professor murder was a band. i once saw them open for girl talk at mercury lounge when girl talk would play a venue as small as mercury lounge. shit was dope. i remember seeing their lead singer outside the venue and noting his ALLEY MAN STEEZ. alley man steez refers to a dude who's dressed in the clothes of an alley man - plain black baseball cap, black t-shirt, jeans, sneakers - and looks like he's up to no good doing what alley people do in alleys. (see: brandon ruben). anyway, they killed it. it was an energetic set. people danced. it was dub, it was rock, it was hip-hop, it was fun.
yo ALSO, professor murder put me on to melodicas. i had no idea about that amazing, amazing instrument until I seen them play one. ALSO i think they never played outside of NY which I respect hell of much for some reason?
ANYWAY, after some human capital shifting, professor murder's been brought back to life in the new project RESTLESS PEOPLE which includes members of Tanlines (one of whom was in the original PM line-up) and Newborn Huskies.
I woke up late for work again. I woke up and I thought, "hey man, what did we do last night?" and then i thought "HEY, shut up dude. you're late for work. think about it in the shower".
okay
Aakash Nihalani is an artist dood who uses the streets as a canvas to paint with tape. Wait..... Aakash Nihalani is an artist dood who uses tape to paint the streets. Wait....
I heard the term "paint the town red" originally referred to murdering native americans and using their blood to .....
Ever seen a fluorescent 3-dimensional geometric tape jawn on the floor or on a wall? Thas brooklyn-based artist dood Aakash Nihalani right there.
there's a whole lot going on in new york. when you grow up here, you're stuck here. you can go to other cities but you'll always come back. this city can drive you mad. there's a whole lot going on in new york.
there's so much going on that sometimes you forget to stop and look around. hey guys ------ STOP and look AROUND.
aakash nihalani rolls around the streets of new york using tape to highlight the little geometric complexities this city has to offer. for real, it's like the city's a book and his tape is a highlighter pointing out little things that you may overlook.
i had an internet interview with aakash and these are the results. (note: i asked him what his cell phone provider was [a la dap] but he didn't answer that one question.)
\\\\\What would you doodle as a child? -I wrote more than I drew when I was younger. I don't really remember my doodles...my writings were kinda dark though.
\\\\\\How good are you at math? Were you particularly fond of geometry? -My math skills are par, but I have no particular interest.
\\\\\Have you ever been into graffiti? -Not really...
\\\\What do your parents think of you being an artist? -I think you'd have to ask them that. Want my dad's email? (edit: YO LEMME HOLLER AT YOUR DAD)
\\\\What would you do if you werent an artist - Be unhappy.
\\\\\I see you fuck with Bose Pacea (a south asian themed art gallery). How much are you influenced by Indian artists - mughal miniatures, husein and the like? -I can't say I've been influenced by any Indian artists....did you hear Bose Pacia is moving to DUMBO?
\\\\Which do you prefer - street art or "fine" art? And why? Is there a difference? Something about adrenaline? -Working in the street is definitely more exciting, given the nature of New York City. But I enjoy making work in the studio, and I thoroughly enjoy showing it in galleries.
\\\\\\\Do you watch tv at all? If so, which tv shows are you particularly fond of? I haven't owned a tv for a few years now and can't say I want one. I get my fill in when I'm at friends...
\\\\\\\Read any good books lately? No, but I want to read some good ones soon. Any suggestions?
***note: i started this piece as a kind of outline of south asians in popular western music though it evolved into a comparison of uk and us south asians in music and a comparison of what socio-economic factors contributed to a larger prevalance of south asians active in uk music. its still scatterbrain and a work in progress but whatever yo, im at work right now. also some of this might be bullshit, admittedly, but again, whatever yo im mad bored at work***
though i came across the xx on gorillavsbear some time ago i never really gave it a listen. today, coincidentally on the death anniversary of aaliyah who they cite as a huge influence and cover here, i finally gave them a listen and as you can see by the post below i'm a buyer. (quite literally, i intend on buying the vinyl today). i was g-chatting with a friend about them and how, though admittedly on some heems self-absorbed shit, i saw parallels in some of the things d.r. and them do musically - writing over internet chat (though gchat > ichat), minimalist production, influences that range across mainstream (camron/aaliyah) and indie music (kmd, etc./chromatics), coming out of a school thats produced other popular musicians of late - and i realized another similarity was the presence of a south asian. the name of their guitarist/keyboardist baria qureshi poked out at me. because of the historic lack of visibility south asians have had in popular american media, though changing very much now, i've always had an eye on the presence of south asians in music. nothing against tony kanal from no doubt and the brown drummer in sum 41, but their music - beyond straight boring me - didn't address me. beyond topic matter even on the level of fashion as identity i couldnt fuck with them because they didnt look and dress like me. i never had brown musicians that I respected to listen to.
