CDs>Drop>TheyDon'tComeOutLikeGays

I didn't buy this because Timbo's juicin. The grammy should have an asterisk

New shit:

in a rash spending frenzy brought on by a recurring childhood trauma involving fish tacos, He-Man, and Daryl Strawberry, I copped both the new TV on the Radio and the new Yo La Tengo. TVOTR's is called Return to Cookie Mountain and its cover art looks like a sinister bird's nest or something. Kool Keith was obviously behind both decisions. It's poised to claim album of the year honors from people who still think indie rock is, like, the serious shit--just about everything I read about it when it came out in the UK a few weeks ago was slobbering helmet buff [1]. So naturally I had to have the actual cd to blast in my Altima (so that when I stop at a red light and some cornshit's blastin Timbuh (lake + land) I can yell at him: "these guys are black!") I've done all that and frankly It doesn't live up to critical hype. It is very good, but like the other TVOTR records, its is a cold, cold thing. I might be more into it if there were a few guitar solos or something, or a guest verse by Young Joc, but as it is, RTCM is a mass of grey fuzz and very high singing by the guy with the huge beard. Worth owning, but it's not like they just dropped Van Halen.

YLT's is called I'm Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass and it looks cool. Its red and shiny and shit. Me like shiny. My dream is that people who listen to rap realize that YLT are great, even though they sometimes sound like happyfuntime music, which makes XXL cover-scowls impossible. This might never happen, unless a Best of NJ album drops, with Redman and Joe Budden trading verses over a languorous YLT baile-funk track. Man would I ever listen to that. Anyway, INAOYAIWBYA starts out with 11 minutes of guitar noise, but there's a beat behind it, so don't get your My Bloody Valentine Thong [2] in a bunch. Plus, there are 15 tracks, you're allowed to masturbate lazily on one of them. There are a couple of bangers (relatively fast songs) in here, notably "I Should Have Known Better." Currently "Stockholm Syndrome" from I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the most played song on my iPod, but I can see "I Should Have Known Better" overtaking it. [3]

[1] This is the same thing that happened with last year's undisputed champion, Late Registration, which was so universally and inexplicably adored by critics. I bought it, liked it for a while cuz it after has fucking beats on it, but then I realized what critics willingly ignored: that Kanye is barely a mediocre rapper. And there was all this "oh it's ok that he's so cocky cuz he backs it up!" and "Kanye was so funny on The College Dropout but now he's gonna get serious and give us some heavy messages," such as the fact that the CIA obviously makes crack and floods the ghetto with it. Then he's on the cover of Rolling Stone as Jesus and not joking AT ALL. That would have been okay only if Lil Kim was also on there as the Virgin Mary. Now I can't listen to that album and I can't look at him without being desirous of a mace with which to bludgeon him ("Through the Wire" was a good song). Rockist critics just wanted sooooooo badly to embrace a rap album and call it a break through masterpiece. Funny they chose one that's barely decent.

[2] Two references to thongs in two posts! Someone needs to switch to hot pants.

[3] I follow my most played iPod list like HR stats. "Pavement hit two more this weekend, probably played the Royals;" "That GZA song hit one the other night, man that shit has been around since Julio Franco. Ha, he hit one too. Guy's 48! I repeat, 48!"

S.P. News

Bizarre, awesome. Apparently it's a trilogy.

Manohla Dargis doesn't like "The Black Dahlia." Scarlett weeps, leaves Hartnett, declares love for canine blogger.

I'm sure my boy Steve wouldn't have wanted to be commemorated like this...

Watch college football this weekend.

Peedi Peedi stands up for Jay-Z. Peedi Peedi is a good rapper.

I used to check this site back in the day for gear...apparently after I stopped paying attention they stepped their game up a bit. Just a bit.

At Times I See the Mirror and Tell Him He Doin Good

Awesome

Rap on the internet is weird. If you frequent the massive blogspace devoted to hip-hop, you probably encounter the same four or five basic threads over and over again, no matter where you visit. You've inevitably been exposed to the neverending rumor mill surrounding the potential release of a new Jay-Z album. You've heard of Lupe Fiasco, who is good, but I refuse to believe that this amount of hype was ever good for anyone. You've been informed as to who (whom?) Jim Jones is threatening to beat up this week, or who's the latest G-Unit affiliate who'll never release an album. I could go on and on; point is, very, very little room is devoted to actual music, and unless these bloggers cop on to themselves, I see the whole thing imploding in a mind-numbing maelstrom of shit like this. Ish like that (this?) seems harmless at first, but it's starting to piss me off. Shouldn't Raekwon be more worried about making sure that Cuban Linx Part 2 doesn't suck than about beating Mike Jones at golf? I was at the Wu-Tang show in Philly when Ghostface called out D4L for contributing to the demise of real hip-hop or whatever. That clip of Rae on the 'way, when you consider it in the context of Ghost's comments, is sort of troubling -- why did he feel the need to get on some bullshit XXL DVD to putter around a golf course? To be funny? Or is it a move he felt the need to make, in an age when it's nearly impossible for rappers to sell major numbers without marketing the piss out of themselves? I mean, literally -- like, marketing their piss. When the beat to "Laffy Taffy" came on at the Electric Factory in Philly, in a typical maneuver, I leaned into my best Fabo impression and paid little attention to what Pretty Toney was saying. Ghost was in the middle of his Fishscale promotional stuff at the time, and for the couple of weeks after the show, I kept hearing cats asking him about his comments. Unsprisingly, he took the diplomatic stance that he wasn't trying to hate, he just loves hip-hop so much, he thinks southern rap is cool, blahzy blah. I forgot about the whole thing until I saw that stupid golf video.

I'm not so ridiculous as to be in denial of the fact that tracks with simple beats and formulaic videos outsell more involved stuff 99% of the time. I was just unaware that someone like Raekwon would feel the need to jockey for screentime with the guy who made this song and signed D4L (and Tigger? Tigger from Rap City???). I thought the dudes from the Clan didn't need that type of exposure, thanks to nerds like me who check for Wu-Tang records like they check for the latest Woody Allen. What I'm saying is, when the nerds with the blogs are the ones not paying attention, it starts to look a little grim for our boys. It's not just Wu-Tang, either (but can we please get a second single off Fishscale? No? Thanks a lot. "Back Like That" really does the album justice); the new Oh No album, Exodus Into Unheard Rhythms, is really nice, and the new Ras Kass could be phenomenal. If you don't spend a lot of time in record stores, hovering over CD racks, you have no idea. The online press (not sure if bloggers count, but for the sake of this, I'm including them) has a responsibility to report on new music, for the sake of consumers and artists, and I'm not seeing it.

Time's come to stop talking empty shit. Furman P. Slothra and Sordid Puppy are dedicated to keeping it real. Foodmantooth will prevail. After all, I'm trying to get some cheddar so I can grab a pair of these...

Birdman and Lil Wayne - Stuntin Like My Daddy

It ain't even my birthday, but I got my name on the cake.

Fashion>BrokenRibs>Footloose

Beard by David Ortiz, soulpatch by Kevin Youkilis, mustache by Don Mattingly

Let's see what Slothra's been up to recently:

Being the resourceful, well-connected Slothra that I am, I parlayed my gaffer's collar-popper position on The Hills into a job in the mailroom at Teen Vogue, where I subsequently and inadvertantly (sorta) threw a Netflick (Cannonball Run II) into the eye of Blaine, the guy on The Hills who looks like that guy in Maroon 5 who hangs out with Kanye and tells him his lyrics are "as good as anything since Mase" [1] Canned unflinchingly by Blaine, I told him on the way out that "you probably made up your own name anyway" and then he hit me in the back of the head with what, when I first turned around, looked like a ball of multi-colored rubbber bands. I looked closer at the post-it note that was stuck to it. The post-it read "ball of LC's thongs." "Heidi was hotter anyway" I snarled after the door to his office was already closed and the fat guy from Fresh Meat who said he was "all taters" put his hand on my shoulder saying "sir you may never set foot in this office again." So fuck Teen Vogue, I thought, I'm gonna go freelance. For my first teen style report, I shall run through some new trends in the teen fashion world.

