Saturday, July 3, 2010
ON AIR...........
It's okay, you can sit down if you need to, I understand how exciting this must be for everyone. Sandman has a new podcast! And he's, uhh.............he's by himself? WHY NOT!! Is it gonna be any good? WHO CARES!!! Just take the pill and ride the wave, people. We don't have much time.
The Basshead Jazz Podcast- Episode 1
Download Here
Playlist
Lightspeed Champion- I Could Have Done This Myself
Local Natives- Wide Eyes
Queens of the Stone Age- Mexicola
Guided By Voices- Surgical Focus
Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Charlie Daniels- Ghost Riders on the Storm
Ian Brown- Keep What You Got
The Shins- Saint Simon
Cee-lo Green- You Don't Shock Me Anymore
Janelle Monae- Oh, Maker
Lightspeed Champion- I Could Have Done This Myself
Local Natives- Wide Eyes
Queens of the Stone Age- Mexicola
Guided By Voices- Surgical Focus
Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Charlie Daniels- Ghost Riders on the Storm
Ian Brown- Keep What You Got
The Shins- Saint Simon
Cee-lo Green- You Don't Shock Me Anymore
Janelle Monae- Oh, Maker
Thank you for listening, seriously. Leave feedback and tips, large bills only. For all the old Speaker Madness fans, welcome back. To the new fans who have no idea what Speaker Madness was.............welcome to the shit.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Furthermore on the topic of time travel.........
Inspired by my last post.
Top 7 Women from the 1960's I would travel back in time and allow to fall in love with me
1. Ronnie Spector.
2. Lucille, the car-washing girl from Cool Hand Luke. Don't know her real name, but you know..........."Anything so innocent and built like dat just gotta be named Lucille." Word, Dragline. Word.
3. Pam Grier. Technically not a 60's star, but I would go back in time to get her pregnant in 1969, one year before her first movie. Why? Because I'm a selfish asshole.
4. Francoise Hardy.
5. Shirley McClaine. Mainly in the movie The Apartment.
6. Ruby Dee. Yes....Mother Sister. Contrary to popular belief, she wasn't always old. Back in all those old 50's and 60's flicks she seemed like a cool ass wife to have. Smart, sexy, and always a little sweaty for some unexplained reason.
7. Your Mom. OOOOOOOOOOOH!
2. Lucille, the car-washing girl from Cool Hand Luke. Don't know her real name, but you know..........."Anything so innocent and built like dat just gotta be named Lucille." Word, Dragline. Word.
3. Pam Grier. Technically not a 60's star, but I would go back in time to get her pregnant in 1969, one year before her first movie. Why? Because I'm a selfish asshole.
4. Francoise Hardy.
5. Shirley McClaine. Mainly in the movie The Apartment.
6. Ruby Dee. Yes....Mother Sister. Contrary to popular belief, she wasn't always old. Back in all those old 50's and 60's flicks she seemed like a cool ass wife to have. Smart, sexy, and always a little sweaty for some unexplained reason.
7. Your Mom. OOOOOOOOOOOH!
The Time Traveler's Old Lady......
If (when) I get a time machine, the first thing I'll probably do is go back to 1965 and allow Ronnie Spector to fall in love with me. I figure I'll walk up to her and say something super cool like, "Hey baby, I can hear music...........in your pants!" See what I did? I took one of her famous songs, and made it about her vagina. That's pretty romantic. And if Phil Spector's little nerdy ass has anything to say about it I'll just punch him in his tiny chest and yell "FUTURE MURDERER" and run away, and everyone will be confused because it's 1965.
It's a working plan.
Editors Note: Yes, I realize Ronnie Spector is still alive. But now she's all old and blotchy and weird. At best, my love affair with her ends somewhere in the late 80's. So keep your smartass comments to yourself.
It's a working plan.
Editors Note: Yes, I realize Ronnie Spector is still alive. But now she's all old and blotchy and weird. At best, my love affair with her ends somewhere in the late 80's. So keep your smartass comments to yourself.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Everyone Lies, Nobody Minds..............
I've spent most of my life being annoyed by pretentious hipsters who almost pathologically lie when you ask them what movies/music they've been enjoying lately. They usually pull the most obscure local synth pop band that opened for New Order once in 1984, or some indie doc they claim they saw at some Palestinian film festival that never happened. In reality.........they've mostly just been listening to Jay-Z and watching America's Got Talent like everyone else. Maybe it's genetic, maybe it's habit, but they've developed this skill for building up their own legend with white lies.
