Here's a trifle

It's weird how often the Energizer Bunny is invoked to describe someone energetic, restless, etc. What did people do before this ad campaign started? Is there really not another thing in the world?

"Who said the game ain't fair? A goddam loser"

En-Dasher strikes a blow in the name of rigor at NYO.

Indeed, to read The Complex is to see, writ small, the very moral and intellectual turpitude that’s delivered us headlong into our recent geopolitical disasters. It’s a document directed at an audience hungry for easy, comfortable dissent. What a morbid joke that its true allegiance is to the Rumsfeldian heresy, the Cheney canard, that a fact is simply something that sounds like a fact, that caring about distinctions in scale and kind is the pastime of the weak, that evidence should be regarded less as genuine appeals to truth than munitions to be indiscriminately lobbed at the recalcitrant until one explodes with enough damage that there becomes no choice but to submit to the “conclusion” that was your starting point.

Quick takes

--Horrible thing that happens sometimes: forgetting to put on deoderant after you've showered in the morning and only remembering when you're already dressed and have your coat on. Especially if you wear shirts with buttons. Then you have to reach in through a hole in between the buttons with the deoderant and contort yourself every which way.

--Horrible thing in general: the idea of deoderant.

--Am I wrong to think that people who let their dogs run around without leashes when they're walking them feel superior to everyone else? It's a total macho move-- basically, "Oh, my dog doesn't need a leash." Doing this also implies you're a really great, kind owner, because you give your dog this freedom and you let it express its nature. Leashes for everyone all the time.

--Really intense DJ Drama drop at the beginning of Lil' Wayne and Juelz Santana's "No Other" from the Dedication 2 mixtape: "I’ma tell you all like this – I learn something new everyday. More money, more problems. I always knew I was gonna make it. But you never know what you’re gonna go through. I’m glad to be here. But sometimes you wonder. Is it worth it? Boy, I done dedicated my life to this shit. There’s nowhere to turn. So I’m in it for life."

--What came first, the chicken or the egg?

--Some things I wrote in the Observer. This one is just inexplicable.

Good instinct

(9:29:29 PM) zenilman.xxx@gmail.com: i'd kind of want to interrogate him
(9:29:32 PM) zenilman.xxx@gmail.com: his delusions fascinate me

If you see something say something

From WJBC in Bloomington, Illinois:

There was one arrest at the latest Soulja Boy concert at U.S. Cellular Coliseum. A 12 year-old boy was taken into custody Wednesday night for throwing a rock through the windshield of Soulja Boy's bus. Why? The kid told arresting officers, "I hate Soulja Boy."

"..."

Werner Herzog and Errol Morris in this month's Believer:

WH: Whatever it is, it makes people talk, and they say things that they would never say to any one of you here in the audience. They wouldn’t say it to me either, but Errol makes it by dint of his face.

EM: It becomes a documentary, whatever that is, by the element of the unpredictable. Now Werner goes to Antarctica. He has a limited amount of time and a limited amount of materials. He has no way of doing any kind of prep. And so the movie emerges. It’s emergent, if you like, from just what happens there. I feel that the element of spontaneity—and there’s a strong element of spontaneity, of the uncontrolled, of the unrehearsed, the unplanned, in every single film he’s made.

WH: Yeah, that’s where real life enters.

EM: I feel that element of spontaneity because so much of what I do is controlled. The element of spontaneity is not knowing what someone is going to say to me in front of the camera, having really no idea, of being surprised. I know that there’s this moment in all of the interviews that I’ve loved where something happens. I had this three-minute rule that if you just shut up and let someone talk, within three minutes they will show you how crazy they really are. And it has happened time and time and time again.

WH: And you have a great sense for the afterthought. The interview is finished, it’s over, and Errol is still sitting and expecting something. Then all of a sudden there comes an afterthought, and that’s the best of all.

