Untitled Master Shake Project

On the Outrage, Oh, the Outrage!

2010-06-30T10:24:00.008-04:00

A recent TIME article perceived as being racist or prejudiced has Indians and inhabitants of Edison, NJ in a tizzy, calling for the author's beheading, or at least a petition asking for a retraction and apology. As this sort of thing really interests me, and the backlash interests me even more, I thought I'd weigh in on it in an organized fashion, especially as I don't seem to side with that Indian/Edisonian backlash.

I've read over the article twice now and cannot side with the people who are upset over it. It always makes me laugh when people in my culture say that something "makes my blood boil," and that is exactly what I am reminded of by this outrage. Really? You guys get upset about this? I'll explain later why such disproportionate outrage annoys me when directed specifically to something like this, but for now, I'd like to say that it's exactly because of people like those of us who are upset at this article that people like Stein and many amateur comedians choose their words so timidly, and why so many good comedians, like George Carlin or Louis C.K., are not accepted into the mainstream - because everyone's just itching to hear some trigger words and go off in retaliation, and not enough people are really listening. People really need to read more. If they did, they'd be more astute in sensing tone and purpose. This wasn't purposely inflammatory and it's silly for anyone to call for any sort of retraction or apology from TIME. If you ask for that, you've missed the point, regardless of how well or poorly it might have been made--this simply is not an article to get worked up about. It would be like getting into a fight with a child who calls you a "dumbhead."

Anyway, let's examine the article systematically and weigh the claims that it is offensive. We'll start by getting a sense of the balance in poking fun.

Jokes/criticism aimed toward India/Indians:
-The inappropriateness of the roof of a re-appropriated Pizza Hut
-Removing the opportunities for Edison youth to learn crime
-Not all Indians are geniuses
-Some Indians are so far from being geniuses that we can understand why India is so poor
-The mentioning of "dot heads" as a racial pejorative
-The mentioning of multi-armed and elephant-nosed Indian Gods in order, one can assume, to point out how odd the people are, if not to also mock.
-The lack of charm of strip malls and housing projects
-The ways in which Indians resemble Jersey Guidos

Jokes/criticism aimed toward Joel Stein and people he considers to be like him:
-The stupidness of Americans who call for tech support from call centers in India
-The stealing of pies and general drunkenness
-Sneaking into R-rated movies
-Stealing from Italian restaurant register
-Jerseyans as a picked-on people
-Our malls as being bad
-Our ability to number exits
-LBJ's conflicting attitudes toward Asians
-The quality of American schools (seemingly in comparison to Indian schools)
-Their inability to come up with a better racial epithet for an easy target
-The changes in Chelsea and the undefined role the author played in them
-Characteristics of Jersey Guidos

This is all approximate, as many of his jokes about Indians aren't really jokes or about Indians at all. I tried to be liberal in picking things directed at Indians, and still, I think the balance is firmly tilted in favor of self-blame/ridicule from the author.

As for criticisms people might have about the article, let's examine those.

Perceived Offense #1: Indians are poor and not all smart
What the author meant to convey - Well, just that, I suppose. He seems to be commenting on the previous inhabitants of Edison and their changing perceptions/understanding. They initially thought everyone in India was a genius and might have wondered why the country was so poor if that was the case. They learned over time that not everyone in India was a genius--in fact, some immigrants were downright stupid--and it's no longer such a surprise that India is poor.

My take - Well, how is this offensive or, more pertinently, untrue? Not all Indians are geniuses, though we forget this, and India is poor, as much as we'd like to forget that. Oh sure, we get upset when people point it out because we want them to see the non-material richness and beauty of India, but 1) it's still true that India is poor and 2) almost every Indian who has come to the US has come because it is richer than India. Even those who say they came for opportunities speak of fiscal opportunities, and those who say they came for education still claim that Indian education is better. It's really all about money, but we don't admit this to ourselves.

