, threw it in the trash, and then tied the bag, took it outside, and watched the truck take it away.

No more pencils, no more books. All I needed was a Capri Sun and I’d have been back in the fourth grade.

However, I didn’t realize that I’d thrown out the Number Twos until it was too late. I could only remember five, but at least they are those with the most import. An optimist might say that, because I forgot the rest, it is now feasible to offer a few words of explanation regarding what kept these recordings from tasting ambrosia. A pessimist might curse and drink. I am a pessimist.

The envelope please…

Justin Timberlake – FutureSex/LoveSounds

You’re sweaty. Everyone else is out of the house. Your subwoofer is up. It's Justin Time. You navigate through most of the album, and as the incendiary “Chop Me Up” yields to the beat-heavy soul jam, “Damn Girl,” you’re wondering where your pants went. “Summer Love” fades into “Set the Mood Prelude,” disintegrating snaps stand in for snare drums, and a harp traverses up and down some finely selected love tones. You’re wishing for your virginity back, just so you could lose it now.

Suddenly, “Until the End of Time” plods lazily onto the soundscape, and you’re forced back to earth by—what is this? Shoddy R&B? Poorly crafted schmaltz? This sounds like…’N Sync. Your sweat turns cold, and your veins run even colder. This is not a perfect album.

To make matters worse, Snoop Dogg cheapens the entire project (and there is no bigger Snoop Dogg defender than I) with the babbling, insipid “Pose,” a mangled love child borne to two lazy fathers. As baseball analysts are quick to point out, your 7-8-9 hitters have to produce in order for a lineup to perform at its peak, and “FutureSex/LoveSounds” trots out duds in the 7 and 9 holes. Inexcusable.

The Damnwells – Air Stereo

Speaking of shameless nepotism, here are The Damnwells, a band so maligned and downtrodden that I adopted them as my personal project. I burn their disc for anyone who will take it, I ping encouraging emails to their management with phrases like, “You can do it guys!” and I impose myself like an ass at party after party, eager to point out that “Air Stereo” has “strong tonal elements and heartfelt instrumentation.”

Hardly anyone listens, but I’m armed with one thing that nobody can take away—“Air Stereo” totally fucking rocks. Its prestigiousness in my personal pantheon is outdone only by the very positive reviews it received in the press. However, there is a problem, and that problem is called “Louisville.” Air Stereo’s fifth track, “Louisville” is the proverbial zit on Air Stereo’s supermodel face. Its chorus pines:

“All I wanted was going home
All they gave me was Louisville.”

All I wanted was a perfect album; all they gave me was Louisville.

Gorillaz – Gorillaz

The smash-hit, “Clint Eastwood,” anchors a stellar experiment. The Gorillaz should receive heaps of credit for remaining fluid, but straying from accepted practices is also their biggest drawback. This self-titled album is so good in so many parts, yet lacking so significantly in others that it would be impossible to justify putting it up with the likes of Billy Joel’s finest. Back in 2001, this record was even more revolutionary than it is now, as this group quietly fused the worlds of Massive Attack trip-hop and radio marketability. Still, innovation does not compensate for genuinely boring and subpar filler, and, therefore, “Gorillaz” is spectacular, but second-tier.

Creed – My Own Prison

This album was probably deserving of a spot on the Perfect list, but Creed’s future sins made that impossible: the MTV pandering; “Higher” and “My Sacrifice”—because they’re awful, but mostly because they have the same chorus; a Greatest Hits album; the religious proselytizing; Scott Stapp’s general douchebaggery. Picking on Creed is an easy sport, and if not for their rap sheet, Creed's very laudable debut would get the attention is deserves.

Mark Tremonti (now of Alter Bridge) blueprinted some righteously bone-crushing riffs, the rhythm section romped, and Stapp tapped into an earnestness and poignancy that, on subsequent albums, became bogged down in sap and rhetoric. This ten-cut offering, already a decade old, gave us “Torn,” “What’s This Life For,” “One,” and, of course, the booming title track, “My Own Prison.”

Too bad Creed sucks.

Nirvana - Nevermind

Territorial Pissings. Track 7. The Screaming Song. Call it what you want, but the most important, trenchant, rocking album of the ‘90s is blemished by the least important, doltish, ill-conceived song of the ‘90s. Enough has been said about Nirvana and “Nevermind” to fill many volumes, so reiterating how much we owe the Seattle trio is redundant.

But, to re-use the batting order analogy from “FutureSex/LoveSounds,” “Nevermind” features a delightfully potent 1-6: Smells Like Teen Spirit → In Bloom → Come as You Are → Breed → Lithium → Polly. Then the Cobain gang subjects us to Territorial Pissings, whose name is indicative of everything you have to know about it. A freakish run in grunge rock’s fishnet stockings.

Stay Secondary, Number Twos
DJ Dung

31-45: The Day My Brother and I Became Lesbians

2008-02-07T03:10:00.001-05:00

When my brother turned 12, our grandfather sent him a check for $250 and told him to use it for something fun. I was ten and a half, and my brother and I shared a room in the attic. Thankfully, our tastes in music were virtually the same, as was our yearning for a CD player. We’d grown up playing Duke Nukem side-by-side in the computer room, with our cassette-deck boom box broadcasting 92.3 K-ROCK and old tapes. Since we were so young, playing Duke Nukem and listening to cassettes was the coolest thing in the world (ironically, now that we’re in our twenties, it is once again the coolest thing in the world), but we knew what could vault our lives into another echelon of awesome: a Compact Disc machine. We used to scour the Sunday circulars for Sony Dream Machines and portable CD players, and once in a while—if we worked up enough gall—we’d flip to the home stereo pages. We’d imagine ornamenting our room with CD players, mini systems, 5.1 surround sounds, even VCR-TV-stereo triumvirates. We dreamed small, but we dreamed big.

So, when our grandfather sent the $250—an unconscionable amount of money at the time—my brother and I didn’t have to discuss how he’d spend it. We made our mother take us to the local electronics store, and we marched right to the CD players. I started at the high-end equipment, my brother started at the cheap stuff, and we met in the middle to discuss the technological tidings. The look of horror on my mother’s face was something between seeing us run blindfolded across the highway and seeing our canoe approach a perfect storm—she, who in her economic life valued thrift and reasonableness above all else (and still does), was suddenly trapped in a world of adolescent decadence, where her two otherwise unspoiled sons were competing to see who could spend $250 the fastest.

My brother laid out $180 for a small Sony CD boom box, with AM/FM and a tape deck. He carried the treasure out of the store wrapped in both arms, and I made one more excessive demand of my mother: we had to go to a CD store. Since this was our house’s first CD player, we didn’t own any Compact Discs, and we weren’t about to take this new system home without anything to put in it.

What we hadn’t considered was that, outside of our dozen or so tapes and the top-40 hits K-ROCK played, we didn’t know a single thing about music. When we walked into Tower Records (RIP, big fella), we sauntered into a hangar full of strange and unfamiliar music. At the time, of course, neither of us admitted our ignorance, and we both picked up discs and read the backs like we’d seen them a thousand times before. I even made comments about certain ones, like, “Oh, this one is really good,” and, “Yeah, my friend in school has this.” Bewildered and browse-weary, I snuck off to a salesperson to find out how to use the listening stations, and he set me up with “Your Little Secret” by Mellisa Etheridge. It was loud. There were guitars. I was ten and a half. I bought it.

Equally embarrassingly, my brother, also goaded by the listening station, picked up the “Angus” soundtrack, and we were on our way. When we got home, we plugged in the stereo, admired its sheen, sacrificed a virgin, and played “Your Little Secret.” Unbeknownst to us, we were about to become lesbians.

I know what you're thinking baby
I used to be just like you
You move when she's not looking baby
One sugar ain't enough for you

We made the CD player the focal point of our now-siamese existences. We joined every “Buy 100 CDs for 99 cents” service, we only accepted birthday presents in the form of Sam Goody gift certificates, and our Duke Nukem days were over—we were in the attic, obsessing over liner notes and memorizing lyrics. Melissa Etheridge and Angus gave way to the Foo Fighters and Blues Traveler, and, eventually, we formulated certain musical facts: John Popper was fat; guitar solos were cool; loud music was better than quiet music; and, most importantly, CDs were better than tapes in every conceivable way, from how they sounded to how they looked to how long they lasted.

Hence, we were not just lesbians, but geeky lesbians. Driven, infatuated, possessed, geeky lesbians. We could not have been happier.

Not much has changed: we’re still into chicks, we still dig a good album, and our musical tastes haven’t diverged all that much. We live in different countries, and disagree vastly about most things—including lifestyle, religion, and temperament—but we both agree that Stevie Ray Vaughn channels Yahweh on “Texas Flood.” We are separated only by approach, as he compartmentalizes music within the context of well-balanced, prioritized life, while I'm a pretentious addict. But I digress.

So, in honor of my brother, without whom I might never have known an album’s glory, here are the last of the perfect albums:

31 Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
32 Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
33 Eminem – The Eminem Show
34 Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head
35 Audioslave – Audioslave
36 Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill
37 Sublime - Sublime
38 Billy Joel – The Stranger
39 Cream – Disraeli Gears
40 Spin Doctors – Pocket Full of Kryptonite
41 Jay-Z – The Black Album
42 Alice in Chains – Dirt
43 Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense
44 Herbie Hancock – Head Hunters
45 Parliament – Mothership Connection

The Number Twos and some wrap-up are next…we might even break these all down in a bracket, NCAA tournament-style, and declare a winner. Then again, we might get some opium and watch softcore porn. The world is our oyster.

Stay Sleek, Sony
DJ Degeneres

16-30: Defining Perfect. Literally.

2008-02-06T14:14:00.000-05:00

The underlying question remains: what is a perfect album? For starters, it’s whatever Jack-O and I say it is. Beyond that, it’s tough to say. Jack-O said a perfect album is one that you’d rather play start-to-finish than for one track—or, he amended later, an album that you’d only play if you had the time to finish it. The theme is gestalt, even holistic: the whole is greater than the sum of its already-great parts.

For me, the definition is more ethereal. There is no one particular criteria for achieving perfection, but such an achievement leaves the listener with a particular feeling. This is the determinant—with an album like Dark Side of the Moon, you just know it’s perfect, whether or not you can point to specific musical or dramatic elements that make it so.

Most important, there is an intrinsic difference between perfect and merely unblemished. The Offspring’s “Smash” is a generally unblemished album, without a glaring shortcoming, and boasts a number of underrated 1990’s anthems. The tracks are pithy and logically ordered. By the time the title track’s half-time chorus accelerates back into its original, faster self, even I—a snobby asshole—have to admit that “Smash” is really good, maybe even great. Without regard for genre or era, it stands as a mistake-free appendage on the musical body.

But is it perfect? Would one insist on listening to the whole thing, rather than just “Bad Habit?” Not necessarily. Would one be adamant about spending a full hour with “Smash” and a beer? Maybe not.

Finally, after the hidden track ends the record, one does not breathlessly opine, “Well, that’s one goddamn amazing album.” You might recommend it to a friend or speak highly of it at a bar, but it doesn’t strike the fanatical fancy as monumental.

On that note, here are 15 more albums that do:

16 Cake – Comfort Eagle
17 Beck – Midnite Vultures
18 DJ Neokase – Return Engagement
19 Ray Charles – The Great Ray Charles
20 Prince – Purple Rain
21 Everclear- So Much for the Afterglow
22-23 Bob Marley – Exodus, Catch a Fire
24 Blues Traveler – Four
25 Chuck Berry – Chuck Berry Twist
26-27 Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love
28 Tool – Aenima
29 The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
30 Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine

Stay Second-Tier, Smash
MC Marley

15 Perfect Albums: There is No Argument

2008-02-05T17:00:00.000-05:00

Perhaps this was a little over-ambitious, but my friend Jack-O and I tried to make a list of all the perfect albums ever recorded. We got exactly 45, with a few honorable mentions we called "Number Twos." When the list was complete (read: when we got to our Super Bowl party), we felt it necessary to immortalize our findings.

First, we set the parameters.
Rule number 1: Just because someone is dead doesn't mean their album is great (sorry, Jeff Buckley).
Rule number 2: Even one bad song keeps an album off this list (hence all the Number Twos).
Rule number 3: Live albums don't count. This point was crucial, as Jack-O is the single most idiotically fanatical Grateful Dead fan in New York, and rule number 3 let me keep them off the list.

Then, we massaged our egos.
Assumption number 1: This list is completely exhaustive. We left nothing off, and anything not on the list doesn't deserve to be.
Assumption number 2: This list is completely correct.
Assumption number 3: You will agree with this list.

Then, we watched the Super Bowl.
Observation number 1: The Giants didn't win; the Pats lost.
Observation number 2: The commercials were terrible.
Observation number 3: Someone said Tom Petty, who performed at halftime, looked "like a Nazir." Good times.

For the sake of presenting our choices in no particular order, here are the first 15. The next completely random grouping will be posted later.

1 Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
2 Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
3 The Postal Service - Give Up
4 Puff Daddy & The Family - No Way Out
5-6 Neil Young - Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Harvest
7 Ben Harper - Welcome to the Cruel World
8-9 Radiohead - OK Computer, Hail to the Thief
10 Paul Simon - Graceland
11 Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
12 Metallica - Master of Puppets
13-14 Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life, Innervisions
15 The Counting Crows - August and Everything After

16-30 coming soon...get ready, world.

Stay Stupefying, Super Bowl
MC Manning

Confirmed: There Is Only Misery On The Subway

2008-02-05T01:02:00.000-05:00

Advertising, as I best understand it, prods at our failure to obtain happiness for ourselves. Buy a Toyota, the ads proclaim, and assuage your misery. Wear Sketchers, counter the urban fashionistas, and dress your existentialism in haute couture. Money couldn’t buy love for Paul McCartney, but he’d have you believe that an iPod could. The ad industry is half-chimera, half self-help, and, apparently, not effective enough for PhilosophyWorks.org, whose advertisements on the New York City Subway explicitly hawk happiness.

The agonizing questions float about their advertisement, like falling leaves of curiosity: “Who am I? What am I doing here? How can I be more effective in daily life? How can I be happy?”

A shining sun illuminates these timeless ruminations with beaming stalactites, and a group of amiable, unassuming clouds part in deference to your opportunity—our opportunity—to take a 10-week course at the School of Practical Philosophy exploring these otherwise-unconquerable quandaries.

Terrified of blind consumerism, I weighed my options: next to PhilosphyWorks.org’s purported 10-week cure-all was a large placard trumpeting the City University of New York’s respective anti-AIDS and anti-malaria achievements. A touch ghoulish, and since I was already enrolled in CUNY, lost on me. Next signboard over, the Interboro Technical School was promising, via an ethnically varied polyglot of smiling faces, that a high-salaried position was just an education away. Afterwards, I craned my neck to view an ad behind me; it was tagged by a graffiti artist with the declaration, “2Btru4eva.”

I’m endowed with the same neurotransmitters as everyone else and, therefore, do not claim to be above advertising. I feel a tinge of longing at the automobile that I can’t afford, or the game system with which I might more effectively conquer Nazi Germany. But New York City is too much. Too much advertising, too much product. Too many promises, confusions, and bewilderments. Too much reductive, “If it’s happiness they want, let’s sell them some” reasoning.

I can’t be bought by philosophyworks.org, nor by my own school, for that matter. It’s not because I’m too smart for it, but because I have too much pride to be lured into surrendering to diluted ideas and half-assed commercialism. Happiness might be store-bought, but the stores around here have lost my interest.

If there were one false prophet—one advertisement, and not a single more, that swore to entail happiness—I might go for it. However, the market is so saturated with battling cries for consumerism that the ruse is transparent: if 10,000 companies a day tell me their product will cure my gloom, then I must induce that, in fact, none of them will. It’s simply impossible for them all to be right, so I must assume that they’re all wrong.

Then I’m back at square one, riding the subway alone, once again faced with the grim reality of happiness that cannot be bought. “True” happiness, however dubious a concept that is (happiness for Hitler looks a lot different than happiness for Einstein), exists absolutely outside the realm of things that can be offered on a subway wall.

So sorry, School of Practical Philosophy, but you’re just not practical enough— 2Btru4eva, you need a little more than a shining sun on the F train.

Stay Sold, Sir Paul
MC Mercenary

Dane! Dane! Dane! Dane! Pain.