more recently there are bands and musicians I listen to now that have popped up with both south asian influences and some with with south asian members. of the latter i can shoot the following off the top of my dome - amazing baby has/had a sri lankan drummer, yeasayer has the homie anand wilder, natasha khan and bat for lashes, shilpa ray and the hookers (she even plays a harmonium), m.i.a., the homies in popo, stones throw recording artist koushik (ghosh), king khan and the shrines/bbq, and im sure others i cant recall. more to the point, a guy like jay sean recently signed to cash money and with the help of a weezy verse like drake, nicki minaj, and eric rudolph has catapulted into mainstream success. the key being his success isn't limited to his backyard of the uk where he's been successful for a considerable ammount of time - both amongst south asians and non - but even in the states. jay sean was on the radio with cipha soundz today?
also what y'all know about farrokh bulsara? farodh bulsara was a parsi who grew up in india, born on the indian ocean island of zanzibar and educated at boarding schools in Bombay. farodh learned piano at st. peter's school in panchgani. . most of you know him as freddy mercury was a parsi who grew up in India. as time magazine put it: "Bulsara duplicated in popular music what other Indians—such as Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth—have done in literature: taking the colonizer's art form and representing it in a manner richer and more dazzling than many Anglophones thought possible. But in his case, the empire wasn't merely writing back—it was singing its heart out in arenas all over the world in a voice that spanned nearly four octaves." y'all may know farodh better as freddie mercury.
thus up until recently, when i thought of south asians in music it was restricted to british "asian bands". though "asian" refers to east asians in the states, as south asians were the first to immigrate to britain, their colonizer, for manual labor (much like east asians and the railroads here) the term refers to them in the uk. it was always the brits.
a big fan of Real World in my adolescence (THOUGH THEYVE NEVER HAD A BROWN PERSON (my kind of brown, no victor) IN ALL OF THEIR SEASONS) i came across the band Cornershop on that show. I think the cast worked at KEXP and cornershop came in for a live performance of "Brimful of Asha". though the catchy hook of "everybody needs a bosom for a pillow" is what got me, upon following up on their music it was exciting to hear mohammed rafi and asha bhosle referenced in a song written and performed by a guy named tjinder singh who played dholak in a band I didn't entirely hate. the only thing I still have from my 7th grade trip to India was the dholak I bought.
when Dap and I were in high school we became fond of a band called Asian Dub Foundation. ADF was groundbreaking to me: they referenced Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, spoke about factory workers and the duality of modernity vs. tradition, had a swagger akin to what I'd like to think my own was like, and dressed in baggy clothing.
Every sunday morning in front of the tv Recording with a microphone naya zindagi Pioneer gurdas maan Nusrat fateh ali khan Kept our parents alive Gave them the will to survive Working inna de factories Sometimes sweeping de floor Unsung heroines an heroes Yes they open de door They came a long time ago But now it seems weve arrived Naya zindagi! naya jeevan New way new life
I'd never seen this video but I recall when I saw Marc Klasfeld's 1998 video for Juvenile's "Ha" - with its authentic imagery of broke folk in the hood which has since seen a return with video's like Pill's Trap Goin' Ham amongst many others - I couldn't help but imagine a video shot in my own neighborhood with old brown ladies walking down the street in full saris and little brown kids playing handball at 172 and shoeless kids in kurtas outside the Hindu Center in Flushing queens and the lady with the mustache behind the counter at Maharaja Grocery down the block and the India Day Parade fights. The video above isn't much different to me than what I could have came up with.