As for some Indians being dumb...well, duh. We're people like everyone else. There are some really smart Indians and some really dumb ones. While there are some really great Indian business owners here, there are a lot that shouldn't make us proud, what with their shady dealings, cutthroat practices, shoddy conditions, poor sanitary records, and the shameful practice of near indentured servitude many inflict on their own people after getting them here illegally. This stuff happens, just like all the stuff in Slumdog Millionaire. While it might not be the sum of all that it is to be Indian, we shouldn't deny it either. Anyone who has been in one of those grocery stores on Oak Tree Road should have noticed the vast difference between them and the environment in there, which is reminiscent of the free-for-all bustle of Indian temples, and that of a supermarket here.

What point does all of this make? Well, simply that while Indians are generally hardworking and industrious, and might be able to make a quick buck and a small fortune, that doesn't necessarily make them all intelligent in a way that leads to group success. It shouldn't surprise us that though there are many hardworking and intelligent Indians, the majority of India is very poor. The same kind of self-serving shadiness that we see in many of the Indian-run businesses here are what has led to the wide gap between haves and have-nots in India, with the ruling class selling out everyone else there. Many intelligent Indians find the US (which I concede is far from perfect) a more fitting, egalitarian forum for the practice of their skills.

Mind you, Stein only spoke of Indian merchants being not-as-brilliant. Their not-so-bright cousins might be any number of Indians that we know here. What comes to my mind are all the people here and abroad who try to outdo Westerners at being Western, until they come off as the kind of caricature at which Stein pokes fun at the end of his article. More on them later.

Perceived Offense #2: Indians have silly Gods
What the author meant to say - If you took offense at this, you have to admit that it's got to be the laziest insult ever against Indians. What you fail to realize is that that was exactly the author's point...that even if his schoolmates wanted to be lazy, they should have found bigger targets than just the dots on Indians' heads.

My take - Really, this paragraph should be all anyone reading needs to figure out what the author's tone was. He gives an example of just how lazy and unimaginative, however adamant, bigotry can be, and I remember experiencing this sort of treatment when I was young and growing up in a town that didn't have as many Indians as we do now. People who just drive down the street and direct Native American battle cries at me (ignorant) or yell "Hindu!" at me (more of a statement of fact than an inherent criticism). Stein is really just making an observation, though, in a self-conscious move (or perhaps one prompted by a nervous editor), he uses this as an opportunity to poke fun at his people/schoolmates for being unimaginative. If we take offense at simply being pointed out to be different, that's rather silly and hypocritical, no? First of all, shouldn't we realize that to most other people, gods with multiple arms and elephant noses would seem odd? Second, don't we know people (including us) who poke fun at things about other cultures that we don't understand? Sure, there is meaning behind those multiple arms and elephant noses, and we might be able to explain that significance, given the chance, but isn't there usually meaning and significance behind the things that everyone else does, and don't we all think things are silly until we learn that? Stein never claims that we and our gods are unequivocally silly or foolish...just that they come off that way initially to young people of a different culture.

Perceived Offense #3: That Indian owned/run strip malls and housing developments are charmless
What the author meant to say - What he said
My take - well duh. Anyone who knows anything about city planning or the fight against urban sprawl and all that good stuff understands why we work toward the charming downtowns of some of the neighborhoods in NYC, towns like Princeton or Westfield or Cranford, or of the European cities we most like to visit. Relative to one of those places or, say, the neighborhoods of San Francisco, the parts of Edison that Indians have developed are more like Canal Street or Time Square in NYC - they're efficient, busy, profitable, but also garish, overrun, and the furthest thing from charming. The area shows no value for city planning, for the construction of neighborhoods that might be attractive or artistic - it shows a value for the bottom line, for packing as many people and as many consumers into as little space as possible, aesthetics/cleanliness/sanitation/prevailing conventions be damned. It is what it is, right? Not every place needs to be charming and quaint and quiet, but let's not get upset about it being called as it's seen.