2008-01-31T00:33:00.001-05:00

Stand-up comedians spend their entire lives navigating their version of “making it”: auditions, rehearsals, open calls, rejection, odd time slots, hirings, firings, applause, boos, glory, and failure. Above all, fidelity to the joke is the comic’s most diligent pursuit, and whether alone in front of the mirror or on Comedy Central, a comedian lives and dies with punch lines. They transmogrify our listless reality into irony and satire, and while elements like delivery certainly count for a lot, substantial material counts for a lot more.

Throughout the years, stand-up comics have developed a give-and-take with audiences that is essential to making comedy function properly. Just like a crowd wouldn't applaud a musician simply for holding an instrument, so too it wouldn't (or shouldn't) cheer a comic merely for setting up a joke. A joke must have direction, purpose, and a climax—the punch line. No audience should be illogically obsequious; make the comic earn it.

Herein lies the Dane Cook Dilemma—for short, the DCD. Cook is a fine comedian, if a bit over-extroverted, and his is a problem that must be an anomaly in the comedy universe: he is too well-received. In an HBO special taped in his hometown of Boston, Cook’s crowd clapped at everything he did. They clapped when he set up a joke, and they roared when he snorted. He asked a rhetorical question, something like, “And you know how much glitter sticks, right?” and they rained down applause.

When Cook wove his way to a punchline, he delivered the money shot, put down the microphone, and marauded around the stage, reveling in an elongated, enthralled standing applause. His face beaming with egocentrism, he absorbed the reception unashamedly and without pause. He less resembled a comedian than he did a triumphant porn star, surveying the seminal damage he’d inflicted.

The DCD, then, is that the audience, for all its enthusiasm, detracts from the comic experience. Try watching a Dane Cook special and thinking any differently—it’s difficult to appreciate Cook’s material when you’re fantasizing about subjecting his audience to a mass castration (girls and guys included). The sickening chants of “Dane! Dane! Dane! Dane!” that precede his appearance on stage kill any organic excitement I’d harbored for the show. It would be difficult to convince Cook of this, since his career is virtually unparalleled in the annals of comedy. Sure, Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock are legitimate celebrities, but Cook’s combination of youth, energy, and media attention have made him the first comic rock star. Not even Dave Chappelle has the same cachet—Cook does stadium tours, dresses like a pop star, and spikes his hair like that dude who played Angel on the WB. (Actually, the two of them look eerily similar. Are we sure Angel never did comedy?)

The DCD will never be solved, at least not while he is vastly popular and at the peak of his powers. Despite my issues with him, he’d be an idiot to change anything, and while somehow taming his audience would serve the greater comedic good, it would diminish his teenybopper appeal. The first rule of business is to never alienate your core demographic, yet that’s precisely what he must do to restore his hardcore legitimacy.

The vicious circle continues.

Stay Sycophantic, Dane Cook’s Audience
DJ DCD

OJ Sip-Sin

2008-01-29T12:37:00.001-05:00

“Orange juice, please.”

You can always spot the weird ones. The subtle, anxious shifting, the hurried breathing, the suspicious glances thrown about the premises—these are the odd traveler's textbook traits. A man sitting across the aisle to my left on a recent flight from Amsterdam to New York was the innovative panoply of strange. He kept on his overcoat, gloves, and winter hat for the entire flight. Twice during the trip, he retrieved his handbag from the overhead bin, sat down, and hugged the luggage against his body. After sufficiently cuddling his valise, he stowed it back overhead. Middle aged, with a receding hairline’s nascent creeping, and pockmarked leathery skin, this man—of ambiguous nationality—had my attention.

The drink cart locked its wheels at our seats. The flight attendant leaned over and asked him what he wanted.

“Orange juice, please,” he requested, in an obscure accent.
“Right away,” she sang, and squeezed the last of her juice box into a plastic cup, placing it on the tray table before him.

He raised the glass to his nose and inhaled greedily. I wasn’t, and am still not, aware of any culture that captures the aroma of fruit juice before drinking it. Still, breathing orange juice vapors is not the worst offense. But I realized he hadn't smelled the orange juice—he snorted it up his nose, then breathed it out all over his mouth, chin, coat, and shirt. Then, with the juice dribbling down his face, he poured a tiny sip into his mouth. Over and over, until the cup was empty, he loaded his nostrils with citrus, super soaked himself, and then drank.

I quickly accepted that this man could be anything—a serial killer, a Nobel Prize winner, a ghost, Barry Bonds. I was pretty sure he saw me staring, and since I didn’t want to be too disemboweled to fill out my customs card, I made nice. I threw him an understanding smile, as if to say, “It's cool. I snort V8.” I made extra room in the aisle when he stood. When the flight attendant clicked the meal cart next to us and offered me pasta or chicken, I made a show of elaborately pointing at the juice snorter, and demanded, loudly and selflessly, that he eat first. She, and he, obliged.

I tried, vainly, to spy the cover of his passport (or even the color) when he completed his customs declaration form. However, he hid the card behind a mountain of clothing, luggage, and assorted tray table garbage, secretively penning his information.

This is the type of person, I recall thinking, who I didn’t want to near me at passport control or next to me at baggage claim. Thankfully, I never saw him again after we de-planed. But I didn’t forget him—I went home and Googled “snorting orange juice,” and most of the results read like this, the third one down:

Link heading: “Crushing & snorting; viagra, cialis, or levitra-faster acting, any…”
Description: “If you want it to work faster. Take the powder you were intending on snorting and put it on a drink. (Tang, Orange Juice) Stir well and drink.”

Another was this, the fifth search result:

Link heading: “Methadone pills and snorting”
Description: “square shaped. Big fuckers. They are made to put into orange juice, or possibly sub-lingual (under the toungue [sic]).”

Did our mystery traveler have ED? Heroin withdrawal? I suppose we’ll never know. Was he not cuddling his suitcase, but rather sneaking pills? Let's assume that, yes, he was an erectilely dysfunctional, heroin-addicted goon from an undisclosed location, snorting his orange-juice-and-pills concoction like so many lines of cocaine.

Somehow, that makes more sense than anything else.

Stay Soft, Juice Snorter
MC Methadone

Joy and Despair: Stranger than Diction

2008-01-23T17:20:00.001-05:00

They sat, two broken souls trading cracks, with torsos on their knees. Taking that sullen trip from intimacy to estrangement, they shared one last revelation, though it remained unspoken: the person I am today is going to die. Eyes ran with rivulets of troubled water. Hands went limp with aches.

Soon, both he and she would begin killing the being they had become; each would painstakingly unwire the DNA they’d so meticulously developed. The tragic vicissitudes that rule relationships would leave them no choice. But both boy and girl would still be the perpetrator and the victim of their own murder, and neither had anybody to tell.

These are the days of post-love.

Despair is a tricky thing to write about. Like melancholy and rage, abject sorrow is a difficult experience, and to conjure it for the purposes of articulation in a written piece is masochistic and miserable. The sages of emotion have claimed that happiness and grief are but two opposite ends of the same feeling, and that both are equally exhilarating and addictive.

These philosophers have erred tragically, no pun intended—dejection and elation have nothing in common besides the “tion” suffix. Elation is writable; dejection is nearly impossible to grasp. For instance, a celebratory passage involving those same two lovers from above might read as follows:

They made love under the old oak, the weight of the world, for a few ecstatic instants, shrinking behind the voice of their honesty. The dust around them caromed in the wind, and as they gave themselves to each other, there was but one thing to say.
“Awesome!” he said.
“Yay, awesome!” she agreed.

A little love, a little nature, a little descriptive narrative. Easy.

Considering that those selections are so obviously different, are we really to believe that happiness and sadness are connected? Opposites are only connected semantically—we group them together in a category we call “opposites,” but they have no inherent likeness. Happiness is the product of, and impetus for, productivity, while sadness is emotional flagellation. These two states are members of the same metaphysical country club—“Club Inexplicably Overwhelming Feelings”—but, again, that is a matter of wordplay.

In practice, the chasm that separates all positive emotions from all negative emotions is wider than the bridge called “opposites” could span.

In the movie “Stranger Than Fiction,” one of Will Ferrell’s most underrated performances, Dustin Hoffman’s character tells Ferrell that every story is either a comedy or a tragedy. A comedy ends in a wedding, while a tragedy ends with death. The premise of the movie, more or less, is that Ferrell, who plays a mundane I.R.S. auditor, must work to change his life from tragedy to comedy before it’s too late.

The genius of the movie is that it doesn’t attempt, as so many movies do, to show that comedy and tragedy are interrelated. Rather, it exemplifies the notion that they are two separate, opposing forces, with the former clearly preferable above the latter. The movie repudiates the pundits who claim that misery—real, true misery—is something in which one would want to wallow.

In a world of comedy, there is little room for tragedy. And in a world of tragedy, comedy can never truly exist. There are lighthearted moments that resolve some of the pall—hence, “comic relief”—but the air of despair is pretty monolithic. It’s difficult to pen, sure, but once its intractable aura starts to pervade the air, misery stands alone.

It does not, as those sages of emotion say, love company.

Stay Sagacious, Stranger Than Fiction
MC Misery

We Need The Funk

2008-01-21T05:56:00.000-05:00

The first big-time interview I ever did was with George Clinton (the progenitor of funk, along with James Brown and a few others. He of the Technicolor Dreadlocks fronted Parliament and Funkadelic, later combining the two in into P Funk. His Wikipedia article rocks.). At interview time, I had to work through a network of handlers to get to Clinton: Hairy J, Big Benny, MMO, etc. The interview, once I reached Clinton, should have been filmed.

He talked in a drug-addled drawl, and most of what he said was completely unintelligible. Think Ozzy Osbourne, but worse. He openly professed his insatiable appetite for intoxicants of all flavors, women of all colors, and parties of all magnitudes. When asked why he still plays music after more than 50 years, he responded, “Pussy.” He chortled and wheezed. “No…wait…[cough]…drugs…and pussy.” He ate acid in elevators and trashed hotel rooms in cities he doesn’t even remember. He claims that aliens abducted him and longtime bassist Bootsy Collins.

Since my article was slated to precede a show, I asked him if I could come backstage and see him after the concert.
“Sure. Bring some girls.” I asked him if he liked Jewish girls.
“Sure, I like girls.”
“So I’ll come backstage and bring you some Jewish girls?”
“Sure, it’s going to be a party.”

He didn’t care if what he said was on the record, off the record, or just part of some elaborate hallucinogenic episode. A few days after the interview, a friend told me that he’d seen George Clinton smoking crack in a club in Florida, which nicely complemented what another friend had told me—namely, that Clinton holds a perpetual party on his Tallahassee property, and is largely ignored by the cops. The police know they shouldn’t even bother.

Music has been connected to theater since Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini teamed up in the sixteenth century to write “Daphne,” the world’s first opera. The ancient love story of Apollo and the nymph, Daphne, portended subsequent centuries of music with plot. Plays, lieder, concept operas, and later soundtracks and rock ‘n roll grabbed the mantle from earlier dramatic works. The last 50 years saw an epic distillation of music and mirage, from the phantasmagoria of Einstein on the Beach to the deadpan doltishness of Spinal Tap. Rock bands became more dramatic, forsaking sartorial restraint for leather, denim, and spandex.

Most mediums adopted the dramatic in tongue-in-cheek silence—KISS knew they looked ridiculous, but inherent in the gag was that nobody called them out. Hair bands came packaged with the tacit understanding that their showmanship was absurd, but talking about it too much would have broken the ice.

This caricature type of musical theater fell into the classic rubric of opera and literature: the willing suspension of disbelief. Did you really believe Gene Simmons went home with his face-paint on, lashing out his tongue in the mirror and conjuring the demonic? (He probably did, but still). We weren’t asked to believe that rock musicians were really as crazy as they seemed, and we didn’t—despite their indulgences, we knew that rock stars were normal folks, with mortgages, health issues, and diseases.

Not so for funk music. Nary does a funk song fail to mention that, a) it’s a funk song, b) we’re all having a real good time, and, c) these funketeers party all the time. Funk is not just the most self-aware genre (narrowly beating out rap, wherein only 99.9% of the songs mention something about rapping itself, the rap lifestyle, and how talented the given rapper happens to be), but it also asks of us that which no other music does: to believe that everything we see is real. George Clinton claims his life is every bit as absurd and dissimilar to the rest of mankind as his stage show indicates. James Brown seemed to be from Planet Funk, a distant polyester planet sustained on narcotics, hip flexor stretches, and subversive interview tactics.

Funk is theater, yes, but a step beyond. It’s not premised on the willing suspension of disbelief—unlike opera or plays or rock, it doesn’t demand our complicity in accepting a temporary, theatrical reality. In fact, it does the opposite: funk claims that the performers live their daily lives exactly as they appear on stage. They mow their lawns while wearing crystal belt buckles. They tie their shoes holding a champagne flute and a blunt. Renew their licenses sheathed ‘neath a velvet cape and a phallus-branded crown. They’re too busy having intercourse to have other intercourse. Funk requests, as a genre, that we, the audience, fully and unequivocally believe that the party never ends, that the excess is the reality.

Evidently, nobody believes that the poignancy of an opera is genuine—feelings fade. Nobody believes that the heave-ho of rock ballads and burners have any connection to everyday existence. But funk music asks us to believe that you could build a real life of vice and revelry—and we comply. George Clinton probably doesn’t know his own last name, but I trust him implicitly. Every story—true. Every claim and allegation—fact.

Do I believe he was abducted by aliens?

If James Brown came from another world, then why couldn’t George Clinton pass through for a few days?

Stay Cynical, Funk Doubters
DJ Daphne

Lost in Amsterdam

2008-01-10T22:21:00.000-05:00

[Editor's Note: Pictures coming when I get a chance to upload the stuff from my digital camera. Might be a couple of weeks.]

The train from Schiphol Airport is painted like a lime-green Creamsicle. It is packed, yet completely silent, and the overwhelming heat provides an uncomfortable backdrop for an IKEA city. In Amsterdam, beginning with the airport and working all the way around the horseshoe-shaped old city, everything looks like it came in a box with a trendy Swedish label. Cars, warehouses, apartment buildings—even the weather—look store-bought and self-assembled. The airport has a meditation center, a massage center, a kids’ center, and a miniscule casino. None of the web sites I’d perused, nor the drug-addled tales I’d heard, talked about the one glaring characteristic that trumps all else about Amsterdam: it’s really, really hokey.

As I disembark from the train at Centraal Station, I mutter, “I hope this isn’t one of those polite countries,” yet confirm my fear with every encounter. Tram drivers laugh too loudly at my jokes. The museum of sex is chaste, proper, and boring. As I pass a sign that says, “Ultimate Party Wishes You a Good Time,” I know that my maiden voyage to Amsterdam will be a lot less grungy than I’d like.

I cut through the red light district and into a bar, a dim, smoky hole named “Lost in Amsterdam.” Apropos, indeed, since I am psychologically lost in this would-be den of iniquity. The Polish bartender pours absinthe over a pulverized spoonful of sugar, and sets fire to the concoction until it caramelizes. He thrusts the smoking crust into a waiting glass with the balance of the absinthe, sending flames dancing about the rim. When the fire dies down, I put back the warmth, and a soft numbness travels from my throat to my feet. I feel a bit queasy, and then a bit drunk. This encapsulates my whole trip: absinthe, the romanticized, allegedly psychoactive, and largely illegalized libation of Bohemian and French artists, is simply licorice-flavored alcohol. No green fairies, no visuals, and nothing psychoactive. The bartender tells me how to say “I’m lost” in Dutch (phonetically, “Ick Ben Ferbvolt”), I light up a second shot, give the bartender 15 Euros ($22) and two DayQuil, and go looking for the cheese market.

Contrary to very popular belief, Amsterdam is not a lawless, perverse oasis, teeming with legalized vice. It is not strewn with the pleasures whose very indulgence would warrant arrest in other parts of the world. Sure, the prostitutes beckon like mechanized mannequins from store windows in the red light district, and coffee shops and bars have a marijuana and hashish menu alongside their food and drink offerings. Cocaine dealers walk the streets (coke isn’t legal), audibly advertising their wares. Yet, the reprobation is strikingly sedate, and lacks for boisterousness what it has in substance—or substances. Innumerable arcane laws and bylaws govern these practices, such that the initial glee of, “Oh man, they sell pot here!” speedily morphs into, “So let me get this straight—you’re allowed to grow one pot plant per person, with a maximum of five per household? And if you go over, you get evicted?”

