December 2009
87 posts
Unanimous reaction to "Hard Knock Life" in the...
“Nope, hasn’t been long enough yet.”
Proof that "The Simpsons" has had a significant...
I get a little anxious trying to remember whether or not you’re supposed to hang your toilet paper in the “overhand fashion.” (Note: overhand is improper.)
Albums '00s →
koganbot:
I have made a decision for the remainder of 2009 to listen to no more Albums I Haven’t Heard Yet. So, a trifle early, here is my decade’s end albums list: Top Ten Albums Of The ’00s 1. Ashlee Simpson Autobiography
2. Montgomery Gentry Carrying On
3. Big & Rich Horse Of A Different Color
4. Britney Spears Blackout
5. t.A.T.u. Dangerous & Moving
6. Various Artists Global...
“Hands down, end of discussion, no contest, the single shittiest phrase of the...”
– Michaelangelo Matos, A Regrettable Decade in Music
One thousand times yes.
(via maura)
I do think “hater” is annoying. Though at the same time, I don’t think that this is giving the people being labeled “hater” little enough credit — at least part of this...
Best Albums of the Decade [Matt Cibula] →
This is probably the best decade list I’ve read so far. Matt Cibula of various places (including his own, Cave17, a site I’m, ahem, supposed to be writing for but am too lazy uh…busy to do so) draws no distinction between niche pick and consensus pick, but doesn’t come off as disingenuously contrarian. And above all he makes me want to actually listen to some of this stuff!...
The 30 Most Important Cats of 2009 →
(via tristn)
I’ve only made one cat movie myself — the first installment of my Apparcatus Theory series (Part 1: “Superbowl Sammy”).
Apparcatus theory, reductively, posits that when presented with (1) an engaging piece of screen media and (2) a cat, a viewer will always choose to focus on the cat. The first installment, however, explores how we track media temporality...
UbuWeb Sound: DJ Food - "Reading the 20th Century... →
Impressionistic mash-up clusterfuck echoing (if not technically “inspired by”) Paul Morley’s “Words & Music” — like Plunderphonics without the smug bastid baggage or Girl Talk without the “hey neat, but lemme just punch this dude in the face real quick” baggage. Hadn’t heard this before now.
Phil Spector Guilty of Crazy Hair, Murder (May...
Uh, Billboard, I don’t think that was quite the most appropriate spot for a “crazy hair” joke.
Holy crap, Billboard: “Elliott Smith Ends Life With Steak Knife (October 21, 2003)” PUT THE WORDPLAY DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERNET.
Conscious, deliberate effort →
koganbot:
Convo between J0hn D. and Weingarten over on the ILM US #1s thread after J0hn calls himself “out of the loop” for not recognizing any of the songs to hit #1 this year. Convo doesn’t go anywhere, of course (and other than that convo, the thread is the usual boring little shots and quips), but it did get me thinking about my own in-loopsiness/out-of-loopsiness etc.
I’ve been a...
'You’re cruel and you are constant'
chainofknives:
foreignaffair:
I’m not saying Vic Chesnutt would be alive today if universal health care existed in the United States. But I am saying he could have died with a bit more dignity.
[snip]
“… Chesnutt, 45, who lived in Athens, was partially paralyzed from a car crash when he was 18 and used a wheelchair. … The New York Times, citing a family spokesman, said Chesnutt overdosed on...
So far...
My “Um, no.” blog experiment is yielding some perplexing and/or terrifying results! Needs followers (hint).
Text vs. Production
It’s perhaps relevant to note the various injustices required to film blockbusters generally (e.g. Titanic) when talking about any possible textual readings of a given blockbuster — perhaps CGI has mitigated some of the real damage done by blockbuster production to local communities but just as an example, here are some quotes from Global Hollywood 2 on how Titanic made a lasting...
Avatar's 90's Futurism
[Spoiler alerts]
Saw Avatar last night and quite liked it as a kinda-sorta swashbuckler (of the neo-Western tradition, full of all the same potential political-read hurdles; though any commentary was too vague to scan as much of anything but “genre”).
What interested me most, though, was how distinctly NOT 21st-century it was, in almost any sense except the overcoming of certain...
“If you’ve been to private art school or perused NYLON, you’ve seen girls like...”
– The Anthropology of Anthropologie
It’s not easy to write about a perceived class of people who make you feel extremely insecure with thoughtful lucidity, but I think Arianna Stern manages that delicate balancing act nicely in this essay.
(via perpetua)
Further, I think that this blurb better...
From the TED speakers list: "Sheryl Crow's... →
girlboymusic:
cureforbedbugs:
maura:
God help us all.