Spandex leggings:

Yo girls be totally wearin spandex, cuz after all, the 80s are the new 60s and the previously medium cool 70s are totally the new 30s (wide-waled Al Capone pinstripe has been out of fashion twice). Also, textile technology has crept into the sexy cipher. Feel free to compliment some tightly clad stems walking on by by saying: "yo girl, that stretch is fetching." Such linguistic dexterity and trendy cognizance will surely lead to slathering butter on her shoulders and sprinkling cinnamon on her ears. Knock-knees and kankles need not apply.

Primary-colored gardening clogs:

Someone told me these were actually for doctors, but we all remember the wearing-scrubs-but-you-ain't-got-no-MD debacle of '97, so I'm callin em gardening clogs for their own sake. They seem to be made of rubber or foam or one of those materials that kills rain forests and kids with allergies [2]. They are only sold in primary colors, like yellow, green and neon lavender (ha, totally not a primary color!). You can wear them on the way to buy cigarettes, to campus, or to a "Don't worry coffee makes me sweat too" support group. So its like casual footwear that makes people think that you don't care enough about stuff for bumperstickers.

Corsets:

Victorianism is cool again (replacing the Tudor period which is not cool anymore, except with regard to houses, because construction workers don't read Vogue and we can't hold them accountable), including the whole holding-hands-is-like-oral-sex thing. Heretofore a fetish/goth accouterment, the corset has gone mainstream, popping up at Hockey games, LFO (the Light Funky Ones if you forgot) and ELO concerts both (transgenerational trend alert!) and Family Reunions. The whole family can get involved in little Sally's aestheticized figure, as corsets can require as many as 4 people to tie up, sometimes involving complex ratchetng pulley systems. So like ties, its as much about the process as the product. The new ActiveCorset™ available from Nike, allows you ladies to maintain that 12" waist while playing team handball (or regular handball).

Footnotes:

[1] Because Kanye, in the one of the more inexplicable statements of all time, told Rolling Stone a few years ago that Mase was incontrovertibly (he didn't use this word, he's not Moby, who used the word 'insoucient' on VH1 in reference to M and M and VH1 put a definition on the screen) the best rapper of all time, he was thereafter convinced (according to the supplementary matrix axiom) that he was now the greatest rapper of all time, despite Weezy being the best rapper alive, TI being King and Game being rap's MVP. Man, Rap should hang out with Boxing.

[2] I'm told that rubber comes from trees, which I'm not sure I believe. I mean, how can something so bendy come from a plant? If this is true, then part of that ball of LC's thongs came from a plant. I wonder if LC knows she's a raging hippie.

Skyzoo - Way To Go

Dre Day

Andre Agassi's career as a professional tennis badass is officially over. He lost three sets to one to some guy named Becker who's not even this Becker (My aunt, a tennis nut, sort of coerced me into reading that book. It's terrible.). No, some upstart named Benjamin thought he'd come and ruin a legend's run at what would have been the greatest career-ending championship by any athlete that I can remember.

S. Canario is no hater, but this cachorro is just sad that his boy had to go out like that, beaten by some nobody in a match whose sets were tight but by the numbers wasn't really close. Andre was the last of a generation of great characters in tennis, one that included Goran Ivanisevic, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Michael Stich, and Pete Sampras. Rivalries were strong, and personalities simultaneously bizarre and engaging. Sure, Sampras was sort of a bore and never had anything even passably interesting to say in front of a camera, but he was probably the best to ever play the sport. Becker was basically an asshole, but intensely entertaining to watch, and Ivanisevic a Croatian giant who came runner-up (or worse) like it was his job but remains legendary for his awesome serve. All the while, Agassi was the man, a real (Armenian-) American rock star come to piss off the easily pissed off.

Andre Agassi, you are hereby Foodmantooth Certified. Congratulations. Award ceremony to follow.

Confetti>Makes>EverythingBetter

Hi, we are rock n roll dieties.

Sonic Youth is probably my favorite rock band of all time. Sometimes Pavement sneaks ahead, but that's only when I'm in a good enough mood to think non-sense is sense, and the Youth usually pulls back out ahead when I compare Malkmus' solo work with the last three SN albums. They've been around for about 25 years, they're all pushing 50, and somehow they're pretty much the most unimpeachably cool band around. Their last 3 albums are all among their best, which is saying something for a band that released their seminal shit in the early 80's. Plus, Chuck D raps in one of their songs. Remember, even though she hung out with Fab 5 Freddy, Debbie Harry had to do it herself. To add to the Youth's stellar post-millennial output, there came the (relatively) new full-length Rather Ripped, which is a conspicuously tight affair, with more hooks and little loops than Velcro.

The last and only time I saw the Youth live was a long time ago when they opened for Pearl Jam. My friends didn't even know who Sonic Youth was, and despite my insistence that they were much better than Pearl Jam, everyone was more concerned with getting wasted in the parking lot than catching the coolest band ever. So tragically, by the time I convinced my crew to get going, the Youth were finishing their set. So needless to say, when I saw they were playing the NY state fair, I was determined anew to actually see the beginning of a SN set (plus I was given an excuse to see "Big Norm" the prized 1600 pound hog). Well, I improved, and this time I caught part of the middle, and all of the end. And I wasn't alone. Everyone I knew at the show was there to see the Youth as much as the opener, The Flaming Lips. The show was set to start at 5:00, and the bill was The Magic Numbers (who gives a fuck), Ween (I don't like Zappa enough to be excited about them), the Youth, and the Lips. We got to the venue at about 6:30, which I figured was in plenty of time. But NooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo. WEEN IS HIGHER ON THE FUCKING BILL! WHAT THE FUCK? Ween higher then Sonic Youth. That's like batting a largemouth bass in front of Ricky Henderson (the bass has a bigger strikezone). So the Youth is playing when I get to the venue. I see then play three songs, the last, "Pink Steam" from Ripped Thurston introduces like this: "this song is about getting food poisoning yesterday in Allentown, PA." Half the crowd hadn't even shown up yet, it was still daylight, and besides a guy with a cowboy hat who was dancing around in paroxysms (who was later arrested), the crowd didn't have enough $4.50 beers in them to go nuts like they should have been. Three fucking songs. Fuck.

Ween is a bizarre band. The singer sings like an Axl Rose cartoon (which is saying something because Axl Rose is already a cartoon), and they try to play every genre of music at the same time, which I guess is a joke. Approximately 20 people in the crowd were singing along to ever song, which astounded my, since I didn't think there were 20 people in the world who knew all the words to a Ween song.

I have to give it to the Lips. They make better use of balloons, confetti and dancing female Santa Clauses than...a bachelor party at the North Pole. The set was OK, but the theatrics almost made up for it. Confetti shot out of these huge cannons at climactic moments, the biggest balloons I've ever bounced around in the crowd during the whole set, and the roadies were dressed like superheroes, Space Ghost included. Also, Wayne Coyne came out wearing these prodigious foam hands. The video backdrop showed the Teletubbies, some Asian game show involving what looked like a Gila Monster, and a naked chick dancing around. Awesome. Too bad Sonic Youth wasn't playing when all this was going on, instead of a band that asked me if I realize that everyone around me will die at some point. Duh!

S.P. News

*Excuse the above endorsement. The season begins this weekend. One time only: Go Big Red.

Oh hell yes. I hope you're all supporting this man.

A violent end for our commander in chief. On television.

A man after my own heart.

Bad F*&%in Move, I Reckon

I switched on the VMAs last night and found it a generally boring and characterless affair; Ludacris and Pharrell (who I'm sure was lip-syncing) performed a lifeless rendition of "Money Maker," which is a really shit song to begin with. I subsequently tuned out.

Deadwood may be the best television program I've ever seen. Earlier this week or last, I'm sure I called Homicide the greatest TV show of all time, and I stand by that. However, having seen -- no, felt -- the Deadwood Season Three finale the other night, it's definitely unparalleled. Except maybe by Homicide, that is...I guess I'd say that Homicide and Deadwood are the best TV show (singular) of all time.

It's with great sadness, then, that I report that Deadwood probably won't be back for a fourth go-round. David Milch, the genius behind the show, originally drew up the story in four parts, one for each of four seasons, but it now appears that his vision won't be coming to fruition -- at least, that is, not as he intended. Apparently he and HBO have come to an agreement to put out two two-hour movies on the network to wrap up the story; that would amount to one-third of the run-time that a 12-episode season affords. Some people have set up a website to petition HBO, but the odds of that working out seem slim. Ever since I fell in love with Deadwood, I've always wondered how many people it's been able to attract; my buddies who watch Entourage say it's boring and confusing. I say it's masterfully written and beautifully shot, its narrative finely crafted and its scenes packed with tension and energy.