Hmm, not sure what else is specifically taken as offensive that isn't addressed above. Anyway, while we can argue about the humor of the piece (whether there was any, which I think there obviously was, or how effective it was - I would at most concede that the humor wasn't as good as he might have hoped), I hope people see that the author actually had some small points in this mostly tongue-in-cheek article.

Point #1: That Edison has changed, often for the better
I hope you guys noticed this...that in comparing the neighborhood of his childhood to now (and while Nilam pointed out that he's mostly focusing on Oak Tree Road, it seems that his memories from childhood are of businesses in that neighborhood, so his article is really about that part of Edison, not of all of Edison. You can't argue that he wasn't affected by or didn't observe the change if a number of the businesses we know now were businesses he frequented or worked at as a kid), he is critical, though nostalgic, about the people/places of his memories. The biggest criticism he says about the businesses that replaced them is that the old Pizza Hut roof doesn't suit the current establishment. He's matter of fact in stating the existence of an Indian grocery store and a cinema that shows Bollywood films and serves samosas, and positive in pointing out that Moghul is a famous restaurant. He later says that the food has improved, and Indians brought a smarter, geekier element into his circle of friends. And he pokes fun at Indians for not being able to tell the ages of white people, which is the old "all you people look the same" dynamic that comes into play any time two cultures initially meet.

Point #2 - That he's simply nostalgic
Stein speaks of the sense of loss and anomie that he shares with people of Arizona. While he does not [seriously] advocate kicking Indians out of Edison and reverting it to what it used to be, it's harmless enough for him to simply say, as he does, that he misses the Edison of his childhood, that it no longer exists for him to return to, and that he no longer seems to belong in his old neighborhood. Notice that he doesn't even make this point without including a joke about Americans/light praise for Indians/Mexicans by pointing out their shock that we can eat such spicy foods. If anything, Stein's article not only has no real barbs, but also pulls its punches.

Point #3 - That people of every culture/country feel put off when another group immigrates, but does not assimilate. And that Indians are now assimilating, which makes Stein's feeling about Edison as it is now more mild.
While I am critical of groups that remain insular while living in another group's country (even if that country is a supposed melting pot, like this one), Stein does not seem to be. He's just pointing out that this has been the reality of the transformation of Edison, and that that increased the feeling of change. He points out at the end that Indians are becoming more American in the area, poking fun at Indians, at New Jerseyans/Italian-Americans, and at you the reader for being a hypothetical pedophile. I hope no one's upset about the comment about the Statue of Liberty shedding a tear about the cologne, because it's both true that the people he describes here wear too much cologne and it's besides his point, which is essentially that "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

As a humorous piece about nostalgia and the nature/inevitability of change/assimilation, this isn't a bad piece. It's not a particularly strong piece, but, as I said, it's just a bit of light humor, not a real satire (really, good criticism and good comedy go hand in hand, and this was rather a bit of light jabbing and no more). If some people are upset about Time, fine, get upset at them for printing the article, though I think Nilam is off-base in saying that this piece belongs in The Onion more than in Time. The Onion is not real satire - it's absurdist humor. This is closer to The Daily Show or Colbert Report in that it makes a small point through a lot of tongue-in-cheek fake-serious points. It should be obvious to anyone reading that this is mostly not a serious piece, and we also shouldn't label Time as something that is completely serious and non-fiction (just look at some of their person of the year choices, for example). This might be on the lighter side of Time fare, but not only is our media far from perfectly informative/objective, but also, there is plenty of room in a magazine such as Time for op/ed/humor.

Now, as for why I am worked up enough about this to write this much about it...I feel strongly that this kind of pride/courage for one's culture is silly and misguided at best and hypocritical at worst. At worst, what Stein said is ignorant (though the more I read it, the less I see any truth to that statement). Simple ignorance is not something to rail against. You don't shout at the dark. You shine light upon it. To shine light upon this article is to miss the point, though. And if this is how we fight for our culture, by missing the point, by getting upset about someone pointing out some harmless facts, then we are blind to our culture and ourselves.

