ALL CAPS
Great use of Autotune:
Bill Hicks
Bill Hicks was all attitude and owned the stage everywhere he played. Listening to him, you’d think this routine was brand new, not recorded 30 years ago.
Rachel Maddow on spilling oil
Clever, clever reporting:
Clarification, in 60 Minutes
A couple of episodes of 60 Minutes will corroborate a few recent posts.
Firstly, about AIDS in Uganda:
And here’s one with Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, along with Michael Burry:
Part II, which reflects exactly my opinion of the whole fiasco (Finally! Someone understands the consequences of interest-free loans):
TED, not always sucky.
That last post was probably unfair to TED, which I think is generally awesome. There are some great talks I’ve looked at recently, and I want to let you know about a few of them here.
The first is by Simon Sinek, who has a really clever concept about how to think about life and meaningfulness in general:
Saul Griffith and his kites:
And Richard Dawkins, always a favorite to listen to amongst men of the book:
See! Not so bad…
Canterbury to Carolina
I just returned from Canterbury. Not my first choice of destinations, but I have insomnia… and when you’re that tired and on the internet, you buy tickets for all kinds of things. (Last week, I bought a ticket for a seminar on bridges…)
Canterbury is the kind of place you go to whittle away a few hours of your life, if for no other reason than to look at old stone walls and eat bad Chinese food. I spent the day walking around the marsh, which I enjoyed (because I’m easy like that), and looking through army surplus and, finally, taking an hour-long punt ride down the Stour river. That ride was especially hilarious. Here’s a guy with a big stick pushing a 20-foot boat, with just me in it, reclined, upriver. Now this guy is working up a sweat because the water is unusually fast today. We’re crawling, inch by inch — slow enough to count blades of grass on the bank — and small children walking by are asking their mothers why I’m laughing so hard.
“Is there a place on earth left for me?” I wonder. My life is transient, peripatetic. Is there a home, like Carolina:
Perhaps not. But I’ve never been known to be sentimental (admittedly, however, I am — especially about weekends in Central Park, afternoons in Tannens, and those early travels to California, when work was less burdensome and, sadly, profitable) at least, not the way James Taylor seems to be.
But this isn’t really about James Taylor, or, at least, it shouldn’t be. It’s about finding a home. Someplace that doesn’t seem so ridiculous or crowded or frustratingly wet as the world often seems to me. But that might be metaphorical: we sometimes substitute places for things, like people, and, I must say, I haven’t seen many of the people I care about in a long while. (Which one can argue is the point of Fire and Rain.)
When I lived in Cromwell, a town of 10,000 in nowhere, Connecticut, I was in a marching band. I played tenor sax with Rosario, a gelled Italian kid with a mouth full of braces, who was a great friend of me, teaching me the greatest lesson I ever learned about woodwinds: flat is fuck, sharp is shit. Rosario explained that if the notes are sharp, it means “shit,” and you have to pull the mouthpiece out a bit, because shit comes out. (Fuck, if you’re not aware, means shoving it in.)
And those dazzling spats you see in the This Too Shall Pass video are similar to what I wore to keep horse shit out of my shoe many a time (bands love marching behind horses, everywhere, in every event, and the fat tuba girl gives you the evil eye whenever you’re out of step, and that’s scary enough to keep you from jumping or sidestepping the steaming poo).
Which speaks nothing of how I am now. I eschew rigidity and conformity (I am, after all, a hypnotist who cannot sleep).
I cannot say much for the song, which I think is just “fair” in terms of artistic merit (”it was a good try”), but this Gaga video, my god, what a vision. It’s one of those things that you’re going to think about decades from now.
The Replacements certainly did that with their anti-video for Bastards of Young, which, to me, is like a revolt against the visualization of music, something once revolutionary itself, but had quickly become commercialized, rigid, conformist. (The Lady Gaga video, in contrast, seems to be a comment about the ridiculousness of our pop-obsessed culture.)