An article I read describing this debacle descibes HBO as "behaving more like a normal network these days." That seems a bit off to me; shouldn't the normal networks be acting more like HBO, and not the other way around? In the past several years, shows like The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Entourage have made a TV with HBO a necessary accessory for college dorm rooms and frat houses. That's significant, because it's the original series, then, that have done most to give HBO the spectacular success that it now enjoys. Rome, Deadwood, and The Wire, HBO's recent dramatic lineup, are all ambitious and utimately risky projects that have helped round out the network's televisual fare, and they're all great in their own right.

When the HBO Original Series brand name became a force to be reckoned with, creatively and commercially, several years ago, I felt part of a new era in television, one where the consumer was empowered to pay a premium to view uncensored and commercial-free programming of a higher quality than practically anything else on network or cable TV. Slowly but surely, thought I, new networks and shows would crop up to compete with HBO, and the fracas would produce a steady stream of wholly original material that would make me pleased with my tube. Instead, Deadwood, the most creative of all, has been assassinated, and I wait to see what will take its place. As The Sopranos crawls agonizingly slowly towards its own resolution, it may be up to The Wire (are they making new seasons of Rome?) to carry HBO drama on its back. Maybe I'll just move on to watching Showtime's The Brotherhood; I've heard good things. Deadwood is gone, and I can't get over it; I haven't been this broken up since Ellsworth got capped.

Drugs>Pigs>TheBelz

I can't believe the guy who plays Stringer is British. That's like finding out that Dan Marino is actually a snapping turtle.

The prodigal slothra returns! My lack of internet juice has kept me out of the blogging game, and my ethernet wire's still dead, but I should be back up like Bacon in Flatliners before you can say "Shizzam Bangles."

Hey speaking of wires, I ploughed through the third season of The Wire in two days this week. By the end, when Stringer gets capped by Omar and Brother Mouzon, I was might as well have been a junkie in Baltimore Robbing Tom Breihan's parents and tagging after Bubbles like the kid from Kids. I was immersed like I was Echo the Dolphin. (Speaking of everyone's favorite Voice rap blogger, I recently found out that he's 6' 11". Not so recently, I found out that he needs to stop using adjectives like "gorgeous" and "syrupy" when describing music. Indeed, Hemingway's ghost and the adjective police need to SWAT that boy). Even though the Wire isn't even the best police procedure drama set in Baltimore, it's probably the second best show on TV now (gotta give the edge to Deadwood). While it never quite acheives the level of cinematic perfection that it's HBO siblings sometimes do, it's more fun to watch in a lot of ways, and in its treatment of the Drug trade, portraying it as the complex business operation it is, is thrillingly new ground (no matter what the Puppy says, Belly doens't quite do it, although I havn't seen Killa Season, so maybe I shouldn't be making jumping to conclusions). After watching all three seasons of The Wire this summer, I realized that the chances of me ever watching an episode of Law and Order again are about the same as the chances of my ascendancy to the throne of England.

Termanology - Watch How It Go Down

Gnarls Barkley - Smiley Faces

Seth Green shouts out Jackson Pollock, gets punched

Congrats, but Please No More Bobby Brown-Ja Rule Collabos...

This sort of flew under the radar, considering how big a deal it was...

Go Go Gadget Genremaker

Procrustean F. Manhandles, blogger new jack and general pookie-about-town, reps D.C., sordid puppies, and Go Go music. I don't know what Go Go is, but its regional popularity reminds me of hyphy and B More, who are similar only in that neither style will ever blow up on a national scale. E-40 is hyphy, I guess, although it seems like he just decided that recently; I doubt seriously that anyone hearing Hall of Game would have predicted that this guy would one day be called an architect of a scene that produces acts like Rick Rock's apostles, Federation. Plus, "U and Dat," unquestionably E-40's biggest hit of all time, bears no resemblance whatsoever to hyphy, save perhaps for those kids with dreadlocks that shook their heads around one too many times and now find it impossible to stop doing so. So I guess the Ballatician wanted to help these upstarts get noticed -- he namedrops hyphy all the time now (as well as the fact that he invented such phrases as "Good Morning," "How's it going?" etc.) -- or maybe he was just hoping to jump on the bandwagon (or Vespa, or whatever) and finally get the sales he's always deserved. Don't get me wrong -- I like Rick Rock and I really like E-40 and Too Short is the MAN but besides these two aging pimps and a beatmaker who's making plenty of scratch making beats for Busta Rhymes, is there anything more to the Bay Area's rap scene right now than putting your car in gear and getting out of it so it drives itself down the road? I mean, it's hard not to draw up a trend's obit when its new product is an outfit of teenagers that you'll probably see on Nickelodeon in the not too distant future. If you like this song, it's only because you made the mistake of never buying real sneakers as a kid, are now stuck with a load of these, and the track makes you feel all right about it.

Speaking of the Bay Area, the NYTimes seems to think Oakland's not such a great spot at the moment...

I'm not quite sure what to say about B More Club Music, because like Go Go and Hyphy, I don't really know what it is (I know even less about whether to capitalize the names of recklessly invented musical subgenres). I thought Spank Rock was going to be the first big name to come out of the scene, but then I heard that they're not even from Baltimore (or if they are, they don't live there any more), which I think disqualifies them, and their first album never got big, so that's that. So who else is there? I've heard of a guy named Bossman, but his website says his new joint is dropping soon...in December 2004. Doesn't seem to be much doing there. There's a wikipedia entry re: this stuff that would lead one to believe that this style is dead and gone, though it sounds like when I was still bumpin Raffi this was a great scene. I'm sure Tom Breihan over at the Village Voice would have a great deal to say about all this, being from the gritty streets of Charm City and all, but ever since his careless post "previewing" the new Outkast album, through which he made it perfectly clear that he hadn't opened his ears to the tunes in the first place, I haven't frequented his site. I guess we'll just have to move on...

I'm left, then, with Go Go, of the three certainly the most difficult to really follow (sort of like this post). Go Go Radio's internet stream provides 24/7 access to D.C.-area advertisements and the truly bizarre mash-up (?) music that is Go Go. Mash-up probably isn't the right word -- it's more like if you (can possibly) imagine 80s and early 90s era house beats being pillaged by some guy who's had too many Zimas and is yelling out the hooks and call-and-response bits of every southern rap song or east or west coast rap song that sounds like a southern rap song. These, at least, are the jams that are easy to decipher. Juelz Santana's "Whistle Song" slams into Da Musicianz's "Camera Phone", which bellyflops onto a stirring rendition of the Purple Ribbon All-Stars's "Kryptonite (I'm On It)" that you could have heard at your local karaoke bar on Sunday night. In general, it's just the bits that everyone at the bar would know -- the choruses, as I mentioned before. That's sort of genius, really -- you can be sure that everyone knows the words to every song, so no one has a bad time. Go Go is like karaoke if karoaoke was acknowledged as a musical style unto itself and got you chicks and "respect". Go Go is pretty sweet.

New Flesh - Wherever We Go

MalteseFalcon>BirthCertificates>SitcomAliens

Sydney Greenstreet, right after he ate Humphrey Bogart

First: So it took Lil Wayne to get arrested for having too man Flinstones vitamins to find out that he's 26, not 20 or whatever the myth was. This makes sense, because he has kids and I'm just not sure its humanly possible to have procreated and taken the throne at the South's biggest rap label before acquiring the right to legally order 17 bottles of Cris for for his ho-biting pekonese. Anyway, now I can say I've been listening to him since he was 20, while in reality it was six months ago, when Dwayne did collabo with a Seaver.

Second: DVD Game on:

Brick (2006), Rian Johnson) One of Slothra's favoritos of 2006, even though it should not be good at all--which, of course, makes it better. It stars Joseph Hyphenated-Lastname, the kid from "Third Rock from the Sun" and the Taming of the Shrew remake, Ten Things I Hate About You, which, if you remember, also starred Julia Styles' globe-shaped face and Heathcliff Gaychaps, who little Joey actually resembles in this one. Brick is a homage to Dashell Hammett-style hardboiled cigar chomping, always raining, "see here buster," tricky dame Bogart noir--and a very sincere homage at that. Even setting the movie in present day, where there's nary a Fedora, Bowler, or Stetson to be found outside a Brian Setzer Sporkestra show, is balls from the window to the wall. This guy takes it to the next level, though, and and sets it in goddamn High School. Genre mashing of this sort so easily end up in gimmick land, but ultimately, the movie doesn't give a fuck that the characters are in high school. Johnson uses the skater terrain of California High Schools well, but we never see the kids in school, ands besides one fairly hilarious scene, where one gangster kid's mom offers our hero apple juice while her son, "the pin," (played by dumbo-eared lukas haas) nibbles at a cookie laid out on a napkin, 'rents are nowhere to be found.