I get upset at Indians who complain about all the injustices heaped upon us by all other people in the world throughout all of history, because it all seems to be very selfish and showy. Showy in that the outrage isn't proportional to the perceived offense, kinda like Aishwarya's many scenes of being disproportionately upset in her movies. And selfish in the sense that few Indians get upset about these sorts of things in a universal way, or out of principle. When a group of Indians get together and make fun of all the other people we deride (pretty much everyone), or are casually misogynistic or homophobic, or when any other group of people says anything mildly critical about anyone else, are we all up at arms because of the affront to humanity? Do we stand up for all people, even against "our own" people?

Why do the answers to these questions matter? They matter because fundamentalists of every group - the people who take themselves way too seriously and "will not stand" for all kinds of perceived affronts, who perpetuate cycles of revenge, who justify anything and everything with some sort of previous offense/attack - get worked up in this way only when they and people they deem like them are affected. This sort of pride/nationalism/what have you splits us apart and breeds hate. To build healthier relationships with one another and a healthier understanding of ourselves, we need to be able to recognize harmless humor and to be able to stomach and overcome the smaller affronts. You'd think the people who express such undue criticism for this article had never seen a comedy show, in which the criticism is almost always much harsher than anything here. The best comedy exaggerates stereotypes in an attempt to not only elicit laughs, but also to shift the focus onto and poke fun at us for still giving any credence to those stereotypes. Whether affronts come in the form of good or bad humor, or harmless/harmful ignorance, we do everyone a disservice when we refuse to tolerate them.

Though it's perhaps not as detrimental, it still bugs me very much when people get upset about articles such as these not out of indignant and self-righteous hate/anger, but instead out of self-importance. That is, many people just (usually sub-consciously) want to think of themselves (and be seen) as being cultured, and so exhibit a disproportionate and displaced anger toward inappropriate, and rather weak, targets such as this author/article. Again, the reaction is often not conscious, and the displacement is a defense mechanism. To have this said about oneself feels very critical, and I admit that I too have been guilty of getting overly worked up about things because I felt I should, and because I had little perspective. The great souls of our various traditions would not be stirred by something like this. The Dalai Lama, for example, would probably just laugh at it, and not only because he is at peace, but also because there are much bigger, more insidious forces at work than what is conveyed here.

It's easy to get upset about an article such as this one. What does it accomplish to go after the author and editor? Nothing. Do we as Indians actually think about his points? Do we question why we are in America if we really value everything non-material in India more than the comforts we have here? Do we insist on living like ordinary Indians when we return to India? Do we care about the kinds of neighborhoods we create here, the kind of practices our people demonstrate in their professions and the way this reflects on us?

Branching out, do we get upset at what is implied when Prop 8 is turned down? Do we care about the loss of rights in Arizona when people can be searched for merely "looking" like illegal immigrants? Do we get up at arms and do something about that? Those are much bigger, more real affronts to all of us as human beings than anything stated in this article. Are we part of petitions on those matters? If not, shouldn't we shift our gaze away from Stein and take a long, hard look at ourselves?