Police raid each cannabis-friendly bar exactly three times a year to make sure the patrons are of legal age and that the quantities of marijuana are within legal boundaries. It’s legal to sell pot in these designated shops, but commercial growing is illegal, and, as mentioned above, doing so can impede one’s housing options. One may smoke in the designated shops or at home, but nowhere else. Prostitution is legal, but is highly administrated by the state. Freewheeling Eden it is not: Amsterdam is about as anarchic as a laboratory.

Things like magic mushrooms are actually quite blasé—a hallucinogenic tourist trap, in fact. They’re regulated, taxed, and closely monitored. The strong ones come with warning labels, and upon purchase the store clerk provides detailed instructions on dosage size and safety precautions.

In spirit, Amsterdam is far more subdued than the average urban center. Perhaps this is because it doesn’t ache under the press of as many unfulfilled desires, and so doesn’t have any restless energy to expel. More likely, though, it is because of the economy. Amsterdam is a social democracy, meaning that financial solvency is relatively easy to come by. Blinding wealth is rare—as is poverty—but comfort is almost a given, and that manifests in ways that the typical capitalist mind could never comprehend. Yes, this is a gross, nation-wide generalization, but a huge percentage of the populace is guaranteed some amount of money, socialized health care, and comprehensive social welfare should they need extra assistance. Those staples in hand, Amsterdamians don’t distinctly divide work and play, since the attitude towards labor is much more lax. They have little to gain and little to lose. Call it complacency or call it café culture, but that looseness leaves room for regular doses of prurience and narcotics. Amsterdamians don’t party when they party—they’re halfway partying all the time.

I return to Schiphol Airport on an identical lime-green train, three back-to-back two-seater benches my only scenery for most of the half-hour ride. Most city residents speak fluent English, so I talk for a few moments to a college student about what she’s studying. At the airport, I pay 3.50 Euros ($5.15) for orange juice.

Ick Ben Ferbvolt.

Stay Salacious, Amsterdam Legends
DJ Dutch

Happy New Year?

2008-01-03T20:28:00.000-05:00

For anybody who thought that my ability to be idiotic wasn’t stronger than the weather, I offer New Year’s as proof. The weather in New York was below freezing, and beneath my jacket I wore just a button-down shirt. When I arrived at a party on Manhattan's Upper West Side, I took off my jacket and began drinking a Jack and Coke. Followed by a Jack on the rocks. Then, just Jack. Before long, I was making outrageous claims to anybody who would listen (I used to live on a fishing boat, I’m running for public office, etc), and standing on the balcony in my very spilled-on, very thin shirt. While everybody else was wearing overcoats, I overcame the elements with a cunning combination of alcohol and talking loudly. I ushered in January 1, 2008 with daring abandon.

I got really, really sick on January 2nd. I could hardly breathe out of my nose, my sinuses were pushing out of eyes, and my skull felt ready to explode horizontally. My voice was hoarse, and I couldn’t sleep. My lone venture out of the house was for vitamins and miso soup. A waitress at the Japanese restaurant recognized me, and, as I collected my two helpings of soup and vegetable dumplings, she said, “You look really pale. It must be cold outside.” Not wanting to engage in conversation—and only able to speak in groans and mucous—I whispered, “Yeah, it’s cold,” took my food, and went home. As I crawled into bed and laid wide awake and coughing until five in the morning, I told myself that things could not get worse.

I got really, really sick today, January 3rd. All the original symptoms were either the same or worse, and I also developed an inter-cranial pounding that made every minute of every hour feel like a bad club in Tel Aviv. My joints ached. My eyes were half-squinted (I have an issue with keeping my eyes fully open in the first place—we’ve termed this DES: Droopy Eye Syndrome), and I was sweating like a porn star because I was so over-hydrated. Worst of all, I’d only gotten back one grade from this past semester, so I had nothing better to do than sit in front of the computer and press “refresh,” hoping for some good news. By the close of business hours, all I had was an earache.

Maybe it’s the DayQuil, maybe it’s that I finally put on pants, or maybe all the Vitamin C supplements are finally kicking in, but I feel remotely energized for the first time in a while. There are napkins in my nostrils and sad Neil Young songs have a strange, comforting appeal, but hope exists for the first time since I told someone at the New Year’s party that I hope to travel to Madgascar to ask the natives whether being included in the game “Risk” has boosted national morale.

In my heightened state, I got to wondering if, perhaps, my illness is cosmic payback for telling so many people so many untrue facts about myself at the party. I rationalize my tall-taledness by pointing out that, a) none of what I say could in any way harm or offend myself or others; and, b) my lies are always so outrageous and unbelievable that no sane person would believe them. The first half of that rationale has proven true, as I have yet to damage somebody either with something I say or with the revelation that what I’m saying is not true. The second, however, is not always the case. Last year, a woman I’d just met, a kindergarten teacher from Seattle, believed me when I said that I controlled the Mars Rover. I added that I spent my days in a cramped, dark room with graphing paper and calculus problems, and used a joystick to move the Rover according to my calculations. She thought I was quite remarkable.

I don’t think I’m pathological, for a few reasons. First, I don’t feel compelled or driven to lie—I lie out of choice. Second, I don’t lie about trifling details. I’d never say I was 23 instead of 22, I’d never say I was born in the spring instead of the summer, nor would I tell people that I had a different major. Anything picayune or even basic gets the truth treatment. I only tell completely outsized, ridiculous lies, and with regards to minimally important matters. Last, I don’t lie to people who are close to me. I might spin a tale at a party full of strangers, but I would never, for instance, tell my roommates that I paid the rent if I hadn’t.

I don't tell lies. I tell whoppers. They’re absurd. Totally transparent. No reason to stop.

I’m sick.

Stay Sick, Me
MC Malady

The Last of 2007: A Doll of a Year

2007-12-31T18:46:00.001-05:00

[Editor’s Note: Herein lies the last of our three-part “Wrapping Up 2007” series, which, to review, was one-third top-albums, one-third top songs, and one-third this. Happy New Year to all, and might the Almighty bless us in 2008 with mirth, sustenance, and the new Postal Service album.]

According to Chuck Klosterman, being post-modern means having an awareness that art is art, and engaging art in evaluation of two distinct qualities: goodness and importance. For instance, Klosterman talks about the difference between the Northeastern and Southern American demographics vis-à-vis the Allman Brothers Band. Citizens of the former, he writes, are more apt to call the Allman Brothers “important,” even if they don’t particularly care for the band’s music. The latter population, though, proffers a patently one-dimensional take on the Allmans. To paraphrase a quote from “Killing Yourself to Live,” the Southerner would probably say, “Well, I don’t know if the Allman Brothers are important, but I sure know they’re good.” The Southerner does not bifurcate his/her music into the significant and the sonorous, the objective and the subjective—music has no defining objective qualities, but merely serves to either delight or disappoint the individual listener. While the Allman Brothers might be significant insofar as one may dearly love “Midnight Rider,” the Southerner would never remove himself from his immediate experience and reflect on how universally—almost abstractly—important that song is.

Far be it from me to confirm or deny Klosterman’s rather pejorative take on Southern intellectualism. All that aside, I can verify that he is correct about the northeast. New York City is the detached music lovers’ capital, where you can practically spy concert-goers making mental notes to Wikipedia song lyrics when they get home. In the Big Apple we’re overly post-modern: we’d rather talk about why Billy Joel matters than clap and sing along at one of his concerts. If you’d break down a typical NYC audience into a pizza pie chart, seven of eight slices would be pretentious thinkers trying to out-articulate the pretentious thinker next to them; the last slice would be people who…um…came to enjoy the concert.

Rarely do these two populations intersect—but, in a liberating end to a somewhat difficult, oft-frustrating year, the seemingly impossible happened on the last Saturday night of 2007. Inside a packed Irving Plaza, The New York Dolls, 1970’s punk heroes and forebears of the CBGB’s counter-counterculture—a lineage that includes Dolls disciples the Ramones, Blondie, and the Talking Heads—continued their reunion tour in front a demonstratively nostalgic audience. The crowd was mostly middle-aged, sufferers of nearly three decades without the Dolls, with a sprinkling of younger baskers seeking an aural history lesson. There was much rock and spectacle, but there was also cognizance, a profound awareness of not just what this music sounded like, but what it was, and where it was. For the Dolls to return to New York with so much vitality was paramount to the return of an erstwhile superstar to his sports franchise.

A faction of cowboy-hatted couples venerated the Dolls from the corner, at once crying and crooning, appreciating that the Dolls were important important and good. Each person had his or her own order—for me, importance came before goodness, since I had compiled a story about the Dolls just days earlier and was taken by their place in rock ‘n roll history. For the spurred-boot-sporting, ripped-jean-wearing couples in the corner, goodness seemed to save them from thinking about importance; it was as though they had grown so weary of recounting the Dolls’ significance that this rock-your-face performance was both a reprieve from, and justification for, all that talk. Most of all, it was a revelation to finally hear music that mattered to people. In a most un-New York fashion, a crowd moved beyond thought and speech and into enjoyment. For them-for us-seeing the New York Dolls wasn’t a fashion statement, nor an opportunity to wax unmoved at yet another performance—it was the integration of quality and quantity, of subjective love and objective value.

I don't know whether this experience instantiates the whole of 2007. On the one hand, it informs our understanding of perseverance, and what it means to literally get it right at the last minute. But who knows if it’s an apt analogy for the year that's past? 2007 was trying, and I’m not sure that, as a global society, we ever got it together like we should have. Yet, I’m also not sure if we erred so badly in the first place. After all, if there’s still a place for exuberance at a New York Dolls concert—lo, for the New York Dolls themselves-then we couldn't have missed by much. What ensues in 2008 is yet untold, but on a dreary Saturday night in December, 2007 was a worthy predecessor.

Stay Safe, New York
MC MMVIII

The Top 10 Songs of 2007: If Only I Hadn't Listened

2007-12-29T20:00:00.002-05:00

[Editor’s Note: This is part 2 of our “Wrapping Up 2007” series, which also serves as the continued evisceration of SPIN’s pandering, nauseating year-in-review issue. As predicted, I wasted ample time watching the “Classic Albums” series, but also had a salient epiphany while thinking about Christmas: if you count December 25 as the first day of Jesus’ life, then isn’t January 1 (New Year’s Day) the eighth? Or, in other words, the day of his circumcision and naming? Sure enough, I was just too cocooned in my own theological world to have not known this earlier, as it seems that the New Year’s circumcision is a pretty well-known fact. According to simpletoremember.com, January 1 has since carried a virulently anti-Semitic banner. “Throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods,” the site says, “January 1 - supposedly the day on which Jesus' circumcision initiated the reign of Christianity and the death of Judaism - was reserved for anti-Jewish activities: synagogue and book burnings, public tortures, and simple murder.” Not only that, but, “Caesar celebrated the first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee. Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets.” Cheery.]

The year in music was a year in trends: digital downloading continued to unseat and undermine the corporate record companies (yay!) and impoverish musicians (nay!). Meanwhile, independent/non-major-label releases by Radiohead, Madonna, and Nine Inch Nails typified the growing sense of autonomy amongst prominent groups, a sentiment previously reserved for Pearl Jam and the Genre formerly known as Punk Rock. Team-ups were all the rage in hip-hop, with Timbaland cutting beats for everyone but his dog, but including all his dawgs—and dawgettes—on his own album, “Shock Value,” which yielded the collabotastic “The Way I Are.” Lastly, music writers begged off any and all controversial assignments, opting instead to laud, redundantly, a few marketable faces.

Yes, the trend was the trend. Just like the Sex Pistols before them and the fads who will surely follow, musicians today work extremely hard to locate, create, and exploit patterns in consumerism. Hence, 2007 was not just the Year of the Trend, but also the Year of the Single. Hoping to catch on with satellite radio, clubs, and magazine covers, artists unleashed a barrage of three-and-a-half-minute clips. Some succeeded, others failed. However, commercial success or failure is utterly immaterial when the issue is quality. Or, more aptly, when the issue is how loud you crank the radio when the song comes on.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many great songs this year. Typing this while listening to Soundgarden’s “Burden In My Hand” is the musical equivalent of looking at a picture of a hot ex while copulating with a barnyard animal: the two don’t even compare, and you’re dreaming of what used to be. Nonetheless, we were graced with a few solid tunes, and—not coincidentally—a number of my “Eardrums be damned, I’m turning this up” selections are included on my favorite albums (scroll down to the previous blog for those). After all, you can’t have great albums without great songs.

So, without further adieu, here are the Top 10 most crankable songs of 2007.

10 Radiohead: 15 Step

While I generally abhor “In Rainbows” (you can check out my review here), "15 Step" is an ode to the Ghost of Radiohead Past. With its haunting, odd-meter polyrhythm and vintage Thom Yorke excruciation, the album’s first track is a refulgent masterpiece set against its dim-lighted peers. However, if it weren’t for the comparatively weak year in music, "15 Step" would be about 15 spots lower on this list.

9 Amy Winehouse: Rehab

Am I tired of it? Probably. But when I first heard this devil-may-care addicts' anthem, replete with blaring horns and multiple hooks, I was carried to a better place; namely, 1960’s Motown, where the coke was cheap and rehab was a non-consideration anyhow. Winehouse’s subsequent demise has been spectacular and saddening, but this song came first. And it will be remembered.

8 Prince: Guitar

Speaking of things formerly known as other things, let us not overlook the Prince of Pop. His suddenly-decades-old tenure begs a promotion to Pop Viceroy, which would allow him and King Michael Jackson to prepare the regal echelons for Prince Timberlake’s eventual ascension to the throne. “Guitar” calls to mind The Viceroy's largely overlooked six-string iconicity—he might not be the best guitarist of all-time, but if I could wail like anybody, I’d wanna wail like Prince.

7 Blake Lewis: Break Anotha

This year’s American Idol runner-up unleashes the musical and vocal attack that vaulted him (almost) to the top of America’s most competitive sham of a show. Nobody—not me, not any magazine, and certainly not Simon Cowell—said Blake was a great singer, but his ear, flair, and beatbox are consistently outstanding. “Break Anotha” is a pretty traditional pop-hip-hop track, but includes all the elements that made Blake such a bugaboo for his American Idol opponents. Wacky instrumentation, a hall-of-fame bridge (“Playin’ a role, he don’t care what he’s told”), and a Jay-Z-esque guitar track lead comfortably into rolling breakbeats and some vintage Blake Lewis noodling. A score for American Idol lovers and haters alike.

6 Marcus Miller: Higher Ground

Let me be clear: this would be number one by a lot (A LOT) if it weren’t a cover. Miller has always taken a backseat to bass greats like Victor Wooten and Jaco Pastorious, and for good reason—he has far less technical ability, he’s not an innovator, and he kinda sorta writes the same “funk in your face” riff over and over again. However, what’s endeared him to me (and scored him some Grammys) is his soul. He’s the funkiest of brothas, and the grooviest bassist on the planet. His rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” might well be the definitive version of the song, as it out-funks the Chili Peppers’ effort and charges harder than Mr. Wonder’s. Forgive me, Stevie.

(For another of Miller’s Wonder-ful covers, “Boogie on Reggae Woman,” click here.)

5 Rihanna: Umbrella

There is a single compelling reason for putting this song on the list: I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to like it, I didn’t want to secretly hope for it to come on the radio, and I didn’t want to ashamedly stream the video after my roommates went to sleep. I didn’t want to know the chorus by heart, I didn’t want to sing it to myself for days at a time, and I didn’t want to find myself drunkenly arguing its merits at a bar last week. But all those things happened. Plus, a little Jay-Z never hurt anybody.

4 Justice: Let There Be Light

Am I the only one who wants to swing an ice-pick through my face whenever I hear “D.A.N.C.E.,” Justice’s off-key, obnoxious, child-driven hit? The way I feel about “Let There Be Light,” which hardly made a commercial splash, is quite the opposite. This trigger-happy dance bona-fide is what we downloaded the album to hear: big drums, swirling synths, and a deadly build-up and crescendo. Everybody D.A.N.C.E.!

3 The White Stripes: Icky Thump

Jack and Meg White have a knack for rescuing themselves with humongous singles, and “Icky Thump” is their best yet. “Fell in Love With a Girl” was passable, “Seven Nation Army” was progress, but “Icky Thump” is the capstone low-fi blockbuster that puts the lid on 10 years (what?) of the White Stripes. I’m still not convinced that they’re decent—nor that Jack and Meg are married—but “Icky Thump” is an unequivocal turn-it-up-and-shut-up lifer.