musically, they incorporated reggae, dub, bhangra, rap, psychedelia - some potpourri shit that only living in a working class uk neighborhood alongside equally colonized and oppressed caribbeans could produce. ADF was far from the only "asian band" of the 90s and early 2000s. You can add Fun^Da^Mental (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun-Da-Mental) to the list, who also consisted of not purely south asians but addressed issues of concern and utilized samples similarly to ADF. further you had bands like state of bengal, talvin singh, apache indian, and several others who also, not entirely but often, incorporated carribean elements from their neighbors. vivek bald (who also made the documentary Taxivalla/Autobiography on south asian cab drivers in new york) did a great job highlighting that scene in his 2003 documentary "mutiny: asians storm british music" which i can't track down. what i can track down is a small clip and if you're interested thus far i suggest you peep it:
so where was the american scene of south asians creating music? why did it occur in the uk and not the us? why didn't i have cool shit to peep and identify with as a south asian american? why were british asian youth more likely to make music than their american south asian counterparts?
this is where shit might get really scatterbrain - my bust.
the nature of immigration to the us and the uk were very different from the beginning. like black folk in the us, brown folk in the us had a history of oppression that dated back hundreds of years. kids in the uk had something to speak out against -
when the national front, an anti-immigration pro-white political party, decided to have their big meeting in a predominantly south asian neighborhood the brown people there, previously seen as docile, were finally like - THE FUCK? FOR REAL? NOT COOL MAN. "an orgy of violence" followed in 1979's southall riots. brown kids and their parents who they'd never seen in such a light finally bridged the generational gap and stood up for something:
again in 1981 a bunch of skinhead "oi! music" bands with lyrics about beating blacks and asians thought it would be great to play a show in predominantly asian southall. they started the day with beating elderly asian men and women and throwing national front symbols on south asian businesses with no response from the police until asian (south asians in the u.s.) youth threw malatovs at the venue and burnt it down on some awesome RACE WAR shit. (sorry?)
south asian immigration to the u.s. was far and few prior to the immigration and nationality act of 1965. the us did have punjabis on the left coast working the fields and in 1929 (i think) they formed the gadhar party to stand up for their rights. you also had other instances of south asian immigration pre 1965 like these cool bros who vivek bald, and vijay prashad another dude who's something like an idol of mine, wrote about:
"In his paper ‘Search of Bengali Harlem: South Asian Migration and Settlement in New York City, 1910s-1950s’ read at Wisconsin, Bald gives a peep look into the fascinating and little-known history of South Asian New York before 1950.
The existing literature tells us that immigration from the subcontinent was merely a trickle during that period. But, starting from the stories of three Bengali Muslim men who migrated undocumented to New York during this period, Bald draws on scholarly literature, archival material, and oral histories in an effort to answer the question: what exactly did the Indian presence in New York look like in the first half of the 20th century?
His answer to the question leads us to the histories of Indian lascar sailors along the New York waterfront and to a community of former-lascars who settled in Harlem in the 1920s-1940s. These men married Puerto Rican and African American women from their adopted neighborhood and worked as dishwashers, cooks, and factory workers.
Bald reveals that by the late 1940s, they had opened some of the city's first halal butchers and Indian restaurants, and also became a significant part of the larger Harlem landscape and were building links with local religious and political figures, including Malcolm X." (Source: http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=101405100320)
approximately 90% of the immigrants who arrived before 1975s family reunification act had PhDs and masters degrees. immigrants who followed didn't really know of a south asian working class so the the illusion or reality if you're an optimist of an american dream was there for you. and to be fair, making money was its own form of activism for those south asians who didn't face a lack of hardships for their accents and skin colors. on the flipside conservatives would turn that activism on its head to point to a model minority theory to further oppress african americans by positioning them against the other immigrants - if the asians could do it, why can't you black dood?
further, indians here grew up in the middle and upper class because of that immigration trajectory and thus their children would have less barriers to pursuing the secure fields of medicine, pharmacy, engineering and in more recent times business and law. though wealthier people have more means of production, poor people (in my opinion, all of this really in my opinion) make better music. if you give a sampler to every kid in the hood right now panda bear's mpc album probably wouldn't hold a candle to some of the shit coming out. to be fair there are a great deal of working class south asians though they're typically more inclined to make money money make money money money than create art. unless they rap and that's where the issue of authenticity comes up.