This is a big foul ball in a lot of ways but

OneVanBeethoven: hahaha i sent such a mean email about dan
OneVanBeethoven: i am so happy with myself
jessem3217: wait, what?
OneVanBeethoven: to the list
OneVanBeethoven: in response to shane's
jessem3217: oh!!
jessem3217: there it is!
jessem3217: why so mean?
OneVanBeethoven: hahaha i don't know
OneVanBeethoven: it just came to me
OneVanBeethoven: i thought it'd be funny to propose to vote someone off
OneVanBeethoven: and he's the only one it made sense to use
jessem3217: hahah
OneVanBeethoven: this reminds me of our old currierwire days
OneVanBeethoven: i love how this feels
OneVanBeethoven: it's a rush unlike any other
OneVanBeethoven: i feel like i just got my old favorite gun back
jessem3217: hahah
OneVanBeethoven: and it just like feels so right
OneVanBeethoven: let it ring out, younguns
OneVanBeethoven: tell em neyfakh's back
jessem3217: shane is losing his shit
OneVanBeethoven: omg so happy with myself
OneVanBeethoven: from happiness??!
jessem3217: and laughter!
OneVanBeethoven: hahaha
OneVanBeethoven: come on send a response
OneVanBeethoven: gimme another crack at it
OneVanBeethoven: lemme just do one more
jessem3217: haha, you know that ain't my scene!
OneVanBeethoven: have shane do it
OneVanBeethoven: set me up, cuz
OneVanBeethoven: lemme hit one outta the park
OneVanBeethoven: for old time's sake
OneVanBeethoven: let an old dug run
jessem3217: he is worried and sad because he can't think of a joke

So anyway I was listening to The Wall last night and...

Weird thing about me is that when I was in fourth grade I was a huge Pink Floyd fan. Like, the hugest! I had all their CDs, and I'd always be trying to get more. My sister turned me on to them I guess? The phase didn't last more than a year before I started listening only to Nirvana. And since then I haven't really come back to Pink Floyd. Except last night as I was going to sleep I listened to the whole first disk of The Wall and marveled at the fact that this band ever existed at all. The Wall sold millions and millions of copies! Honestly a lot of it sounds like opera, I now realize. And the rest of it sounds like Leonard Cohen or The Eagles covering show tunes maybe? How did this music become so popular?? Where did the audience for this come from?

A lot of it is really good BTW.

What's your fantasy?

For years now I've really loved this Mountain Goats b-side that appeared on the "demo" version of The Sunset Tree, a song called "The Day the Aliens Came." The melody is pretty bold and riveting, and Darnielle's singing makes him sound wounded but fearless, resilient, proud, etc. Some of the lines in particular always really got me: "I will find my way to the front door like a soldier crawling through the smoking carnage / smoldering bodies at my feet / I'd love to stick around but I've got someone to meet / And I will put my best foot forward / And I'll thank God I made it out of there." Later: "There's gonna be a redefining of some borders / And I will receive my orders."

Taken together, I always thought, the song is a rallying cry and a tale of redemption, full of purpose and resolve and confidence.

Except that last night I actually listened to all the words and realized it's about a crazy person who burns his family's house down because he thinks that aliens are coming for him and that they want him to kill everyone.

That bit about the smoldering bodies -- just what it sounds like! Also, second verse:

I will present myself in my nice white tuxedo jacket.
and I will look out at the day through my dark sunglasses,
and take in the scene.
the house behind me and the people in it
will all go up like steam in just a minute.
there's gonna be a redefining of some borders,
and I will receive my orders
on the day when my new friends come.

And third:

The rooftops and the sidewalks
will all melt like plastic.
and oh friends, old friends, dear friends,
I'm gonna look fantastic.
There won't be any reason left to cry
'cause there won't be any people left to cry for.
my memory's gonna vaporize itself,
and my italian shoes, well, they will be to die for.
I believe I can fly.
Might you look up at me and wave goodbye,
on the day when my new friends come?

I guess the aliens are his new friends, and he thinks they're going to take him under their wing and tell him what to do. What does it mean that I found myself pretty inspired when I listened to this song before I realized what it was about?

"Thematically," it actually reminds me of another song, "Phasers on Kill," by Screeching Weasel, in which aliens come and crash on the singer's couch and in exchange he wants them to go kill his ex-girlfriend:

What to do a spaceship crew came
Crashing through my house
Captain Kirk the stupid jerk
Punched me in the mouth.
Why'd you pick this place?
You came from outer space
If you're sleeping on my couch then
You'll do what I say
Go! Set the phasers on kill
Go! Set the phasers on kill
Go! Set the phasers on kill
'Cause I don't love her anymore.

It seems pretty clear, assuming it's true what Keyhole says about the way things are, that the Mountain Goats song is about grey aliens and the Screeching Weasel one is about green ones.

Quick takes

--In Clipse's "Grindin'" Pusha T says a funny thing at the end of the first verse, right before the chorus kicks in: "Platinum on the block with consistent hits / while Pharrell keep talking this music shit..." This is a hilarious way to characterize what is happening in the song.

--On the way to the subway this morning, I walked by a pile of shattered glass that had been swept to the side of the street, right up against the sidewalk. There were four sparrows jumping around on it and picking up pieces of glass with their beaks!

--Old ladies strike! Via Jess.

--I went to a party last night at Housing Works and wrote a thing.