I don't have that. At all.
Maybe it's out of spite of the aforementioned hipsters that I hate, but if you ask me what I've been watching and listening to lately, I'm gonna fucking tell you. For better or worse. Like now, I'll tell you straight up the last movie I watched was Land of the Lost with Will Ferrel (which I thought was hilarious), and as I type I've been listening to Cocteau Twins and Morrissey solo albums. The entire time. Pretty gay, right? See? You're already calling me a loser in your heads. Silently judging me. Even the name of this post came from Morrissey lyrics. So why the hell did I tell the truth? I could have said anything. I could have just as easily told you the last movie I watched was some newly restored Kurosawa masterpiece, and while I was typing I was listening to a Bob Dylan/Iggy Pop jam session bootleg that nobody knew existed but me (mainly because I just invented it, but also because it's INCREDIBLY RARE).
But I didn't. And that is the textbook definition of "honest to a fault". White lies can clearly help you look cool, but for some dumb reason I choose to opt out of coolness in the name of some misguided integrity.
Another example.
I watch the Turner Classic Movie channel. A lot. And not in some nostalgic "they don't make 'em like they used to!" kinda way. We've already established that I think post-Anchorman Will Ferrel movies are funny. Trust me, I don't own any high horses. I just watch a shitload of movies and have absolutely no filter for what is acceptable viewing. Old, new, foreign, whatever. It's all worth a try. And my late discovery of the miracle that is DVR technology has only made this unhealthy obsession worse. I'll press record on pretty much anything that sounds halfway interesting or features Sidney Poitier. The sad fact is that this means I end up watching an uncomfortable amount of musicals every month. I don't know if Ted Turner just has a soft spot for motherfuckers tap-dancing in kilts or what, but the regular programming schedule for any given week on TCM will lead you to believe that roughly 83% of all movies released from 1929 to 1959 were sweeping set-piece musicals.
Don't get me wrong...........not all of them are terrible. Road to Bali for instance, the old Bing Crosby/Bob Hope comedy, is pretty hilarious and dumb and I watch it anytime it's on. And I don't think anyone who's actually seen Singing In the Rain could bring themselves to say anything bad about it. It's a legitimate classic. But still............there's really no cool way to tell someone the last movie you watched involved choreographers and costumes. And yet, I put myself in that position more often than anyone should.
Most recently, I saw an old musical on TCM starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy called "New Moon". It's about a French revolutionary who escapes on a ship headed for New Orleans posing as a petty criminal to be sold into slavery. Falls in love with a wealthy debutante who owns a plantation. Becomes her man-servant in New Orleans. Reveals his identity when the French come looking for him. Leads a slave revolt. I know, it sounds boring. But it's really a fucking awesome movie, I promise. Well written, funny, action packed. There's one scene deep in the Louisiana swamp where Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald are singing to eachother romantically, and outta nowhere they get interrupted by this weird voodoo ritual involving slaves dancing around an ancient tree and calling to dead spirits, and it all can very easily be taken as racist or a product of the time in which the movie was made (1940)............but really it's a beautiful and haunting scene, no matter how you slice it.
Anyway, so it was a great movie and I enjoyed it. The next day at work (and remember, I'm in the military, I don't work in some curtain store where this kinda shit is acceptable) a friend of mine says "Hey Mike, you have pretty good taste in movies, what's the last one you watched?" Instead of doing what I should have done, which was lie my ass off, I said "Oh, last night I watched this one called New Moon". He says, "What.........that fucking Twilight vampire movie?" I had totally forgot that was even a thing. Never seen those movies. So I quickly corrected him, "Hell no, I don't watch that bullshit. No, this is an old movie from the 40's I saw on TCM, a musical about the french revolution." No sooner did the words leave my mouth than I realized this made me seem a million times gayer than if I HAD been watching Twilight, and had been literally drooling over Robert Pattinson in a room full of teenage girls. While licking an oversized candy lollipop.
So my mid-year's resolution is to be a liar from now on. And next time when you ask me what I'm listening to on my Ipod and I tell you Black Sabbath or Clipse, please don't grab the headphones and call me on it, cuz neither of us will feel comfortable when the truth comes out.