2 The National: Fake Empire

Not the best song of the year, but certainly my favorite. My routine for writing up a band includes an abbreviated trip to its MySpace page for a 30-second primer on its tunes and the size of its cyber-fanbase. Rarely do I dally for more than a minute, much less listen to an entire song—I prefer listening by CD. However, when I was researching The National, something very unusual happened: I heard Matt Berninger’s ominous baritone careen over a flood of wavy piano and criss-crossing horns, and I listened to the whole song. So I played it again. And again. And again. Before long, I made a habit of loading The National’s MySpace page before I went to bed so that I could listen to “Fake Empire” immediately after I awoke. I blasted it when I was in the bathroom, looped it while I was studying, and recommended it to all my friends. And yes: it is as good live as it is on the record.

1 LCD Soundsystem: Get Innocuous!

Bucka-bucka-bucka-bucka-bucka-bu-CKA. Bucka-bucka-bucka-bucka-bucka-bu-CKA. My friends, welcome to the best bass line of 2007, the anchor for the year’s matchless musical landmark. I said it in the last blog, and I’ll say it again: you will not find a more honest, adrenalized, or memorable artist than James Murphy, and “Get Innocuous!” is his grand tour de force. Jonathan Ringen of Rolling Stone calls it a “massive, clattering dance-floor killer” with an “awesomely pathetic title.” I call it Bucka-bucka-bucka-bucka-bucka-bu-CKA.

Stay Shoddy, 2007’s Musical Output
MC Murphy

The Top 10 Albums of 2007: If Only Justin Timberlake Had Released Something

2007-12-26T00:35:00.002-05:00

[Editor's Note: I intend for this to be the first in a series of "Wrapping Up 2007" columns. Whether I get around to more of these or get sidetracked by "Classic Albums" on VH1 Classic is completely up to the gods, and I accept no culpability in the matter.]

[Editor's Note 2: Was the title of this column a gratuitous ploy to include a picture of Justin Timberlake, whose album, unfortunately, came out last year? Yes.]

With a repulsive deluge of “year-in-review” columns pouring through my mail slot (not a metaphor), I have but two options: acquiesce or differ. Notably, SPIN magazine named Kanye West’s “Stronger” collaboration with French electro-heroes Daft Punk 2007’s best song, and named West and Daft Punkers Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo the top performers of these almost-bygone 365 days. The myriad difficulties with these exaltations are somewhat elusive, inasmuch as Kanye and Daft Punk are adept producers and songsmiths, and there is nothing ostensibly violative about either the original “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” or Kanye’s hook-heavy seasoning. Beneath the still waters, however, are issues with the track (the beats are light, there is no climax, it’s perplexingly repetitive), and, moreover, with SPIN aggrandizing it above every other 2007 offering.

Since this is merely a bitter prelude to my own top-10 posturing, and not an exposition on nefarious pop journalism, I will name but two of my issues with SPIN’s “Stronger” celebration (the rest will be available henceforth by conversation only): first, it’s not the best song on Kanye’s “Graduation.” In fact, it straggles miles behind “Good Life” and some of Kanye’s more vintage hip-hop cuts. Second, it’s not the best song of the year. The National’s “Fake Empire,” SPIN’s fifth-best number, outclasses “Stronger” in virtually every melodic and rhythmic capacity (if you haven’t heard it, and you’re equipped to donate two hours to cycling “Fake Empire” in a fit of autoerotic revelry, alight on myspace.com/thenational.) Even Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” ranked nineteenth, is more significant, and will be remembered 10 years hence. “Stronger” will not—it’s too forgettable and ephemeral to be the best song of the year.

For my own sanity—and for the sake of some deserving metaphysical cause—here are my top 10 albums of the year.

10 Amy Winehouse: Back to Black

Of all the multifarious good fortune I’ve been lucky enough to channel this year, perhaps the most fortuitous piece was discovering this album just before the rest of the world heard “Rehab,” cemented Winehouse’s beehive hairdo on every magazine cover, and followed her drug addiction in so obsessive a manner as to make Lindsay Lohan look downright anonymous. I listened with no premonition of her forthcoming celebrity or the blotto fascination that derailed her career immediately afterwards. What I found were a bunch of gems; “Rehab,” obviously, but also the regal R&B of “He Can Only Hold Her” and “Some Unholy War,” a cross-pollination of a Biggie Smalls gansta backdrop and a Bob Marley lament.

9 Infected Mushroom: Vicious Delicious

By far (and as can be expected from these Israeli stalwarts), the year’s best trance album. The explosive build and final two minutes of “Eat it Raw” is perfectly percussive and delightfully violent, and the unwelcome lyrics on some songs are outweighed by the visceral, straight-ahead techno that Infected has helped establish as the defining element of Goa Trance. With Jaffa Oranges and ecstasy, Israel’s finest exports.

8 Of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

With all due respect to the work’s titular question, this album—or anything associated with it—is far from the destroyer. In fact, Of Montreal prove once again to be indie music’s most un-indie band, with genuinely layered and nuanced tracks that put to shame the inchoate mess that is most of its competition. “Hissing Fauna” scores the mystification quad-fecta, with the year’s most mystifying album title (which fauna are we talking about, and why is it hissing? Does fauna hiss?), most mystifying band name (they’re from Athens, Georgia), most mystifying song name (“Sink the Seine”…um, isn’t it already a river?), and most mystifying existential statement housed within a track title (“The Past is a Grotesque Animal”). Confusing and comforting all at the same time, “Hissing Fauna” marries Williamsburg panache to Staten Island rent prices.

7 Chrisette Michele: I Am

Okay, so I’m biased. I interviewed Michele in June, just before her album came out, and I was taken by her voice, do-gooder ethos, and psychic propensity for channeling Billie Holiday. I was put off by her abstinence, temperance, and un-potty mouth, but she made me emote in three ways that I never have during an interview:

A) About halfway through our sit-down, I said, “Goddamn it, I love my mom!”
B) Two minutes later, I observed, “Well, I guess I’m going to kill myself.”
C) With my last question, I looked her dead in the eyes and asked, “Would you say that your macaroni and cheese analogy extends to other areas of your life?”

(You can click here to check out my story for the now-defunct Inside Connection magazine.)

6 The Bad Plus: PROG

It may strike you as ironic, considering their name, but the Bad Plus has achieved a veritable collective of “bests”—best jazz/rock piano trio, best post-Nirvana version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and best example of an aggressive, stylistically ambiguous, between-genres band done good on a mainstream-sounding project. “PROG,” as the name implies, is a progressive romp through a grab bag of covers and originals. It leads off with an inspired iteration of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and then mimics Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” and David Bowie’s cult classic, “Life on Mars” (unlike Bowie, the Bad Plus don't phrase "Life on Mars?" in the form of a question). “PROG” is not the group’s best effort—that honor is reserved for “Give”—but hey, it’s better than Kanye West and Daft Punk.

5 Dr. Dog: We All Belong

Dr. Dog wins the award for “Most under-the-radar Beach Boys and Beatles sound-alike from Philadelphia with soothing, pithy songs and engaging album artwork.” Their latest studio effort clocks in at a compact 38 minutes, with jaunty head-boppers like “The Girl” that evoke a base, juvenile glee. What’s more, lead singer Scott McMicken is exceedingly polite, and really gave it to the man by holding out on an iPod until he got one for free after playing a show at the Apple Store in Chicago. ¡Viva La Revolucion!

4 Arcade Fire: Neon Bible

They’re loud, they’re over-the-top, they’re melodramatic, but they’re also touching, wrenching, and uber-talented multi-instrumentalists. Canada’s Favorite Sons follow up “Funeral,” their roaring debut, with an equally tonal and maudlin haranguing of suburan ennui and parental oppression. “Neon Bible” would have ranked higher if the Arcade Fire didn’t prove such willing darlings of the SPIN and Blender media machine, but would have ranked lower if that sharing-the-self attitude didn’t also manifest in their riveting, balls-out live performances. So I guess they’re right where they should be. Now, if we could only do something about Win Butler's hair.

3 Sigur Ros: Hvarf-Heim

Never mind that the album name evokes a Nazi bark, nor that its translation (Haven-Home) is uncharacteristically innocuous and sterile for these ethereal Nordic shoegazers. Just know two things: Sigur Ros is now classified as “Post-Rock,” which is way badass, and they sing in “Hopelandic,” a fake take-off of Icelandic whose words mean nothing. As if all that rhetorical rebellion weren’t enough, Sigur Ros inhabits the rarified sonic territory of Radiohead and Pink Floyd—eastern hemisphere titans who deliver the airy, psychedelic goods.

2 Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand

In 2007’s most fruitful and intriguing collaboration (hear that, Kanye and Modest Mouse?), country belle Krauss and Led Zeppelin frontman Plant deliver a tasteful alt-country masterpiece that proves that, a) hot chicks always do it better, and b) Plant is the most versatile singer in the history of hard rock. Although the two trade lead vocal duties throughout, their 13 utterly transporting selections shine brightest with Krauss at the fore, whining and pining like a homesick goddess while Plant forsakes his trademarked Zeppelin squeal for raspy, understated harmonies. "Through the Morning, Through the Night" finds Krauss in a bed of would-be Grateful Dead harmonies; think of her singing the choruses on "Brokedown Palace." The lonesome “Please Read the Letter” is cutting and melodious, slowing, for a bit, snail mail’s rapid demise.

1 LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver

The One. Not just number one, but the transcendent recording that changes how you think about music, impacts your iTunes (or illegal European downloading site) purchasing habits, and vindicates an otherwise mediocre lap around the calendar. 2007’s “Futuresex/Lovesounds,” James Murphy’s second release as LCD Soundsystem is a catchy mash-up of disco spew and faux-adolescent angst, the brilliant convergence of tunefulness, technology, and social commentary. Not only is “Get Innocuous!” the year’s best song, but “North American Scum” and “Someone Great” prove worthy competition for the crown.

In an altogether dishonest era—both musically and otherwise—Murphy waxes axiomatic with Mick Jagger-like realism, reminding us that we don't always want what we want. “Sound of silver,” he drones in the title track, “makes you want to feel like a teenager. Until you remember the feelings of a real life emotion of teenager. Then you think again.”

James Murphy makes me stronger.

Stay Seminal, Sound of Silver
MC Music in Review

Tell Me Again What You Think

2007-12-17T00:57:00.000-05:00

God either exists or doesn’t exist. There is no median possibility. God, however one might conceptualize such an entity, is either truth or fiction. Conviction in either direction is some combination of faith, conjecture, logic, socialization—and ultimately free will—but there are only two directions to go: yay or nay. That’s why the God issue is so simple, and why long, agonizing theological conversations completely escape me: there are but two possible realities, and neither can be proved. Arguing about whether or not God exists is like a 35-year-old arguing over whether he’ll live to see 90. There are only two possible outcomes, and both are speculative. It’s a profoundly idiotic thing to argue about, and I wish people would stop doing it.

I have no problem with theological discourse. I have no problem with abstract posturing. I have no problem with wanting to pursue universal and cosmic truths. But I have a problem with people who impose their God know-it-allness on others, who masquerade their spiritual guesswork as inarguable fact.

I met one such girl at a group dinner at my college. A bunch of us spilled outside after the meal, only to be met by the girl (whose name I forget, and most probably never knew) who was all-too-eager to tell us the deal. God exists, she said. She knows He does. He DOES. No, she can’t prove it, and, moreover, she only came to that conclusion after deciding, a few weeks earlier, to start Believing. It was beyond her to realize that you can’t decide on objective reality; in essence, the very idea of her trying to convince us of her truth is proof enough that her efforts were futile from the outset. If something is obviously true—say, that the sun rises every morning—you don’t have to accost people in the street to convince them. They just know. If something is not true—say, that the sun exploded 1,000 years ago and hasn’t existed since—people will simply know you’re wrong. In both cases, people don’t need to be told in order to know.

Anything else, then, exists in ambiguity. So, the second one finds oneself arguing for the obviousness of something, it’s clear that the thing in question isn’t so obvious. It’s also clear, then, that people can’t simply be convinced. People need charming, charismatic idea salesmen in order to buy into sub-obvious concepts. Eons of credulity have been assigned prophets—purportedly real and fake—because there was a particularly beckoning flair to their soapbox. They didn’t yell so much as they coaxed, and their coaxing always led the audience up to the precipice of the incredible, and then offered an ultimatum in the form of an option: benefit or suffer. Of course, the subtext was “be saved/repent or die,” and that’s exactly the point—if cloaked in attractive semantics, the most unbelievable, threatening, and too-large-to-fathom ideas become embraceable.

To be embraceable, and to be embraced; to have our ideas accepted as facts, to be revered as purveyors of wisdom. That's what we all want, and the girl outside the cafeteria wanted it bad. She could have had it if she'd have curbed the close-talking theological aggression and offered a rhetoric more cozy, lazy, and yielding. Something like, “God loves you, just do what you can to reciprocate, but anything is fine,” and I would have told her how right she was, that I wished more people would get hip to the enlightenment.

As it is, with that statement wrapped back up in the ether of my wishes, I will continue to suffer the philosophy bullies. Maybe they go away after college.

Stay Self-Satisfied, After-Dinner Theology Girl
DJ Dithering

The Breakfast of Baghdad

2007-12-11T01:41:00.000-05:00

Authoritarian rulers have large appetites: for power, for prestige, for influence, and for Raisin Bran Crunch. His “Butcher of Baghdad” moniker notwithstanding, Saddam Hussein’s were decidedly dairy druthers: cereal with milk, eggs, and French toast. No pork (he was Muslim), no Fruit Loops (he couldn’t stand them), and Cheetos were OK, but not quite Doritos. While awaiting his fate inside a US-controlled penitentiary, Hussein personalized more than his commissarial intake; according to a cnn.com report from June 2005, he also gave his overseers advice on women, American intelligence, and how the Allied Forces might have better decimated the Iraqi capital.

“Find a woman not too smart, not too dumb, not too old, not too young,” Hussein reportedly instructed Spc. Sean O'Shea. Peculiarly caring advice, considering its barbarous provider, but, as far as all sources are concerned, he conveyed this directive of his own free will, with no corporeal coercion. As for President Bush’s unyielding insistence that this Doritos-laden dictator harbored weapons of mass destruction, Saddam was slightly less understanding.

“"He knows I have nothing, no mass weapons,” he told his guards, all of whom were just a fraction of Hussein’s age. “He knows he'll never find them."

Bush, however, did not just err in military premise, but also in logistics. For on the fateful night in 2003 when the President initiated the “shock and awe” sequence in Baghdad, Hussein was hailing a cab outside of his palace—the one in which he was actually situated, and not the one Bush mistakenly bombed.

“America, they dumb. They bomb wrong palace."

America, we dumb. We bomb the wrong palace, we upholster a mass murderer with Kellogg’s, and our cardinal news-reporting agency humanizes the principle target of a four-years-and-counting military campaign. These subtle immolations of our foreign policy are novel efforts, phenomena unconscionable and unpardonable under Roosevelt and Truman. Those Commanders-in-Chief of yore would have negotiated a compromise between freedom of the press and wartime sensibilities, and would have kept a similar story about Hitler or Stalin from casual dissemination. They didn’t have to contend with the internet or Wolf Blitzer, but they also wouldn’t have bombed the wrong presidential residence had they access to those advances.

Even Hussein comprehended the competence hierarchy evident in American socio-pop culture.

“The guards said Saddam showed an affinity for Ronald Reagan and Dan Rather, but is not too keen on the Bush family,” Brian Todd related in the same cnn.com article.

With that particular personnel ranking, and his affinity for American breakfast—and preference for manageable women—the animal takes on a human hue. Butcher becomes benign.

Maybe Saddam wasn’t so than us different after all.

Stay Sated, Saddam
DJ Doritos

Bowser From Sha Na Na and Arthur Fonzarelli

2007-12-04T18:49:00.000-05:00

Religious traditions are rarely intelligible. Trying to interpret a manger, a tree, and an overpriced sweater from The Gap is just as difficult as deciphering a spinning top, an eight-armed lamp, potato pancakes, jelly doughnuts, and an overpriced sweater from Old Navy. When I was growing up, though, my parents synthesized all of Hanukkah's symbols and rituals into a rational whole.

They explained that we give gifts in order to show that it’s best to be generous with money; we light the menorah because the miracle in the Temple involved the High Priest doing the same; we eat potato pancakes because they’re fried in oil, oil being the operative agent in allowing the High Priest to light the lamp; we eat jelly doughnuts because they’re fucking awesome.