"If my Walkman fades / I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame"

Sorry to do a weird thing with my blog, but I stepped on my headphones a few nights ago and broke them, and am wondering whether anyone "out there" could tell me what kind I should buy now. I don't want to spend more than 100 dollars on them, and I don't want them to be so big that my head weighs a million pounds when I'm wearing them. I understand there are websites that talk about this kind of thing but I've been hurt before.

Don't it make you sad to know that life is more than who we are

How is it possible/OK that Julie and Julia are two different names when Robert and Bob are the same name? I swear I've met Julias and Julies who get mad/fake mad when you call them by the wrong thing, as though the difference is enormous.

Also, good two-word derby: cat person.

Corporate magazines still suck

I went to a Mountain Goats concert tonight, maybe my sixth or seventh (not doing a thing, promise), and as he has in the past, John Darnielle refused to perform anything anyone in the crowd asked for and instead played almost exclusively songs from his newest record. He does this on every tour, regardless of how good or bad his latest stuff is, and he does it defiantly, with some obvious contempt for the people who are yelling things out. "We have a setlist." He either implies this with his looks or says it straight out, with scorn and impatience. Tonight someone asked for "Golden Boy," which I think is from one of his first albums, and Darnielle said something about how in the afterlife that person would be able to hear "Golden Boy" all the time, but that right now we weren't there yet and there was no way he could hear it. Every year someone in the audience yells out for "Going to Georgia" and "No Children," and neither is ever, ever performed. Darnielle seems to take satisfaction in withholding these songs. Because they're fan favorites I guess? How could he justify this to himself?

One way is that he believes that if he didn''t play only his newest stuff, he'd be admitting that his old stuff was better. And I could see him not wanting to admit that.

Then again, shouldn't he force himself to? Like, wouldn't it be good if people who were past their prime could just own up to it and act accordingly? Do we not believe that a person could ever be past their prime? I feel like it's an American idea, maybe, that there's no such thing. You're supposed to always believe that you can do better than you're doing -- that you can't ever peak. Obviously that's not true though! People peak. People start getting worse at whatever it is they do. It's quite possible that John Darnielle will never write a song as good as "No Children" or "Going to Georgia" ever again.

This is explained, I think, by how we think about geniuses who died young. Because we want to believe that something big was lost when they died, we want to believe that their masterpiece or whatever was still in their future when they were taken from us. It is hard to admit, but it's quite possible that if Kurt Cobain had lived, he would have, at some point, become less relevant/good than he was the last time he made a record. Same with Tupac, Biggie, etc. Different but similar: Salinger's latest books, the ones about the Glass family he's been secretly writing or whatever, are maybe not as good as his first ones. John Lennon is a weird one, because his music had already gotten very bad by the time he died, and it seemed pretty likely that he would never be as good as he once had been. And so his death left a weird taste in people's mouths, I think. The same way Paul McCartney's survival does. Also Dylan's.

Anyway, Eminem's apaprently working on a new album, to be called-- according to a very extensive Wikipedia page-- "King Marshall." I think of this, from "Til I Collapse," 2003:

Till I collapse I’m spilling these raps long as you feel 'em
Till the day that I drop you'll never say that I'm not killing 'em
'Cause when I am not then Ima stop pinning 'em
And then I am not hip-hop, and I’m just not Eminem.

Also "Soldier," same year:

Listen to the sound of me spillin' my heart through this pen,
You motherfuckers know that I'll never be Marshall again
Full of controversy until I retire my jersey,
till the fire inside dies and expires at thirty

I can't tell if I want "King Marshall" to happen, or if I'd rather it lived alongside "Chinese Democracy" and "Detox" in purgatory.

One other thing about the Mountain Goats show: every year everyone's sad that Darnielle doesn't play their favorite old songs, and everyone mostly just stands there patiently while he's indulging himself and playing the new album. Whenever he plays an old one though, the place comes alive, everyone sings along, etc. And every year, the songs that inspire this reaction grow more numerous. Which is to say, anything that came out before the most recent album is sure to make people happy -- the songs that we don't like this year will be the songs we love when we see them again on their next tour.

Everybody let's watch our heads.