UPDATE
While I was on our honeymoon, my sister sent me a response to this blog post and said that the article was pointless and passed along a retort to it. Here's what I said in response to this retort:
Anyway, I hope by now everyone's forgotten about the article because it is, at worst, forgettable. The response article that Indian guy wrote underscores my point...if this really is a pointless article (I didn't feel it was. It really seemed like an honest confession of guilt/embarrassment from an otherwise proud liberal wrapped in perhaps unsuccessful light humor), then why the outrage? If it's poor writing/humor or poor decision-making by TIME, then why aren't people writing to say, "Hey, my intelligence demands better journalism!" Why direct such outrage and, in the case of Rahul Parikh, pretension, at such a harmless, easy target, when there are much more dangerous forces at work? I think it's precisely because it's easy that people jumped on this guy, because it's reflexive and patriotic in a misguided way, and I think that's far more debilitating to people with real problems (in a world with the same) than anything Stein said. I wonder how the people upset about this article would react to a comic doing a standup routine in which Indians (or any race) are joked about, though the venue/medium is also blamed (that this is simply inappropriate for TIME to publish). I think that's weak, because, again, the outrage isn't about the quality of journalism (we could use a lot more of that kind of criticism). We all need to be able to recognize humor (even humor that fails) because the best of humor (and yes, even this article) tells uncomfortable truths (though the ones here are and were meant to be about Stein himself. If he wanted to criticize Indians, he pulled his punches. It's funny that Parikh doesn't realize that simply pointing out that Indians have spicy food and unfamiliar gods doesn't really say anything except to state a fact). To appreciate humor, we have to be honest with ourselves, and so it is that humor about race is the most appreciated type of humor...until it's about "our" race.

On Music Worth Checking Out

2010-02-05T01:36:00.004-05:00

The Gorillaz have a new album! This is the song I like the most off the bat because I love when artists add layers of music one at a time (especially because it is helpful in demonstrating the goodness of complex music to the uninitiated) and because of Mos' flow (another thing that casual radio-only rap fans don't ever get to appreciate). Also, I enjoy the seeming dysrhythmia the song devolves to at the end.
Gorillaz - Sweepstakes (featuring Mos Def)

Kings of Convenience - I Don't Know What I Can Save You From (remix by Röyksopp)

A few of many great songs from Chuck:
John Denver - Leaving On A Jet Plane (performed by Jeffster!)(Ignore the pictures and lyrics)

Nina Simone - Feeling Good

This version seems kinda blah compared to the original, but...
Shout Out Louds - Four By Four

On Your Need For Daily Links

2010-01-26T21:37:00.005-05:00

Wonderful twee side-to-side fades, complex arrangements of light, twittering keyboard music, snares and bass beats. Precious lyrics that might give you a sugar rush, but earnest and fragile enough that, if you've got a heart, you'll probably appreciate. A singer whose voice perfectly fits those lyrics, breathy, thin and sincere as it is.

...Hmm...I wrote this about 5 months ago and don't remember what about, though I imagine it might have been about Owl City. Or wait, probably something more recent than that. Yeah, probably Owl City or Swimming With Dolphins. I recommend both. Anyway, I'm way overdue for posts on here, so here are a few things I liked so much recently, I couldn't be lazy any longer (plus, I'm done with classes for the school year and am done with wedding planning, so I have some time).

First up, two really awesome Star Wars movies. Well, not really movies. They're video game excerpts, but the guy from Pajiba who posted them really thinks we should just have the video game company make us some movies. After seeing them, I tend to agree. Like he, I suggest you watch these in HD.

This was a really fun thing to play around with.

That's all for now. Oh, no, wait:
Here's a wonderful and clever throwback to video games of my childhood:

There's more where that came from. And then some.

Here's my boy and yours, Biren, on his first sky dive:

On Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue

2010-01-20T19:44:00.005-05:00

I haven't much time to describe this album in detail, but I listened to it today and really liked it. It's Billy Bragg singing unreleased songs of Woody Guthrie with backing from Wilco and other vocalists. I've thought of Wilco as being good from all I've heard of them, but I haven't been really blown away by anything of theirs. This, on the other hand, struck me immediately. The songs are mostly short and simple, but they seem so real and precious, and so much like some lost folk musings on the world (which I guess they are), though they're played in a variety of styles.