I don't have that. At all.
Maybe it's out of spite of the aforementioned hipsters that I hate, but if you ask me what I've been watching and listening to lately, I'm gonna fucking tell you. For better or worse. Like now, I'll tell you straight up the last movie I watched was Land of the Lost with Will Ferrel (which I thought was hilarious), and as I type I've been listening to Cocteau Twins and Morrissey solo albums. The entire time. Pretty gay, right? See? You're already calling me a loser in your heads. Silently judging me. Even the name of this post came from Morrissey lyrics. So why the hell did I tell the truth? I could have said anything. I could have just as easily told you the last movie I watched was some newly restored Kurosawa masterpiece, and while I was typing I was listening to a Bob Dylan/Iggy Pop jam session bootleg that nobody knew existed but me (mainly because I just invented it, but also because it's INCREDIBLY RARE).
But I didn't. And that is the textbook definition of "honest to a fault". White lies can clearly help you look cool, but for some dumb reason I choose to opt out of coolness in the name of some misguided integrity.
Another example.
I watch the Turner Classic Movie channel. A lot. And not in some nostalgic "they don't make 'em like they used to!" kinda way. We've already established that I think post-Anchorman Will Ferrel movies are funny. Trust me, I don't own any high horses. I just watch a shitload of movies and have absolutely no filter for what is acceptable viewing. Old, new, foreign, whatever. It's all worth a try. And my late discovery of the miracle that is DVR technology has only made this unhealthy obsession worse. I'll press record on pretty much anything that sounds halfway interesting or features Sidney Poitier. The sad fact is that this means I end up watching an uncomfortable amount of musicals every month. I don't know if Ted Turner just has a soft spot for motherfuckers tap-dancing in kilts or what, but the regular programming schedule for any given week on TCM will lead you to believe that roughly 83% of all movies released from 1929 to 1959 were sweeping set-piece musicals.
Don't get me wrong...........not all of them are terrible. Road to Bali for instance, the old Bing Crosby/Bob Hope comedy, is pretty hilarious and dumb and I watch it anytime it's on. And I don't think anyone who's actually seen Singing In the Rain could bring themselves to say anything bad about it. It's a legitimate classic. But still............there's really no cool way to tell someone the last movie you watched involved choreographers and costumes. And yet, I put myself in that position more often than anyone should.
Most recently, I saw an old musical on TCM starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy called "New Moon". It's about a French revolutionary who escapes on a ship headed for New Orleans posing as a petty criminal to be sold into slavery. Falls in love with a wealthy debutante who owns a plantation. Becomes her man-servant in New Orleans. Reveals his identity when the French come looking for him. Leads a slave revolt. I know, it sounds boring. But it's really a fucking awesome movie, I promise. Well written, funny, action packed. There's one scene deep in the Louisiana swamp where Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald are singing to eachother romantically, and outta nowhere they get interrupted by this weird voodoo ritual involving slaves dancing around an ancient tree and calling to dead spirits, and it all can very easily be taken as racist or a product of the time in which the movie was made (1940)............but really it's a beautiful and haunting scene, no matter how you slice it.
Anyway, so it was a great movie and I enjoyed it. The next day at work (and remember, I'm in the military, I don't work in some curtain store where this kinda shit is acceptable) a friend of mine says "Hey Mike, you have pretty good taste in movies, what's the last one you watched?" Instead of doing what I should have done, which was lie my ass off, I said "Oh, last night I watched this one called New Moon". He says, "What.........that fucking Twilight vampire movie?" I had totally forgot that was even a thing. Never seen those movies. So I quickly corrected him, "Hell no, I don't watch that bullshit. No, this is an old movie from the 40's I saw on TCM, a musical about the french revolution." No sooner did the words leave my mouth than I realized this made me seem a million times gayer than if I HAD been watching Twilight, and had been literally drooling over Robert Pattinson in a room full of teenage girls. While licking an oversized candy lollipop.
So my mid-year's resolution is to be a liar from now on. And next time when you ask me what I'm listening to on my Ipod and I tell you Black Sabbath or Clipse, please don't grab the headphones and call me on it, cuz neither of us will feel comfortable when the truth comes out.
Friday, March 26, 2010
The late, late blues............