Ultimately Brick's driven by the dialogue, which sounds like its written by a cross between Ghostface and Elmore Leonard, and a well constructed plot with more chicanery and backdoor exits than the Nixon Administration. The talk is some of the densest patois this side of Miller's Crossing. Indeed, the director admitted the Coens' own twisty-plot faux-noir as an influence. But while the Coens mostly just wanted to dress up Gabriel Byrne in finely tailored suits and have him say stuff like "take your flunky and dangle"--all with half a tongue in their cheek, Brick ain't joking around much. Like Miller's, the movie makes up its own slang, and the characters spit that shit with abandon. "Nah that's upper crust, Dode's pie pan grease" says the Brain, the coke-bottle-spectacled, rubix cube-fiddling consigliere to Brandon (the protagonist). I had to watch it three times to understand half of what's said. For instance: "No, bulls would gum it. They'd flash their dusty standards at the wide-eyes and probably find some yegg to pin, probably even the right one." Apparently a 'yegg' is someone who burgles burglars, in case you were wondering. Rating: James Monroe

Oh No feat. Dudley Perkins & Georgia Anne Muldrow - T. Biggums

Acetate>ChiaPet>RalphMacchio

Fuck this, Shrek ain't even supposed to have hair.

I was talked to a flaming Chia Pet in a Bulgarian monastery who told me the number seven was holy:

1. I'm writing a long-ass article about Laguna Beach/The Hills/Adam Morrison's mustache. Hopefully it'll end up in the New Yorker Talk of the Town Section. Otherwise it'll be here pretty soon.

2. The Minutemen drop a funk bomb on ya. And I'm not talking bout the legendary Fife and Drum corps with Bootsy Collins' greatgreatgreat grandpappy on bass.

3. S dot mini dog always pushin Killer Mike. Took me until now to tease him out of masses in the A. Which means differentiate him from Big Boi. "That's Life" gets a John Quincy Adams even though I can't figure out his stance on Cornell West.

4. Blogger is annoying as fuck if you have a mac. You hafta be Steve Woznifuck to link to Tera Patrick's elbow or a recipe for fertilizer gumbo. How much do I wish I owned a HTML wiz who is a midget who always wears a nacho hat? This much (Kevin McHale wingspan x 97098032982398)

5. The Wikipedia Chia Pet entry is a tour de force. That there's a Chia Shrek and no Chia Early Ludacris makes me cry much. One of them has an afro one of them doesn't you fukers

6. I wasn't gonna blog bout no Red Sox jingoism, cuz I feared the Puppy might maul me with anti northeast/pro midwestern manicured doggy claws---- but Papi did the crane kick, Karate Kid style on second base, for no reason. I nearly combusted with love for the man.

7. I found an italian-import red vinyl reissue of Pere Ubu's seminal LP "Dub Housing" for $15. On my way out, I gave Madlib and Shadow the League of Extraordinary Cratedigging Gentlepeople handshake. Although not sure is Otis or Josh is into Postpunk. Wait...those two are into (insert humorously obscure genre).

DJ Khaled - Born N' Raised

This isn't fair. First two verses, anyway. Jury's still out on the "Boobie Boys" tee.

Busta Rhymes - In The Ghetto (Feat. Rick James)

This track sure is better than "Touch It"

DJ Khaled - Born 'N Raised feat Trick Daddy, Pitbull, & Rick Ross

Trick luv da kids, and you luv this track. This is required.

http://music.yahoo.com/ar-30124963-videos--DJ-Khaled

As soon as it's up on YouTube, it'll be up here; til now, click on the link, dummy.

*props to Ozone Magazine for the pic*

EastVSWest>Haggis>PinchHitters

"I'm so excited about the sublime quietude of contemporary Taiwanese cinema!"

Let's check in with Slothra's DVD game:

Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang): The first DVD transfer of this Chinese beast was put out faster than a brush fire in the middle of a water convention, and as a result it had the editor's KFC grease in some of the shots; it was nearly unwatchable, but Criterion just released a new one that they pulled Cindarelly tedium shit on, so you can finally catch the serious knowledge. I've only seen it once, so I don't wanna get too Mount Rushmore, but Yi Yi (translation: "a one and a two") is one of the best movies I've seen in long time. It's an epic family medodrama that's not really epic and certainly not melodramatic. In most scenes the camera barely moves. Sometimes, the subjects of a scene will walk away from the POV, into another room or into the background, to the point where they're no more significant to the composition of the frame than a lamp or an opossum. It has funny parts, but you don't remember any of the lines. At the beginning of the movie, the little boy of the family tells his father that he wants to help people know the half of the truth that they don't know. Later, after you will have forgotten this line, the father discovers a bunch of photos in the kid's room of the backs of people's heads. I may have pumped my fist when this happened, like I was Kirk Gibson. Rating: Thomas Jefferson

Heat (1995, Michael Mann): With Miami Vice out, which I'm not sure deserves my 10 bones, I thought I'd go back to this DeNiro vs. Pacino circus from Michael "grey suits w/o ties" Mann. Wow, Mr. Mann cannot write a story. With Collateral, and even The Last of the Mohicans, guns and crazy actors keep the movie going so when a stylistic sunset or skyline shot comes up, we don't want to throw rotten watermelons at the screen. Heat, on the other hand is a like an old caddy with an ill paintjob and polished chrome covering an rusty, farting engine. It looks good, but its way too long and and it breaks down on the way to the porn shop. Gawdy, clunky fucker. The movie is basically an excuse to get Travis Bickle and Serpico in the same room, and it feels like one of those times (observational humor warning) when two of your good friends from separate places meet each other and while you think the two of them together should create a vocanic eruption of charismatic hanging out-ness, it's just regular and kinda awkward. Mann knows action though, so we do get some AK cop killing choreography with Val Kilmer spinning around a lot with his backswept blond ponytail. A slightly post-pubescent Portman is in this too, as a totally obtrusive and unnecessary subplot/back-story thing. She appears twice, cries, and then tries to kill herself. At the end, one of the Corleones caps the other one, then holds his hand as he dies, because after all, even though one is a cop and one a robber, they're really the same. They look at the stars and the credits roll, while I scoured the house for some large fruit with which to pull a Gallagher on my TV.
Rating: Calvin Coolidge

The Wicker Man (1973, Robin Hardy): This is scheduled to be remade by Neil LaBute. A lot of people have told me to see this, gets the 'cult film' label. Its tone is light, and much of the acting is borderline cartoonish, which is interesting, considering the movie is about pagan sex romps and human sacrifice. There's lots of singing and folk music in the movie, including a recurring tune about barley rigs. During a sort of chase sequence a can of funk is opened up on the soundtrack, which makes sense because the Average White Band is Scottish, and black people are often chased. The twisty-wisty ending is cool, and there's some exorbitant zoom-in shots that will remind you of Kung Fu and its mysterious power.Rating: Ulysses S. Grant

part two coming soon.

Cam'Ron: Love My Life feat. Nicole Wray

Sentimental stuff from rap's evil genius, Killa Cam.

Rick Ross Proposes to Oprah Winfrey

Rotund Ross dropped his album today. I wonder if Oprah's heard the line on "Push It" (see video below) that shouts her out for being a fat kid who grew up to become herself. I'd love to say that, before handing out awards for realizing one's existential potential, Ross should learn how to rap well, but he's got a moderately formidable team behind him that sees real talent as the triviality that it is and fills the void with stunning beats.

Mostly stunning, I should say; in the case of "Push It," I'd like to reiterate that "Scarface (Push It To the Limit)" by Giorgio Moroder has yet to be done justice in a hip-hop sample. I'm not sure who produced Ross's "Push It," but the track ain't that great and fat man does not convince. You would think that these rapper types, who feel the need to fill their houses with cheesy reproductions of the awe-inspiringly cheesy stuff that T. Montana adorned his halls with, would treat Moroder's masterpiece as unfukwitable.