Sheryl Crow, particularly through her early-decade work with John Shanks, has been an important figure in teen confessional (roughly (Vol. 1) Michelle Branch—Pink/Perry—Avril —> (Vol. 2) Ashlee/Kelly/Lindsay —> (Vol. 3) P!nk mk 2-Katy-…who else am I forgetting in the new guard, aside from Taylor Swift who seems to have shifted the...
Um, no. →
“Um, no.” is live!
From the TED speakers list: "Sheryl Crow's... →
aceterrier:
cureforbedbugs:
maura:
God help us all.
Sheryl Crow, particularly through her early-decade work with John Shanks, has been an important figure in teen confessional (roughly (Vol. 1) Michelle Branch—Pink/Perry—Avril —> (Vol. 2) Ashlee/Kelly/Lindsay —> (Vol. 3) P!nk mk 2-Katy-…who else am I forgetting in the new guard, aside from Taylor Swift who seems to have shifted the...
From the TED speakers list: "Sheryl Crow's... →
maura:
God help us all.
Sheryl Crow, particularly through her early-decade work with John Shanks, has been an important figure in teen confessional (roughly (Vol. 1) Michelle Branch—Pink/Perry—Avril —> (Vol. 2) Ashlee/Kelly/Lindsay —> (Vol. 3) P!nk mk 2-Katy-…who else am I forgetting in the new guard, aside from Taylor Swift who seems to have shifted the...
Stop The Pazz and Jresses
tomewing:
Hold on, TATU’s third English-language album came out LAST WEEK? And I had no idea? Despite both their other ones being AMAZING?
I can consider myself a failure as both critic and Internet perv :(
I checked this out, too — it’s just their previously mostly-Russian release from ‘07/’08 (“Happy Smiles”) with a few new tracks, not really their best...
New project
The Tumblr “Um, no.” in which I document every time someone on the internet uses the phrase “Um, no.” as its own sentence. It would encompass:
—Paul Krugman responding to the assertion that warnings about housing bubble crashes in California in the 90’s were false, hence not predictive of larger future collapses (like the one that actually happened).
—...
In the next decade
Can we please announce a moratorium on the “parents’ basement” epithet for bloggers? It’s so MODEM.
The Blogger Problem (to the extent there is one — I’d argue we have a much much bigger Journalism Problem to worry about as far as public writing goes, but hey) is a confluence of poor reasoning and researching skills, shoddy analysis, and basic lack of reading...
Reading end-of-decade lists before the end of the...
…Is a bit like watching Oliver Stone’s W. — you feel like there’s something missing here, the experience is more meta than meat. When I saw that film in the theater, there was some experiential value, but the film itself rang hollow, like a cartoon (and a toothless one at that). I was focusing more on the act of watching it itself than what was actually happening —...
“It’s probably going to get annoying to keep reading me talk about just how...”
– Andrew Unterberger on “Crank Dat Soulja Boy” (via screwrocknroll)
And yet by dint of being released after c. 2005/6 there is no way that the true weirdness of this (or many other) songs will register in quite the same way as it might’ve in days past. But maybe not — I imagine...
I rode a lotta els
From the latest installment of “Me: The Decade” (The college years! 2003: Cooler Kids):
Me: The weirder aspect of [making a “child-appropriate mix”] was determining appropriateness of songs based on lyrical context that no one else might get — there’s a drug reference in “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” (I rolled a lotta L’s) and...
“Drink in My Cup” stands as 2009’s finest drinking song, its vertiginous, woozy...”
– Alex MacPherson, The Guardian
I’ve seen “Drink…” described elsewhere as a drinking song, and I can’t agree. It sounds to me as if Electrik Red, with their screwed-up vocals and, yes, “woozy synths,” have created a promethazine song. In pop music, unlike rap, “drank” doesn’t usually mean “drank,”...
Can't you hear me yell-a / You're puttin' me...
“Simpsons” Season 4 is encouraging me to upload the abridged musical portion of a play I wrote and directed in high school, in which a hack director puts up a musical version of Casablanca. Y/N?
“No wonder Yeezy wants everyone to think he’s a dick. It’s less pressure than...”
– Rob Sheffield on Kanye West, Rolling Stone (Issue 1094/1095, Dec. 24, 2009-Jan. 7, 2010) (via johnmayerwillchangeyourlife)
Note to self: catch up with Rob Sheffield’s writing NOW.
“We’ve been dying to introduce photo galleries to add a new dimension to our...”
– Welcome To The New Idolator « Idolator: Music News, Reviews, And Gossip
They mean “to get cheap clicks,” right?
(via desnoise)
Hilariously (if sadly) representative move — THEY CLEANED UP THE MURDER SCENE BEHIND THE HEART. Did they have to pick little pieces of brain and skull...
???
agrammar:
cureforbedbugs:
But if that’s the case, then I think this 21-year-old is seriously deluded (and I’m pretty sure dude’s like 30, so WTF are you still doing on the precipice [of adulthood], dude?).