I understood Hanukkah when I was seven (at that age, Hanukkah and Reebok Pumps were the only things I accepted without protest), one of the major reasons I still appreciate it now. The other reason is that, like Christmas, Hanukkah is a pleasantly casual holiday, light on responsibility and heavy on good cheer. There are no Sabbath-like restrictions. All you have to do is exchange gifts (nice), eat unhealthy food (nice), and light fires while you’re singing songs (very nice). It’s uncomplicated and juvenile, with very little time commitment. And, because the holiday is diffused over eight days, even the most over-bearing family won't make you come home for the whole thing. The folks only demand a night or two, and you walk away a few presents richer.

What’s not to love?

Hanukkah also shields us Jews from Christmas jealousy. Judaism has fast days and days of mourning, and has a total of eight weeks during the year wherein you aren’t supposed to listen to music or see movies. Included in those eight weeks are nine days (called "The Nine Days") that prohibit the following: music, movies, alcohol, meat, swimming, parties, sporting events, and doing laundry. But it’s not just Judaism—all types of monotheism can be a drag. Muslims don’t eat for a month; Christians have to put ash on their foreheads and tell some guy sitting in a latticed booth how much they masturbate. Although I always thought of myself as an “oppressed Jew,” I wasn’t jealous of the non-Jews; in some ways, their plight seemed more abject than mine.

But Christmas is enviable. A tree, some presents, multiple nights, caroling, a nice dinner, “Home Alone”—I could get into all that. The one time that a rival religion might woo me for a few days, however, coincides with Hanukkah, of equal (or more) grandeur. It's also got the presents, the multiple nights, the singing, dinners, and family time. And while we might not have an answer for “Home Alone,” history has made it clear that Macaulay Culkin is not worth pining over.

Silent Night or The Hanukkah Song? The choice is clear.

Stay Soggy, Sufganiyot
MC Menorah

Tucker Max Redux

2007-11-28T10:59:00.000-05:00

[Editor's Note: This was my original Tucker Max post, but when I clicked "Post," the computer crashed, and I thought it was lost forever. I wrote a new one, which I posted a couple of months ago. Yesterday, I found this original stashed away in hidden folder, and I like it a lot more than what I published earlier.]

I'm relatively comfortable with people more fashionable than myself telling me what to wear. I have a long, proud history of wardrobe dependency, beginning with my mother and continuing through classmates, friends, girlfriends, drugs, and the media. In essence, I've never truly "dressed myself," although these days I do a better job of mechanically dressing myself, as in "I pick out and put on clothing without the physical assistance of others." Which isn't to imply that general dress psychology and peer pressure don't factor into my choices--it's just that, to the naked eye, I appear autonomous around my dresser.

I am not comfortable, however, with people more fashionable than myself telling me what to read. Which brings me to Tucker Max.

According to the back cover of his tome, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, Max is a University of Chicago and Duke Law School graduate who drinks and womanizes in New York. Of less consequence, apparently, is his writing, which seems to chronicle those two behaviors. My apprehension of Max's modus operandi was confirmed by a visit to his website, tuckermax.com, which is an aggrandized testament to those same base elements: fucking and boozing. His work is at least half-engaging, if not excellently written, and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is Max's grand volume of short shit-show vignettes, the culmination of what appears to be months and years of blogging and debasement.

But here's my problem with I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell: I read it in Urban Outfitters. I spied it to the left of the counter, squeezed on the popular book rack along with other trendy literature (including, I'm ashamed to say, Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live). Drawn by its provocatively banal title and bored with clothing, I sped through the first chapter, a suspiciously coherent minute-by-minute account of a vomitous night of failed Breathalyzer tests and pantless sushi consumption. Max's methodology is obvious, and is also overt--he co-opt's readers' obsessions with drunken revelry and sexuality, and aims to produce two types of critics. One type bashes his insensitivity and coarseness, and the other praises his honesty. Both, however, are quoted on the back of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Max's faux-sensationalist take on contemporary sinning is, much like a pop song designed to be a radio hit, shaped for public consumption.

Unfortunately, by the time I realized all this, it was too late. I had already pick Max's book off the shelf, read a chapter, and thought about it for more than 15 seconds. As far as Max and Urban Outfitters were concerned, mission accomplished. And what's worse, I'm writing about it afterwards and linking (twice) to his webpage.

I hope they serve beer in hell.

Stay Suspicious, Tucker Max
DJ Dressing Himself

My Trip to Israel, Part III: Misers, Misereres, and Margaritas

2007-11-27T19:26:00.000-05:00

[Hotel Ramat Rachel, Jerusalem. Monday, November 26. Wedding Day, and my last day in Israel.]

Greed and marriage are irreconcilable, and their teleological disparity makes weddings exceptionally conflicted. The hall, caterer, florist, band, stylist, clothing store, and printing shop all epitomize insatiable capitalistic avarice, while the bride and groom (should, at least) exemplify the opposite: unity, compromise, and a remarkable willingness to have less so that another might have more. Here in Israel, these diametric combatants palpably digress—the extremes are even further removed from one another than anywhere else. Israel is a land, simultaneously, of sacrosanct Infinity and unspeakable filth, where the best and the worst spiritual forces awkwardly coexist.

Since my very religious brother is going to be married in less than two hours, the wedding hall’s acute cupidity seems, to me, even more abominable than it normally might. Despite being part of a family that paid thousands for a 5-hour affair, I am assaulted by miserliness at every turn: five shekels (about $1.50) for an outlet adapter; the same for a pack of crackers. Coffee is double. Jewish tradition maintains that a religious couple should recite Psalms throughout their wedding day, right up until the husband stomps on a glass and the union is official. In light of the hall’s financial practices, however, it might be best to recite a revised Psalm 51 not for the couple, but for Hotel Ramat Rachel:

Have mercy on Hotel Ramat Rachel, O G-D,
according to Your unfailing love;
according to Your great compassion
blot out Hotel Ramat Rachel’s transgressions.
Wash away all Hotel Ramat Rachel’s iniquity  
and cleanse Hotel Ramat Rachel from Hotel Ramat Rachel’s sin.
For I know Hotel Ramat Rachel’s transgressions  
and Hotel Ramat Rachel’s sin is always before me.

Freedom will be swift, literally—my brother and his fiancée, dipsomaniacs though they are not, picked a hall at which an open bar comes standard. Soon I will be imbibing those shekels I dished out right back into my system, and then some. It is my responsibility to drink my family back into the black. A scotch-and-coke costs about 50 shekels at a trendy Jerusalem bar. A glass of decent wine is 30, and a mixed cocktail is 40. If I drink ten of the first, two of the second, and two of the third, then my family will be 640 shekels further towards even. Granted, that’s only about $170, but I’m just one person. If everyone quaffs his or her share we could make my family's money back.

Besides, isn’t it our right—nay, our duty—to think (and drink) along the bottom line? If the hall, caterer, florist, band, stylist, clothing store, and printing shop can do it, then why shouldn’t we? Sure, you might deploy the “two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right” argument, that joining in their greed is no more defensible than their greed is in the first place. You might call me a hypocrite for deploring avarice and then calling on others and myself to adopt that trait three hours later. You might say, using my earlier statements about weddings—and Israeli society at large—being battles between good and evil, that calculating how much I have to drink to screw the wedding hall might constitute a victory for the latter.

You might be right. I’m not really sure. Inside my frayed emotional universe, I feel like a valiant protector, guarding this family event from greed and vile people, and that by robbing those who are trying to rob me, I am vigilantly fighting back those forces. You might disregard that as a rationalization, and, again, you might be right. But if it’s rationality you speak of, I am currently incapable of such a pursuit. I just overpaid for crackers, my brother is getting married tonight, and the twenty-hour project that is my return to New York will begin 120 minutes after the last guest leaves. I’m equal parts jilted, jocular, and jet lagged.

When the alcohol wears off somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, I’ll hastily reconstruct my reflections in a fuzzier, cuddlier way: nostalgia is the luxury of the removed. In the meantime, an ironed set of dress clothes awaits me, as do a brother and soon-to-be sister-in-law who have a happily less dire conception of tonight’s proceedings than I do.

Stay Swindling, Ramat Rachel
MC Mimosa

My Trip to Israel, Part II: Epilogue to Uncanny Travel Companions

2007-11-22T17:54:00.000-05:00

[Aeropuerto De Madrid-Barajas, Madrid. Wednesday, November 21. Flying to Tel Aviv.]

I’m attracted to wine salesmen. Cosmically, that is—the last two times I’ve flown, the person directly to my right has been a wine salesman. Both were Spanish speaking—the first from Argentina and the second from Spain. And neither was some Podunk loser trying to peddle his swill on me; in actuality, both were head sales managers for their respective—and enormous—family wine companies, chatty and personable businessmen responsible for moving millions of bottles a year. Both taught me more about wine in 45 minutes than has a lifetime of alcohol consumption, and both reiterated the four golden rules of wine:

1. Wine is not something you read about in magazines and talk about at parties. Wine is something you drink—nothing less, nothing more.

2. Price doesn’t matter. A bottle that costs $6.99 is as likely to taste good as one that costs $40.

3. The label doesn’t matter, either. Taste is the lone factor that matters to wine professionals, and it should be all the consumer is worried about.

4. Because of the American dollar’s current free-fall, we Americans will be seeing more and more wines from South America and less from Europe, since the almighty Euro is discouraging American importers from doing business with the Eastern Hemisphere’s first world.

Both gave me their contact information. Gaston Chamiza, the Argentine I met at the end of last November on a flight from New York to Montreal, asked me to stay in touch with him regarding the Creamfields music festival near his hometown. I emailed him when I got back to New York, and we exchanged emails for a while, until my inability to execute an excursion to Argentina sullied the hopefulness of our contact. We stopped corresponding altogether a while back, although one day I plan to fire off something like, “Hey, I’m coming to Buenos Aires! Can I crash at your place?” to which he’ll respond, “No.” Call it the renaissance of hope.

Juan Costa, the Spaniard from this late November, was flying to his hometown to vet two wineries. An émigré who fortuitously found his way to Connecticut, Juan is a family man with serious dirt on the wine industry: vintners paying off magazines to give their wines rave reviews, bottling plants diluting their brands with cheaper, foreign varieties and labeling them incorrectly, etc. When I told him that I’d be available to meet him in Manhattan for the purposes of conducting an interview and getting drunk, he jotted down every conceivable way I might reach him (landline, cell, email, social security number, blood type, gym membership, favorite restaurant) and told me to be in touch. Call it the renaissance of intoxication. Or, an opportunity for me to write a good story and drink for free (for life, maybe, if I do good by a man who sells four million bottles of wine every 365 days), and for him to clean house in an industry revered for its traditions, history, and pride.

I don’t know how to construe these similarities. Late November. Flying to a foreign country. Spanish-speaking. Head sales manager at booming family-owned wine outfits, with identical philosophies and convictions about their business. As far as I remember, both have two kids, are in their late thirties, and lament how hard it is to succeed in wine selling. They were like two apparitions cut from the same ghost, and I was the spooked protagonist who wanted to sew them back together.

Call it the re-birth of reunification.

Stay Similar, Gaston and Juan
MC Madrid

My Trip to Israel, Part I: Prologue to Drunken Revelry

2007-11-21T17:45:00.000-05:00

[JFK Aiport, New York. Tuesday, November 20. Flying to Madrid.]

“It’s gonna be a byoozy weekend, eh?”

I’m waiting to have my backpack, shoes, laptop, and everything bagel with scallion cream cheese x-rayed at JFK airport. Two flights and seventeen hours away is my brother, whose wedding next week brings me to Israel. The x-ray line is most interminable, with bumper-to-bumper foot traffic preceding a metal detector that always finds something stowed away deep inside a pocket. The middle-aged British couple behind me, with leather-bound “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” passports, inquire as to where I am flying.

“You going to England?” the gentleman asks me, clutching an oblong handbag.
“No. Spain, then Israel.”
“You flying for the holiday?”
“No, my brother’s getting married. He moved out to Israel a while ago.”
He hardly pauses to think.

“It’s gonna be byoo-zy weekend, eh?”

I don’t know if he means that my weekend will be boozy or busy, but I figure both are reasonable assumptions. I say “yeah,” start laughing, and the gentleman and his wife, as if on cue, start laughing that quirky British laugh that I thought only existed in movies and English variety television. I love the British.

The airport is a collection bin for weirdos: polite, crass, cheerful, suspicious, odd, boring, nervous, and helpful, but all weirdos. The Brits on the x-ray line were a fortunate combination of polite, odd, cheerful, and helpful. The man who will later sit across from me at Gate Six is suspicious and nervous, and easily goaded. As I type this, he clutches his portable MP3 player with both hands, darting his worried eyes across everyone in our vicinity, but especially at me. Every time I look down at the screen, I can feel his shifty gaze upon me, like a crack addict who thinks I have money.

I'm so on to him. Each time I finish a sentence, I look directly in his eyes for 2 seconds. If he doesn’t see me, then so be it. But if he does—and the majority of the time, those 2 seconds are spent in locked ocular warfare with him—I look right back down at my computer, telling him in no uncertain terms that: a) I’m on to him; b) I have better things to do than stare at his gaunt face; and c) it’s very possible that what I’m doing on my computer has something to do with him. I can feel him growing increasingly concerned with each stare-down, and I wouldn’t be shocked if he sics an airport security guard on me. With my luck, this man will be seated next to me on the plane, and I’ll have to evaluate whether falling asleep is worth risking all the groping, stealing, and other subversive behavior I assume he performs. With his luck, he’ll be seated next to a man with a big beard and a turban and he’ll have to shit his pants until he lands.

I’m technically "spending the weekend in Israel," but Travel Tuesday has me off to a rousing start. By Friday, the man staring at me might be my business partner, and on Monday night I may be the lone drunk soul at my brother’s nuptials. Complicating matters further is that my return flight departs about six hours after the wedding ends, so I might be violently hung over the entire way. I have one Ambien for 35 hours of travel and a dangerously weak grasp of when and if public drunkenness laws apply on airplanes.

It’s going to be a byoozy weekend.

Stay Suspicious, Starer
DJ Departing

Patriot Games

2007-11-19T13:37:00.000-05:00

I’ve watched a ton of sports in my life. Too much, really. I could have been walking in parks, sampling museums, or earning money (of which I currently have none), but I chose to vegetate in front of a television and experience vicarious glory and excruciation. I know sports. I have a feel for them. I intuit the expected and elucidate the odd.

The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls and 1998 New York Yankees were the only teams that escaped my comprehension, who respectively compiled 72 and 114 wins in ways that deviated from the natural flow of things. Their talent was so overwhelming, their coaching so sound, and their execution so impeccable that those two teams didn’t just win; they devastated and demoralized.

They made you wonder if their opponents would ever recover. In some cases, they didn’t—after losing to the Bulls in the ’96 finals, Seattle SuperSonics forward Shawn Kemp embarked upon years of weight gain and general apathy, earning an early exit out of the NBA. The Yankees, meanwhile, shattered Padres pitcher Kevin Brown in the World Series, and although Brown went on to sign a mega-deal with the Dodgers and played a while longer in the bigs (including a couple of seasons with the Yankees), he was never again his old, dominating self.

My sports acumen told me that I’d never see a team like that again, and certainly not in the National Football League. The NFL is, after all, the land of salary caps and parity, the one major market sport in which 80% of its teams begin the season with a legitimate shot at the playoffs. Some teams are usually good, other typically terrible, but the NFL is characterized by competitiveness. Everyone has a chance against everyone. Only the 1972 Dolphins completed an undefeated 12-0 season, and no one has turned the same trick since the NFL expanded to a 16-game schedule. The odds are stacked immensely against a 16-0 season: injuries, off days, hostile road games, sheer luck, and a thousand other forces collude in preventing perfection. Week in and week out, anyone could win and anyone could lose.

Consider, then, the following numbers:

31/39 373 5-0 146.1

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady amassed those numbers today's 56-10 dehumanizing of the Buffalo Bills. He completed 31 of his 39 pass attempts (a sterling 79.5%) for 373 yards, with five—five—touchdowns and zero interceptions. His quarterback rating, out of a possible 158.3, was 146.1. Many quarterbacks go their entire careers without a single game like that, but Brady has posted about seven just this season. Within the larger picture, Brady’s mastery is representative of the Patriots’ team-level success. At 10-0 and with six games to go, they look like they just might run the table. As was the case with the Bulls and Yankees, it’s not just that they’re winning—it’s how they’re winning.