Forego "Port of Miami," then, and go buy the soundtrack to "Scarface," because it's way more likely to inspire you to great feats of criminal enterprise than Ross's labored tales of cocaine kingpindom.

And buy those sunglasses, too. Sweet.

Rick Ross - Push It

SCARFACE'S Push It To The Limit

Giorgio Moroder's "Push It To the Limit" is a pretty awesome song. Rick Ross's new single "Push It" (to be posted here ASAP) is a good song, but will not be the best rap song to sample Moroder's masterpiece. What producer/rapper combination will properly capture the feel of the original composition? It's only a matter of time...

F*$%ing Balls

Sordid Puppy felt pointedly sordid today, and not because he's awfully torn on the subject of whether wearing cartoon characters on one's shirt (a la Lot29 or this new ish from Disney 19twentyeight) is slyly gangster or purely silly. What had his fur all a-prickly today was the anticipation of a trip to the emergency room, made necessary by the disovery of a particularly troubling pest of a "mass" in your hero's nether regions. Earlier today, S. Puppy, administering (as any dog with half a brain should) a little self-perlustration while taking a doggy bath, came across a distressing little bastard of a object in his doggy bag.

As awful wankers found in the worst possible places go, this manky piece of work was especially worrying because it fit the profile of, well, the sort of thing that makes a puppy wonder if, god forbid, he's got this. With great trepidation, then, S. Puppy crept over to the E.R. to face his fate, however dire it might have been. Initial examination was not encouraging; the vet who saw Puppy wasn't at all confident that the letter right after beluga but just before dingo wouldn't rear its fearsome head.

To the ultrasound, then, Puppy -- what's that you say? Pregnant, noo, you're not pregnant; well, at least not with cute little Sordid Puppy babies. We fear you may be carrying a load of a different, and decidedly less cute, sort, though weighty nonetheless.

One fainting studio gangster and several tubes of weird sound-repelling gel later, your favorite hound is returned to the E.R. via wheelchair (sittin' on 26" spinners, naturally). Torturous conversations with nurses-in-training are had -- "Well, y'know, I was talkin to some kids the other day at our summer program about TSEs and they, y'know, were gigglin and such, and I just said, 'Hey, y'know, it's not funny! These things happen mostly to young men!' Y'know? Hey, did you say you were from Ireland?"

That's right, missy. An Irish dog am I, and your words of underhanded malice, crafted to sicken me with fear, don't impress me. Now excuse me as I pass out. Again.

S.Puppy awoke, slowly at first, to a Big Mac dangled just under his snout. "Ah hah!" exclaimed a radiologist. "I knew it would work! Always does with these types." Puppy chose to ignore the gawky imbecile's derisive comment and devoured the all-beef patties. Then, our man heard news more delicious than the freshest Whopper Jr. he'd had the pleasure of tasting: no death sentence would be handed down today. Rather, a, well, if you really want to know then here it is -- anyway, this dog will live to, er, lay about for another day. Follow-up meetings and future ultrasounds seemed like invitations to parties that all the prettiest poodles would attend. All was well, and Puppy felt an onus lift off his shoulders. He then fainted.

He trotted straight off to Runza after being discharged I haven't seen him since. Am I worried? Not at all -- let him eat all the double cheeseburgers he wants, I say. Every dog has his day.

Commerce>Railroads>SheFriendedMe

"I do yoga before ballin with VCs. This position is called 'pet rock'"

Most of the time, shit is free for a reason. When I see the word "free" atop some little goodie or curio, I immediately think said product is made of boiled-down chipmunk toenails or something. Free music, when not in the computer/parrot-and-eyepatch variety usually comes in the form of samplers from eskimo down-tempo cowpunk labels, which usually don't have guest appearances by Akon.

Well, here's a way to get 25 free songs which probably don't have Akon on them either, but some of them are good. I found out about this from Riffmarket. It's a facebook thing, and since the Zuckerburg kid has all kinds of capitalists on his dick in various positions, it's not suprising Apple's here for the gangbang too. All you have to do it join the "Apple Students" group and you get a code to download the songs. Every week until the end of the summer they switch up the genre. The playlists been surprisingly not poopable so far. Now the taxonomy is "electronic" and the first song by the Junior Boys is pretty borderline feces-hot. Those guys aren't European, so you don't hafta worry about gay robots trying to molest you when you listen to that one. Problem is, your impeccably medium-ironic group list will be slighted, and if you lick your Dellpod all the time because you hate Steve "billion dollar budget" Jobs, then you risk defection. But shit's free comrade. Bread line'll never be shorter.

In other news, Xtina Aguilara namechecks Etta James to impress DJ Premier and then rhymes Coltrane with "soul train." Herbie Hancock, her best friend, looks on, wondering if "ain't no other man" is a conscious double-negative and what she thinks about "Ascension" and its unbridled formlessness.

Download - Christina Aguilara - "Back in the Day" Rating: Zachary Taylor

Eggplant>Grimace>Prince

Yes I own these fuckers. Had to do it. I don't wear things like wear purple-camo on black hi-tops. Just like I don't request a reverse mohawk when I go down to Supercuts for my weekly rap with the rotating employees. When it comes to my wardrobe, I'm muted. Fucking quelled. But when I first saw these things, I knew that one day I would don them, hopefully in a Cam'ron DVD. When they first came out, they were over $100, but luckily, nobody in the world bought them, and this summer, they're givin em away ($27). I've already had a complete stranger tell me they were "the ungliest thing I've every seen" while I was pumping gas, and at that point I decided that they would be for special occasions, like participation in a basketball-playing strike force in Oompa Loompa land.

Nomenclature>LoveTrysts>TradeEmbargoes

"Intestinal bleeding's got nothin on me"

Let's run down the docket quickly, before Castro dies.

1.I just ate a cookie that was called "Chocolate Walnut Rendezvous." On the back of the box are displayed other varieties, including "Mint Chocolate Serenade" and "Coffee Chocolate Tango."

2. When I woke up I had not heard of a band called "Holy Shit" or a band called "Holy Fuck." When I go to bed I will have heard of both, which is to say I came upon both of these bands today. I read about them independently, in unrelated contexts: one in print, one on my computer screen. Holy Shit is a side project of Ariel Pink, who strangely, is a mantooth, not a woomantooth.

Download - Holy Shit - "Ashes to Ashes"

This sounds like one of those singer dudes with a guitar fell into an abyss filled with computers. I am tired. Rating: Jimmy "Hotpants" Carter

Download - Holy Fuck - "Tonebank Computer"

Holy Fuck is one of those bands that fiddles with knobs on stuff made of circuits and tries to get people to break stuff at their concerts. Either break stuff or drink chai, there is no between. Rating: Chester "Albatross" Arthur

Neither of these bands can play on the Ed Sullivan show or identify themselves on on the radio.

3. When it's very hot outside, a good tip for cooling off is to shave your head like Yul Brynner. Steve Malkmus wrote a song about big Yul. And then he played it into some microphones and slapped it on his first solo album.

Download - Stephen Malkmus - "JoJo's Jacket"

This song is in my top seven musical tributes to Yul Brynner. Bone thugs have one that's pretty good too. Naturally, Malkmus called this one "JoJo's Jacket." Rating: John "more of a kayak man" Tyler

Rhymefest - Fever

Hot rocks from S. Puppy's favorite album of 06.

baby cham - ghetto story

Styles P Ft Akon can you believe it

The Ghost, the Convict, and Melo. This song rules.

Obie Trice ft Akon - Snitch

Part of today's tribute to the 2006 Nate Dogg, Akon.

Dan Dority Fights Captain Turner

Deadwood is the best thing going in TV right now. The development of the beef between these two was flawless, and I had no idea what the outcome was going to be when the brawl began. I just know that I would have been heartbroken if things had turned out differently. Viewer discretion strongly advised.

Non Phixion - 'Rock Stars'

These guys just broke up. It's too bad -- Black Helicopters is one of my favorite songs.

