S/FJ

I AM CURRENTLY PERCULATING

and generally uninterested in hateration, but it may become necessary to speak about "Juno." I am hoping that a more intelligent person will speak first. Jim Hoberman's recent abortion movies wrap-up is an excellent start, but I want an intelligent person to say approximately thirty-two other things.

DOMESTIC BLISS

These two have it all worked out. (Wait, what is that Big Black song? “I got it all worked out, I got it all worked out.” Maybe that was a DeBarge song.)

If you do not think that these two people are funny (....), then watch The Colbert Report tonight. It is going to contain classical music. Holy Music For The End of Time!

Speaking of Riffvester: Nick told me to get the new Peedi Crakk tape. I think you should, too, even though the sound quality is butt.

BONUS ADDED CONTENT THAT I SHOULD HAVE JUST ADDED WITHOUT POINTING OUT THAT IT WAS BEING ADDED: One of our favorite people we actually know talking about people we like but do not know personally.

THAT'S BETTER

LEMME OUT

EMMY THE GREAT

No content here. This was the day after the Zeppelin concert. Hey, Emmy.

WHEN THE WORLD IS RUNNING DOWN

Joshua finally put up his album of the year essay. I wish I had read the Mike Davis book to which he refers.

Unless I am mistaken, this was the first time M.I.A.’s music was referred to as “world music.” And unless I don't read so good (this has been suggested) I framed “Arular” in some of the same ways Joshua frames “Kala,” an album I did not form an attachment to.

THINGS I LEARNED RECENTLY

Fernet-Branca cures everything. You can get it at Lucky Strike. (Other places, too, I am sure.)

In 1992, Michael Jackson and two co-creators filed this patent: “Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion.” It is, from what I can tell, a small hitching device that locks your shoe to the floor, you funky chorus member.

From now on, imeem will provide the closest thing to a “best of” list here. (In a box to the right, to the right.)

Pelican found their swag in the 1970s.

Get The Glass! is the family-oriented advertisinal content you need.

FIRST THOUGHT, FIRST THOUGHT

Joshua just sent me this link.

What if we define “folk music” as “a song everybody knows the words to”? If that definition fails, why and how does it fail? It works for me.

Joshua responds: “That's what Gramsci thinks (sort of)*: that popular culture is both mass-commodity culture and vernacular folk tradition at the same time.”

* Really: sort of.

A SURPRISE IN EVERY BOX

Hey, only a year late! I am not going to make the same mistake with Lil Mama. If her album comes out in Latvia, I am buying it.

CRIT

“The thing about great artists is that some of them forget what people look like.”

“You mean the people they paint don’t look realistic.”

“Look. There—you can’t see one of his knees, and in the other one, you can’t see his eyes.”

“Sometimes making the people look different is a way of making the painting feel more realistic, rather than making it look more realistic.”

“In this case, it would have to be realistic. What else is there?”

AN ANTIDOTE TO THE SELF-LOATHING THAT IS CRIPPLING OUR YOUTH

IT IS JUNEUARY

WHAT IS THAT, A GANG?

This artwork (not my own) occasioned a response from Jay Smooth: “My stepdad, the drummer, once had some sort of vodou curse put on his performance space, while we were having a birthday party there for Max Roach, I think (pardon the namedrop).

The curse, which we found leaning against the front stoop, was a coconut on top of a seagull’s foot with the seagull’s severed head balanced on top of the coconut.”

THE NEW UNISCRIBE 3000

Not only do I want this guy to write all the press releases in the world, I want him to edit and proofread all the newspapers in the world. (Like a Chewel, the web has both hard borders and a liquid center, a quality which should be appreciated whenever possible: as the call for jihad against The Simpson Clan™ goes up, wee Google ads for The Simpson Clan™ brush their advertorial toes against the poet’s fire.)

IN DUOTONES

“I think sometimes Radiohead play too slow and I can’t always understand them.”

I LEARN MORE ABOUT TV EVERY DAY AND THIS LEARNING IS STRONGER

If all you creepy creepersons had just ponied up and TOLD ME about this TV racket, my '07 (OK, '03, but dream along with me) would have been fresh to death. I had NO IDEA people like this could appear on the televisions. (I do not endorse the mean-spirited quality of the link but the linked words contain a dose of facticity so I chose them over some network-hosted page that would slip quickly into darkness.) Had I known about this webness (from, like, ten years ago), I would not have left my cave for fear of the TiVo-ish thingummy inside my Time Warner box failing me. As things went, I went on living my life as if there was little I could not glean from the interweb and printed material. But I was wrong for days. The TV box had mad shots to share, and I lived unaware. I cry for these lost moments.

(I stole all of this from Spencer Sloan. He has a website.)

NERDY ADDENDUM (NERDIER PARENTHETICAL)

I wrote some short bits on Miranda Lambert and Prodigy. (The piece is archived in Collected Pop Notes. I did not write any of the other copy, so it is not linked as Current Pop Note.)

I...GOT THAT _____, I...GET ON DOWN

In 2024, when that Chemical Allen baby is sixteen years old, Big Beat will be making a massive comeback, so he/she can do a ripping first single with his/her parents and challenge Sonny J’s kid to an uprock battle. On the Wii.