I think the songs that I listened to on repeat the most the first time through are Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key and Eisler on the Go, though I really enjoy the repeating theme, playful as it is, in Walt Whitman's Niece and the sweetness of Hesitating Beauty. And there's the sincere, childlike love song to Ingrid Bergman. Really, all the songs are good, not a single seemed out of place to me. The music is always sweet and creative, and this is especially impressive when you think of how eclectic it is, taken as a whole.

On Okkervil River - The Stage Names

2010-01-19T12:18:00.010-05:00

I'd heard of Okkervil River in 2007, I think, because of their album, Black Sheep Boy, which I thought was pretty good. I think I included some tracks from it on a recent post. I just listened to this album of theirs, however, and absolutely loved every little bit of it and had to share it in its entirety with you.

I'm short on time, so I'll post all the songs at once and give you just a few words on each (or be lazier still and copy their lyrics).

Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe
I like how the last line in each verse flows and, of course, the movie theme.

Unless It's Kicks
This was the first song that caught my attention, and the one I play on repeat the most. It's just so catchy, so exciting and upbeat. I like the lyrics and his staccato delivery.

What breaks this heart the most is the ghost of some rock and roll fan
Exploding up from the stands
With her heart opened up
And I want to tell her, "Your love isn't lost,"
Say, "My heart is still crossed,"
Scream, "You're so wonderful!"
What a dream in the dark

A Hand To Take Hold of the Scene
Again, I like the energy of the song and the fairy-tale like lyrics that are also a bit meta, as the characters seem to be talking about someone leading their story in a positive direction.

She rises up like a yawn, grips my heart like a claw, splits apart like a jaw, like an eye
And she asks me with a sigh:
"When we're so far from right
When we're losing the fight
When we're letting the light weaken its beam
Oh, oh
Is there a hand to take hold of the scene?"

Savannah Smiles
While this beautiful song seems like something I would sing if I had a daughter and grew out of touch with her, it's actually based on a true story from a magazine article about an adult film star who killed herself. You can find the details about 2/3 of the way down the page here. It's essentially still a song of regret and loss, but the singer/songwriter read/included much more into it.

Plus Ones
This clever song puts a twist on a bunch of well known songs by adding one to their titular sums. See how many you can catch. Again, the commenters on songmeanings.com have found them all.

A Girl In Port
If this is indeed a song about a one night stand, it's the sweetest of that type I've ever heard.

Oh, I'm a weak and lonely sort
Though I'm not sailing just for sport
I've come to feel
Out on the sea
These urgent lives
Press against me
I'm just a guest
I'm not a part
With my tender head
With my easy heart
These several years out on the sea
Made me empty, cold, and clear
Pour yourself into me

Let fall your soft and swaying skirt
Let fall your shoes
Let fall your shirt
I'm not the lady-killing sort
Enough to hurt
A girl in port

You Can't Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man
Not sure what to say about this song. I like the music and sound most of all.

Title Track
Will Sheff knows a thing or two about diction, phrasing, and enunciation, and it really shows on slower songs like this one (where he doesn't let the slow pace make the song feel lethargic or dull), though I really like his pronunciations on all the songs.

John Allyn Smith Sails
I think Dave Eggers would be proud of the imagination and self-conscious drama of this song.

Love To A Monster
And finally, as bitter break-up revenge songs go, few can touch this.

Yeah, so here I go, just exploding the hope we'll be speaking
Some day, years from now, seeking friendship and understanding.
Yeah, I hope you get angry, and hurt, and have the hardest of landings.
And I hope your new man thinks of me when he sees what a number I did on you.

I grow tired of this song. Turn my eyes
To the blonde in the bleachers.
She's a lovely young creature.
I think she's seeking adventure.
I think she's ready to see that the world isn't so sweet or so tender.
I won't break her, just bend her, and make her into my new ringer for you.

On Music Worth Checking Out

2010-01-14T00:59:00.003-05:00

My brother and some other people have been trying to get me to listen to more Country music, but the big name artists I checked out (explanation below) didn't impress. I thought I'd check out more of Wilco and Drive-By Truckers, two artists I'd already been impressed with, as well as to listen to the albums of theirs I'd already heard, as well as some other artists that make Country music or something similar, and I'm very glad that I did. If you're one of many people who won't give Country a chance, please give these songs an honest chance. I'd dismiss the genre too if I were only going by stuff on the radio, like Toby Keith giving beer to his horses or telling terrorists what's what.

Everything below's not Country, though. There's a bunch of other songs/bands that I've listened to recently but forgotten to share, so enjoy!

Old Crow Medicine Show
As you can see, I really liked the debut album from these guys.

OCMS - Take 'em Away
This sounds like a traditional or a riff on a traditional. Check out these lyrics:
Take ‘em away, take ‘em away, Lord
Take away these chains from me
My heart is broken ‘cause my spirit’s not free
Lord take away these chains from me

Some birds’ feathers are too bright to be caged
I know I’m not that colorful but a bird just the same
Open up your gate now, let me put down my load
So I can feel at ease and go back to my home

OCMS - Wagon Wheel
No matter what the lyrics may be about or what they show in the video, something about this song is just so sweet.

OCMS - We're All In This Together
I think my favorite part of this song is how the twangy strings in the back and the singer both seem to crack and wail together.

OCMS - Hard To Tell
They get to show off their speed and musicianship in this song.

OCMS - CC Rider

OCMS - Hard To Love
A twist on the old theme of unrequited love:

OCMS - Poor Man

OCMS - Big Time In the Jungle
A song about a young man going to Vietnam in specific, and to war in general.

Wilco
I'd heard of Wilco for some time, though I'd never listened to them until I really grew to love a VW ad campaign that had songs from Sky Blue Sky in it, so I checked that album out and liked it, though I didn't think much more of it at that point. I relistened to it recently, along with other albums, which I'm still going through. I wasn't enamored with Wilco's songs--which are solid throughout, without a doubt--as with the artists I've placed before and after them, but I still want to share a few songs of theirs from their first album.
Wilco - Pick Up the Change
Wilco - That's Not the Issue
Wilco - Should've Been In Love

Drive-By Truckers
I heard all of Alan Jackson's music and most of George Strait's after my brother wouldn't stop criticizing me for loving Iron & Wine, whose brilliance I explained to him mostly in terms of Sam Beam's deep, complex and poetic lyrics. He said if I want something poetic, I should listen to George Strait, and he'd been telling me to check out a bunch of country artists as it was. Unfortunately, my brother's started doing something he never used to do, which is to listen to mainstream radio stations. Sure, Country has a lot of great artists and fans of the genre bristle at all the people who dismiss it as a whole, but mainstream, formulaic country is no better than mainstream, formulaic anything. Strait is like Mariah Carey, let's say. He has hits undeniably, and a great deal of talent, as well as songs that most anyone can be fond of, but having staying power on the charts for decades (this guy has 50 #1 singles!), you have to be broad and not so deep, so while there are songs here and there in his albums that I can really appreciate, they're drowned out by a whole bunch of stuff that lyrically and musically sounds exactly the same as every other song of his or anyone else's on the radio. Alan Jackson I found to be a similar, though less successful, story.

I was really pleased, then, to listen to Drive-By Truckers, whose Country/Southern Rock music is skillful, adventurous, and dignified, amongst other things. The first song below is what really caught my ear and appealed to my reason.

Drive-By Truckers - Outfit
Country has a LOT of songs that are about how Southern/Country/Hick the artist is, replete with illustrative examples. It's really just pandering, touching on hot topics and key words the way politicians do in their debates and the way political ads have eagles and flags and puppies and children in them. Here's a song that bucks the trend, something that's not meant to make a bunch of drunk people chant U-S-A! or the equivalent, something that's rooted in real pride and dignity, as well as honest self-reflection.