Semi-confidential to cureforbedbugs: I don’t know exactly how old you are, or exactly how old Amanda Petrusich is, and sometimes I even forget exactly how old I am, though I think it’s safe...
Ashlee Simpson, "La La"
girlboymusic:
cureforbedbugs:
Started writing about this a bit in the inevitable Ashlee inclusion in F2K (I happen to know Maura hates this song, so fair ‘nuff). First I should point out that in a strange way I welcome her inclusion in “worst ofs,” only because I know she’s not going to hit any best ofs and this will at least provide a better-publicized way to talk about Ashlee’s first album...
I am listening to the theme song of the Never...
desnoise:
rosasparks:
Your musical choices are invalid much better than mine.
Giorgio Moroder co-writing credit! You win.
SCOOOOOOOOOOOTER! TO THREEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDD
EDIT: At the risk of screwing up everyone’s Tumblr dashboard, I have reduced my enthusiasm for Scooter by about 12%. But ONLY for the purposes of this post.
Ashlee Simpson, "La La"
Started writing about this a bit in the inevitable Ashlee inclusion in F2K (I happen to know Maura hates this song, so fair ‘nuff). First I should point out that in a strange way I welcome her inclusion in “worst ofs,” only because I know she’s not going to hit any best ofs and this will at least provide a better-publicized way to talk about Ashlee’s first album at...
The false maturity of your mid-20's
Jonathan asks an excellent question in response to my hasty and semi-unfair (eh, I can live with it) “My Girls” follow-up:
What are some excellent songs about leaving the false maturity of one’s middle twenties?
Talking Heads deal with this in interesting ways, like “Up All Night.” Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” comes to mind. But I am having...
PSA
screwrocknroll:
cureforbedbugs:
My Top 20:
4. Taylor Swift - Fearless
I know I’m a jerk for doing this, but I just have to:
November 11 2008
There was plenty of time to fall in love with this album last year, critics. If you slept, you slept. But this wasn’t a 2009 album, as all these people knew.
Yeah, I cheated, SO WHAT. Did the same thing last year with the Veoronicas! Anyway, this...
???
screwrocknroll:
cureforbedbugs:
“…in some ways, “My Girls” feels like a life preserver for people tottering on the precipice of adulthood. Panda Bear might be apologetic about his craving (“I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things,” he hedges), but “My Girls” is ultimately a celebration of the simplification— of desire, of priorities— that comes with growing up.”
From the Pfork...
???
“…in some ways, “My Girls” feels like a life preserver for people tottering on the precipice of adulthood. Panda Bear might be apologetic about his craving (“I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things,” he hedges), but “My Girls” is ultimately a celebration of the simplification— of desire, of priorities— that comes with...
Damn it, Priscilla Renea, why can’t you have...
Final round of listening before compiling my Top...
For reference, here is my list of albums I’ve liked/disliked with my tentative top 20.
The Very Best - Warm Heart of Africa
Sleigh Bells - s/t [This is Sasha Frere-Jones’s album of the year but I can’t confirm it exists…all I know of is a 5-song EP]
Dude ‘n’ Nem - Tinted Incubators [OK clearly this doesn’t exist either. COME ON, SFJ. Thx for the MOP...
From Arcade to Ashlee: Interview with David Cooper... →
Just did a (long) interview with Scott Woods at RockCritics.com in which we talked about how I ended up dippin’ my toes into the rock critical waters, how I started to dig Skye Sweetnam, how I got into a fight that one time with Simon Reynolds, and Ashlee Simpson Ashlee Simpson Ashlee Simpson. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to have me talk to/at you for an hour, click...
Deep Thought
thisisareallybadidea:
I do not understand how people can live in major cities and support themselves with writing/comedy/hourly job stocking shelves/training at my Bally’s. I would freak out if I didn’t know where my next 26 paychecks were coming from. Sorry, dream of living off my wits and my sparkling personality.
Ha.
As I recently said in an interview, I’d hate for music writing...
my ideal lilith fair bill from the artists... →
maura:
• erykah badu
• mary j. blige
• tegan & sara
• miranda lambert
• metric
• PLEASE GOD NOT SHERYL CROW, YUCK
I would love to see Sheryl Crow live! <—yes, this is all I could manage to Tumbl today.
Is Taylor Swift Being Set Up For A Fall? - Taylor... →
chainofknives:
This was brought to my attention, and there’s really only one thing I can say to all the feminist bloggers bashing Swift: this is not a marketing construct. She really is that wholesome. And the girls who love her, the disparaged teenage girls? Many, many, many of them are that wholesome, too. Taylor Swift (tm) is not an attack on feminism; she’s not enforcing the patriarchy....