Friday Music Special, July 30, 2010

One of the most repetitive songs I've ever heard. Really. But leave it on loop in the background, and it kinda grows on you.



I'll still always love their first record the most, but The Gaslight Anthem still does it pretty well.



I asked a friend for a suggestion on the third track for this week's FMS. I got the following: "Ok, this song, because it is awesome." ...I may declare shenanigans.

Friday Music Special, July 23, 2010

A goody from some time back - I recall hearing this on a Ministry of Sound record from the early 2k's. And I recall liking it.



The video's more than half the fun.



Ok. Honestly, I watched part of this one on mute -- but Charlize Theron wielding a katana, and taking out a score of ninjas? Yar! ...oh, and there's some music playing too...

Quality of Life Index, July 21, 2010

The timelessness of The Bard. (+5)


Bardolatry and its discontents. (a phrase I've totally co-opted from a lecture series I heard last Spring) (-2)


Shakespeare, still up by 2. (even)


Music of Trevor Morris, latest in a series of soundtracks I've been listening to as I read. (+2)


Will I finally see Inception in IMAX tomorrow? (even)


Crutches, still... (-1)


Dude. Alison Haislip did a scotch tasting. For really real. (+2)


Same scotch tasting had the gall to include Dewar's White Label in the flight. For Shame. #BlargFail (-1)


I may actually get an iPad 'cause of this. Well...that, and I found what looks like a semi-easy way to convert Kindle content to iBooks. Shazam. (+1)



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This week's total: (+6)
Last week's total: (0)

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Corner...

Overheard yesterday @ Café Pamplona, post-seminar:

"I don't know if movies like American Pie 
are, like, mimicking American culture or, 
like, making it."


Now. Far be it from me to wax overly critical of this inquiry --- but I will say this: the sad truth is the answer is neither. It is, in fact, both. Sha-whaaa? A double answer? A non-answer?

Consider this, one can fill in just about any piece of art in the blank: "______ makes modernity, and modernity makes ______." My own esteemed Pedagogue uses this governing dictum to navigate through a course on Shakespeare and Modern Culture, and I purport that such a symbiosis between art and culture is the imperative, and not the exception. According to another Cultural Savant who espouses the essential nature of this cyclical relationship, endeavoring to understand culture by understanding a particular work “is part of the social contract with appreciating anything artful”. Your making that art a part of your life “is the most transcendent thing any kind of art can accomplish". While in his book, the Author happens to be talking about Saved By The Bell (a mildly less compelling example of artfulness than, say, Hamlet), the concept, as Lacan wrote, engenders the thing. Modern culture’s contract with _____ is that it will endeavor to understand itself, through _____. This is the proof and pudding all in one.

So now back to you - Sidewalk Philosopher, Cinephile of the Late-90s Persuasion, Tea Drinker - did American Pie mimic us, or make us? The low-culture (a term I mostly despise for its divisive tendencies) gems of Pie-Copulation, Acronyms-for-maternal-Copulation (I'm starting to see a trend...), and yes - Stifler's Mom outcries all aside (trend verified, btw), if American Pie made us, we made it first. And before we made it, it made us too.

See the problem with the question you ask?

What's to glean here - what's absolutely germane - is that the question is vastly more important than the answer. Answers diminish potentiality, and that, unless thoughtfully considered can diminish the perpetuity of the very art (a term, perhaps, loosely applied to American Pie) you consider. But so long as its got you thinking, asking, wondering, and "considering" - its done the job it set out to do. And that's the point.

Let me put it to you like this, isn't anything cinematic, like, ten-times more interesting before you know how it ends?

Friday Music Special, July 16, 2010

I know it was Kobe commercial during the NBA Finals --- but heck, just such a good cover.



Just. Just. I mean...just. I can't even. Just watch it. To the end, you hear?



A textbook worthy case-study on the construction of music for the masses.

One Should Probably Disregard

In sort-of a frak all kind of mood.

I find myself weary - weary, maybe wary, of that particular slice of the thousand natural shocks that occupies my head.

Viddy that. I am entrenched. Incensed. Does my disarray, my discontent, make me malprop of la vie? To what?

I say, without remorse or contempt --- really and truly --- frak all that. Frak all, for sake of all --- 'tis oft one's place to play the prop, but ne'er shall it be that prop serves place and soul, bare.

Strange yet true.

And as for you, friend poured and friend standing most faithful guard --- thanks most kindly for your sentry. For your gentry, thanks.

Mes pensees ses presses vers toi ---

Quality of Life Index, July 12, 2010

Back in the saddle. So to speak. (-3)


The colossal ass-hat that owns the dog down the street, who leaves the dog down the street outside all day to bark and make all other manner of disturbance. (-2)


Succumbing to the relentless pop-assault of Stieg what's his face. (even)


The excitement being felt about this week's Friday Music Special --- I'm gigitty. (+1)


Shakespeare Firs Folio case finally resolved. Jerk-off gets his. (+2)


Season One version of theme song to "The Wire". Jus' sayin' (+2)


All other iterations of theme song to "The Wire". 'nuff said. (even)


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This week's total: (0)
Last week's total: (moot)