Pynchon>Hangs>WithDMX

There was a technician named Urban,
Who had an affair with a turbine.
“It’s much nicer” he said,
“Than a woman in bed,
And it’s sure as hell cheaper than bourbon!”
-Gravity’s Rainbow, pg. 312

No one reads books, let alone novels. Even someone mentioning that he or she took a look at Moneyball on the can makes me want to wail on the guitar and kick my dog in the face. I do know a couple people who like poetry, but I think this is because they have no legs. Philistinism is something I accept; indeed, I would buy into it if I didn’t have transparent skin that leaves my vital organs vulnerable to sun or allergies to playing Frisbee and soap. It’s always been like this. You think people in the 30s read Faulkner? No chance. The Sound and The Fury starts out with a retard who literally doesn’t understand the concept of time and rambles for 60 pages about how his sister smells like trees. It's not as though 80 years ago, normal people had the magical ability to get past this stuff.

So no one will give seven shits that my man TP, the most undeniable living literary talent, just announced that his new joint, Against the Day is droppin in December (Rick Ross actually posted an even more pants-creaming post on his MySpace blog, so that’s cool). But fuck it, you watch when Oprah picks this shit up and it teaches everyone in the world how to be themselves.

It’s a beast, weighing in at 900+ pages, so it should be useful when you’re attacked by roving gangs of violent William Gaddis devotees packin silly string and Zippos.

Here's his description of the book written by TP himself:

"Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it’s their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they’re doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck."

There’s a year of my life down the drain. If you hang out with me from Dec. 06 –Dec. 07, be prepared for drunken yelling about this book. In the meantime:

Download – Nirfuckingvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Demo)

Pynchonians (read: the most raging paste-eaters you can possibly imagine, which of course includes yours truly; but I also like rap, so I’m tempered a bit) think that Kurt Cobain read Gravity’s Rainbow and based his little ditty on a song one of 3489 characters in the book breaks into randomly, on page 547 (Penguin “Great Books of the 20th Century Edition). The lyrics include the line: “Spirit is so --con, --tay, --juss,” and the words “nevermind” and “spirit.” I’m not convinced, mostly because you can go into that book and find a connection to basically every single thing in the world ever. Rating: James Monroe

Download – Yo La Tengo – The Crying of Lot G Rating: Millard Fillmore
Download – The Klaxons – Gravity’s Rainbow Rating: Lyndon Baines Johnson

Yo La Tengo does justice to TP's shortest book, the one people actually read. The second one is some discopunk band x you might like if you’re still really into The Rapture. I’m not, so I think it sucks, esp. since it’s named after the great beast.

Download – Thelonious Sphere Monk – Brilliant Corners

TP was really into Monk. It makes sense; each had a highly attuned yet jarring sense of humor that was rare in his respective art form. This is the title track from one of Monk’s best albums. In TP’s debut novel V., published seven years after this song was released, there’s a character named “McClintic Sphere,” who is, one can argue fairly convincingly, a stand-in for Monk. A less convincing case can be made for V, the titular female character, as a stand in for Monk’s mistress and patron, Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter, in whose New Jersey home Monk wrote Corners. This guy goes for both (if someone actually follows that link I will eat my own feet). Rating: Thomas Jefferson

Dizzee Rascal - Off to Work

Gamma - Killer Apps

Samantha Mumba, salad cream, and cucumber.

Talkies>DeliriumTremens>DualCassetteTapedeck

I'm glad I used this instead of that Nick Nolte mugshot

Having a music blog is all about making playlists with arbitrary themes. For instance. If it's Tuesday and your elbow itches, you search your itunes for the words "elbow itches Tuesday" and you will probably find a Pavement b-side and a song Daniel Johnston wrote because Captain America told him to. But two tracks will barely get you in the door with Sally Anne Rottencrotch down the street. So you broaden the theme to "appendage discomfort." This is no good either, since this only gets you a Bloodhound gang concept album about venereal diseases. To simplify things, you go for songs with "hurt" or "pain" in the title. If you stretch the theme to include artist names, you can juxtapose "I'm In Luv Wit a Stripper" with "Everybody Hurts"; this winking, virtuosic turn will bring sally to her knees before you can say "drip the hot wax on my toes BEFORE you call me J. Edgar Hoover, not AFTER!"

Now, I want to have a "music blog" about as much as I want an orifice right here (imagine me pointing to the back of my hand, which is somewhere without the proper market infrastructure to support an orifice). But I gotta get that hot wax on my toes as much as the next guy, so I'm going with the theme thing.

Clean, the movie's called. Just out on DVD. Slept on terribly. Although every movie that's (a) foreign, (b) independent, or (c) lacking Portman--is slept on, so not sayin much. But critics were wrong on this one. Nick Nolte holds down the movie. He talks like he beat Tom Waits in a cigarette-smoking contest, but he's not all Blue-Chipped up. Indeed, I wanted to sit on his lap and drink hot apple cider by the end. And Maggie Cheung, a big Hong Kong star, who you know if you're into my man Wong Kar-wai--in the movie she speaks three languages fluently and manages to imbue a character with quietude and charm who is (a) sick because methadone is not as good as heroin (b) just out of jail (c) bisexual, and (d) reeling from her husband's death. Most of what makes the movie good is the Brian Eno music that is deftly placed during shots of skylines and sunsets; and Maggie Cheung's hair's all puffy. The thing's about junkies who die and abandon their kids and stuff, but its treated at a distance (constipation isn't a major theme a la Trainspotting, no sped-up withdrawal tossing and turning a la Ray). Ultimately its about Maggie's character trying to become a normal person and get her kid back (with the help of Nice Nolte). Plus there are monkeys and giraffes in once scene. Everyone in the movie dresses way too cool and Tricky is in it for no reason, but imho this might get close to the founding fathers*. Rating: William Henry Harrison

The Clean, the band's called.

Download - The Clean - Beatnik

New Zealand's best lo-fi post-punk band. Also New Zealand's best rock band (I don't know another rock band from New Zealand, but I've heard this is true.) Rating: James Buchanan

Download - Tricky - Aftermath

Tricky plays himself in the movie. He appears, then declines to help out Maggie and leaves the movie. What a dick! we think. Then we realize that might not be a proper representation of Tricky. Then we wonder why Tricky would want to be portrayed as dick if he wasn't one. Then we listen to this song and think if might be like heroin.
Rating: Martin Van Buren

Download - MF DOOM - Mr. Clean Rating: Andrew Jackson
Download - The Jam - Mr. Clean Rating: Martin Van Buren

If you don't know yo history, DOOM pities the fool like Mr. T (who took off his gilt chains and gave them to katrina victims to eat). The Jam pities the fool who don't wear pleated trousers and listen to skiffle.

Yummy Bingham - Come Get It (2005)

Future Ms. Puppy wishes fewer people would have slept on this track.

CopyrightLaw>AkaiS1000>Wordplay

Remember magazines? So tactile they were, so foldable.


Download - Girl Talk - Too Deep

Anytime some shit I've never heard of is touted by Sporkfuck, I stay away, lest my cred with drug dealers and female boxers be scuffed irreversibly. Same woulda happened with this, esp. considering the name. Although with a tag like that, I thought for sure this was some hardass sludge metal band who likes irony. I've heard "Girl Talk" is a pretty sick board game though.

Turns out this as a mash-up artist from Pittsburgh who threw all this mainstream shit into a Cuisinart and out came a sort of OCD samplefest that, from the few tracks I've heard, is basically the most fun music to listen to since 2 many DJs mashed Christina Ag. with the Strokes or Max Bedroom (S. Puppy's boy) spread 50 on Reznor. Mash-ups usually suck because they're fueled by whimsy and aimed toward novelty (hey what would happen if Stravinsky had Afroman on top of him? no homo btw), and even if they're good, like Dangermouse's infamous shit, they don't hold up too long. This one fares better because it doesn't give any sample more than 15 seconds of fame, and almost everything on here is recognizable by your mailman. On this track, we got Dem Franchize Children, Dipset verses crowded by KRS-one shoutin for jakes, the fucking Beatles and a brilliantly placed Smashing Pumpkins sample that leads to the ending of the track, which warms my heart. Let's just say Pow Wow get's chipmunk'd and introduced to Misha Barton. Rating: James K. Polk

Download - Gnarls Biggie - Crazy Butt

I downloaded this whole album, some from BK dudes name Sound Advice, mostly because Ce-lo looked funny with Biggie's baby-body on the page. The Biggie vocals sound terrible throughout, but this this one is by far the best. It works alright, and putting Biggie on such popular song is smart if you are a DJ seeking blowjobs, but this fails the Van Halen test (I've found that whether or not i'd rather listen to Van Halen over certain music is a kind of telling taste-threshold). Rating: Theodore Roosevelt