Consider these numbers:

38-14
38-14
38-7
34-13
34-17
48-27
49-28
52-7
24-20
56-10

Those were the scores from the Patriots’ first 10 games, and the lone close one, the 24-20 squeaker over the Indianapolis Colts, might have been their most impressive win. The Colts, defending Super Bowl champions, the team that beat the Patriots in last year’s playoffs, and the only other undefeated team at the time, had a 10-point lead with about 10 minutes to play. The Patriots’ offense, silent all game, calmly and methodically scored two touchdowns in seven minutes for the win. As emphatic as 52-7 is, the statement they made against the Colts—in the Colts’ home stadium—was much more severe.

After today’s Bills game, NBC’s sideline reporter interviewed Brady, who delivered all the requisite platitudes: It’s a team effort. Coach has us playing hard. We’re taking it one game at a time. Everyone is contributing. The quotes remained unremarkable until he paused, smirked, and said, “The [Philadelphia] Eagles are our next test on Sunday night,” as if he realized, along with everyone else, that the Eagles will wake up on Monday morning with the same katzenjammer as the Bills. For all the professionalism and ho-humness that cloak these Patriots, they know exactly how good they are. How great they are.

The Patriots have two “test” games remaining: one against the Pittsburgh Steelers (whom the lowly Jets beat today) and another versus the New York Giants (who habitually fail to win big games). If the Patriots pull off a perfect season and win the Super Bowl, they will undoubtedly go down as the best team of all-time. They’ll probably be remembered the same way even if they lose one or two but still take the championship.

But on the off chance that they’re eliminated from the playoffs and another team lifts the championship trophy, at least I'll say this: in a sport full of ass kicking, I never saw anyone kick more ass than the Patriots.

Stay Stupefying, Patriots Road Wins
MC Moss

Driving Two Cars on the Information Superhighway

2007-11-14T00:04:00.000-05:00

This is a time of extreme manliness. With a sleek, silver, 500 GB hard drive designed by Porsche standing up next to a cool, black, slightly taller and slimmer 300 GB model, the latter with flashing spot-blue bulbs and a red, racing heart, I am at peak technological force. I am optimally wired and connected. I am exchanging information between two incomprehensibly vast apparatuses, using my badass, ultra-slim, white laptop as the interface along which the information traverses. A cold beer is the Macy's cosmetics stand compared to my current endeavor.

What I am doing, in reality, is re-backing-up my iTunes. Most people, especially writers, are gravely concerned with backing up their documents—which I am doing, as an ancillary exercise—but I’m hardly phased by the prospect of losing my essays and rants. If something happened to my iTunes, though, the balls of anyone within scalding distance would never be the same. Long ago, owing to space considerations, I moved my music library to the 300 GB model, and then acquired the 500 GB model for an extra layer of security. Once a month, I copy everything from the 300 to the 500, and all the whirring noises, flashing lights, and cool icons make my cajones feel abnormally large.

39.21 gigabytes of music just passed hands. That’s 23 days, 3 hours, 6 minutes, and 41 seconds of playback. 7,083 songs. The time, money, and energy those songs represent are innumerable. Some people call themselves “well read;” I claim to be “well listened.” Either that or “capable of listening well.” That’s the secondary implication, I believe, of “well read”—that not only has one sampled a wide selection of books, but one has acquired and honed the ability to read in an insightful, critical way. Simile. Metaphor. Allegory. Synecdoche. Parallels and contrasts. The things that high schoolers claim only exist in the essays and minds of their teachers.

Those same traits are reasonable to expect in someone who’s listened to a large quantity of music. Even if one is not a musician, one begins to pick up on quasi-musician concepts: song structure, dynamics, melody, and basic rhythm. One stops hearing the songs and starts listening to them. Like my music 101 professor told us on my first day of college, “All of you listen to music with your heart. I want you to listen with your mind, also.” Knowledge of any medium breeds a deeper appreciation; this is not just true of the arts. From computer geeks to architects, bobsledders to restaurant owners, cause and effect become cyclical: you like something, so you start learning more about it. The more you learn about it, the more you like it.

And the more I learn about external hard drives, the more I like them. Looking at both of mine now, I lustily await next month’s turn to back up my backup. The silver one lies dormant, its metallic husk cool to the touch. Its tall black companion, the original standby, breathes and hums, throwing heat from every crevice. They make for a formidable pair. My music is safe.

I feel like a man.

Stay Secure, iTunes Collection
DJ Disc Space

Sitting With Soda: Osama Strikes in Rockefeller Center

2007-11-12T15:28:00.000-05:00

I read an essay positing that miracles happen. A friend posted this thesis on Facebook yesterday, concluding that his ability to procure two chicken sandwiches six minutes past a restaurant’s closing time—at half cost, no less—evinces, in finality, that the miraculous is real. I happen to concur with this take on the arguably inexplicable, and I could elucidate hundreds of stories akin to his—stories which posit our universe’s preternatural tendency to cater to us, to indulge our indulgences. These stories are not just about chicken sandwiches at 360 seconds past zero hour, nor do they merely celebrate paying half price. These stories are the ontology of dumb luck: serendipity is real.

Such serendipity is how I came upon the most important cup of soda in the history of mass transit. At 3:00 am on Saturday night/Sunday morning, Sideburns and I (remember: Sideburns is a girl. Sideburns does not have sideburns) are taking the F train back to Queens from Manhattan. We initially navigate to the 63rd and Lexington stop, since it is the closest one to Queens. However, due to construction, the Queens-bound train isn’t running, so we take the F two stops downtown to Rockefeller Center, where we will be able to cross over to its Queens-bound iteration.

Upon our arrival, the Rockefeller Center platform has all the trappings of a late-night subway station: quiet, a little sad, hung over in the way that an underground, rat-infested nucleus full of transients is bound to be. In the scant hours that separate the nighttime frenzy from the morning order, the platform feels like the shell-shocked end of a once-raging house party. It is not the place for discourse, and it is certainly not the place for conflict; unlike the bellicosity that streaks the subway during daylight, the wee hours are usually softly humane.

In addition to the chance train stoppage that necessitated our being at Rockefeller Center, Sideburns and I are uncharacteristically tired. Resolute city walkers most nights, we opt for the benches—the second bit of dumb luck that facilitates our encounter with the esteemed soda.

We are exhausted, in an exhausted place, already steered out of our way, and battling malignant 3 am bitterness (I am, at least. Sideburns is suspiciously kind-tempered). There are two available seats at the end of the bench, upon one of which is perched a white paper soda cup, a straw jutting from the top. The soda, presumably, belongs to the young man sitting in the next seat, who looks to be about 23, helmeted by a red baseball cap and earphones. As I swoop in to sit, the young man glowers at me, but I don't think he is taking issue with my sitting. Every rule of decorum and courtesy demands that he move his drink so that I can sit. Which I do. He doesn’t move his drink, which is sitting against my left leg, lukewarm condensation rubbing off on my jeans. He murmurs something.

“What?” I ask.
“I TOLD you I didn’t fucking want you to sit there.”
[3 incredulous seconds elapse]
“What?”
“I TOLD you I didn’t fucking want you to SIT THERE.”

This man is possibly homicidal, but there’s no way I’m surrendering my seat to a soda. Exacerbating the standoff is that I’m too perplexed to respond, so, for better or worse, I look like a badass, apathetically shrugging off his vitriol.

“That’s fine,” Sideburns chirps, and cheerily moves us to two seats on the other side of insane soda guy. I sit, again, in the slot next to him, this time on the side not housing a soda. He scoffs at me, collects his drink, and moves down to the very end of the bench. He is enraged, and perhaps mentally handicapped.

A first-year St. John’s Law School student is seated next to Sideburns. “That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, and we assent. The F train pulls up, and Sideburns, the law student, and I sit on one end of the car, while crazy soda guy sits on the other, glaring at the three of us.

“He hasn’t taken one drink from the soda,” I say. “Nobody buys soda in a paper cup to bring home. You buy a bottle if you bring it home. Why hasn’t he taken a drink?”
“That’s right, you don’t take a cup home,” says the law student. “He hasn’t touched his soda.”
We all realize that he's not drinking his soda now, and he's not going to drink it later. And he was irate that I came near the cup. We are stumped.
“Maybe there was gold in the cup,” I offer. “Or maybe a million dollars' worth of heroin."
“That’s right,” law student says. “How dare you, sir, sit in the same seat as his cup of gold? The terrorists have won.”

Indeed, the terrorists are winning. I encroached upon the autonomy of a cup of soda, I displaced its owner to the end of the bench, and my offense engendered a segregated ride home. To confirm my cadre’s insidiousness, oppressed crazy soda guy delivers an extended, deranged stare before bounding up the stairs at the Roosevelt Avenue station, out of sight forever.

“Will you ever sit in the same seat as a soda again?” asks the law student.
“No way,” I answer. “No way.”
“That’s right,” he says. “Or you, sir, are a terrorist.”

Stay Serendipitous, Subway Closures
MC Miracles

David Byrne on the New English Muffin: "Same As It Ever Was"

2007-11-08T16:16:00.000-05:00

Thomas’ English Muffins now come in sandwich size. This 40% bigger variation is new to me, if not new to the world. I bought two packs last night, thinking that the hamburger-sized loaves would revolutionize the way I eat. Well, they haven’t. I’m still making English Muffin pizzas with two slices of cheese, ketchup, basil, pepper, and Mrs. Dash. I’m still reluctant to microwave an English Muffin, reserving that desultoriness for extreme emergencies. Nay, the sandwich size English Muffin hasn’t done anything besides for deliver slightly more bread per serving, a boon, perhaps, to prison inmates and terror camp attendants, but not to someone like me, who could have bought a loaf of regular bread for the same price.

The pantheon of non-pizza pizzas, therefore, remains intact: first is the pizza bagel, followed by pizza on a pita, followed by matzo pizza (those who have never observed Passover might not concur), and then the English Muffin pizza. Pizza on toast, whole wheat bread, and hero sandwich round out the lineup. I was desperately hoping to unseat matzo pizza with sandwich size EM’s, but alas—the rankings are made of stronger stuff.

The apocryphal supermarket lore is that these places, which we take for benign providers of nourishment and non-perishable goods, are designed like casinos, in that their layout intentionally disorients the consumer. The purpose in a casino is obvious—the bewildered gambler is the screwed gambler. A supermarket, too, derives financial benefit from confused shoppers. Lost and dizzied by the intertwining aisles, one might purchase far too much food, or splurge for luxury items one did not intend to buy.

I paid no heed to this supposition before today, when I opened my freezer, seized the burgeoned muffins, stared at their freezer-streaked façade for a moment, and let out a string of profanity. I was duped. I was had. The supermarket tricked me into believing that these English Muffins were different, weaseled me into dropping an extra half-dollar per pack in the hopes of something better. I thought I was buying happiness, or at least the opportunity to eat in a way I never had, but all I got was a raw deal. Were the English Muffin pizzas still delicious this morning? Yup. Were they a little bit bigger than usual? No doubt. But they were sullied by the taint of capitalism.

In retrospect, I should have known this all along. I get weak and tired the moment I enter a supermarket, and I grow increasingly lethargic with each item I place in my cart. By the time I suffer through check-out, load the bags into the car, and unload them at home, I have to sit for a few minutes and recuperate. It takes 10 hours of blackjack to do what grocery shopping can do in 30 minutes. It takes a week of work and school to exact the punishment I endure during a trip through the produce section. Shopping leaves me debilitated, light-headed, and powerless, like a car battery that’s been on a cross-country road trip.

Once I get home, I muster what remains into a last-second English Muffin pizza Hail Mary. As I found this morning, my prayers usually aren’t answered.

Stay Stupefying, Supermarkets
MC Muffins

Last Year 1,944 New Yorkers Saw This Blog and Did Not Leave a Comment

2007-11-05T00:39:00.001-05:00

Did you know that last year 1,944 New Yorkers saw something and said something? You probably did if you ride the New York City subway. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is intent on telling everybody how fiercely their riders combat terror—it’s a post-9/11 beacon of pride on the scale of electrified rail cars. There are signs in every subway car boasting, in imposing bold letters, “Last year 1,944 New Yorkers saw something and said something.” What “something” means is anybody’s guess—a man vomiting on the F train at three in the morning, or exposing himself and eating crab legs during rush hour? A torn, inseminated pair of leggings on the Columbus Circle platform? We don’t know what people saw last year—the MTA merely advertises that a few less than 2,000 people vigilantly reported having seen something they thought to be suspicious.

Maybe the proclamation is supposed to be farcical, since even the MTA bureaucracy isn't so myopic as to laud the fact that not even 2,000 people reported something. According to the MTA's website, 8,272,117 people, on average, use New York's public transportation every weekday. The weekend averages are a bit lower—the website doesn’t specify, so let’s assume that, on the average day, 7 million people use subways and buses. Extrapolated over 365 days, that’s 2,555,000,000 people—TWO BILLION, FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE MILLION PEOPLE—using MTA transportation every year. And just 1,944 people saw something and said something? That’s .0000761% of riders.

The SUBWAYblogger interprets the statistics in terms of day-to-day occurrences. If 1,944 people saw something and said something, that’s about 5.3 people per day. “There’s easily that many people passed out in the middle of a hallway every day,” the SUBWAYblogger astutely notes. “That alone can account for all the reports in a year.”

5.3 people per day. Out of eight million, two hundred and seventy-two thousand, one hundred and seventeen. That’s unreal. That’s earth-shatteringly, bone-jarringly, soul-numbingly infinitesimal. That’s buying-drinks-for-underage-girls-at-a-Nickelback-concert low. That’s so low, in fact, that one must assume the MTA didn't crunch the numbers before they signed off on the ad campaign. I’d bet four Nickelback tickets that there isn’t a single precedent in the history of civilization for celebrating failure on so grand a scale. The only thing that comes to mind is when, in 1967, then-Egyptian-president Nasser told his country that they'd triumphed in the war against Israel, while, in reality, Israel had decimated the Egyptian military in a matter of hours. But that wasn’t so much celebrating failure as much as it was covering it up with a lie—the MTA, in fact, might have been better served by lying. That they didn’t is what’s shocking.

So, translated into terrorist, “Last year 1,944 New Yorkers saw something and said something” means, “Do whatever the hell you want.” The ad might as well read, “7.61 x 10^-4 percent. Last year we asked two and a half billion people to watch for suspicious activity. We can only represent the percentage that did in negative scientific notation. We’re fucked.” Ironically, any infidel-hating fundamentalist with a calculator could deduce from the MTA's own advertisement that the subway is a soft target.

Besides, can you really blame the riding public for its silence? As a frequenter of New York City’s subways and buses, I can assure you of three things:

1) Something that could possibly be a mass terror attack occurs once every five minutes. Any veteran rider is irreversibly desensitized to any and all weird, suspicious, and flagrant behavior.

2) There’s nobody to whom one might "say something." If Osama bin Laden was sitting in my subway car and lighting a stick of dynamite, I wonder who I’d tell first—the passed out crack addict with his head in my lap or the crocheting grandmother sitting under the “Last year 1,944 New Yorkers saw something and said something” sign?

3) If I did manage to find somebody in any position to thwart a mass murder, he/she wouldn’t care. The men and women who work for the MTA are some of the hardest, most terrifying people I’ve ever met. They’re a million times scarier than any terrorist. In order to save the day, one would have to, in a matter of seconds, see a terrorist attack in progress, find somebody to tell, take a few moments to relate what I'd witnessed, and cajole that individual to do something about it (as if an unarmed subway operator could overpower an armed terrorist. But that's another issue). I'd say one's chances are about .0000761%.

This is why I keep my mouth shut on the train. Which is typical: according to the MTA, last year 2,555,499,056 New Yorkers saw something and did not say something.