And why the analysis… why the music? Well, Kurt Vonnegut says music is proof that god exists. I don’t know about that, but I’ll agree music is indeed proof that something exists. Hope. That the sun will rise tomorrow. That grapes grow sweeter after some rain.
Charlie Sloth: Brooklyn Rap
This is exactly the kind of thing that would play well in Park Slope (or Williamsburg, or Boston — or anywhere else liberal white American culture grows).
Supertramp: The Logical Song
Hey, did you one better today: got some lyrics (and a retro MTV intro).
When I was young it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle; oh it was beautiful, magical…
And all the birds in the trees well they’d be singing so happily; oh joyfully, oh playfully, watching me…
But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, oh responsible, practical…
And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical.There are times when all the world’s asleep… the questions run too deep… for such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned. I know it sounds absurd. Please tell me who I am…(I say) now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh fanatical, criminal.
Oh won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable, respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable…
Whoa (tick, tick, ticka, yeah)But at night, when all the world’s asleep… the questions run so deep… for such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned. I know it sounds absurd.
But please tell me who I am — who I am — who I am — who I am
Jim Croce: I got a name
Record companies keep an (unfortunate) stranglehold on music (see: yesterday’s post). Which is sad to me, because it reflects poorly on our society as a whole. (However: Zac Efron reflects poorly upon our society as a whole.)
This may help a bit:
Old Spice-y
Fantastic Old Spice commercial (just great writing):
My right foot.
Living with plantar fasciitis is like living with a two-legged dog: walks in the park are never the same. It started two years ago, in Bangkok, when I felt like walking everywhere, every day, until my feet ached with exhaustion. I thought it would go away but months before I had completed a training regimen where I gained 12 pounds of muscle — and that’s when my feet started planning their revenge.
Basically, it’s like this: it feels as if someone has driven a nail into the bottom of my foot. And it’s there all the time, every day. Over the last two years, the left foot has improved greatly, while the right foot has gotten progressively worse. And that kind of pain, it should be known, leads one to consider things only hippies and hipsters would dare consider, things like barefoot running:
And wear shoes old women and small children would consider ridiculous:
The Strings That Bind Us.
I spend most weekends listening to Chrissi rant about String Theory and the horrors of advanced particle physics. Sometimes, when I catch myself paying attention, I learn something. One thing he’s turned me onto recently is Columbia physicist (and fellow Stuyvesant alum) Brian Greene. Greene is one of individuals who are very obviously good at what they do.
String Theory is one of those things only a handful of minds in the world can grasp with depth and Greene, in the following clip, hints at just how massive his must be:
And, if there’s any remaining doubt about Greene’s awesomeness, let it be known that he did Letterman.
My Chemical Romance: I Don’t Love You
My Chemical Romance is a band most rare: consistent, gutsy, and well burnished. Their musical sensibility is, at times, breathtaking.
Wal-Mart makes a funny.
Run during the AFC championship game:
Owl City: Fireflies
I heard this over Christmas, in New York, driving on the LIE, thinking “Deathcab for Cutie finally made something I can listen to.”
Empire State of Mind
These are two people who, simply, understand the ethos of New York.
Babies
This looks fantastic. (Seriously.)
An American Christmas
This is what I’m missing.
If you didn’t already know, that’s Cliffs of Dover — one of the greatest solos, ever. Look:
The Darkness: I believe in a thing called love.
Fantastic, gutsy guitar riffs. You need that. Right now.
Lo, the sad face of America’s future.
Harvard Quidditch.
Danzig: Mother
Because you need it.
Dunham is no dummy.
Jeff Dunham is featured in today’s NY Times Magazine.
If you’re not familiar with (probably) the world’s best comedian, then Achmed the Dead Terrorist is a good study of Dunham’s impeccable timing and rhythm.
Sexy fMRI
Pek Van Andel, winner of the Ignobel Prize, gives us the best money shot ever:
Guillermo’s Vampires
Guillermo del Toro contemplates vampires in this op-ed piece for the Times. Prescient in a way, with Daybreakers and New Moon coming out: