S/FJ

GO, ME! GO, ME!

It's my birthday, and I give a hoot that it is my birthday. I am 37 years young.

I want nothing from you but a promise that you will keep keep on with me. Everything else will be returned for credit. (Unless it's a totally wicked tripod.)

DREAM STATE

From Harper's Weekly Review:

"David Kay, the outgoing head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that Iraq got rid of its illegal weapons programs years before the United States invaded. Kay made it clear that the United Nations weapons-inspection process had succeeded in disarming Iraq and said the Iraqis had been reduced to experimenting with ricin, a primitive but deadly poison easily made from fermented castor beans; Kay also said that the CIA had completely misread the situation in Iraq, largely because the agency had no on-the-ground spies after the U.N. inspectors were removed. More than 100,000 Iraqis filled the streets of Baghdad in a march supporting the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in his demand for direct elections; thousands also marched in Basra, Najaf, and Kerbala demanding that Saddam Hussein be turned over to the Iraqi people to stand trial. Skepticism was growing that the United States will succeed in handing power over to an Iraqi client regime before the presidential election, and the head of the occupying authority's Tribal Affairs Bureau admitted that he had been relying on a 1918 British report in his attempts to make sense of local politics."

PRIMARY COLORS

The New York Times and Slate are following 50 Cent's lead--more beef means everyone eats. The Landesman fracas will soon have its own section in Borders. Tempers are subsiding, though. I would like to see more non-white and/or non-men weighing in, especially as Mexico is central to the original piece. This has probably happened and I don't know about it. Lemme know if so.

Aaron Wherry of Toronto's National Post made this point: "I think the fallout to the NYT sex slave story has a lot to do with a general backlash against poorly documented "trend" pieces. I don't know if anyone necessarily doubts the relative truth of these pieces as much as they are suspicious of the media and shoddy evidence. Wasn't there a similar kerfuffle surrounding a NYT piece on AIDS and black men? And I seem to recall the same arguments being made about a piece by some publication somewhere that said there was an epidemic of gay men who actively pursued HIV/AIDS."

Good point. It is worth calibrating and acknowledging the Xray vision you think you're running. A piece about bugchasing gays reads as scare-mongering and demonizing to me. That's my political take on the rhetoric: If bugchasing isn't an imminent threat to the larger population and if it's not something you can do anything about (my eternal objection to the local fires and stabbings in 11 o'clock newscasts), then why run the story except for senastionalist color? Of course a bugchasing piece will make people ratchet up their latent homophobia. (The ritual abuse meme springs to mind, etc.) Since gays are not exactly overburdened with social, symbolic or economic power, I'd feel very tentative about running a piece that wasn't absolutely factually tight (were I an editor--duh--and if I had the desire to run it at all). But that's my politics. I am fine with that.

The Landesman piece, were it fudgy, would represent a different kind of misrepresentation. Who gets a bad rap in the piece--men, police, pedophiles, traffickers, coyotes, scumbags--are members of cohorts that I don't protect or favor in my brain. If these people get a little more heat than they scientifically "deserve," I will shed no tears. And I think the Landesman piece absolutely implicates and addresses everybody. You CAN do something about a rapaciously sexualized society, and the dissolution of identity that children are facing in the All Midriff, All Viagra datastream. And, further, may I say, like, what? There are going to be manbashings across America now because of the Landesman piece? Normative privilege would never allow it.

I wouldn't critique anyone's critique on the basis of "journalistic integrity" or any shit like that. I don't believe in agenda-free writing. It doesn't exist. I don't even particularly care about logroling. (Oh, maybe I do sometimes. Just stop, Sasha.) There may be an EB White Objective Reporting Ruler™ somewhere that would measure Landesman unfavorably, but that's baseball. Who wants to pretend they don't have a bias? There's a war going on outside, etc.

CLASSICAL MUSIC IS SO THUGGISH AND RUGGISH WITH ITS BONE

Alex Ross reports:

"Alban Berg's brother invented the Teddy Bear. He bought 3000 unsold Stieff bears in Germany and put them on sale at Wanamaker's department store."

That's fine all. But when Lil Neef introduces his own line of Escalade-compatible volcanos, this whole classical scam is OVER.

THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IS GOING TO GET A STERN TALKING-TO

This sad little building is on (I think, lazy non-fact-checking blogger that I am) East 4th Street. This big wooden girdle is all that stands between the bricks and atomization. Maybe it's just an unsafe crackhouse that deserves razing, but I like to imagine it as the last holdout against a maxicorp rolling on treads through the valley. (Maybe NYU is going to install a giant promotional volcano on the site. They are, after all, one of the biggest landowners in town. And volcanos are the shit right now!)

You can see Jean-Michel Basuqiat walking down this block in the very bad but also most very bestest movie ever, Downtown 81. In 1981, this block looked like Beirut or that parking lot near the Farragut Houses where we used sneak menthol smokes. For a moment, it looks the way it used to again. Sensing this, the ghost of Basquiat came back and tagged up a door right down the block. The black paint? Fresh. The chalk? Fresh. Leonard Nimoy, file now.

Wait. It's just one of those assy anti-volcano protesters imitating Basquiat's duppy again. Fie!

"WHAT? WHERE ARE YOU? PON DE RIVER? PON DE BANK? CALL ME BACK!"

I'm not sure Jamaica is any more trendy now than it was a year ago, but any article that uses the word "honed" correctly is a step towards righteousness in my biosphere.

MAYBE GOD WENT TO IHOP THIS MORNING

Manhattan below Canal Street smells like maple syrup and ozone right now. It is not an entirely organic smell. Perhaps Roc-A-Fella is installing a make-believe volcano at South Street Seaport to promote the new Young Gunz album, but I doubt it. If someone knows what's going on, holler. We worry about, like, staying alive and stuff.

ERNIE ANASTOS-STYLE

Last week, after dropping one of my kids at school, I noticed there was an enormous icicle formation hanging from the building next door. The fire department was in effect.

But some sneaky firedude went inside and knocked the glacier free before Ladderman could save the day. The ice formation was about the size of a VW Beetle.

Don't tell me it's not a jungle down here.

LUTHER PLAYED THE BOOGIE

Jordan Davis expands on the the punk-indie-alt lineage: "I don't hew to the Greil Marcus line, but I rather like his conflation of the Munster Rebellion with punk—a reformation within the reformation which Luther was very clear about putting down. This of course begs the question, who's my indie Luther. I dunno, Alex Chilton? Not enough of a suck-up. Let's ignore the begged question and look instead at the institutionalization of indie as alt. Or, let's not."

MUITO

Philip Sherburne provides this link to Patricia Melo's piece from Topic on body image and child sexuality in Brazil.

I would post more, but I have to be fitted for a stiff, starchy collar and go to my Fire and Brimstone/Pilates class.

JUST WHAT YOU WANTED--BACK TO THE EPHEMERA

Ricky Gervais of The Office is all, like, a genius and shit.

I AM NOT LARKING ABOUT HERE, BOBBY

But neither is Jessica, who has her specially-designed Asshole-o-meter™ on blast. What I would pay to see Shafer and Hopper go mano-a-mano on TV: 8 gazillion dollars. Hopper would take the blue states before Kerry could say "I'm sorry, Miss Jackson!"

RHYMES WITH STORY SEEKAH, NEWEST WU-TANG MEMBER (WE THINK)

You know how we feel about Choire Sicha. He is the set of spinners on your Hyundai, the tulips on the table, the gelt in your terrifying little bag. Celebrate the here and now with the best writer in New York and make fun of big, shitty art today. You'll be helping the next generation.

MORE AND MORE HITS

Douglas comments on this Landesman deal. Douglas says "The point of Landesman's article is not to prove that sex slavery is horrible (of course it is), or that it exists in the U.S. (Landesman cites one example right up at the top), but that it's epidemic in the U.S.: that it is everywhere here, and condoned by people in a position to do something about it."

Landesman likes big, dangerous stories, rocks the old-fashioned moral obligation, and enjoys the fact that he's written a big flag piece. He's a feature writer--he wants to get as much color into the box as possible. None of these things bother me, because my interest in this story is instrumental: If Landesman pushes consciousness of these issues, hot dog. If some anecdotes and numbers turns out to be fudged, who the fuck cares? Was all of Silent Spring absolutely accurate? What's more important: actual progress or the allegedly sacred precepts of journalism, which allegedly serve the alleged people? And isn't it funny when tough guy journalists put their toes in the sand and cry "Don't hurt our home!" when it's sort of obvious journalism is the best-armored cockroach in town? And since everyone loves to trumpet their integrity when someone turns out to be a fudger, don't discount guys getting a boner for the octopus back-pat maneuver.

My marrow starts to hum when I see two MEN scrambling to unplug Landesman's hysteria. Yes, his rhetoric is hysterical. When four-year-olds are being sodomized and 12-year-olds are being forced to blow people all week long, hysteria seems like the perfect thing to bring to the party. The urge to correct and discredit Landesman is just creepy. It's like standing in front of Ground Zero and arguing about which tower fell first.

My original waahh waah handwringing about this piece was preciesly imprecisely asserting that this piece is NOT just about proving that sex slavery is an "epidemic." It's about demonstrating that this flesh trade is the logical outcome of these variables:

1) The internet's Pavlovian reward system and consequence-free encouragement of fantasy drives.
2) The American imperative to satisfy desires Right Now, above and beyond the law.
3) The capitalist imperative to earn above and beyond the law.
4) The ongoing sexualization of everyone, including children, which is correlated with variable 1-3.
5) The infinite disgustingness of human beings.

I think Landesman did a good job. I am done. We will see how this plays out. If people want to send more comments, go on ahead and I'll post what I can.

Jennifer Lena forwarded this June 20003 UN Wire article reproduced in The Atlantic.

Hua Hsu adds his angle on Shafer and Bales.

Thank you to Suzanne from Honolulu for writing. She says: "It's Wednesday here, and I'm still searching for ways to ease my conscience. What do I do? What CAN I do? I've started collecting toys and stuffed animals and blankets. I'll put them in boxes and see how best to distribute them. I may discover that the best bet is to go local; donate to abused children shelters around where I live. I'm looking for ways to volunteer, foster, whatever is humanly possible."

There's lot of opportunites to provide post-trauma assistance. A quick session with Google will put you in touch with your local agencies. The harder question is at the other end of the food chain: How can we be less ignorant and assy now? What choices do we make every day that help maintain a system where this happens? Like, get a coffee cup that says "Am I An Ass?" and then think about it.

STAY HOME

Schools in New York will be closed tomorrow (today), Wednesday, January 28th, 2004.

THE INSOMNIA OF THE UNJUST

[It is snowing again. I suppose this is because maybe there is someone who has been asleep for a month and God wanted to give everyone a chance to cross-country ski across Canal. This photo is from the last snowstorm. I no longer respect the weather, so I will not photograph it again. Ha! Snag on you, elements!]

Last words on Landesman for today. He made clear on NPR (link below) that he did attempt to meet one of these girls under the pretense of business, but ended up walking away. The language barrier would have slowed things down, or made them impossible, it sounds like. He also said the threat of death (hers) was moments away, and he didn't want to endanger the girl by making funny moves. Having asked around, it seems that implying a constant state of doom may be the kind of enhancement he's getting critical heat for. Nobody I spoke to suggested he's a full-on Kapuscinski-type, fabricating characters.

I will now let Julianne Shepherd reiterate the point, or the point we agree on:

"Why would anyone even care if the sex-slave epidemic was exaggerated, if it's even happening AT ALL? Do you think people were put off by the Bush-fighting aspect of it, that maybe his involvement/advocacy of new laws is making people subconsciously turn off their thinking/human rights faucets? I also think people are in denial of what the sex-slave trade means at its basest levels: 1. sexism, 2. racism, 3. ageism (not to mention this couldn't happen if the US weren't phenomenally well-off compared to most of the rest of the world, and also that Mexico owes a fair amount of its desperation to US policies). And a denial/skepticism of this is, in a way, a denial/skepticism of the existence of those things. The Radosh thing is even more ridiculous. Reading his argument and then scrolling down to see a photo of a bra-wearing female torso, even advertising the wacky yarmulkebra, was actually kind of unsettling.

Aside from that, it's well documented that much of the sex tourism market for young prostitutes/slaves in SE Asia comes from American and European businessmen (which Landesman kind of said in the article), so it's almost unavoidable that there'd be a similar market in the US. Have you seen Anonymously Yours, the documentary about Burmese women sold into prostitution because of poverty/sexism? I have a VHS copy I can send you, that is if you even want to see it. It's pretty unbearable. But much of the testimony in the Landesman article is mirrored by the women in the film."

THE CORRECTIONIZERS

Douglas points out that not everybody is buying Landesman's research.

Jack Shafer has a piece up at Slate doubting Landesman's methods, and Daniel Radosh has posted several times about it. Maybe I'm just too riled up, but my first reaction is: What a strange reaction. Had either of them uncovered truly bogus research, I'd better understand the impulse to write these pieces. (Blogs aren't magazines, and that makes Radosh's remarks different. Half-finished thoughts are the luxury of the blogosphere, and we all indulge.) This seems like vague distrust thrown at what they see as vague methodology. Why doubt Landesman? Is the piece fully void if the numbers are slightly off? Shafer and Radosh leap up to confront the horror by suggesting we hold our repulsion until we're SCIENTIFICALLY SURE people can be this terrible.

Shafer gives himself a pass by admitting sex slavery is a terrible reality and that it's hard to research--no fucking duh--but still wants to douse the fire. And what the fuck does Radosh mean by "the Internet=scary trope...is so 1997"? Is that like "the murder=bad trope is so 1945"? Sounds like the blogosphere hewing to the cynical baseline attitude: whatevs, we did everything last year. And that's how we figure out if it "matters." Next story, please=fucked ideology.

Maybe, like Radosh, I'm reaching for my own "inflammatory" parallel, but this feels reminiscent of various denials, whether of the wage gap or the Holocaust. Or, overblow the parallel into the red and plug in our own pharaoah: Wait until we get all the numbers. It's probably not all that bad. Gotta be prudent. We will consider all the options when we know what we know.

Things will go all pear-shaped if the piece turns out to be substantially fabricated. But does anyone really expect that? And if the numbers are a little hot, how much difference would that make? How different would a difference have to be? And why would you focus on that aspect of the piece? Maybe because it's easier than believing the rest of it? Radosh says "However, the article does raise a few serious (if you care about journalism) questions." Landesman is THREATENING JOURNALISM ITSELF. If this article prevents one person being harmed, you can have journalism back, whatever that is. (And how might it fall apart exactly, considering what "it" has sustained? Does journalism have an address I can send a nasty postcard to?)

There is this, though: "If a trained investigative reporter can't get closer than one, two, or three steps removed from these alleged sex slaves, how are the johns finding them?" Probably by offering to pay to have sex with them. So, the question: Why did Landesman decide not to pull a Kristof and end up in a room with one of these girls? Talk to them at the crime scene? I can guess he didn't because he was trading access of one kind for another, but it would be interesting to hear Landesman answer that.

[Also: "Sleight-of-hand" needs an "e" and "non sequitur" needs a "u," not an "o." But typos are another luxury of the blogosphere, so I ain't gonna write a piece about that.]

Maybe all this shit is checks and balances and totally fine, but I'm too heated right now to read it that way. I doubt I'll see it that way tomorrow either.

It seems that Jane Smiley hasn't read Landesman's piece.

Landesman on NPR's Fresh Air.

---

I didn't post this right away, because I couldn't figure out a way to break the blog syntax and signal an event of the heart. I may not endorse the "funny boner boner funny ha ha" bloganschauung, but I'm plenty chatty and irresponsible. I put people down. I gossip. I hardly feel like I should be rocking the pulpit, or that I'd be convincing if I decided to do so. I don't want to fuck up this topic with false identification or bogus transference. Expressing moral positions is sticky, as it both implies and demands a good deal of accusation. It has to, but figuring who and what to exclude in this instance is proving impossible. What follows isn't quite the hammer on the nail, but I'm never gonna get it right.

I can't slow the bunny-hopping, window-clicking process of reading in the blogopshere. So be it. I'm uncomfortable writing in the first person, because foregrounding thoughts like "Ooh, your pain gave me a headache" is so not where I want to go. So be that, too. I'll pull the lever and leave it at that.

[What are you on about? you ask.]

I flail because of Peter Landesman's article on sex slaves in The New York Times Magazine. If you haven't taken sleepy pills and can read what's been written, you'll see the indictments stack up to the ceiling. Not just of coyotes and traffickers. Everybody. You. Me.

The piece describes the structural, institutional destruction of lives. Not just the children who are torn apart and dehumanized, but everyone who clicks on the porn banners, everyone who allows capitalism to supercede the law, everyone who says "you gotta do what you gotta do," everyone who nods and smiles at the sexualization of every part of every person all day, every day. Everyone who lets childhood bleed into adulthood, day by day, trench by trench.

You say "We knew this stuff, yeah, it's bad. We saw Lilja 4-ever." or "We've read about comfort women." Maybe I'm daft. I don't know why it took so long for this stuff to acually metabolize and spread through my limbs. Riding on the train Sunday morning, reading the piece while looking out the window and playing Alphabet with my son, my stomach began to flip over. I started seeing lines in front of me, shiny white lines connecting all the players and sins: the states, the websites, the police, the johns, the dogwalkers, the lawyers, the bartenders, the innocent. Do people need to see tanks rolling down Broadway before loading Morals 3.0? Do we have a Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free pass until that moment? Have there been a thousand moments where we could have acknowledged our agency, and each time we ignore these moments makes it exponentially less likely that the next moment will be the one we confront? I spent the day with a mild numbness in my limbs, unsure if I should just start killing people. Maybe myself first. Maybe you.

I decided to volunteer as a mentor for a child. There's no guarantee I'll be accepted, nor is there any guarantee I'll do any kid any good by taking them to the park and talking about old Pete Rock 12-inches. It also seems a very after-the-fact move. Damage is being done, and if I could do something preventative, I'd unplug the entire internet right now. I have not found the plug.

I understand a bit of what terrorists must feel. Obviously not the exigency--nobody is threatening me or starving me or depriving me of my ability to speak and earn and live. But I understand wanting to change something immediately and furiously, the need to sign your name in blood. Not sending a nasty email or spitting in the sandwich you just made for some pig, but taking a hit as you dole one out because you know you're as guilty as anyone. You sacrifice yourself for not having sacrificed yourself earlier.

You have by now clicked on "Custard Ass and The Bandit, Part Five."

Afterr I shook the nausea, the gorgons kept poking their heads into my head. Sitemeter revealed that the most popular Google path to this site is "Nelly+Tip+Drill+video." Yep. Wash your hands all you want. And then, for the stench of hell that not even Swiffer can eliminate, I got an email about Howwasshe.com. I predict a Vice-style "we're just kidding" wuss-out when the criticism gets too thick. Just like that Hunting Bambi thing. But maybe no-one will bother and maybe the gesture is foul enough that any follow-up is already sort of funereal.

Have a great day!

ELIDED BY CHOICES

I disagree with most of this analysis of Robert Pollard's lyrics. Pollard's words are barely worth hearing, let alone parsing, and indie rock was not the Reformation--that was punk, my mellow--but I enjoy close readings. Jordan Davis has written a fun piece on a band I couldn't possibly care less about. The magic of thinking! (Thanks to Franklin Bruno for the link.)

POPE TRIPS DURING UPROCK ROUTINE: COUNCIL DECIDES TO REFINISH VATICAN IN LINOLEUM

There is simply no way to trump the AP feed.

WORLD OF ECHO

We just received an email newsletter from the excellent Charles Keil. He calls these irregular messages "Moss," and here is today's:

"Echolocation and Evolution.

Over 930 species of bats are known. Bats have been around for about 50 million years. All bats have the capacity to echolocate, though it is much diminished in fruit bats and the 30% of bats that are not primarily catching insects on the fly. Each species makes unique echolocating sounds. Three species of bats echolocate and eat fish by bouncing sound off ripples of water or off little fins at the surface of the water.

There are over 300 species of shrews, more discovered all the time, and some of them may be echolocating food or obstacles in their paths.

Cetacea – 78 species of whales, dolphins, porpoises – some famous for echolocating in water.

Humans are a very recent invention, around as hominids for a few million years and as sapiens, with big brains relative to body size, for a few hundred thousand years. Civilization, social classes, urban living invented just a few thousand years ago.

Humans and bats probably both descended from a tree shrew creature. Bats took one path and are finding a 1000 ways to serve Gaia, while humans took a different path and recemtly found one way, our way, to harm Gaia. Bats are 930 times more successful than humans because they have co-evolved to fill 930 different ecological niches, evolved 930 strategies for survival and continuity, whereas we have devised just one strategy and it is failing. We are dragging 1000s of other species down with us.

By this sort of logic shrews are 300 times more successful than humans.

Cetacea are 78 times more successful.

Why are we opposing all these vastly more successful ontologies and echolocating strategies of mammal species on land, in the air, in the seas? Why are we betraying our fellow mammals so horribly?

Did humans take a wrong evolutionary turn when we abandoned echolocation for "culture?" Or when we gave up sound minds in sound bodies to look at books, TV and computer screens?

Could music-dance-ritual be our version of echolocation and the key to resuming our co-evolution with nature?

Could we branch into more species eventually if we resumed music-dance ritual-echolocation as our primary communication and mode of being?

Why weren't there any exciting or stick-in-our-minds findings from Bateson's research with dolphins on matters of communication? Is echolocation a kind of primary communication that makes our kind of language communication less necessary?"

Keil's Music Grooves is one of the five or two truly great books ever written about music. Buy 10 copies and give nine away, even if you don't like the word "groove." I'm looking at you, Albini.

KING ARTHUR'S COURT

Audika reports that the reissue of Arthur Russell's World Of Echo will be out in late May/early June. Calling Out Of Context will be out in the second week of February. And the Soul Jazz compilation, The World Or Arthur Russell is due in mere minutes. Hoorah.

REACTION SQUAD

After seeing American Splendor a few weeks ago and being underwhelmed by the subject, I sent a typically hot-headed and ill-considered email to Douglas Wolk, because he knows more about comics than The Yellow Kid himself. (I love George Herriman and Chris Ware, and when my friends got stoned in high school, we'd pull out Zap comix. That's the extent of my comix knowledge. And Pedro Bell, who I hate. You don't have to love those shitty album covers to love P-Funk.) My question went something like "Why do people care about this 'tard? His reviews seem like passable liner notes for Collectables reissues and his stories are known only because R. Crumb illustrated them. I can't see any other reason." Well, I suggested a reason, and Douglas kindly responded:

"Hi Sasha--

So I'm not the biggest fan of Harvey Pekar's stuff, though I like a lot of it okay--I didn't love the movie, either. But the idea that "he's an absolute sham, and part of the 80s 'laugh at the average guy' irony fest" doesn't really make sense to me. I'm not sure what he's supposed to be shamming, and he's laughing at the "average guy" from what perspective? If anything, it's the perspective of being one, pretty much, at least in terms of class: here's somebody who worked as a file clerk at a VA hospital for decades--not something people tend to do ironically--and read a lot, and thought it'd be interesting to document his life mostly in terms of its quotidian parts rather than its dramatic points, and then to get those refracted through a bunch of different artists' ways of showing his life: sort of autobiography, but partly removed from his control.

The other people in Pekar's comics are sometimes broadly caricatured, sometimes in unflattering ways (Mr. Boats comes to mind), but I'm willing to cut him lots of slack for that, since nobody gets it quite as hard as Pekar himself does--again, he mostly avoids peaks & chasms, but he shows himself mostly in a vaguely unflattering light. (If I'm remembering correctly, which I might not be, part of the reason he dissed "Maus" was that Art Spiegelman had been much more disrespectful in depicting his father than himself.)

Maybe the part where the irony-fest comes in was his appearances on Letterman, whose attitude toward him was pretty condescending. (Pekar's attitude, as far as I can tell, was that he was willing to take Letterman's smirks, because there's no such thing as bad publicity when you're trying to sell something self-published, but that he wasn't going to shut up if he wanted to talk about GE.) But I don't think too many people read it for the "oh look at the ordinary guy!!" factor; when I was working in a comics store in mid-Michigan in the mid-'80s, most of the people who bought it liked that it was thoughtful and different from everything else in the store and had some medium-to-big-name cartoonists contributing to it. (The fact that Crumb drew part of the early issues--starting in 1976, incidentally--is probably the only reason he was able to get any attention at all for them.)

That's also part of why Pekar's stuff hasn't been so interesting to me in the past few years. When you're doing quasi-realist autobiographical comics and everything else in the store is either "Dr. Strange" or "The Fabulous Furry Freak Bros.," that niche belongs to you; when you have to compete with David B. and Marjane Satrapi and Chester Brown and Joe Matt, things are tougher.

Anyway. Thanks for asking me to play Shana Alexander; here's a kind of interesting piece about Pekar and the movie."

I put irony on the consumer, for what it's worth. I am sure Harvey is unironic about what he does. That doesn't mean it's any good, but I am sure he means it.

THINGS WE LOVE

If we didn't already think the A-Frames were the shit plus ultra, Erin's recent entry in the News section would have been enough to topple them right into the Gangsta Bin: “A-Frames are going to re-record the next album in March, the attempt in October was too punchy and warm.”

Julianne Shepherd has been on fire for a few weeks. You probably knew. We have to cop this idea: If a song makes you want to rub your own ass, it's pretty good.

HIP-HOP FISTICUFFS, REAL AND UNREAL DOUBLEPACK

Allhiphop.com reports that "Debbie Mathers, the estranged mother of Eminem, was carjacked on the outskirts of Detroit last week (Jan. 21). Mathers was refueling her vehicle at a gas station at the now-famous Eight Mile road. A teen with a handgun demanded her car & threatened to murder her. The suspect was apprehended a short time later."

People should not go around carjacking people if they are not going to dress up like the Jack of Diamonds.

In the Imaginary Hip-Hop Violence Dept., our actual friend Jessica Hopper is having a beef with our e-friend Jay Smooth. I can't figure out how they started this ruckus and I doubt the number of people who care would fill a cab, but Jay has posted a dis rhyme MP3. It's not "friend good"--it's actually good. But he is taking his frigging life into his hands dissing this tiny and unstable woman. He will wake up with Showbiz and AG's fingers on his pillow if he is not careful. We await the answer MP3.

(Jay's entry on The Source is worth reading.)

THE NEW YORK TIMES + FLESHBOT = "TRUCKER FAGS IN DENIAL" BY R.W. APPLE, JR.

Mina Naguib, "a Perl/UNIX/media hacker living in Montreal, Canada," has created a website mixmaster. Slot the content from one site into the layout of another: instant, time-gobbling fun.

"YOUR SONGS ARE GONNA BE ON THE NEXT ALBUM. THEY'RE JUST, LIKE, TOO NEXT LEVEL FOR THIS ONE."

Joseph Patel comes through on the subject of N.E.R.D.'s Shae Haley: "Make-a-Wish winner." Way to pick the right friends in high school, Shae. If he's gonna keep being the guy in the band who doesn't do anything, he should look into the oeuvre of Madness's Chas Smash. (Shae is a lovely guy, for the record.)

Have you heard Eminem's freestyle on the new DJ Green Lantern tape, Invasion Part Three (Countdown To Armageddon)? "I got a riddle/ What's little and talks big/ With midget arms and creamy white filling in the middle?/ That will do anything to throw dirt on my name?/ If it means walking the whole Mediterranean?/ Is it Albanian? Armenian? Iranian? Tasmanian?/ No it's Dave, Raymond and a ho." Hey, that's mean! His name is David!

DEAR MR. JACKHAMMER MAN: YOU MUST BE COLD. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE SOME COCOA? A NAP?

The Department of Environmental Protection is drilling big square-shaped holes in front of my house. At night. When we are sleeping. It's some polar bear work and I am not about to tell these guys not to do their thing, but they're blocking traffic no matter what time they do this shit. I don't understand why they're being forced to freeze and keep the block awake. Whatever they're digging up has been there for a while, I reckon.

You want further freezing, I recommend The Alchemist's Insomnia mixtape. Mobb Deep's "Carved In Stone" is one of their best tunes in ages. Eskimo dance? Son, this is Cryogenic Bounce!

There may be a lot of posts today, some of which will go directly ino the archives because of bandwidth limitations, so check there, too, before going to check the debut of Wonkette, by our DC ace, Ana Marie Cox. Last time she was here, she left us vodka. She is the greatest writer in the history of the world.

Did you know there are people in The Fall who are not named Mark E. Smith? Neither did I!

BWAH! IT'S ON LIKE THE RADIATOR! LET US RUMPUS!

You know. Words to the effect that we are back and we intend to keep it thorough. We will hold you close, make you warm and keep you safe from harm. We will honor the fire, build the pyre and keep dropping Cubic Zirconia through the wire. We missed you, you and your funny ways, your hesitant smile, your steady gaze. What are you blushing for? Girl, it's all about YOU. Boy, you are my all in all.

Thanks to Dan Hill at City of Sound for alerting us to this [OVERSTATEMENT ALERT] totally fucking mindblowing, genre-crushing mix by Strictly Kev of DJ Food at Boomselection. it's one of those bootlegs--you really don't want to hear proper music ever again. The wee capuchin monkeys in Accounting shed tiny tears of regret when the digifunk ends but they are too small to reach the space bar so they have to ask me politely to play it again. Because I love them and they write all my copy, I comply. Round round round we go.

Holler at your boy.

HEY!

I ain't drown or nothing. Coming back strong this week. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here's a note from my friend Ben:

Here's Proust, fucking with the darkness on the subject of music, in the new Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way.

"The year before, at a soiree, he had heard a piece of music performed on the piano and violin. At first, he had experienced only the physical quality of the sounds secreted by the instruments. And it had been a keen pleasure when, below the little line of the violin, slender, unyielding, compact, and commanding, he had seen the mass of the piano part all at once struggling to rise in a liquid swell, multiform, undivided, smooth, and colliding like the purple tumult of the waves when the moonlight charms them and lowers their pitch by half a tone. But at a certain moment, without being able to distinguish and outline clearly, or give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly charmed, he had tried to gather up and hold on to the phrase or harmony--he himself did not know which--that was passing by him and that had opened his soul so much wider, the way the smells of certain roses circulating in the damp evening air have the property of dilating our nostrils. Maybe it was because of his ignorance of music that he had been capable of receiving so confused an impression, the kind of impression that his, however, perhaps the only one which is purely musical, immaterial, entirely original, irreducible to any other order of impression. An impression of this kind is, for an instant, so to speak, sine materia. No doubt the notes we hear then tend already, depending on their loudness and their quantity, to spread out before our eyes over surfaces of varying dimensions, to trace arabesques, to give us sensations of breadth, tenuousness, stability, whimsy. But the notes vanish before these sensations are sufficiently formed in us not to be submerged by those already excited by the succeeding or even simultaneous notes. And this impression would continue to envelop with its liquidity and its "mellowness" the motif that at a times emerge from it, barely discernible, immediately to dive under and disappear, known only by the particular pleasure they give, impossible to describe, to recall, to name, ineffable--if memory, like a laborer working to put down lasting foundations in the midst of the waves, by fabricating for us facsimiles of these fleeting phrases, did not allow us to compare them to those that follow them and to differentiate them. And so, scarcely had the delicious sensation which Swann had felt died away than his memory at once furnished him with a transcription that was summary and temporary but at which he could glance while the piece continued, so that already, when the same impression suddenly returned, it was no longer impossible to grasp. He could picture to himself its extent, its symmetrical groupings, its notation, its expressive value; he had before him this thing which is no longer pure music, which is drawing, architecture, thought, and which allows us to recall the music. This time he had clearly distinguished one phrase rising for a few moments above the waves of sound. It had immediately proposed to him particular sensual pleasures which he had never imagined before hearing it, which he felt could be introduced to him by nothing else, and he had experienced for it something like an unfamiliar love.

"With a slow rhythm it led him first here, then there, then elsewhere, toward a happiness that was noble, unintelligible, and precise. And then suddenly, having reached a point from which he was preparing to follow it, after an instant's pause, abruptly it changed direction, and with a new movement, quicker, slighter, more melancholy, incessant, and sweet, it carried him off with it toward unfamiliar vistas. Then it disappeared. He wished passionately to see it a third time. And it did indeed reappear but without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a sensual pleasure that was less profound. But once he has back at home he needed it, he was like a man into whose life a woman he has glimpsed for only a moment as she passed by has introduced the image of a new sort of beauty that increases the value of his own sensibility, without his even knowing if he will ever see this woman again whom he loves already and of whom he knows nothing, not even her name."

ASSBASKETS DRAFT VETERAN SPAZ--SFJ

Spilled glass of wine ("Woo-hoo! it's 5! my piece is done!") on laptop yesterday. Shook computer vigorously, distributing liquid evenly through the innards. Turned power on and off quickly, sending charges through all the newly conductive surfaces. Baked own cake, shot own foot, fucked scene up royally.

Have a nice day and post lots of good things on your own sites. Remember: If you spill shit on your computer, unplug it, don't touch it and let it dry. Don't be a powerguard for the Assbaskets like me.

HOW CAN WE GET MORE FREE VODKA?

Julianne Shepherd writes: "Last night I DJed the opening party of Portland Center Stage's interpretation of "MERCHANT OF VENICE." The micro-managing organizer lady pressured me into playing "In Da Club," which she kept calling "the Eminem song," while digging through my records and making sour faces at ones she didn't know (virtually all of them). During "Milkshake," she told me to "play something danceable." I then played "Izzo" to a room full of very rich people, casually sipping free Stoli cranberries. My soul feels amputated, deflated and vestigial."

DETACHABLE ROBOT FACE MEANS LET ME BREATHE!

Rusty Shackleford answers: "Since you ask, [the movie with robot Yul] was Westworld, and an incredible disappointment after all the hype I'd heard prior to seeing it. A fairly hackish future pleasuredome and then 30 minutes of a limping, unfrightening Yul Brynner "chasing" the moustachioed dude, slowly, all around the outdoors of the future. Somebody shoot SOMEBODY. Dude, you can have my copy."

Hey--does anyone have the DJ Zinc or Freq Nasty mixes of "Milkshake" on MP3? The sample at Juno is driving me bats.

Listening to grime for two weeks solid has done my head in completely. I am very happy on my ice floe, but I don't recommend the faint of heart climbing the Sidewinder 8 CD packs without a guide. And the Dizzee album is still the best single piece of work, though I could see Kano giving him a run.

"ZANK YOU FOR INTRODOOZEENG ME TO ANDRE SREE SOUZAND. NOW TAKE YAR BABYFESS GREMMY AND GO!"

BMG boots LA Reid out of Arista. (Link courtesy of Jeanne Fury.) Moral: Do not send out purple grape-scented t-shirts to promote albums nobody wants. Moral 2: Give Andre and Pink what they want. Everyone else can have a bake sale if they want to make a record.

FREEZE! BREAK!

Regular readers will remember that, idiomatically but respectfully, we recently put Christ on a plastic dolphin as an expression of surprise. Today, we are putting Christ on a woolly bison with little mittens and a bright orange hat so that his Father, GOD, will maybe see him and remember that he put the thermostat down WAY TOO FAR last night. We humans will become ice and then break into a billion pieces, dispersing across New York like fine red dust, and then Yul Brynner will have to come back from the dead to be the mayor of abandoned and empty New York because it will be like Omega Man or, no, that was Charles Bronson. What's the movie where Yul has a detachable robot face? And it's a Western? So it's not in New York?

It is so fucking cold.

Did I ever tell you the story about how Ui got money from Grand Royal in '96 or '97 to record some songs? And we recorded three songs and then gave the money back? (The songs ended up on Lifelike.) It wasn't because we knew they were going to sign Ben "England Dan" Lee, go out of business and end up on the auction block. It was because we were insane. I don't actually remember why we did it. I still feel funny. It was rude and weird of us, but we dodged a bullet, innit?

I just wanted to end a paragraph with innit.

Go to GHP now and download the new shits.

NEXT, ESKI DELIS EXPLODE WITH SALT BEEF WRAPS!

Is there anything more grimy than an MRI? Buhhz buuhz, ang aaannng. Clack a clack. Once Wiley leaves his "cold" period, I predict a "medical" period. "All grime massive, please come next week to Catscan dance!"

REMEMBER THE BLOG SCOUT PLEDGE

(Painting by Sam.)

When there's no time to post, link. John Darnielle explains how the Radiation 4 rewired the Rock Time Server in Sketchy Flats, AZ. I have many good things to say about Radiation 4, but I've never seen them.

LIGHT DUSTING OF SNOW

for lightly dusted people. (Writing about the weather = bad sign.) Mammon calls, otherwise we'd talk about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, American Splendor, Angels In America, the Haus of OUCH, and how that Coheed and Cambria album has a song that sounds exactly like The Go-Gos.

JOHN IS HERE!

John Griffin, sensei and master of all the seas, is here!

NEW PUTDOWNS FOR THE 04

"Yeah, the Crumbs don't go there anymore. It's all Pekars now."

YES X 3

A shot from last night's Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at Hammerstein Ballroom
and a site for the Centralia mine fire. More about the show here or somewhere else, soon.

TO WATCH OVER YOU

Painting courtesy of Sam.

GO, WEB, GO, WEB!

All the 30 second movies at Bush in 30 Seconds are good, but I especially like "Child's Play," "In My Country," "Human Cost of War," "Desktop," and "Hood Robbin'".

NEW COMPLIMENTS FOR THE 04

If someone says "You're so Kim Jong-il!," don't hate--congratulate. They just mean you have your priorities straight. (Link courtesy of Jeanne Fury.)

CONSENSUSSED

Keith Harris points out that this guy is not handing us that old Elephantboxxx/The Missy Below same old same old. He heard a different year and god bless him for sailing right past consensus. Maybe Be is the record of the year. Don't you kind of hope it is?

NOT TO BE UNGRATEFUL, BUT...

I really do appreciate Piero Scaruffi's love (see below), but a list of bass players that doesn't put James Jamerson at 1 and George Porter at 2 is, by definition, useless. And a list of 61 bass players that contains only 3 players of color is more than useless--it's politically and musically embarrassing. I'm happy to see Melvin in the top 10, but the big omissions are Titanic: Robbie Shakespeare, Busta Jones, Larry Graham, Stanley Clarke. Piero doesn't even list Duck Dunn, and he's white! (And Wilbo should be on there if I'm there, for real.)

TO MY BLOGSPOT BROTHERS & SISTERS

For some reason, Blogroll doesn't like Blogspot (sat next to each other at morning meeting for years, had crush on same RSS feed--typical kid stuff) and none of the lovely Blogspot sites register as fresca! in the links index when they update with new content. I regret this and encourage everyone to click on all the links at once.

PIZUNK AS FIZZUCK

Pig G-Latin really doesn't improve that phrase. (Leaving the mistakes in--this is essential. We can't fool you.)

Andrew aka xdonricklesx aka Rusty Shackleford has given us the gift of a new band to love. Against Me! are described by some as "mysterious Florida anarcho-punks." Their 2001 EP, Crime As Forgiven By is all I have, and right now it's all I need. If I describe what it sounds like, you will not trust me. It sounds a bit like Bright Eyes covering the Violent Femmes. In my house, that gets you a pat on the head and a MetroCard. But life is odd for days and Against Me! are ridiculously good.

Tom Gabel is the nucleus dude and he likes to sing his brain out through his nose. He has the heebies, I mean the jeebies, and he cannot and will not stop. On the sleeve notes for the EP, he says Against Me! "make music because we're the best of friends, because we have something to say, and it helps to keep from drowning in dirty, dirty cesspools of capitalism." This EP is available from Plan-It-X Records, but the band is now on Fat Wreck Chords. They have a new album called The Eternal Cowboy, which I don't have. Two guys made the EP but now there are four guys total. I get the feeling Tom is still the don dada of this collective. (Right, no leaders. OK, the...biggest branch of the tree. The...liver of the beast.)

In a similar vein, Jessica Hopper recommended Smart Went Crazy's Con Art, which we now love entirely. I don't subscribe to the Fugazi-is-the-best-template-for-rock party line [[redundant phrase, you used this yesterday--Ed.]] but it did give us SWC and Pretty Girls Make Graves [[please stop using x but y construction--Ed.]].

NOW & THEN

Witold Riedel's drawings of the subway are good because 1) they're good; 2) they remind us of most of the kids books we read when we were actually kids; and 3) he walks around the city looking at stuff, an activity proven by science to be the most best way to live.

WE CAN GET THROUGH THIS, TOGETHER, WITH ITALIANS

Rock criticism is in a crisis. We've seen this, discussed it, linked to it, admitted it, wrung our hands, blamed each other, planted flags, crossed dicks, banged vulvas, and looked the other way. We haven't been fair. We haven't been nice. We've scapegoated the big dogs, sniffed at blogs we read every day, ovepraised our friends, and overestimated the shit-giving factor of the public. We've generalized, theorized and vaporized our free time and use value with impunity. We've forged our own personal golden ages (always remote), nominated baddies and licked butts we hoped might shit a golden egg our way. And we've gotten nowhere.

Because this is all cat piss without a leader. We need authority. We need genius. We need Piero Scaruffi. His version of history makes the paving stones heave up like petals and disperse, revealing the beach of our true desires. (Make sure you see the whole list. Go on.) And his take on 2003 (scroll down almost to the bottom, please quickly quickly do it now, God, do it now) is astounding. No one else could see what we were all doing. Piero has. I tip my hat. No—I bow, scrape, prostrate myself. I may also end up paying you every dime I have.

(I am assuming he bought all four copies of Answers we've sold.)

BIFF BANG POW

Deerhoof's Milk Man is already a strong contender for Top 10 of 2004. It's got everything: crash, snark, sweee and gaplourf. There is a Can impersonation on here that everyone in Williamsburg should marinate on before they start selling Krautrock cookies again. I would have said the more blippy things that interrupt the boofy explodo things are surprising, or that the heavier bottom buzz barnacles are new, but it all sounds like Deerhoof and any issue of surprise is an issue of misunderstanding. Deerhoof may be on some wacky arts and crafts shit, but they have been running a blue chip algorithm since they started. It goes like this: What do we do best X more horsepower. Take sum, subtract what didn't work, and repeat. So they read now like a pop band (while doing very little of what the Pop Dept. would accredit) because they are running Hit It And Quit It Version 6.0. If this happened more often, the world would be less boring and possibly better, in a Platonic sense.

But have you seen Greg Saunier play the drums? This is the real question. Have you? All ten feet tall and shit, playing a 37" parade kick (or close) with his bare feet? And no hi-hat? If you see them live, bring a stopwatch. Measure how long you watch each member of the band. You cannnot not watch Saunier for longer than you watch all the other band members combined.

IT LIKES SCREAMSES AND DRONESES

I love Khanate as much as you do, but does singer Alan Dubin sound like Gollum on the new one, Things Viral? I'm not saying that's not scary. Or great. But it fucked me up a little.

DEAR NELLY: CAN I LOOK UP YOUR ASS WITH A PAPER TOWEL TUBE?

(Photo: Christopher Wilcha)

Nelly has a video called "Tip Drill." Great name, huh? Here is what passes for a hook: "It must be your ass, 'cause it ain't your face. I need a tip drill, a tip drill." The video is porn, only marginally qualifying as soft. The video ends with Nelly sliding a credit card between a woman's ass cheeks. If that doesn't pack all the fucked-up variables into one gesture, what does?

I'd be higher than Rush Limbaugh to suggest the men in the video are more degraded than the women, but gad, they look so joyless and fugly with their bottles of maple syrup or whatever the fuck they're toting around like blankies while they conduct their crunk gynecology clinic. People can't get enough of this shit, so it will keep happening. I am having neutron bomb fantasies about the jiggle kings. CLICK. BOOM. THUD, PLOP, FOOF. Throwback jerseys filled with ash and platinum litter the tennis courts, but the rims keep spinning... (The photo of Centralia, PA is a pretty good sketch of what I have in mind.)

DREAMWORKS VAPORIZED BY HUGE DUDE WITH NO FACE AND LARGE KEYRING

(Photo: Christopher Wilcha)

The ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien is writing press releases:

"In the beginning, Oct. 5, 1995, DreamWorks SKG created DreamWorks Records, headed by über music legends Mo Ostin, Lenny Waronker and Michael Ostin. After 59 RIAA gold, platinum and multiplatinum certifications, 26 Grammy Awards and nominations and countless critical accolades, the first chapter of DWR lore ends tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 9, 2004. Vivendi Universal Entertainment has acquired DreamWorks Records and our DWR computers shut down tomorrow first thing."

Sauron could not be reached for comment.

POP WILL BEAT ITSELF

Ruff Ryders specializes in the not-quite, don't they? New signing Jin, "the first Chinese rapper," has a single out called "Learn Chinese". You hear that keyboard line? It's the melodic taunt every playground bully throws at the Asian kid he thinks he can shake. The producer: Wyclef Jean, the man who never met a cultural clash he couldn't ruin. He's had an Asian hangup since The Score--remember the Chinese restaurant skit? OK, but then Jin himself says he's "the original chinky eye MC." Then he sings the chorus of "Player's Anthem" in Chinese. I think. Cannot entirely compute.

Is this so culturally post-post that we love it? So insensitive and dumb that we feel bad for everyone, especially Jin? Especially since he can't rhyme? Is Wyclef a racist or just a moron? For more tuRRd buRRgers, check Drag-On's new single "Bang Bang Boom," where he kind of, like, accidentally forgets how, um, he sounds (like a butt with lips) and rhymes like, you know, 50 Cent. A lot. Swizz Beats continues his Falling As Far Off As Possible From A Great Height Career Curve™ by sort of, like, you know, trying one of those Ludachingy type dance, um, tunes there. Right. Please mistake me for a hit!

GOLD

Avoiding Ryan Adams is a full-time job which I have no intention of quitting, but my betters have been telling me that I need to check the technique of rock's least successful gadfly: the answering machine message, the website posts, etc. I didn't want to, because the boy needs help and I am not going to laugh at a man when he's already The Universally Acknowledged Wackbot. But then Fluxblog (not a relative, I swear) stepped in with the Adams message and WFMU DJ Tom Scharpling's deconstruction, and I broke down. I listened. I don't agree with Scharpling's assessment of Steely Dan, or the whole WFMU "weird is better" party line, but his heat session made me want to use several popular emoticons. Check the madness here.

Listen through to the end, where it is revealed that Ryan Adams is naming his new records label Pax American. I doubt Adams knows the original phrase he's mangling, but Scharpling doesn't seem to either.

I AM ALMOST READY TO RECOMMEND A FLOETRY SONG

MC I like who no one else likes, and this is not likely change: Magoo

MC everyone would like if they heard just ten seconds of "Easy Star": Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers.

Bargain bin CD you should "run out" and buy now: Whale's We Care. You have 75 cents. Don't give me that look.

You're daft if you don't already visit Fluxblog every day. Here are two reasons why: The new Method Man and whatsisname song and the new Kanye song with the Lauryn sample. Matthew's description of Lauryn is strong, but you must remember this: Lauryn didn't become Jandek when she found Jah. She became Phoebe Buffet.

I CANNOT REALLY COMPLAIN

because I don't live in Centralia, PA, where an underground mine fire has been burning since 1962. Smoke rises from holes all over town. This photo and information come courtesy of Christopher Wilcha. Thank you.

I HATE YOU MR. COMPUTER

OK. OK. [Breaks hand on door molding.]

OK.

The hard drive with ALL of my photos (originals) and sound files (some originals, some copies) and MP3s (mostly dupes) is either dead or faking a very inconvenient Rip Van Winkle-type nap. I am trying to stay cool. When Jack LaLanne turned 70, he swam handcuffed and bound, pulling 70 boats carrying 70 people, so I can live through this like Courtney. (Question, B: If you have no strong opinions abotu Courtney Love, do they take away your rock critic decoder ring?)

In an effort to calm myself, I looked through my brain and found the following. I hope I didn't write it.

PIGEON WITH PURPLE SHACKET LETS ME DOWN AGAIN (Adagio)

I see you piegon,
shaking that ass.
I bought you shrimp
and you said no.

I asked you to freeze it,
but you tossed it in the bin.
I must run to the loo and cry.

You do not care,
because you are a bird.
You cannot pick up my dry cleaning
but I need my velvet snood NOW.
I am excommunicating someone today
and I need to look my freshest.

While we are on the subject of
things you birds cannot do,
ha ha,
you cannot do the Cabbage Patch.
I got you that audition
and you didn't even go.
I do not care for birds who do not care.

I found a note in your pants
from your friend, Lucozade Hemlock.
He likes you more than I do.
He wrote you a poem
that you do not deserve:
"Oh, cruel infamy
They call you a shitter
But, I know you my dove
And you are no quitter."

I enjoyed the taxonomical accuracy,
as you and the dove are both Trenoninae,
but I think your friend is a putz.
You should have more friends your own age.

But now I remember why you did not eat the shrimp.
You are a tree-dwelling fruit eater,
and my shellfish made you ill.
It was selfish of me.
It was not easy for you to turn down my offer,
because you are proud.
But you wanted my second copy of that Ben Sidran record,
so you acted all suave bolla.
You are living trife,
dumb pigeon.

Computers are extra stupid. This is an email I got this morning, with the subject heading "You and I know your fat": (Illiterate, unkind computer!):

"cowboy addenda polygynous lance billie kaddish rudolph scottish clown severn outlawry chop transfinite bounce slovakia cashew filbert where'd desolate houghton repetition monday mcpherson exhilarate mach iran mute seersucker pathology trip bunt furbish thalia butyric dee intact proverb examination repeater astronomy fireside barnhard quandary chisholm yourselves bylaw simultaneous millionaire sturbridge exhumation peabody peg myofibril earthen alias samba bernhard watchful civet grey abut coulter contradistinction mchugh bengal counterflow synaptic crate threaten blouse demiscible chromatograph assignee coffee echinoderm decry surjection mucus sickish bereave awl quadrupole parkinson boggy carport cargoes brazzaville revel krakow wasp polygynous clipboard demoniac heterozygous inshore brahmaputra ferry mckesson yap advocate blocky beatitude readout tomatoes bib coffeecup tunisia anachronism discreet siege snapdragon chinch eerie corroboree tel yuki sweden indices jaw daddy molybdenum nutshell abject connote continue imprison bail dwarves prefecture orate chaw mortgagor dougherty darkle consortium commissary destroy fredholm brisbane surcharge negate aires were composite watchmake cantilever poi helix joseph divan connally gory nuptial normandy bottom involutorial styrofoam decisionmake detour condominium fourteen margo urban grand chaotic despotic between parliamentary folly bucketfull upheaval capacitive crisp morphism putnam syringa magma goliath davis paraboloid mexican halpern boardinghouse braggart referenda myofibril cuprous audition pent gratitude labial elucidate honshu informal."

That's SO 2003. Everyone know the bengal counterflow left the synaptic crate years ago. Stupid, behind-the-times computer! And if you see my hard drive lurking behind a broken directory, tell him to eat mud!

FIREBRANDS

Professor Jennifer Carroll Lena of Vanderbilt University responds to the American Brandstand list :

"It starts with the idea in bullet (!) #4: "Hip-hop is extremely good at using brands as metaphors in the same way that contemporary society does." I find it extraordinarily naive (particularly for marketers) to view branding or conspicuous consumption in a social vacuum. One very important thing that differs between the mass American market and hip-hop producers is that the latter augurs authenticity, credibility and relevance from their negotiation of the line between commercial success and "the street" (aka, the ghetto, the "real" fans, etc.). It is only by largely rejecting the social domesticity that came with bourgeois consumption in the 1980s (a la Cosby) and the commodificiation of blackness so popular in Spike Lee movies (or even by say, Arrested Development or *gasp* Public Enemy) that we get to a point where hip hop can be "extremely good" at creating a _facade_ that they use brands as metaphors in the same way that contemporary society does.

The problem is exacerbated in bullet #5 (pow, pow): "Hip-hop has always been about defining your status." [and what social activity, pray tell, is not? or does this just work really well with our little white imaginations of the big, powerful, competitive, uncivilized black man?] It continues, "Aligning yourself with brands in lyrics are the best short-cuts to do that..." {pause}. Here's where we really suspend history...sure--branding doesn't have any cost for cultural producers. It's easy--even though some part of us all dies a little bit every time we see a bottle of Crystal drenching a beautiful woman in a gold lamé bikini. And it's not like we're all dying of the same disease either. And then we continue with our bullet: "Gucci is the same whether you're in the USA or anywhere else." Ok, this one's easy to refute: I can prove to you that Gucci means two exactly opposite things to the same woman standing on the corner of Canal and Bdwy--it depends on if the label is sewed on."

AND ANOTHER THING

The math error that got me going on this Menand thing in the first place ended up on the cutting room floor, somehow: There were four lists of 2003 pop albums in the Times, not three. Here are all four combined, with duplicates eliminated. (Multiple mentions are noted in brackets--R. Kelly wins!)

Just 34 albums, each with an easy-to-understand description (not included here):

1. 50 CENT: 'GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN'
2. AFI: 'SING THE SORROW'
3. ALICIA KEYS: 'THE DIARY OF ALICIA KEYS'
4. ANNIE LENNOX: 'BARE'
5. ANTHONY HAMILTON: 'COMIN' FROM WHERE I'M FROM'
6. BASEMENT JAXX: 'KISH KASH'
7. BEBO VALDES AND DIEGO EL CIGALA: 'LAGRIMAS NEGRAS'
8. BLUR: 'THINK TANK'
9. BRAND NEW: 'DEJA ENTENDU'
10. CABAS: 'CONTACTO'
11. CAFE TACUBA: 'CUATRO CAMINOS'
12. COHEED AND CAMBRIA: 'IN KEEPING SECRETS OF THE SILENT EARTH: 3'
13. DAVID BANNER: 'MTA2: BAPTIZED IN DIRTY WATER
OUTKAST: 'SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW'
14. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE: 'TRANSATLANTICISM'
15. DIZZEE RASCAL: 'BOY IN DA CORNER'
16. EL GRAN SILENCIO: 'SUPERRIDDIM INTERNACIONAL VOL. 1'
17. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE: 'WELCOME INTERSTATE MANAGERS'
18. HOLLERTRONIX: 'NEVER SCARED'
19. JOHNNY CASH: 'UNEARTHED'
20. MARS VOLTA: 'DE-LOUSED IN THE COMATORIUM'
21. MIROSLAV VITOUS: 'UNIVERSAL SYNCOPATIONS'
22. MISSY ELLIOTT: 'THIS IS NOT A TEST!' (2)
23. OI VA VOI: 'LAUGHTER THROUGH TEARS'
24. OTIS TAYLOR: 'TRUTH IS NOT FICTION'
25. OUTKAST: 'SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW'
26. R. KELLY: 'CHOCOLATE FACTORY' (3)
27. THE BAD PLUS: 'THESE ARE THE VISTAS'
28. THE POSTAL SERVICE: 'GIVE UP'
29. THE SLEEPY JACKSON: 'LOVERS'
30. THE THRILLS: 'SO MUCH FOR THE CITY'
31. WARREN ZEVON: 'THE WIND'
32. WAYNE SHORTER: 'ALEGRIA'
33. WHITE STRIPES: 'ELEPHANT'
34. YEAH YEAH YEAHS: 'FEVER TO TELL' (2)

ALL OF FOIL

No? Say it again.

Wacky links pose infinite problems. You could post them forever, but you don't, because other sites (like Boing Boing and Metafilter) do it better. But a man who wraps another man's entire house in aluminum foil is too good to hoard. Is this love? Borges on the cheap? I can't stop imagining what each object feels like. How long will the apartment owner leave it all wrapped before going crazy and stripping off all the foil?

BRINGING HEAT LIKE RED BULBS OVER CHICKEN WINGS

I am indeed one of those white males in the crosshairs, but that doesn't blind me to the point of Jeff Chang's new piece in the SF Bay Guardian, "Return of the White Noise Supremacists." I have a few disagreements with some of the piece's mechanics--Nik Cohn and Jayson Blair are not equivalent--but I am glad Jeff turned on his laser beam. He is not seeing ghosts and goblins here.

[HUMMING SABBATH]

The best thing about Keith Harris' blog is that it is undergoing mitosis. Of his own free will, Keith is going to "choose two albums, one of which is the number one record in America and one of which isn't. Each weekday I'll publish a compare & contrast mini-essay." For no money, he is going to bless us with more and more hits. Call it The K. Harris Collection. This makes him the Iron Man of the interweb. I tip my Movable Type Personal Publishing System to you, Mr. Man.

MY STATUS IS LIKE QUO!

No, Keith, I'm not done with you yet. Mr. Harris was "kind of touched" to read Louis Menand looking down his spectacles at the pop culture shills of the...um, New York Times. Neither Keith nor I was shocked to see Menand dropping rhymes for the anti-pop consortium, but I was surprised his statcock was so limp. I usually dig Mr. Research. I thought American Studies was great, especially the Christopher Lasch essay, and The Metaphysical Club is a tight model for mapping the life of an idea, and how and when that idea becomes bigger than the people who found it. His paper on Birth Of A Nation, “Do Movies Have Rights?", is a balls-deep use of data to illustrate racism's deep roots in American popular culture, and America. None of this makes him less of a snob--look him up on T.S. Eliot if you're catching the vapors--but his work gives me pleasure.

This Talk of The Town filler is just pants, though. He name-drops Parmenides to set up his closing joke: Check. No shock that he implies Parmenides is worth looking up where Autechre is not. The next bit is what you expect: Popular culture won't stop breeding, it looks confusing, consensus has broken down at the record store, authority is dissolving. Help, I'm a melting modernist.

His kung fu is subtle--he expresses "gratitude" that critics make lists, because these "make sense" of the product avalanche. Can't call him a grouch now, can you? Then, with a faint praise sucker punch, he maps the tricks of the trade with a sigh, like he gave up making well-balanced, eclectic lists in 192whatever. I mean, it's so EASY. Timbaland does the same kind of un-secret dis in interviews: "You know, evveryone said so-and-so's album was wack and it didn't sell at all, but, hey, I liked it."

Then the importance of authority (jingle!) is established. We can assume the Times still has it in Menand's eyes, because his beef is not that Ratliff and Sanneh and Scott don't have juice. It's that 28 films or albums is just too much. That's all. It's a number that makes him snooze.

If Menand had taken on the cheapening of lists in the blogosphere, he mighta had a point. (Not an entire point, but closer.) But Menand himself emphasizes the product vomit that is Now: "Pop music has become so fragmented that it is a wonder the industry survives." A big shout-out to "people born before 1980," because they don't recognize any of these newfangled artists. Not like those friends of William James--EVERYBODY knows them. Or, no, he'd say, "That's why I wrote my book!"

But the Times is a daily newspaper, and news is like stuff you don't know? But then you read the words and you learn about it? Like cities in Iraq and stuff? And in these allegedly Melvillean lists, right there under the album titles are these words, see, descriptions that will help you to learn about these obscure, baffling musicians you don’t know. And here's the Achilles' digit: If there's so much stuff out there and it gives you a headache you want to cure (you didn't go into the Virgin Megastore just for a Talk of the Town piece, now did you?), wouldn't ten albums seem skimpy? Adjusted for inflation of output, 30 albums would probably have been three in 1968. And why does a dude who writes long for a living find three well-written, brief little lists so daunting?

Because pop culture is just temporary dirt in the wheels of a bigger, older machine and everything was better when the barbarians were outside the gates and all these people weren't, like, writing and thinking and shit. And putting out records.

SQUIRREL SEEN SHOPPING FOR UGGS

It isn't snowing yet, but if you threw a can of seltzer out the window of a cab it would be snowflakes before it hit the ground. So, let me ask the parents of Lower Manhattan, IS IT THAT HARD TO PUT SOME FUCKING MITTENS ON YOUR CHILD? Saw not one, not two, but THREE different kids wailing this morning from frost-pain as their minders (organic and paid, both) pushed them heedlessly through the Nazgul-style winds. (I put a check on my postal Garp tendencies a few weeks ago and did NOT tell you about the woman I saw pushing a stroller through a red light while yelling on her cell. I also didn't tell you about the D'Agostino's delivery person I saw catching a cab on Third Avenue. I was a messenger for three years and unless D'Ag is paying some new kinda wage, you are going to cut into that nest egg if you take cabs with bags.)

So, Keith Harris is probably thinking of people like me when he attacks the "You wouldn't say that if you had kids" defense. He'd only be half-right, though: Having kids makes it clear why the saftey of children is an obsession right now in popular culture. (Watching two minutes of TV and reading the newspaper for twelve seconds will make it even clearer.) But there's no excuse for bad movies about children in peril. I am sort of glad nobody gets this right in movies, because it would be unwatchable if someone did. (The Sweet Hereafter got close but wasn't a patch on the book, which put me under a rock for a week and I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE KIDS THEN.) I can't even see Bad Santa because Thornton apparently yells at "a vulnerable child," so listen to me only through the appropriate filters.

BRAND ON THE RUN

Agenda, a marketing firm that specializes in pop culture brands, tallied up the brands mentioned in popular culture during 2003. Like, rappers ride in (Mercedes) Benzos. Ching-y.

MUST..NOT...CHANGE...BALLOT

So I went and monkeyed with the 2003 list a teeny bit. But I resisted the urge to change my ballot and snuck Xtina's "Beautiful" in at #11, an entirely clerical omission. (I've spent months thinking it was there, along with the other France car songs: "Mundian To Bach Ke" and "All The Things She Said.") I moved some other albums to the 2004 list, because that's when they're gonna do their damage, and a few late horses got into the barn. Thank God I'm not in charge of that camera on Mars.

"NO ONE WILL EVER SEE IT"

The real-life backstory for Bill Murray's Lost In Translation character, Bob.

BOOT SALES

Certain records were meant to be sampled, and certain English people were meant to do it. Once all the funny records have been uncovered and mixed together properly, I think we can sink these soundtracks and cover versions below the surface of the Earth and move the fuck on.

DEPT. OF NO SHIT, DUDE

An informal poll of friends suggests that OutKast will win the Pazz & Jop Album poll by a ginormous margin, and will probably take #1 or 2 single. That's fine, but I have a Christmas morning neurosis about polls: I want to wake up and find the world transformed, in any direction. Like, say, the Michael McDonald Motown album wins. Or the On The Beach reissue. Or 50 Cent. But no. Always no.

ALL THE VIOLENCE, NONE OF THE GRAVITAS: MINGHELLA MUFFINS!

My deadly mood was not enhanced by sitting through Cold Mountain yesterday. Predictable, creepy and sadistic: How does Minghella always walk away wearing a little gold crown? Hell, at least Renee Zellweger's ham sandwich was a distraction.

DIG ME A DITCH AND I'LL DIVE IN IT

My heart is black and my eyes hurt, so I will now read from Resolution 04.01 Subsection A in pertinent part: "No more screen reading." Amendment 1: "Less screen reading." A new reading group (of books) looms and I don't have the time to keep skimming the links. Call the plug un for now.

I have to assume bands aren't involved in reissues like the Wounded Bird twofer of the Gang of Four's Hard and Solid Gold. Putting Hard (1983) before Solid Gold (1981) on the CD? Greg Tate said he liked the "kinky black pop sound of the sucker" (that's from memory), but Hard is sof serve. Two duds followed by three keepers ("Silver Lining" might cut it on an actual Go4 record) and then more yawns. Bad enough, but when you follow "Independence" (last track of Hard, had to look) with motherfucking "Paralysed," you are buying a billboard that says WE LOST IT. "What We All Want" comes next and that's just cruel. And why include only the lyrics from Hard? Sure, Hard came with lyrics the first time around and Solid Gold didn't, but Christ on a plastic dolphin, someone there can type, can't they?

SONGS IN THE ETHER

"How I Could Just Could Kill A Man": Muggs closes the book on the “Tramp” sample, steals the Bomb Squad’s siren and glues it to the top of a Chevy sitting on drunken switches. Then they all drive to the circus! Stoned!

LEXICON DIAMONDS

Skillz's year-end (w)rap-up is better than the last one, whenever that was. Skillz on the Madonna/Britney kizz: "It didn't shock me. It would have shocked me if she'd kissed Missy."

Is the new Raekwon actually kinda OK? "Missing Watch" is more than OK--narrative bobsled alert, but I'm feeling five or six other tracks. That's a shock.

On NPR this morning, callers were asked to suggest words to be eliminated from the dictionary. A woman caller said "gymnasium" makes anyone who says it sound congested and "horny" reminds her of bedpans. She suggested both words be replaced with "clock."

WAIT FOR NO ONE

Johan Kugelberg's list of the top 100 D.I.Y. singles, which appeared originally in issues 19 and 20 of Ugly Things.

IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME

I shouldn't have left you without some strong ephemera to step to. My apologies. Me and jazz, the films of 2003 and other potent bourgeois gimcracks are in the post.