Stay Silent, New York
MC MTA

Ali G in HD: A Holy Land Saga

2007-11-01T00:12:00.000-04:00

HBO is running a high-definition “Da Ali G Show” marathon, and I’m brushing up on all the sketches that I already knew. Over the last year and a half, I’ve memorized every line, incitation, gesture, facial expression, and outraged, unwitting guest presented by Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, and Bruno. There are some segments—the religion roundtable, Pastor Quinn, dinner etiquette, Pat Buchanan (WMD/BLT), the campaign trail, clubbing in Miami—that I can’t watch anymore, because by the time they’re thirty seconds through I’ve completed the rest in my head.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s genius is mostly comic, especially in his exploitation of the awkward moment. No one, not even the estimable Vince Vaughn, is more adroit at creating, maintaining, exacerbating, and being comfortable with awkwardness. His brilliance also lies in his normalcy, since, unlike Woody Allen or Andy Kaufman, Cohen is completely sane. He’s intelligent (he graduated from Cambridge), reasonable, and, on the surface, pretty unremarkable. Comedy, for him, is a calculated, quasi-mathematical process, a system of actions and responses that he meticulously plans, yet—and this is where his brilliance is most apparent—he is also a master of extemporaneous comedy. When “gay converter” Pastor Quinn quoted from the Book of Romans, Bruno immediately chimed in, “Great, I love Romans,” and when a high-society woman asked Borat why his sister was a prostitute, he said, “Because she like to make money, high five!”

The social import of Da Ali G Show, however, has nothing to do with comedy. Never has a show so acutely and blatantly revealed prejudice and bias, nor has a single program ever exposed those prejudices in such a variety of cultures, from outback Arizona cowboys to anti-nuclear activists, to priests, rabbis, and atheists. Most of all, he illustrates that religion can be a two-headed monster, one that preaches sound morals (as in the religion roundtable) while simultaneously perpetuating prejudice and irrationality (like the homophobic Pastor Quinn).

We can all identify with how Cohen, a somewhat observant Jew, feels about faith—there’s something incongruous and confusing about the way we tend to think about our spiritual lives. Religion, to me, is moving to a tiny swath of land smaller than New Jersey, that has been a nexus of murder, hate, and mortal danger for thousands of years, under the faith/hope/knowledge/conviction that, one day, a man will reveal himself to be the savior, the dead will be brought back to life, and the enemies that lie three countries deep on her borders will be magically vanquished—and then, once you get there, complaining that that it’s hard to get a good steak.

It’s funny, really: keeping up a singularly religious worldview is extremely difficult, so that a lot the decisions we make with clarity eventually get muddled by late buses, bad weather, rough toilet paper, and weird street signs. In other, non-religious arenas, you’d eventually reach a compromise, some balance of quixotic idealism and pressing realism. But religion doesn’t work like that, and adherents to all faiths find themselves bouncing back and forth between two opposing extremes. Above and beyond pure comedic timing, Cohen capitalizes on peoples’ tendency to get extremely defensive about their beliefs.

Which begs just one question: what’s up with so many nuns working part-time as strippers?

Stay Subpar, Israeli Meat
DJ Da Ali G Show

Daughtry is Distracting You All

2007-10-30T17:42:00.000-04:00

I’m not the type to use music as the background for my life—I use life as the background for my music. Subsumed within song, dictated by it and sublimated into it, life is a dizzying stream of physicality that is, on a good day, sufficiently benign and uneventful to remain ignored. If something tragic or gripping pulls me out of music consciousness for few moments, I don’t panic. I play something by Death Cab, move the headphones to release the depressions in my ears, and embrace, again, soundtrack as foreground. Said another way, if life didn’t stop to notice me, I fear I’d never notice it.

The above paragraph may or may not be true. I’m sure, however, that it encapsulates my experience last night: a normally uncharged bus ride from New Jersey to Manhattan hosted a wedding between music and soul, a fusion of melody, mind, rhythm, and bone. I didn’t so much enjoy or anticipate or feel the music so much as I embodied it, manifested it, imparted it-was it. My skeleton spontaneously generated sound and vibration, and my gesticulations produced the energy that powered the instruments.

This very private, very enthralling experience illuminated two things: first, that listening to music alone is entirely different than sharing it with other people; and second, that trance music is an abused substance when taken in public. Trance is perhaps the most meditative genre, with a booming, unrelenting pulse and deeply hypnotic textures (hence, “trance”). Its manifestation in most countries, however—especially in Goa, Europe, and Israel, where trance is an overt, dominant style—is extremely juvenile. People obnoxiously announce that they “totally just took some e,” that they’re “raging hard” and “getting their ass melted.” All of these are valid things to experience and to say, but it’s the WAY they say it that denigrates the trance experience. It’s analogous to getting married, and then, on the wedding night, having your spouse belch, grab his/her balls, and say, “I’m pleased as shit to be married to you.” It’s a nice, legitimate thought, but the expression is disgusting.

Popular music is made for mass consumption: three-and-a-half minute songs replete with verse, chorus, bridge, memorable hook, and catchy chord progressions. Millions of people hear songs built this way, memorize them, and go to concerts to sing along. I was recently forced (read: drunk and not wanting to reach for the remote) to watch the music video for Daughtry’s “Home”, and it struck me that, in the live performance shots, everyone was singing along. Apparently, people love to use their voices when they listen to music, and will take any opportunity to do so—lyrics, a sing-along solo, etc. Trance, for all its virtues, does not indulge that love for singing, since it has no lyrics to parrot or easy-speak melodies to hum, nothing that feeds into our predisposition to use our voices. It leaves you verbally frustrated, and that spawns the phenomenon of people compulsively proclaiming how intoxicated they are.

Public trance, therefore, is problematic, since speech-starved masses are left with nothing to say besides for jamband platitudes like, “sick set, bro.” That same emptiness, though, is perfect for personal mediation. Without words or simple tunes, trance is not distracting in the same way that other music tends to be. Singing along is a diversion, a canard, only the apocryphal crux of a song. Trance strips away that element, and leaves purity—a timbre, a tempo, and nothing else. It brings out the same simplicity in the listener, but it cannot if the sweaty, tattooed fan next to you is rubbing his arms and asking if you want to blow lines in the bathroom. Not that you should turn down his offer—that’s between you, God, and your therapist—but it might not be conducive to an introspective evening.

Stay Situational, Trance’s Hypnotic Value
MC Music Machine

Reading and Writing: Only One Is Important

2007-10-26T03:30:00.000-04:00

I’m a slow reader. Always have been. Even when I pored over John Grisham and Mario Puzo in the third grade—which would be remarkably precocious if I’d been reading them for any reason other than prepubescent thrill-seeking—I’d settle on a chapter for 45 minutes and then go to bed. Completing any book prompted a monumental celebration, followed by the dread and foreboding that accompanied my pacing up and down the fiction aisles at the Teaneck Public Library while I hunted for the next read.

I’m much better at continuing books than starting or ending them—starting means arousing enough determination to begin Chapter One, while ending means parting with a project that took weeks of concentration and commitment. Finishing a book is like sleeping with a girl, insofar as both are memorable victories fraught with pleasure, tribulation, patience, and surprise. And you can’t catch syphilis from a book, which is both the beauty and the boredom in reading.

Books, however, are inconsequential—you could live your whole life without reading one and be perfectly alright. The advertisement may claim that “reading is fun-damental,” but it’s not. Reading is something we all entreat ourselves to do, in hope of some short-term recreation and a heavier dose of long-term cognitive benefit. It’s a type of working out that doesn’t usually pay immediate dividends, whose value lies primarily in a future point that may or may not arrive. It’s beyond comprehension that there are so many Barnes & Noble bookstores sprinkled throughout New York, the one place of all the impatient metropolises wherein people never have the time to read. In fact, reading for pleasure has been replaced in New York City by a) reading for necessity on the subway—newspapers and work-related items; b) porn; and c) big-bicepped romance novels purchased on the top floor of a seedy bookstore; namely, porn. Manhattan literacy consists in the neurotic and erotic, while the novel and short story have long been forsaken.

I conveniently espouse that I prefer writing to reading. My reasoning is sound: it takes me virtually as long to read as it does to write, while writing is infinitely more proactive and exponentially more interesting. It also places me in total control, which, unlike finishing a book, is nothing like sleeping with a girl. I could either spend hours searching for the right book or minutes writing something of my own. Writing is easy—unlike playing music, construction, or most other things, it doesn’t require special skills. If you can talk, you can write. If you can think, you can write. If you can hold a conversation, you can write. If you ever speak to yourself, you probably should write. If music were writing, you’d only have to hum to compose a song. History’s “great writers” are just diligent thinkers, while those who claim that they can’t write are merely refusing to encode their sentient processes. Illiteracy or a language barrier is one thing, but, barring those, anyone could write something of import. Poke around Amazon or Blogger or the Onion, and it’s clear that writing only demands an expandable idea and a little free time. It’s just like masturbation, except without an orgasm. So it’s not like masturbation at all—but it is like sleeping with a girl.

Stay Slow, Reading
DJ Dawes Green

Terrorist Psychology, or, Fundamentalist H-O-R-S-E

2007-10-19T00:33:00.000-04:00

Do terrorists have social anxiety? Phobias? Besides for the prospect of eternal damnation, do you suppose terrorists fear anything us laymen do? I, for one, am terrified of heights, humongous empty rooms with high ceilings, and Philadelphia. But someone seemingly unafraid of death—and of imposing his or her own death, moreover—couldn’t possibly fear spiders or public speaking, right?

Think terrorists have blogs? Does Osama bin Laden unwind by jotting down his musings on Wahabi Islam and Dispensationalist Christianity?

The underlying question here is, do terrorists have lives? Not just phobias and blogs, but do they have hobbies, artistic interests, secret handshakes, H-O-R-S-E contests, the mundane, recreational things that, here in the West, we associate with a well-crafted lifestyle? The answer is probably “yes,” that terrorists do, indeed, have lives outside of their suicidal, apocalyptic designs. But how could someone who’s come to peace with killing him/herself in the name of heaven possibly engage in anything else? It seems incongruous, as though the commitment to take lives—including one’s own, in some cases—subsumes and negates everything else.

The notion that the 9/11 hijackers made sure to squeeze in one last game of backgammon is one of the more intriguing existential concepts I could ever imagine. While the image itself is laughable, and completely irrelevant in a pragmatic way, it is nonetheless an abstract powder keg. Think about it this way: if Atta and co. did not stop for one last board game hurrah, it only proves further that these murderers were less than human, that there wasn’t even that spark of normalcy that we all possess. And, if they did throw together a round-robin tournament late on the night of September 10th, it only proves further that these murderers were less than human, that there wasn’t even that spark of normalcy that we all possess. Philosophically, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t—if they played backgammon, they’re heinous, unfeeling killers, and if they simply said their prayers and turned in early, they’re hyper-murderous automatons.

We try very hard to dehumanize terrorists. The media usually depicts them with a wrap around their faces, purposely concealing their countenances. We refer to groups of them as “cells,” instead of the words we use for groups in our culture, like “teams,” “squads,” or even “forces.” I’ll be the first to admit that there is a quantitative difference between a band of terrorists and the San Francisco 49ers, the former being sanguinary death-dealers and the latter a professional football team. There is certainly a difference between what terrorists do when they convene and what a true “team” does on the field. Even a legitimate military, unscrupulously bloodthirsty though it may be, is quite distinct from rogue terrorists. Even so, it’s still curious that, even in our parlance, we dehumanize terrorists, while our media literally hides their faces.

Obviously, they don’t deserve any better. Terrorists are below shit, whether we can see their faces or not. But if one played guitar or collected stamps, it would say a lot about his/her psychology. At best, it could be a counter-terrorism tool. I’m no terrorist, but someone who wants something from me is infinitely more likely to get it if he/she (usually she) knows how my brain works. The same approach could apply to the jihadists, and perhaps stymie something terrible.

And if that doesn’t work, we can always read Osama’s blog.

Stay Scary, Big Rooms with High Ceilings
DJ Dread

(Airport) Terminal 5

2007-10-16T17:57:00.000-04:00

If you've ever been curious about what 40,000 square feet of noise, skinny jeans, and iridescent blue bathrooms looks like, wonder no longer: Terminal 5 is your cavernous answer. This past Thursday, October 11, the newest venue from the Bowery Presents (papas already to the Bowery Ballroom, Webster Hall, the Mercury Lounge, and the brand-new Music Hall of Williamsburg) opened on the West side lot that used to host Club Exit. Remnants of the space's previous tenant are scarce, totaling just a still-half-pink stairwell and--presumably--some of the same young clientèle that used to shake its collective, gainfully employed booty on Friday and Saturday nights at what was one of the largest clubs in Manhattan.

Terminal 5's official capacity is 3,000 people, but the edifice is spacious enough to accommodate closer to 5,000. Its layout is unnerving at first, with so many stairwells and alcoves and doorways that, for the first time in my life, I was intimidated and mildly insulted by a building. The personal affront stemmed from the conviction that Terminal 5 purposely aimed to bewilder and confound, and on opening night it took until The National galloped into the three-beat shuffle of "Fake Empire" for me to find my happy place: a bank of couches, set up at right angles and supplemented by ottomans, in the far recesses of the second balcony. Like I said, Terminal 5 is huge (fucking huge, even), and the couches are the best example of its expanse. Even on the venue's inaugural night, with a sell-out crowd exploring every inch and alveolus of a just-opened space, we were the only people sitting on the couches. There was no one within even 20 feet of us, and the bar to our left was our own personal watering hole. We've all been to so many crowded, germy clubs that it was a revelation to feel at peace both with my immediate radius and the bottom of my shoes. No gum, no sickly spit, no unidentified liquid, and no adhesive fliers advertising a band's MySpace page.

There is a downside to all this luxury: Terminal 5 is expensive as hell. Tickets for most shows hover around 30-35 dollars, and, as is the case at any self-respecting purveyor of spirits in Manhattan, beers cost about $7.50 and mixed drinks cost even more. Furthermore, while being situated between 11th and 12th Avenues is optimal for housing an enormous building, you have to venture eastward for a few long blocks to reach any subway. Late at night, the walk is a pain in the ass for guys and a safety concern for hotties, not to mention how burdensome the schlep might be in a month or two with snow on the ground and wind gusts coming off the Hudson.

Still, we finally have a comfortable place to see a concert in New York. Admittedly, even my favorite venue (the Bowery Ballroom) has sightline issues and sticky floors. My least-favorite place to see a concert (the Lion's Den) is too loud and too hot, and it's impossible to see the stage from the back half of the room. Terminal 5 is (probably) too big, (definitely) hard to navigate, and on most nights stands to resemble a Spin Magazine Subscriber convention. But you can see the stage, the sound is perfect, there's tons of booze, and the couches might as well be emblazoned with the advertisement, "Make out here without seeming creepy."

The only place half that potentially libidinous is the Delancey, a much smaller club all the way downtown. With a tropical-themed roof and a pleasingly dank, dark cellar sandwiching a respectable bar in between, there are three genres of getting-it-on at your disposal: exotic, grungy, and traditional. In much the same way, Terminal 5 offers a cross-section of feelings, from its industrial warehouse frame to its Yuppie crowd to its homey furniture. So what if it's a long stroll from the train? At least you won't feel like you're packed on the subway the entire time you're there.

Stay Spacious, Terminal 5
DJ Disoriented

In Rainbows: Oh, the Crap I Gave Before I Listened

2007-10-14T17:57:00.000-04:00

“In Rainbows” might not be the most masculine album title, but it certainly encapsulates Radiohead’s multicolor mood swings. In the last 10 years or so, no band has matched Thom Yorke and co. as a vibe contagion—as deeply as “There There” lolls in resigned masochism, “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” is a directive to move, to make like a well-dressed greaser at a machine politics cocktail party. “Packt” makes you feel so sinister, so outside society’s grasp, that it functions better as a motivational tool than as a song.

Just as remarkable, if not more, is the way Radiohead released their brand-new album, “In Rainbows.” Their last work, “Hail to the Thief,” completed their pact with their label, so they decided to release this new one sans corporation. The album is being sold both in hard copy and as a download (about a 40MB Zip file), and is only available at radiohead.com. Here’s the twist: you, the buyer, decide how much you want to pay. You simply type in the desired price, anything from zero pounds and up (they’re a British band), and you’re immediately sent a link for the download or ordering instructions for the hard copy.

I downloaded “In Rainbows” today, and I’m giving it a mediocre review despite listening to only three-and-a-quarter songs. It’s distinctly lacking in fire, and its few strong moments are overshadowed by the reality that, on “In Rainbows,” Radiohead sounds like a Radiohead cover band. The melodies and beats are derivative, and the vocals are, on a good portion of the verses, pretty uninspired.

But that’s not the point, at least not in today’s music market. Radiohead’s sales technique was, from the start, bound to overshadow the album’s content—in ten years, “In Rainbows” will be remembered primarily as the album Radiohead independently sold for no price, and not as the average listen it really is.