south asian youth in the us had no preexisting culture in the states to follow in the footsteps of so the most accessible culture was that of african-americans who physically resembled them more. this stands in great contrast to south asian parents who wanted to get ahead at all costs and yes-man'd their way to whites up the ladder of course. additionally this is more true for south asians in areas like new york, texas, dc/maryland/virginia and california where they represent larger portions of the population and saw less need to assimilate. thus after the age of 8, i grew up around indian kids who may have been middle class but acted as if they were working class. sometimes people are what they pretend to be and if you put 50 indian kids who like violence in a neighborhood and they think they're "hard" and act like they are, chances are they'll do some "hard" shit. i've seen middle class kids stab people before. though to the american consciousness indians aren't "hard". like east asians, the american stereotype is that of someone docile and well-educated. on the flipside, unlike east asians, south asians are more likely to hook up with white ladies, the lightweight embodiment of nationality, in tv and film. thus they're positioned somewhere above whites in a certain way but below african-americans in terms of masculinity and when it comes to music like rap that's rooted in masculinity, it didn't seem authentic. it still doesn't. i don't seem authentic. what is authenticity?
further, you have SOME south asian brits growing up in working class neighborhoods around working class whites who listened to rock music and would be much more likely to pick up a microphone than turntables. why aren't there as many south asian guitar players in the us - why is the m.o. of american south asians rap music 90% of the time? american south asian youth, beyond not being present in large numbers during the late 70s when punk music came to prominence (as thats when most parents came), were not growing up in manhattan around bands like television and the death boys. they were in queens. and yes, thats where the ramones came from, but there werent brown folk in forest hills back then. they'd be much more likely to settle in jackson heights or flushing queens or elmhurst, or as more money came into the community, neighborhoods like glen oaks and bellerose where i grew up.
even in the uk south asian rappers lik chandrasonic of adf and riz mc are able to come to more prominence as there's a history of mutual colonialism amongst caribbean grime cats and south asian grime cats. on our side of the ocean that solidarity, though existent as exhibited by the nation of islam cats who got their halal from the aforementioned bangladeshis or rastas who had matted hair and smoked weed like shivites sent to jamaica as indentured servants, wasn't en masse. in a lot of ways what the south asian bands were doing in the uk is what 5% rap was in the states.
post-9/11 you do have the taqwacore movement and bands like the kominas making music much akin to adf in terms of political lyrics and visibly a band of south asians but i'm not really buying that shit. according to wikipedia, and excuse me while i vomit, they describe their sound as "bollywood punk". i like a lot of what they write about - homophobia in islam (rumi was a homo) and islamophobia in america (most of their stuff), but musically its just not doing anything for me. they do have a south asian following but i think thats more related to american south asians who dont limit themselves exclusively to bhangra, hindi, rap, reggae, and r&b (like most kids i grew up with) not having anything to attach themselves to.... again. also this michael muhammed knight cat who wrote about these bands and brought them to the forefront of whatever they're at the forefront about was probably just trying to make some guap. that might not be a fair statement - i don't know dude - but something just doesnt add up.
ultimately it could seem like we skipped our need to react against anything and make the hip-hop or more punk, what i'll call "angry" music for lack of a better word, of the uk's south asian bands. thus south asians who make music do so now in not so political a fashion. furthering that point is the increased visibility of south asians in popular media - your saieds on lost, mohinders on heroes, and kal penns on house - and the appearance of south asian wealth and development as a result of post-1991 liberalization. that of course misses the boat on the vast disparity of wealth distribution amongst the wealthy and poor. further, generally with globalization and the mask of multiculturalism (and how you cant read an article with the word multiculturalism without mention of obama) there doesnt SEEM like south asians have anything to stand up to and against. that's false of course and the unifying factor amongst those more political and straightforward "south asian" bands and bands that have south asians in them and may not lyrically or musically reference south asia is the fact that solely by being visible in american culture as a dude whose brown and plays guitar or raps you're changing the way people view south asians. a band like popo doesnt NEED to go out there and talk about being brown like the kominas because solely by being a respectible, good fucking band of three brown dudes who visually stand out the way they do, they're saying something. and similarly a guy like dude from yeasayer or a girl like natasha khan are changing the way tons of brown kids think of themselves.
so.....
i forgot what the point of this was but hopefully there's a couple of interesting things in there. IM AUDI 5000 now. i gotta go to the afghani hindu temple in long island now for a memorial for a relative who passed away - aka to paraphrase noreaga "my relative died, and i dont wanna blog no more, my relative died."
I like this new breed of superspecialized websites about incredibly stupid and obscure shit. This one's called lolchair, and it specializes in inanimate objects that inadvertently look like smiley/sad faces. I love it. If you peep a post I made a few weeks ago, I mention the old Pay-o-matic check cashing spot logo looking like a crying man with a frown. This is stuff like that.
the xx are 4 19 year olds from england who make real simple r&b influenced pop music and their album came out last week on youngturks. i havent heard the whole album but i did listen to this about 4 times on the train this morning.
I had a dream where I was at a small house party and I looked out the window and there were about a dozen orange tabby cats lampin in a tree. A couple of them were a sleeping. One was looking off into the distance. One was kind of jumping around from branch to branch. One was sitting up with one paw out ready to shake hands.
holy fuck shit. shoutout to jake aaron for this one via twitter. falling under the same genre as the series kate put up of that girl that paints herself gettin busy with old presidents.
theres an art dude named dan lacey who likes painting the president with unicorns and THAT IS AWESOME!
ok o.k. okay. where to begin with this one. 2008 was a crazy year, am i right? in 2008 I was really fond of spreading the rumor that larry bird said the n-word. i dont know why i thought it was funny. it seemed very plausible to me. still does. there was a solid year in college where i thought being a pathological liar about anything was a good look. slowly i started lying about important things without even realizing it and thats when i had to cut that out. so peep how i would bust it:
"yo, you seen the youtube where larry bird says the n-word? unreal dog."
and those who remembered would go home and youtube search "larry bird says n-word" to no avail. that is until my crafty bud and friendship-rap partner KOOL A.D. decided to put the following youtube up on June 22, 2008, a day that should be remembered by races and racists across the globe:
even i was fooled at first. i saw the youtube at work where i have no speakers so i assumed there was a vocal track behind it and was blown away until i went home. a friend or two reacted as if it was real in the youtoob comments stream (shoutout ryder fleming-jones and big bubba bran). THEN...
THEN, the comments really started flooding in.
Bassman5123 said "Even if he had, I'd say he earned it. I'm sure many ex-NBA players consider him a nigga and will vouch for him.... Only a geeky black kid, or a stupid black bitch would question Larry's use of the word nigger!"
JamesColvent, a true all-star of the comment thread for this youtube chimed in with his thoughts: "I've found that most blacks suck in basketball. That's all blacks do is play basketball and not much else in sports, they should be better whites excel in nearly all sports. I've been beating blacks in ball forever now, and I LOVE it! They are so 1 demensional, drive in for lay ups, post up, no shooting skills, can't pass for shit, selfish, beating blacks is like shooting fish in a barrel if you're white and milti faceted and skilled....Larry scorched thousands of niggas, so did McHale!!!"
wow
A couple of folks chimed in with their "HE DIDNT SAY ANYTHINGS" and a couple people said "wow I can't believe what I just heard!"
Some people weren't too happy with JamesColvent but he defended himself - "If you act right and worthy of respect, you get treated right and get respected. Should I respect some thug drug dealing inner city piece of shit? Hell no I won't and not because he's black becase he's a loser bitch. Stop kissing their asses with your sissy do-gooder attitude and beat them and get respect."
yes
Apparently our hero JamesColvent, defender of all things Bird, is nice with the rock: "I've been beating blacks in ball for years man, blacks suck. They are one dimentional selfish showoffs who can only drive and handle sometimes, can't shoot for shit. I OWN any blacks I play, and they all know it too."
Because he types with such conviction, i believe him. I really do.
DABUSDRIVA92 chimes in with a good point though: "You really think all Black people are how you describe them? One-dimensional? What about Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. In all sports you can argue that a Black man was the best to play it. Baseball: Hank Aaron, Football: Emmet Smith, Jerry Rice, Warren Moone. Black people are the most athletic people in the world. That is also a fact."
then some hippie named FIGHTINGFORFREEDOM23 is still stuck on the fact that Bird didn't say anything. He's pissed off the positive vibes of youtube.com are being ruined!
"What the hell, Bird didnt say anything, the only people I see saying anything are the people here writing on this video. All this bickering about race is really sucking any positive energy we might have right out of us, and channeling it into shit like this. The sooner we can embrace what divides us, instead of letting it divide us, the sooner we can move on and actually become someone enlightened. Its 2009 already, I mean what the hell, we must move on, because divided we will surely fall!"
true that FIGHTINGFORFREEDOM23.
About 3 months ago our hero Colvent chimes in with some more valid points. "Warren Moon? O lord. Best Basketball players Bird, Stockton, Maravich and West....
How many black decatheletes you see?
Who has the most gold medals ever, Phelps..Who has the highest verticles in the world? Volleyball players mostly ALL WHITE. Wake up and stop nigger worshiping."
NW is a harsh accusation but I think DABUSDRIVA92 might be guilty as charged in this case.
xdigdugx123, a family man, chimes in with more support for bird: "alot of niggers would welcome bird in their family."
as does commenter Pablo Coon, who's clearly taken a class or two in race theory at Bard: "Good for him. PC idiots eat my shit. Black people call each other Niggers every day, a white guy says it and he's ostracized, it's total hypocrisy. LARRY, Larry, Larry!"
About 2 months ago when I lost faith in JamesColvent, he comes back out of the blue with this gem:
"What are you a black loving fagboy?"
Wasn't that a band? Black Loving Fagboy?
And as of 23 hours ago we have a few more "I can't find this ANYWHERE online. I think it's total BS" and "what's the purpose of this? it's just a damn picture!" comments.
Some more color on our boy JamesColvent though. Here's one of his favorite videos on Youtube:
James left a comment on this video: "Dude it's about time a white dude plays rock music when showing highlights playing basketball. You'd fit in nicely with my squad! Way to keep it real Matt!!" wow.
I wonder what kind of rock music James Colvent likes. Wait, here's another of his favorite videos!!!! Who could forget Demon Hunter's classic jawn in the New Romantics style - "Fading Away"
I'm not finna do a lot of fashion posts like i used to but one of my favorite parts about following what was going on in the world of clothes that are too expensive for me to cop but heck of fun to look at was coming across the sneakers homie kris van assche would make. not my favorite shit dude's made but i'd still rock these - if my guap game was more on point of course. autumn 2009 jawns here:
actually though, if you do care about this type of stuff, peep shipley and halmos' new mens autumn 09 looks - http://www.selectism.com/news/2009/08/21/shipley-halmos-mens-autumn-2009/#more-22019
For the past few weeks or months or something I stopped remembering my dreams, except for the occasional memory of a dream that's too vague /indescribable/boring to blog about. But in this period of time, I did have three dreams that I think came mostly from feelings of guilt for neglecting to blog about my dreams (which is kind of an embarrassingly stupid thing for my subconscious to be occupied with). The first two dreams would still probably fall under that above-mentioned category of "too vague/indescribable/boring to blog about" (TVIBTBA) But the third one I thought was pretty interesting. All three times I woke up being like "Really?"
DREAM ABOUT BLOGGING ABOUT DREAMING #1
I didn't have a body, I was a floating camera, panning across a seemingly endless bookshelf with a bunch of thick white magazines with no words on the spines. At some point I realized I was dreaming and thought to myself, "Oh shit, I should remember this dream so I could blog about it." I woke up and looked around for a pen but couldn't find one and fell back asleep. I woke up again later knowing I had had more dreams but was unable to remember any solid details. Then I remembered the panning across the bookshelf dream and considered blogging about it but didn't.
DREAM ABOUT BLOGGING ABOUT DREAMING #2
Again, I didn't have a body. The dream was really just of a red ball sitting in a white space of indeterminate size. I thought, "Oh shit, I'm having a dream, I should remember this and blog about it," and then, still in the dream, I "woke up" and started blogging about the dream. I started writing: "A red ball in a white space..." and then couldn't think of what else to say and then I actually woke up for real. DREAM ABOUT BLOGGING ABOUT DREAMING #3 This one was more like an actual dream.
I was married with one son. My wife and I were both archeologists. We lived in a really nice apartment on the sixteenth floor of a big building. There was an elevated train track outside the window but instead of a subway it was an old-timey steam engine train that would pass by every few minutes.
My son was playing around in the living room and I passed by him and "playfully" tossed him incredibly high up into the air and when he came down I couldn't catch him and he landed on his head. I noticed his tooth came out when he fell but when I looked closer, it turned out a whole row of teeth, like dentures, had come out. He was crying and bleeding and my wife came in and yelled at me for being careless. I called an ambulance and she started cleaning the blood from the rug and when she did she started noticing heiroglyphics in the rug. She pulled out her archeology tools and started dusting the rug or whatever archeologists do and looking at it with a magnifying glass. I came over to read what it said and I saw my son's two hand prints. It's around this point that I realize I'm dreaming and say so to my wife, who suggests I blog about it, which I find funny.
The scene changes and I'm in another part of the apartment with my wife and someone who is apparently a professional dream interpreter. He's saying that my son represents me and I'm like, "Can't a man just dream about his own son without it being secretly about him?"
I just had no idea leather clubs could get so awesome. Stick around at least til 3:18.
Of course, this was never allowed to hit the eyes of anyone ever, so they made a blatantly de-homofied version (each dude is covered up in clothes as much as possible, including gloves, and hanging out in a generic industrial space). But it has pretty neat laser-fog tricks, so hey:
Shit, was bugged out the last 6 days, gonna read parts of Please Kill Me for the third time this year and 'whatever' it off till everyone forgives me. In other news..
A friend sent this video to me. I don't remember the song from my childhood but the name sounds hella familiar. I think the video is a must-peep. Somehow they managed to pull off generic mid-90s corporate garbage so well that it turned into art. Maybe I'm wrong. Also, THE DUDE IN THE VIDEO IS AN INSANE SQUEEZER.
"Happily, the stress-induced changes in behavior and brain appear to be reversible. To rattle the rats to the point where their stress response remained demonstrably hyperactive, the researchers exposed the animals to four weeks of varying stressors: moderate electric shocks, being encaged with dominant rats, prolonged dunks in water. Those chronically stressed animals were then compared with nonstressed peers. The stressed rats had no trouble learning a task like pressing a bar to get a food pellet or a squirt of sugar water, but they had difficulty deciding when to stop pressing the bar, as normal rats easily did.
But with only four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls, able to innovate, discriminate and lay off the bar."
Did you catch that? Waterboard rats and they get really stressed out and their brains change, but if you give them vacations free of TASERS and BULLIES their brains start to recover. This seems relevant to me, and also diffuses some of the rage I experienced Saturday at 4 am drunk reading the jibberish trend piece about the supposed rising fashionability of potbellies.
Anyway I guess I'm going to call this "animals don't have jobs?" So some of them get stressed out.
Or hit the streets. This guy's doing ok, he'll definitely make it to Hartford
Or vacation
But mostly they just be hangin out
How's that blogging gig working out for you dude? Let me know aight?
All holler to my doo Anthony Z for hipping me to a live version of that song that we all thought was by Yes or something:
And yeah, I think that's Oprah cameoing there, I don't know why. Anyway, kids, take speed; you'll get your homework done in time to write a mini-orchestral prog-shlock masterpiece. You'll be huge in Scandanavia (is that still a thing?)
ps. hippie-sabertooth dudero now looks like grandpa john popper:
Beer something at the frontwindow of a bar with old friends Davey Moore and Jeddy Huxtable et alia, when a severely cerebral palsy black man wheels mechanically swerves to a stop. Davey says he knows the guy, names Kevin , comes in for services at his clinic, likes to chat using his laminated sheet of common words, phrases, letters, numbers to point at with wild hands. I want a cigarette and Jeddy against his Ayurvedic wisdom decides to join. So we stand outside because this is Berkeley and smoking is murder even "in" open-air patios, with Kevin. He posts up next to us. His cornrows are frizzy. He's drooling down his beard onto his coat. He posts up and swings his hands around. We say hello, honestly hello because we are all good and equal people here and he has a good cv from our dood inside, Davey. He wants to speak but cannot. So I try to pass him his speak-sheet. But fail. And he does it after some struggle. This is a way of life. He points slowly and with difficulty. The body does not accord the mind in its brain. Kevin (we know his name but it doesn't feel fair to use it, kind of like recognizing Gary Sinise in a record shop) points the phrase: "Hello." Then: "How are you?" And we say well, man, well. You? He doesn't answer that cuz it would take time and dood is kinda clearly a little worried about something. He points: A-S-K. And we say ask. He nods angly. He points: "Man." We say Man. "White." White. B-A-L-D. Bald. White bald dood? Nods. Work. Dood works here? I don't see one. I see a black bald dood. Kevin raises his hand. Davey joins us, "Hey Kevin, I work at the clinic, do you remember me? I'm Dave." We all introduce. Kevin doesn't care to say if he remembers. Long story, I know. But it has a sweet payoff. So I go ask the bald black door guy if there's another "close-cropped" man working there cuz Kevin's asking and it seems important, but this lil fuks and fahk, I can see it in his mouth. Okay. So I go back. They've figured out dood is white, bald, short, works here, wears a blue shirt. Too many facts to be crazy. I'm going back in. I holler at our very stoned looking server guy. "Is there a shortish bald white dood in a blue shirt working here?" "Yeah, E.J. the manager." "Shit yeah, cuz Kevin out front is asking for him and it seems important." He smiles, "All right, I'll have him come out." Back outside, I'm fucking pumped, I can feel the love, "Allright Kevin, is his name E.J.?" Huge nods and sounds and smile and waving arms. And we all laugh. "He's on his way out." Promptly comes E.J. "Hey Kevin, what's up man?" Kevin looks nervous, E.J. looks totally happy to be dealing with Kevin. All love, leans over to watch Kevin talk. A-M. "Am." I. "I." B-A-~~~~. "Am I what?" 7. "Seven." No. 8. "Eight." 5. Then me and E.J. say together "Eighty-six?!" And E.J. "What you think I'm gonna eighty-six you for spilling a coke?! No way man no way, come inside! You're a regular." We're all laughing hard. Kevin laughs deep and waves his arms around and gets pats on the backs and smiles real good. And we kept drinking very very happy.
Another shoutout to KB's Potrait-o-furia, which I suggest we have a permalink to at the top of the GG homepage, at least until kate tops herself once again, or until the death of the internet in 2102 (you've all got it backwards!).
but anyway, here is my humble contribution to the blawg (nicked from one Boy in Crisis owen), a well-crafted compilation proving Harrison Ford is a family man:
dude also has a medium-funny comp of things that Tom Cruise can outrun, worth a peep. shit is frightfully similar to an idea i had involving Nick Cage (wicker man def included) that i now have to jump on before this dude makes it true on the 'tube. prolly get around to in the next 6-18 months.
UPDATE: While reading G.I. Joe reviews for no reason I came across this absolute beauty of a line:
"The taint of cruddiness extends everywhere in this joyless stinker."
Friend of GG JamesDewey hipped me to this fantastic, amazing, beautiful thing. Someone was so curious about the Gathering of the Juggalos 2009 they made this mini-doc about it. It's fantastic. Watch this and read Kate's Portrait Party post and then just float away...
kate just put the game on smash with gordon gartrelle's 600th post and the most amazing series of JPGz i ever seen. i wanted to institute a one-week blogging ban to let the genius of that post remain at the top. then i saw pat morita (RIP) and this huge snake.
Ok, I'm going to use Bob's lovely photo as a jumpoff because I love staged portraits. From such simple precepts- I'm going to project an image of myself that will be canonical and representative of this moment in my life, and I will stand in front of something, and it will be a rectangle- we get this awesome tableau of humanity. If you were to look at my school portrait from say, 5th grade, it is conceivable that I would be wearing a gigantic red t-shirt that says 2002. I WOULD have been wearing big flammable liquid stickers (see below) on the knees of whatever fucked up jeans I was rocking in 1995 except my mom vetoed it on portrait day and I was too thrown for a loop by adolescence in general to say "These here stickers represent a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom" a la Nic Cage in Wild at Heart years before he starred in still my favorite youtube video of all time, Best Scenes from "The Wicker Man:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo
But my mom missed the point, and not just because it was actually a totally righteous stylistic choice. These photos have such great stories to tell! Sorry this might be a little epic. This is when...
...I was really into...
...I looked amazing
...I loved my cat/dogs/fiance/harmonica
...I could kill a man with my bare hands
...I knew how to have a real good time
...I walked on the moon, hey remember that? that was fun.
...I looked amazing