Download - Lily Allen - Nan, You're a Window Shopper

Saw this on the horizen a while ago. First team All-MySpace limey dub-popstress retools sports drink tycoon/memoirist's Macy's banger so she can talk horse on her Granny. I mean, you gotta call out granny for buying tampons for no reason and having lumpy ankles. Otherwise she might get all "I'm the shit" and get shot 49 times over a Bingo discrepancy. Trust me, you don't wanna fuck with bingo. She couldn't clear this shit in time for the album drop, so, like the immortal Flow-be, it can't be bought in stores. This is real, by the way. Rating: Millard Fillmore

Download - The Replacements - Alex Chilton

Not a mash-up or a cover, but a great song from one of the drunkest bands ever. A retrospective just came out that's basically my reason for living right now (besides The Hills). The Replacements were originally called the Impediments, but everyone in the band got hammered (the bass player was like 13 at this point) before their first show and as a result, they were blackballed from playing around Minneapolis; so they changed their name. But Whatta song. Rating: John Quincy Adams

Lil Wayne - Shooter (Feat. Robin Thicke)

Str8forwardforya

Outkast - Morris Brown

Region haters. Spectators. Dictators. Behind-Door...

This has been a long time coming. Furman can attest to the frequency with which this track was obnoxiously blasted through the floors of the multi-apartment palace that we called home for the past year. In an interview released around the time of The Carter II's explosive dropping and subsequent one-upping of everything else I might have been listening to at the time, Weezy F. Baby (please say the Baby) claimed "Shooter" was to follow "Fireman" as the second single off the album. I was torn between cynical disbelief and hope that I would one day see Robin Thicke's (son of Jason Seaver) lanky frame dancing -- and towering -- over Young Carter's in a music video of the best song of 2005.

Months passed, and I sort of forgot about Shooter and its promised 12" release. This appearance on Jay Leno had satisified me, I suppose; it was audacious of me to ever think that such a daring -- and yet, I thought, potentially commercially massive -- record would ever make MTV.

You can imagine the thrill I felt yesterday, when I turned on MTV2 (almost there), Making the Video came on, and Lil Wayne's platinum grill flashed on screen. His face followed a few moments later, and I held my breath -- surely paranoid record label execs had pushed Weezy into putting out that one track on II that I skip, the one where he talks about getting his grown man on (with you). Instead, he started waxing...er...weezy about his spectacular collaboration with Thicke, and I the thrill of anticipation rushed through me.

What a Making the Video it was. Watching these two guys interact would make even the most hardened rap (or is it rock)-is-dead moralist grin and pass the haterade. Wayne talked about how he's been living his dream since he was 8 years old, how he's never had a girlfriend, and how work is never hard if you're doing what you love. Thicke's swagger is subtle but convincing; he's smooth and articulate, self-effacing but possessing of real confidence, the kind that will enable him to succeed as a white R&B singer who likes to talk about rock and can't really dance.

It was fun to watch Wayne and Thicke talk about how much they love the song, and Benny Boom seemed like he was probably having a much better time than he does directing most run-of-the-mill rap videos. I was impatient, however, to SEE THE VIDEO. Until the show was wrapping up and the video began, I kept myself from believing it actually existed; surely someone, somewhere, would realize that the public, having heard Shooter, would no longer stand for rap/singer tripe the like of this. An industry surviving on cheap imitations and formulaic crap would be in real danger of collapse.

I guess it's just the one that got away.

DiatonicScale>IsForLovers>Penguins

I'm debating whether it says "wamp wamp" or "ostrich"

Download – The Clipse feat. Slim Thug – Wamp Wamp (What it Do)

(note: I got this from nahright.com, which becomes a hilarious hip-hop message board free-for-all after every post – this one turned into a discussion of a youtube clip with the top ten dunks on Shawn Bradley – thank God for hip-hop message boards.)

From the forthcoming Hell Hath No Fury full-length, which at this point is known on the street as the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot of rap, which is especially apropos given the Clipse’s affinity for Wilco. “Wamp Wamp” is supposedly the second single, but there’s some talk of Mortarboard P and Bill Gates fightin’ over the beat.

The last album we heard from the Clipse, the We Got it 4 Cheap Vol. 2 mixtape was the first beat-biting contraband (mixtape) to escape the insular sphere of its kind and enter another insular sphere: critical acclaim (Village Voice Blogger fellatio). The funny thing here is how the Clipse claim in Mass Appeal (which I think is mostly a magazine about how graffiti is the coolest thing anyone can possibly do) that they saw no camembert from either WGI4C tape. Indeed, they basically say that those mixtapes did them absolutely no good, no money, no show bookings, only bloglove (which deep down they must really cherish for its purity). I quite like the thing, but mostly because the “One Thing” beat is amazing and I enjoy coke slang that involves flightless birds. But regardless of how much critics or even people that bought it loved it, the Clipse are bringin’ the woman’s scorn for being left in the PCP while errbody else leanin’ rockin’ and whatnot at the mall, at the club and at the used book store.

But back to the Mass Appeal interview, which is by Jon Carmanica, who seems to write for everyone, and got me golling (guffawing out loud--ing) when he quipped in his blog about Papoose doing a response to Jay-Z’s live update of “22 Two’s” (44 Four’s) called “The Prime Number rap (Fuck Fibonacci)” feat. John Abruzzi (math/prison break/rap puns get me every time). Anyway, Caramanica uses the “trap music” taxonomy, qualifies the Clipse brand as “outré” and “arty” (Pusha went to RISD) fails to get Clipse to talk shit on W.F. Baby and Divingboard P, then, referring to the new LP, follows the question “Is it drug shit? Is it emotional shit?” with “Is it hard to temper the lessons with wordplay?” If I were him, I woulda gone into Edward Said’s Marxist reading of Supreme Clientele, but he probably didn’t have much time. Their answer to that last question leads me to believe that Pusha and Malice moonlight as a comedy duo:

P: That’s the part of hip-hop that’s missing. It’s one thing to say ‘I sell bricks, I sell bricks.’ But when you saying, “Trunk like Aspen/Looking like a million muthafuckin crushed aspirins,” dog, we getting back to the colors. A lot of dudes is working with the 8 crayons in the box. They do not have the 64 box, yo. They don’t got “Burnt Sienna” They got red, yellow, blue...
M: They got Roy G. Biv.

As for the track itself, it’s Neptunes produced, and for a second, it made me forget how “Change Clothes” made me want to mash The Black Album with Kathy Griffin stand-up and call it the Newspaper-Riddle Album. Besides a vaguely Eastern synth, it’s all drums: steel ones and what sounds like roto-tom bashing with chop-sticks. Sounds like Hugo and Bullitanboard P are following a music-of-the-world beat cookbook here, but fortunately it’s restrained and drives pretty well. Slim Thug cracks this one, even though he's taking the more-travelled path with all the scenes of equine death, rhyming ‘dro with Mo’. I had no idea what “Wamp Wamp” means, but I’m goin out on a limb and figure it’s synonymous with “ostrich.” Weird drug slang though, so awkward sounding, definitely will get Prez and Freamon curious down at HQ. Pusha and Mal coppin us the fishscale (when in Rome…) wordplay - I’d say the 48 Crayola set here (Ghost has shits outta the visual spectrum btw). Plus we got the casual anti-Semitism, which is a must: “I got the wamp wamp when I move it, it still damp / mildewish, I heat it, it turns glueish, / it glues to a tight wad, the Pyrex is jewish.”

Rating: Franklin Pierce*

*rating system explanation: the deader the president, the better.

ChaosTheory>ArmyBoots>BetterThanBadItsGood

I think the "look what random shit I found on Google image search" joke has already outstayed its welcome, but man, this really makes me want to learn about the "Legend of BBQ". Also, I wonder what this so-called legend has to do with Jeff Goldblum if he was 6 inches shorter and had seen more than 4 Megadeth shows

List of really bad things that are better than the mtv show "Yo Mamma":

1. The huge pile of dino-poop in Jurassic Park
2. Jeff Goldblum
3. A rapper's name if his name was "Jeff Goldblum"*
4. A rapper's name if it was not "Dan Akroyd"
5. Entourage minus Drama and Ari and the teasing, vicarious thrill that comes with imagining one's real life coming within 89.3 light years of Vince's
6. The non-charm of clammy hands
7. The fact that having clammy hands because of a girl's quasi-attractiveness is more than 89.3 light years away from Vince's life.
8. Bono
9. Bono tricking the entire world into thinking that he knows what its like to have a distended belly as a result of hunger.
10. Cam'ron as a moralist.