Only kind of related to thing from before about jokes and being ladylike

FancyLad: you know who has become my favorite troll disguised as media commentator?
FancyLad: chrsitopher hitchens
FancyLad: his stuff on atheism is a snooze and I could give two shits about his opinions about iraq
FancyLad: but i loved how he wrote that dumb article about how women aren't funny
OneVanBeethoven: haha yeah
FancyLad: then vanity fair has the cover story WOMEN ARE FUNNY that is waaay more sexist than his column was
FancyLad: then his response was all "the author wants some half erect hitchens dick!"
OneVanBeethoven: haha
FancyLad: then the editor of jezebel cried and ripped her hair out while listening to cat power
OneVanBeethoven: hahaha
FancyLad: *swish*

Pretty good link

From Romenesko b-roll:

The Fox News of gay journalism?
Third item.
(Washington Blade)

"First it feels like a prick and then it hits you like a jumbo jet"

Couple things about "Hovi Baby" from Blueprint 2.

First:

I got the whole rap world on my shoulder, they trying to see
further than I am
And I have been trying to be patient with they preoccupation
with David and Goliath.
But sooner or later, that patience gonna run it's course
and I'll be forced to be a tyrant.

What he's saying basically is that he's Goliath and he's still going to win. Like, yes, he's saying, there is the counterintuitive little myth that people like to talk about where the little guy stuns the giant, where the turtle beats the hare, etc., but that's not what's going to happen here. Goliath is going to win; this time, the counterintuitive conventional wisdom is wrong.

This seems pretty clearly related to the factoid problem, wherein the unexpected becomes the expected because people latch on to it for its narrative "isn't it pretty to think so" elegance.

Weird related couplet on Lil' Wayne's Jay-Z diss, "I Know the Future," where Mack Mane says: "That's a hint to you Davids / throwing shots at Goliath / This the new testament / where the victor is the giant."

Second thing re: "Hovi Baby":

I'm so far ahead of my time, I'm about to start another life
Look behind you, I'm about to pass you twice
Back to the future and gotta slow up for the present
I'm fast, niggas can't get past my past
How they propose to deal with my perfect present?

This has to be a grammar joke on "past perfect" but in a pretty rare display of leaving out/holding back, Jay never spells it out.

UPDATE: Keyhole notes in an e-mail that "present perfect" is a thing. Which means that the joke here is pretty much completely spelled out. I should have kept this thing dark is the point, obviously I wasn't really ready to get back on the horse. :-(

"It's not a game, it's just called a game"

Speaking of good yarns can we stop for a second and remember how incredible it was when Dr. Dre had to choose between 50 Cent and The Game after the two of them had their fight and Game was kicked out of G-Unit? Like, Dre had to have known that Game was the more honorable of the two, that 50 might make him more money but that Game was the one with the real promise and heart. And yet he sided with 50 and refused to contribute any beats when Game started working on Doctor's Advocate. Spoke out against him in interviews, even, if I recall, and generally disowned him even though a year before he had heralded him as his own second coming.

Doctor's Advocate is an album I love because Game is not just plainly and unabashedly heartbroken throughout the whole thing about Dre abandoning him, but confident and sober-minded and conflicted too. "I done been to hell and back," he says on the first song, "left for dead, you know who to thank for that / finished my second LP without a Dr. Dre track / You can take my soul but can't take my plaques."

He is defiant and yet, later, totally honest about the fact that a wound has been inflicted: "Everybody wanna know what the fuck is going on -- am I signed to Aftermath? Interscope? What's up with Geffen? I'ma just say it like this: one day I walked in the motherfucking house, and all my shit was gone."

Later still, on the impossibly sad, teary title track, in which the man's voice can actually be heard cracking: "Now it's my turn to carry the torch / And I still got the chain that you wore on the cover of The Source / Remember when we got drunk to do "Start From Scratch"? / I told you you was like a father to me, I meant that! / Now I'm sitting here looking at my platinum plaques, thinking 'what the fuck am I without a Dr. Dre track?'"

He mentions Dre on literally every song, and never once does he sound vengeful or petulant. Dignity in the aftermath of betrayal: not a single 'fuck you too' or 'who needs you anyway' to be found in a single line. Game stands alone, forsaken and disowned, and yet:

I still think about my nigga from time to time,
Makes me wanna call 50 and let him know what's on my mind,
But I just hold back 'cuz we ain't beefin' like that,
He ain't Big, and I ain't Pac, and we just eatin' off rap.

Which is up there, I think, with that verse Keyhole and I like from "I'm Not You" by the Clipse, in its earnest self-deprecation and its economy of words.

Which is all to say, this was a remarkable thing that happened in rap and I don't think people paid enough attention to it when this album came out. I mean, sure, everyone were excited when the beef first ignited and Game was kicked out of G-Unit, but did anyone follow up post-Doctor's Advocate and like, really get into it? In any case, now would be a good time to interview Dre about it, especially considering how embarrassing it probably is right now to be the guy who brought 50 Cent into the world.