I've been pretty busy lately what with HAVING THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN THE WORLD and all. I also took the 3rd class petty officer exam last week, which I only realize now that I've typed it all out on the screen is of absolutely no interest whatsoever to anyone on planet earth. If I pass, I move up a rank, that's all you need to know. But I have still been faithfully reading a book a week. Here's a quick rundown of the last 4 weeks..............
Probably the most talented "black intellectual" when it comes to pure novelistic prose, he also manages to be the most controversial, just because he has the nuts to point out that gangster rap might be full of overblown stereotypes of murderers and whores. As a rapper, and a kid who grew up on gangster rap, do I agree? Well................yeah. It's kinda hard not to. Especially when he writes like this.............
"As people of the western hemisphere, we are a mix and a mess and given to reinventing something more important than the truth, which is the poetry of our connections, above and below, in the heavens and the sewers, the happy blues, the plaintive blues, and the hilarious blues."
Wow.
Anyway, the book is a collection of essays on race and authenticity in popular american cutlure, and I highly recommend it. Whether you agree with him or not, if you are not reading Stanley Crouch, you are wrong.
Chuck's last 5 or 6 books have gotten mixed reviews at best, if not universally bad ones. Sometimes it has been warranted (Haunted, Snuff), and other times it has not (Rant, Lullaby). And yet we still all race out to read anything he puts out, which has to say something about the guy. Either way Pygmy is no exception to the mixed reviews.....critics and readers have been pretty dismissive of it so far. But I have to say, I loved it. I thought it was his best book since Invisible Monsters. And it's probably his funniest book, period. It has a real slapstick feel to it, mixed in with the usual Palahniuk topics.............you know............anal rape, zombie consumerism, and love.
The plot follows Pygmy, a foreign exchange student from an unnamed asian communist regime, who is secretly a member of an impending terrorist plot against the United States. Pygmy speaks a broken english, which to some can come off as borderline racist, but if you just let go and accept the joke premise it's really hilarious and impressive how Palahniuk uses this speech pattern to play with prose. Pygmy sees nothing but evil and ugly in Americans and their culture, especially his host family. Much of the story takes place in three settings that even to the most staunch patriots could be seen as the biggest representations of anything and everything wrong with America............walmart, church, and high school. But Pygmy doesn't see Americans as frigid right-wing puritans. The America he sees is a world where high schools are unsupervised orgies, and batteries are in short supply because all the oversexed adults walk around with sex toys lodged inside them.
Even with all the judgment being passed on western culture, make no mistake............this is not Fight Club 2. Whereas in Fight Club you felt like Palahniuk was, for better or worse, assaulting you with his own personal views, in Pygmy you get these high-minded socialist rants from a brainwashed terrorist fresh from the reeducation camps, and you never feel that it's Palahniuk speaking through the character. In a weird backhanded way, this is a very pro-american book.
No explanation needed really. The genius of the second half of the 20th century talks about stuff, and things.
If you don't know who John Hodgeman is, you are missing out. He's probably most known as the "PC" in the PC vs Mac commercials, opposite Justin Long. He also is a regular contributor on the Daily Show, which is a pretty good representation of his style of humor. Nerdy. This is a sequel to his first book, "The Areas of My Expertise", which was basically a book of fake facts written in the style of those old timey almanacs from the 1800's. But it's so much more than that, and you really have to read it for yourself to understand. Areas of My Expertise was by far the funniest book I have ever read. At the time I remember being amazed that one human being could fit that much hilariousness into every single page. Even the JACKET of the book was funny. Little did I know he had enough for a whole new book, and what's more he has hinted that this will be a trilogy.
I'm about halfway through the new one, and already it's even better than the first. So you can get a basic grasp on what kind of thing these books are filled with, here's Hodgeman's description of Ulysseys S. Grant, 18th president of the United States.............
"Financial scandals plagued the Grant administration, though historians debate how much Grant knew about it due to his fondness for whiskey and for not knowing things. We do know that when the robber baron Jay Gould proposed to take all of the nation's gold and hide it in his private mountain, he invited Grant to join his heist as a grappling-hook man. But Grant declined. His skill with a grappling hook may have won the Civil War, but he was not corrupt. He saw the White House as a brief chance at drunken peace and an opportunity to work on his many hobbies, such as throat cancer."
That's just a random passage I picked. Seriously, get both books immediately if you haven't read them yet.