*Upon completion of this list, I have decided that "Jeff Goldblum" would actually be the best name a rapper could have EVER.

Competition>MessWithTheBull>PimpMyRide

"Yes, doctor, this is where it hurts. Also, my shame seems to have turned me into a marionette. Can you give me something for that?"

Xenadrine Zidane’s headbutt in the WC final was one of the great cranial batteries in history, and basically everyone in the world wishes FIFA had a mic buried in the pitch (I'm going to start calling all fields 'pitches' by the way) so that we hear what Marco Materazzi said to X-I-mean-Z-to-the-Z.

The AP reports this: "The Paris-based anti-racism advocacy group SOS-Racism issued a statement Monday quoting "several very well informed sources from the world of football" as saying Materazzi called Zidane a "dirty terrorist." It demanded that FIFA investigate and take any appropriate action." If this is true, Materazzi clearly hasn't seen The Battle of Algiers. I mean, you don't hafta rock the Kasbah too hard to get your proverbial discothèque purse-bombed.

This is great: In reference to Zindane growing-up in some PJs in Marseille and playing streetball on concrete, Terry Hank, the great French nose-tackle, was quoted as saying "you can take the man out of the rough neighborhood, but you can't take the rough neighborhood out of the man." Was it the ancient street philosopher Iced Tea (w/lemon) who first said that?

To preempt Letterman:

Top 10 things Marco Materazzi might have said to Zinedine Zidane in the World Cup Final:

10. Who's your barber, a Franciscan monk or Verbal Kent?
9. Your midfield play has been decidedly subpar.
8. Les pince-nez sur votre entraîneur, tres chic!
7. How do you feel about Dutch cartoons?
6. Hey, Zisou, do you think you could pretend my sternum was one of those balls you headed into the back of the net in '98. That would be great, thanks.
5. Remember when you had brain surgery when you were 5? Well, the Italian government was behind the scalpel, installing a powerful magnet in your brain. Another such magnet is in my sternum. Let's see how they work.
4. Jesus takes Muhammed in rochambeau any day of the week.
3. One of those little kids that we escorted out of the tunnel told me you offered him candy and winked.
2. I posit that your government’s continuing deregulation of its economy is fundamentally at odds with much needed reforms in the labor market
1. Yo mamma wears army boots.

Azzurri

Foodmantooth salutes the nation of Italy for producing World Cup soccer champions to add to their already formidable list of triumphs in automobile production and design, cuisine, and female occupants, to name but a few.

Foodmantooth wonders at Zinedine Zidane, whose incredible career will forever be marred in retrospect by this little bit of theatrics on Sunday night. For those of you who are unaware, after having been sent off, Zidane was unable to participate in the post-overtime penalty shootout stage, which France lost. Draw what conclusions you will; apparently the French, for better or for worse, are quick to forgive.

Plagiarism>Sandra Day O'Conner>Cocaine

This, my friends, is what happens when you become a psuedo celebrity and as a result you get a lot of free lunchables in the mail. Watch out Jared!


Two tracks from funk outfit, the El Michaels Affair. They're doin the same thing the Beasties did on Check Your Head; that is, trying to recreate sampling/production wizardry with live instruments. But instead of merely emulating the Dust Brothers and Matt Dike, the El Michaels affair is straight covering two Tu-Tang songs.

C.R.E.A.M.

Glaciers of Ice

These turn out pretty well, although I wish they'd given a go at the minute long opening of Glaciers of Ice where Raekwon is fucking fired-up about the his idea for a new color scheme for some Clarks. Clarks really should sponsor the Wu if they don't already.

I've heard about some new Thompson Water Seal treatments of rap songs by bands that play instruments and sing and stuff.

Baby Got Back (Sir-Mix-a-lot) - Radiohead.
Sir-Mix-Verywell was after all an early champeen of the limey fucks, even helped em book Arsenio. Although I think he told the fist-pump progenitor that it was Kato Kaelin and Guest Houses, a sweet new rock band.

Fuck the Police (NWA)- The Police.
The bee-man really has a handle on puns. fuck that's great.

Fight the Power (PE) - Ted Nugent.
The Nuge and Chuck D need to be the new Crossfire duo.

Triumph (Wu-Tang) – The Supreme Court (the actual members of the Supreme Court, not a band called ‘the Supreme Court’)
I hear Scalia is fire on Inspectah Deck’s verse.

Big Tings Fi Gwan

U.K. rap gets a hard time from pretty much everyone I know. It's not wholly fair; Roots Manuva has been making consistently decent (at times great) records for years now, and I suppose I'd say he and Ty resemble sage elders of the U.K. rap scene. Anyone who hates on Dizzee Rascal has probably never heard "I Luv U" , "Fix Up Look Sharp," or "Dreams" (what a video) and most certainly hasn't caught him live. Kano makes his best effort at keeping it gully, to mixed results. Lady Sovereign is...well, the jury's still out on the midget.

All that said, there's a lot not to like about U.K. Hip-Hop (or is it garage? grime? dub?).
The relative success of the above-mentioned MCs has opened the floodgates for English (and Scottish, Irish, and, yes, Welsh) performers who've spent a little too much time eating hash cake and have forgotten that they're amateurs. It's no great surprise that the U.K. artists who distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack are those who DON'T act out cheap imitations of their favorite U.S. gangsta rappers. Unfortunately, when these assholes are getting signed to Diplomat Records, it becomes hard for up-and-coming MCs in South London NOT to want to go the uninspired route.

Despite all this, Sordid Puppy will continue to rep for the U.K., in spite of the slings and arrows of the NYC purists and Dirty South trendsters who will probably never accept an English rapper who looks like this. It would do all of them -- and you, discerning reader -- well to put Papoose on ice for a bit, accept that Bubba Sparxxx's creative well has run dry, and check for Sway. Here's something to feel good about.

Greatness

When I was a child, my family summered in Cork City, Ireland, the town of my parents' upbringing and education. Each July was spent traveling to visit countless relatives around Cork county and otherwise removing ourselves from the too-small-for-anything-resembling-comfort townhouse which we made home. Miraculously allayed, however, was our discomfiture during the two weeks of the All-England Tennis Championship, Wimbledon, when we were all content to huddle around our tiny living room TV with its spotty color and grainy picture and to soak in the most elegant of sporting events.

The players whose hopes of Wimbledon glory were alternately realized and crushed in front of my pre-teen eyes possessed character unlike any I've found elsewhere in sport. Perhaps the pretentious atmosphere of pristine austerity that is maintained in the courts contrasts with and so magnifies player vivaciousness; certainly the singular nature of the sport fosters individual flair.

On Saturday afternoon, American tennis legend Andre Agassi played in the final match of the final Wimbledon tournament of his career. He was beaten in straight sets by Rafael Nadal, the current world #2, who was born around the same time that Agassi turned pro. I first saw Andre play Wimbledon in 1991, and was immediately a huge fan; he was a rock star and a rebel to me, someone who found Wimbledon's elitism stifling but whose play silenced critics and snobs. For me, tennis became a hobby and Agassi, a life-size poster of whom leapt from my bedroom wall, an idol.

In 1992, Agassi won Wimbledon, coming back to beat Goran Ivanisevic in 5 sets. It was an emotional moment for many, not the least of whom me; the only time since that sport ever elicited such a reaction from me was this, and the Huskers' victory elicited real tears from my overjoyed face.

Andre never won Wimbledon again, though he went on to win other Grand Slam titles -- all of them, in fact, making him one of only five to accomplish that feat. He remains the only male tennis player in the Open era to have triumphed in all Grand Slam singles, the Masters, the Davis Cup, and the Olympics. His rivalry with Pete Sampras, who so often got the better of Agassi, defined male singles tennis in the 90s.

Foodmantooth gives nuff respect to Andre Agassi. He will always remain a hero of American sport and, to be sure, the progenitor of a great line of impossibly talented tennis players. His game was rivaled only by his style. Watch the U.S. Open, Agassi's last tournament-to-be, and know that, as Rafael Nadal astutely realized on Saturday, whatever the outcome, the day will be his.