"The exception that proves the rule"

This is not really a thing. Nothing could ever "prove" a rule by virtue of not following it. I don't want to list examples but I will anyway: in this book I'm reading about the NYRB the author talks about how the editors of that publication never discovered any young talent or launched anyone's career. He then lists two people whose careers the NYRB did launch, and refers to them subsequently as "rule-proving exceptions."

This is not how data works, and I say that with some confidence even though I do not know that much about how data works. These two guys are outliers, sure, and you can know that if you know that all the other people who contributed to the NYRB were old and established by the time they started publishing there, but you can't just look at them and extrapolate the "rule" he's insisting they prove. In fact, these two guys don't really make any difference whatsoever, because if you believe the rule is true, the fact that in these two instances it didn't hold teaches you nothing new, and in identifying them as outliers you haven't come upon anything that would/should strengthen your faith in the pattern from which you think they are deviating.

UPDATE: Turns out this is an old, fossilized factoid, not a new thing at all. It has a Wikipedia entry and everything. So humiliating!! Sorry readers, this was some straight to video shit.

"She did a movie called 'Revenge of the Pervs' / there were screams and jeans and curves and nerves"

1. This morning I had really long fingernails so I decided that I needed to cut them before I found myself anywhere important. So I brought a pair of clippers with me with the intention of using them at some point during work, in the bathroom. On the subway platform though at Dekalb I saw a guy standing over the tracks, and he was cutting his nails. It would have been pretty good if I'd come up right alongside him and started doing the same thing. Would he have said something?

2. I did an item for NYO last night that went up around six this morning re Bob Barker's memoirs, which he's writing now that he's been off The Price is Right for a year. When I woke up this morning at 8:30 or whatever, there were already two comments. The first one:

Bob Barker is immensely talented and charismatic. Hosting a game show is not as easy as it looks and there's only a select few who master the craft year-after-year. Decades is extremely rare. Bill Cullen was in a league by himself and so is Bob Barker. Wink Martindale is down the list a bit. Way down!

From what I've read, Bob Barker has a dark side. A very dark side. I used to watch The Price Is Right years ago, and there were hints of this dark side with the contestants in the form of putdowns and ridicule. It was all in the name of fun, but nonetheless it was putdowns.

A number of former employees of the show have filed lawsuits and I think most of them, if not all of them, are women. I'm only familar with two women: Parkinson and Hallstrom. One lawsuit was of a sexual nature and the other lawsuit was due to a firing. Several months ago. I read another lawsuit has been filed which has racial overtones. There was a fairly recent mass firing on one day, and Barker's explanation for this mass firing was economics.

I hope Bob Barker will address these issues in the book, and I'm sure his version of what happened will be quite different. I'm of the opinion Bob Barker has a dark side, because there's been too many lawsuits. As I said previously, you saw little hints of this dark side on the show. If the contestant didn't do the right thing, he was impatient. Something along the lines: "You're not yelling loud enough. Louder. I mean louder. What's wrong with you. Do you want this car. You can putt better than that. Audience, let's here a boo. Spin the wheel, NOW. NOW. That's not how you spin it."

I'd post the second one but the guy just responds pretty much and it's not terribly compelling. They go on for six more posts, but man, can you imagine writing that first thing? Thinking those thoughts/ideas about Bob Barker? "There were hints of this dark side with the contestants in the form of putdowns and ridicule. It was all in the name of fun, but nonetheless it was putdowns." This is a crazy thing to think.

3. Problem in "Certain Songs" by Hold Steady, which is that Craig Finn identifies a bunch of jukebox selections during the climactic bridge or whatever, but he only gives the coordinates of the disk, not the song. You need both to make a selection on a jukebox; if you punch in just the first letter and number you will not get any result. The lyrics go: "B-1 is for the good girls / it's, 'Only the Good Die Young.' / C-9 is for the makin' eyes, it's 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light.' / D-4 is for the lovers / B-12 is for the speeders / and the hard drugs are for the bartenders and the kitchen workers and the bartender's friends." In other words these are songs he's listing. But there's no way it's true that you could press "B-1" and hear that song. You'd have to provide the jukebox with more information. It's a fucking lie is what it is.

4. Standing on the elevator the other day at work, waiting for it to leave the lobby which it always takes a few seconds too many to do. While it sits there, on the first floor, a woman comes aboard and asks me, "Going up?" Yes obviously going up.

Actually whatever

Infinite lives etc. Back to the gats.

If it's too loud you're too old

A couple songs recorded about a year ago by my friend Willy that would, in any reasonable universe, set the world on fire. The first is "Bullets" and the other is "Car." It is safe to say no one has heard songs like these before.