In all, this year’s album crop has been just that: average. Ben Harper’s new CD was OK, as were the latest Kanye and 50 records. Indie releases were solid, if not stellar, as the Arcade Fire’s "Neon Bible," for example, wasn’t as scintillating as 2004’s "Funeral." "Zeitgeist," the first album from the reunited Smashing Pumpkins, is ironically titled, since it unintentionally captures the perfunctory attitude of our time. The problem for songwriters like Yorke and Billy Corgan is that there we're currently floating between artistic epochs. We are steadily digging our globally-warmed, watery graves, and we're hacking away at a devastating, dead-end war in Iraq, but the public hasn't sufficiently mobilized to drive an artistic age.

Someone told me recently that we’re living in the “post-post-modern” age, the restless ennui of post-modernism supplanted by a docile, inert era. It’s hard to define “post-post-modernism,” since “post-modernism” itself inherently escapes description, but we might summarize our era as follows: we’re living in the time that came after the time that came after something important. We had classicism and industrialization a century ago, which dictated the Western world’s socio-artistic values. Post-modernism followed, hand-in-hand with deindustrialization, and we knew was that it was some kind of answer to modernism, that it pushed back against the strict definitions and mechanization of the early twentieth century. Now, in the era after post-modernism, we don’t know how to regard ourselves. If post-modernism is Point A, we're having trouble getting to Point B, since Point A is undefined in the first place. Our current station is the amorphous follow-up to an era of absolute chaos and intrinsic disorder. We’re floating in the clouds, in rainbows, and without an intellectual GPS. We’re living in pretty mediocre times, and our music, our art, and our zeitgeist reflect just how aimless we’re feeling.

Stay Stolid, In Rainbows
DJ Desultory

One Test, Twenty-Eight Backwards Haikus, and Five Self-Satisfactions

2007-10-11T01:31:00.000-04:00

There is a vengeful beast lurking inside the New York City public college system. It’s called the CPE: the CUNY (City University of New York) Proficiency Exam. Administered to every CUNY student after the completion of at least 40 credits, the CPE tests basic academic skills: reading comprehension, comparative analysis, and sitting in a packed room sweating your ass off.

The CPE has two sections, and the first asks the student to compare and contrast two essays. My test, for example, asked me to distinguish between the philosophies of two writers, one who espouses the benefits of modern technology and another who lambastes modernity as a soulless departure from upstanding, traditional living. I called the first writer a sage and the second, Amy Wu, a terrorist. I referenced the Taliban. I figured that was good enough.

The student is allotted two hours for Part A; I finished in 35 minutes, as did most of the people at my table. However, CUNY rules mandate that students must sit until the full two hours expire—even bathroom breaks are, literally, against the rules. So, armed with nothing but two number-two pencils, a pen, and two sheets of scrap paper, I set about writing twenty-eight haikus. However, because I'm an idiot I thought that haikus are arranged 7 syllables-5 syllables-7 syllables, while in fact they're 5-7-5. Herein is a sample of my incorrect work (I just hope the test graders don't see what I did and flunk me for it):

Hand inside the cookie jar
Caught with your pants down
Blowjob and chocolate chips

Trick or Treat! It’s Halloween
Dress up like a ghoul
Don’t rape a kid in costume

Conspiracy JFK
Bullets in Dallas
Texans own too many guns

The haikus touched on a number of significant world issues, from Ahmadinejad (conveniently 5 syllables) to alcoholism (conveniently concealable). At one point, the person seated across from me was scribbling on his own scrap paper and, like me, counting on his fingers. I assumed he was also writing haikus, at least until I asked him about it during the break between Parts A and B, whereupon he said, “No man, I don’t know what I was doing. I was just counting.” That, if nothing else, describes exactly how boring it is to wait for Part A to end.

Part B was even more scintillating than its predecessor. We were given a three-paragraph synopsis of how much meat and vegetables Americans ate in 1970 as compared to how much meat and vegetables they ate in 1980, 1990, and 2000. On the opposite page sat two USDA graphs, one with statistics about meat consumption during those years, and the one below with the same stats for vegetables. Our assignment was to determine whether the paragraphs and graphs said the same thing (really). They didn’t. Not even close. So I said so. We were given a complete hour for Part B, but most of us discharged the task in under 10 minutes. Mercifully, they let us out as soon as we finished, in lieu of making us wait the full hour, noting that, “You guys are really fast test-takers. I guess we’ll have to make an exception for you.”

I took a physical inventory as I left the testing center. Two number-two pencils: check. One pen: check. My bookbag: check. Serious B.O., left armpit: check. Trudging down the hallway afterwards, I called my friend JackO, who had taken the same test in a different room. The exchange:

Me: “I think I’m stupider now.”
JackO: “I finished Part B in 10 minutes. I don’t know what the fuck everyone was writing so much for.”
Me: “I called Amy Wu a terrorist.”
JackO: “I said that modern technology describes not how we live, but what we are.”
Me: “I don’t know what that means. What are you doing tonight?”
JackO: “Going to the Apple Store and seeing Resident Evil.”
Me: “With a girl?”
JackO: “Yup.”
Me: “A little make-out in the theater?”
JackO: “Fuck no, it’s Resident Evil!”
Me: “You know, if you were 14, you’d be dying for any ass. Look how old you are.”
JackO: “If I were 14, I’d be dying for a new type of Vaseline. Or a way to jack off five times a day without getting arrested.”

Confident that I’d passed the CPE (it’s administered on a purely pass/fail basis), and that JackO struggles with some combination of addictive masturbation and the law, I stopped by another building on campus to see Sideburns, who asked me how the test was.

“Retarded,” I told her (yes, Sideburns is a girl. She doesn’t have sideburns. Her nickname for me is “Big White”). “I wrote 28 haikus. And I called a female author a terrorist.” It was almost 10 o’clock, and both of us were exhausted, me from a two-hour, 10-minute brain drain, and her from being forced to listen to at least 10 of my non-haiku haikus.

Thus, a proper way to conclude:

Stay Swapped, Lines in My Haikus
Wu a Terrorist
MC Meat Consumption Stats

Please Call for My Drool Cup

2007-10-08T14:18:00.000-04:00

I’m contemplating going crazy. Not shitting-my-pants, hearing-voices, punching-my-own-reflection crazy, but something in the “imbalanced” region. Slightly off, perhaps, is the appropriate nomenclature. I wouldn’t do it for very long, and I’d have specific goals in mind, like procuring medication, an extended vacation, and lots of sympathy. I wouldn’t go crazy enough to scare anybody, and I’d terminate the project immediately if the benefits didn’t work out exactly as I wanted them. I suppose I wouldn’t be “crazy” at all, insofar as I’d have complete control over my mental state—and I suppose, further, that having pinpoint control over my faculties is the exact opposite of crazy—but I’d fake it really well. Plus, never say never: I wouldn’t object to punching a mirror or two if I had to.

Why feign insanity, you ask (as if drugs and time off aren’t sufficient motivation)? Because I’m curious about how people regard the insane. Movies portray the fissure between sanity and psychosis in various degrees of acceptability, while popular literature aggrandizes psychosis to a larger extent than one might assume is realistic. The dichotomy in how we perceive and categorize the process of going crazy is pronounced: on the one hand, we romanticize it—we associate artistic and academic genius with it, and ally it with great personalities of our time. On the other hand, we think that crazy people are crazy. We don’t think they’re sexy, and we don’t want anyone we know—no matter how brilliant—to become afflicted with imbalance.

There is just one indisputable fact concerning going nuts: it happens. The question of how often it happens, why it happens, and how we classify it is less discernible than the circumstance itself. But is it useful to go crazy? That’s the intriguing, potentially lucrative question—could it spawn a new career, or some efficacious product to which only a fractured mind could give rise? We all know that both Dave Chappelle and Mike Tyson nearly lost their respective careers because of mental illness, but there have been, presumably, world leaders whose own psychotic breaks have vaulted them to power. Travel to a place like Cuba, North Korea, or Iran, and despite any personal or ideological differences you may have with the leadership, you’d have to agree that insanity goes a long way towards ensuring a vice-like rule.

Herein lies the intrigue: would my trajectory more closely resemble Castro or Tyson? Moreover, I don’t think that pretending I'm nuts would hurt the experiment, since empirical evidence indicates that, for some, insanity is partially affected —Tyson and every UFC ultimate fighter being the best examples. They're not as shit nuts as they’d like us to believe. So why can’t I get in on the ruse? Why shouldn’t they share the psychotic glory? Any person willing to risk their personal and professional reputation on a get-rich-quick insanity scheme deserves a piece of the Wellbutrin pie.

So, if you hear about me losing my mind in the next few weeks, don’t be concerned. I’m probably faking it—and if I’m not, at least I’ll be medicated.

Stay on Seroquel, Tyson
DJ Desipramine

Reflections on Still Being Pissed At the Mets

2007-10-02T00:02:00.000-04:00

Everyone’s a douchebag. I wasn’t aware of this when I signed up for existence. I merely checked “English speaking” and “musician” when I filled out the preferences form, learned some in utero calisthenics, and jetted into the womb for what were, regrettably, nine months of celibacy. The saddest revelation of all the sorrowful truths I’ve accrued is, undoubtedly, that my conception of the world and the world’s actual reality are evolving in inversely proportional ways: I grow increasingly sure that there is some bastion of goodwill here on this earth, while this earth continues to defecate large, undigested turds on my face. There is no battle between good and evil; rather, various degrees of evil battle for immoral supremacy.

Think about all the things you learned not to do with strangers: talk to them, take candy from them, get in a car with them. Later, when your father/mother/guardian/teacher/older sibling/LSD tab was edifying you about business, there were a few principles about people that you had to know: everyone just wants your money; everyone’s out for their own ass; everyone is trying to screw you; everyone only sees you as a resource; it’s dog-eat-dog, and everyone’s trying to be the big dog. As if all that weren’t sufficiently disheartening, the real misanthropy lies in the wisdom we impart about relationships. Women are evil. Women are vixens. Men are assholes. Men always cheat. Love is an illusion. Love isn’t real. Love isn’t worth it. Every relationship ends badly.

Quite caustic, this world of ours. Brimming with assholes, overrun with pricks, nothing but people getting fucked while they’re groping for footing: just a big, unfortunate porno where all the actors contract VD. Loving kindness be damned—anyone who’s spent a spiritless five minutes in a law firm knows that we’re litigating our way towards an bleak future. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

I’m a bit encouraged by the Live From Abbey Road special on the Sundance Channel, and soothed further by the knowledge that the worst of the Mets’ season is over. There is a new Californication in the TiVo queue and a promising Rangers season about to get underway (Drury and Gomez? What a treat. I don’t deserve this. No, really. You’re too much. Please, take back one of them. I couldn’t possibly. Really? I can have them both? I feel so spoiled. Oh—I still have to watch the NHL on the VERSUS network? I guess life is worse than I thought.) The weather is decent, and it’s been quite some time since I’ve been in a law office. I’m practically oblivious to society’s most venomous sectors (law, politics, health insurance), and I’m at peace, for now, with my iTunes collection.

This life may not be grand, but it has its gentler moments.

Stay Sexual, Dystopian Metaphors
MC Maladjusted

The Mets Totally Suck

2007-09-30T22:53:00.000-04:00

I’m an absurdly huge Mets fan. I’m an absurdly huge sports fan in general, but the Mets, for all their futility and storied incompetence, occupy a station far exceeding that of my other rooting interests: the Jets, Rangers, and whichever NBA slam dunks the most. When the Mets lost Game 7 of the National League Championship series last year, not one, but two friends called me the moment it ended, both checking to make sure I was staving off suicide. When, six years before that, I witnessed, in person, the Mets winning the pennant, I swore I’d never lose the hat I wore to the game. That held true until this past November, when I lost my tattered, aged cap in a movie theater in Montreal. When I realized my head was bare, I ran from my hotel in the freezing cold to see if the theater had a lost and found. It did not. Life’s a bitch.

Still, I've been pretty stoic in the face of this season's Mets ignominy: when they started losing their grip on first place a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t particularly care. When I read that they’d dropped out of first place—and out of playoff position—I cursed a couple of times and walked away from the newspaper, wholly unscathed. Today, when they lost and the Phillies won, completing an unprecedented, historic collapse and ending their season, I laughed and thought about boobs. Strange, I thought, that these unforgiving vicissitudes hardly registered on my Mets Richter scale, but stranger still that anyone seems the least bit surprised. The Mets suck; that’s what they do. The Yankees win, the Cubs lose, the Red Sox hate the Yankees, and the Braves have good pitching. Every team in baseball has a fixed identity, one that transcends eras and generations. The Mets identity is that they suck.

The Mets sucked when they lost almost every game in 1962, their inaugural season. They sucked when Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry snorted their way out of the major leagues, and they sucked when Jeff Kent and Bobby Bonilla forgot how to play baseball in the early nineties. They sucked when Mike Piazza, Robin Ventura, Edgardo Alfonzo and co. couldn’t beat the Braves in Atlanta, and they sucked when they lost the Subway Series in 5 uncompetitive games to the Yankees. They sucked last year, when Pedro Martinez’s arm fell apart and Carlos Beltran inexplicably looked at strike three to end their season in the aforementioned series against the Cardinals. In fact, the Mets even sucked in 1986, when they only won the World Series because Bill Buckner took a page out of the Mets’ sucky playbook and let a simple ground ball roll through his legs.

And you know what happened this year? The Mets sucked. Carlos Delgado decided to eat feces for 162 games. Their pitching staff resembled an AARP convention. The Phillies swept them twice, they lost to a host of last-place teams, and they blew a canyon-esque division lead. In the final, ultimate coup d'esuck, they lost 8-1 to a crappy team in the last game of the year, the one contest that could have vaulted them into the playoffs and salvaged their season.

The recurring suck will undoubtedly continue next year, and the year after that, and the next 50 after that. Which explains why I wasn’t shocked at this year’s collapse—I would have been shocked if they had won down the stretch, if they had justified their bloated payroll and shocking ticket prices by putting together two solid, if not spectacular, weeks of baseball and cruising into the playoffs.

They can fire their manager, they can make a big trade, and they could even move into the new stadium that's being built across from their current, decrepit home. Whatever they do, it will suck, and I will be watching.

Stay Sucky, Mets
DJ Dissapointed

Maybe I'll Ask Google for a Date

2007-09-26T15:22:00.000-04:00

I'm having a one-sided conversation with Google. I ask questions, and it dispenses routes to answers. Is Britney Spears a genius? Yes, according to the Weekly World News. Am I a hottie? I could find out if I submitted my picture to amithisorthat.com . And when, might I ask, is Messiah coming? Turns out he’s almost 2,000 years late.

Inquisitive web browsing is a sedate, lonely pursuit: it’s like talking to an artificially intelligent brick wall. It’s slightly more personable than the class to which I’m currently being subjected. Above the clackety din of my typing, I can make out the professor lamenting that the American army used white phosphorous to fight the Iraqis in Fallujah. I haven’t yet asked Google whether employing that agent is immoral or not, but by my teacher’s grave tenor I gather that, at the very least, it’s socially unacceptable.

Which brings me to this: professors believe that a lot of things are unacceptable, be it sexual categorization, politicians in power, or school policy. These ombudsmen have the fortuitous fortune of teaching, which is the most fitting profession for a person with myriad strong beliefs that they don’t want challenged. For instance, my politics of terrorism teacher maintains that American military policy is unacceptable, but refuses to say why. The class convenes at 10:50 in the morning, so his claims are met with minimal resistance. Later in the day, my contemporary Middle East teacher thinks that the term “Middle East” is itself unacceptable. Right or wrong, she doesn’t garner—or get—feedback from us. Her conviction falls into the timeless rubric of “irrefutable opinion.”

I had an Israeli ex-patriot professor who thought that the state of Israel is a collection of Zionist aggressors and fanatical murderers (just for confusion’s sake, she wore an Israeli flag pendant every day). Her fire breathing elicited a response from exactly one person, who would rebut with something about Israel’s social welfare proficiency or absorption of desperate immigrant populations. Then the professor would mutter something about “Zionist fear mongers” and trail off back into her insipid lecture.

Was my professor a bitch? I don’t know, but when I asked Google the same question, I was redirected to fascinating discussion of the family by Bitch Ph.D. Enjoy.

Stay Silent, Google
DJ Phosphorous