I'll try to stay on top of the blog now that I have some free time again.
"The Artificial White Man" by Stanley Crouch
Probably the most talented "black intellectual" when it comes to pure novelistic prose, he also manages to be the most controversial, just because he has the nuts to point out that gangster rap might be full of overblown stereotypes of murderers and whores. As a rapper, and a kid who grew up on gangster rap, do I agree? Well................yeah. It's kinda hard not to. Especially when he writes like this.............
"As people of the western hemisphere, we are a mix and a mess and given to reinventing something more important than the truth, which is the poetry of our connections, above and below, in the heavens and the sewers, the happy blues, the plaintive blues, and the hilarious blues."
Wow.
Anyway, the book is a collection of essays on race and authenticity in popular american cutlure, and I highly recommend it. Whether you agree with him or not, if you are not reading Stanley Crouch, you are wrong.
"Pygmy" by Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck's last 5 or 6 books have gotten mixed reviews at best, if not universally bad ones. Sometimes it has been warranted (Haunted, Snuff), and other times it has not (Rant, Lullaby). And yet we still all race out to read anything he puts out, which has to say something about the guy. Either way Pygmy is no exception to the mixed reviews.....critics and readers have been pretty dismissive of it so far. But I have to say, I loved it. I thought it was his best book since Invisible Monsters. And it's probably his funniest book, period. It has a real slapstick feel to it, mixed in with the usual Palahniuk topics.............you know............anal rape, zombie consumerism, and love.
The plot follows Pygmy, a foreign exchange student from an unnamed asian communist regime, who is secretly a member of an impending terrorist plot against the United States. Pygmy speaks a broken english, which to some can come off as borderline racist, but if you just let go and accept the joke premise it's really hilarious and impressive how Palahniuk uses this speech pattern to play with prose. Pygmy sees nothing but evil and ugly in Americans and their culture, especially his host family. Much of the story takes place in three settings that even to the most staunch patriots could be seen as the biggest representations of anything and everything wrong with America............walmart, church, and high school. But Pygmy doesn't see Americans as frigid right-wing puritans. The America he sees is a world where high schools are unsupervised orgies, and batteries are in short supply because all the oversexed adults walk around with sex toys lodged inside them.
Even with all the judgment being passed on western culture, make no mistake............this is not Fight Club 2. Whereas in Fight Club you felt like Palahniuk was, for better or worse, assaulting you with his own personal views, in Pygmy you get these high-minded socialist rants from a brainwashed terrorist fresh from the reeducation camps, and you never feel that it's Palahniuk speaking through the character. In a weird backhanded way, this is a very pro-american book.
"A Man Without a Country"- Kurt Vonnegut
No explanation needed really. The genius of the second half of the 20th century talks about stuff, and things.
"More Information Than You Require"- John Hodgeman
If you don't know who John Hodgeman is, you are missing out. He's probably most known as the "PC" in the PC vs Mac commercials, opposite Justin Long. He also is a regular contributor on the Daily Show, which is a pretty good representation of his style of humor. Nerdy. This is a sequel to his first book, "The Areas of My Expertise", which was basically a book of fake facts written in the style of those old timey almanacs from the 1800's. But it's so much more than that, and you really have to read it for yourself to understand. Areas of My Expertise was by far the funniest book I have ever read. At the time I remember being amazed that one human being could fit that much hilariousness into every single page. Even the JACKET of the book was funny. Little did I know he had enough for a whole new book, and what's more he has hinted that this will be a trilogy.
I'm about halfway through the new one, and already it's even better than the first. So you can get a basic grasp on what kind of thing these books are filled with, here's Hodgeman's description of Ulysseys S. Grant, 18th president of the United States.............
"Financial scandals plagued the Grant administration, though historians debate how much Grant knew about it due to his fondness for whiskey and for not knowing things. We do know that when the robber baron Jay Gould proposed to take all of the nation's gold and hide it in his private mountain, he invited Grant to join his heist as a grappling-hook man. But Grant declined. His skill with a grappling hook may have won the Civil War, but he was not corrupt. He saw the White House as a brief chance at drunken peace and an opportunity to work on his many hobbies, such as throat cancer."
That's just a random passage I picked. Seriously, get both books immediately if you haven't read them yet.
I'll try to stay on top of the blog now that I have some free time again.
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