Drive-By Truckers - The Living Bubba
A song about an artist who has AIDS and may die soon, but he "can't die now cuz I got another show to do." The lyrics are so representative of DBT...honest, real, unashamed. "Don't give me no preachin' no self servin'. I ain't no angel but nobody's deserving...I ain't got no political agenda, Ain't got no message for the youth of America 'cept 'Wear a rubber and be careful who you screw' and come see me next Friday cuz I got another show..."

Drive-By Truckers - Late For Church
Reverend Bob is pointin' his finger
Mom and Dad follow every last word
All this hollerin' makes me wonder
Does a whispered prayer get heard?

Drive-By Truckers - Why Henry Drinks
Wow, speaking of honest, these lyrics hit hard and pull no punches...at least, the person in the song doesn't.

Drive-By Truckers - Buttholeville
I love the dirty sound of Why Henry Drinks and this song as well. I just love the energy of this song. It reminds me a bit of ZZ Top or The Black Keys.

Drive-By Truckers - Steve McQueen
This song showcases how playful and clever DBT is. They're not content to stick to the well-trodden path, and if they're going to praise an idol of their, it's not going to be without some digs at other people (Alec Baldwin catches a bit of their dismissive ire here).

Drive-By Truckers - The Deeper In
Wow, heart-breaking and real, this song was apparently based on a magazine article about a brother-sister couple in jail for consensual incest.

Drive-By Truckers - Sink Hole
Wow...the singer shows both pride in the land that's being taken from him (this is apparently based on the film The Accountant) and shameless, murderous anger at the man who's taking it from him.

Drive-By Truckers - Hell No I Ain't Happy
I think the first line of this song, "There’s a lot of bad wood underneath the veneer," is the perfect summary of the anger bubbling underneath that the singer feels.

Drive-By Truckers - My Sweet Annette
Heartbreaking and penitent

Drive-By Truckers - Sounds Better in the Song
Heartbreaking and stripped down, fittingly.
"Dreams are given to you when you’re young enough to dream them
before they can do you any harm.
They don’t start to hurt, until you try to hold on to them after seeing how they really are.
She used to dream them with me, every single crazy one,
until they started hurting her too, now she’s got some of her own
and outgrowing me, might be the best thing for her she’s ever done."

Drive-By Truckers - Your Daddy Hates Me
Again, honest, to the point, repentant, flawed, but proud. I'd respect someone who showed these qualities in his life and can't help but love DBT for all exhibiting them in their songs.

Drive-By Truckers - Decoration Day
Oh my God...such a moving tale of bad blood and violence between two families for reasons the singer can't remember or doesn't know, but which affect him through and through all the same.

Levon Helm
I like the earnest and articulate lyrics, the heartfelt/wailing singing, the beautiful strings and the simple, yet lively drumming from Helm, drummer of The Band, amongst other projects. The songs span or touch on Country, Traditionals, Folk and Blues, if not other styles, and feel as organic as the title of the album from which these came, Dirt Farmer.

Levon Helm - False Hearted Lover Blues
I love how absolutely catchy this song is and Helm's wailing, bluesy delivery.

Levon Helm - Poor Old Dirt Farmer
As with "Poor Man" above, sometimes artists, even really successful ones, just get the plight of the commonest of men, and it shows here. I also really like the style of this song, how everything quiets down at the start of each verse, and how everyone joins in after he sets up the latest description of the poor old dirt farmer.

Levon Helm - Little Birds
Sparse, especially considering Helm's a great drummer, but I love the harmonies:

Levon Helm - Calvary
There's something so epic about this song, like it's some Negro Spiritual or something, as if it predates even The Blues.

Levon Helm - Anna Lee
Again, I really enjoy how heartfelt Helm sounds, how much meaning he gives his words (and the words themselves--"...hold your sweet, weary head to my breast") and the wonderful harmonizing:

Levon Helm - A Train Robbery
A great telling of a folk tale, that of Frank and Jesse James, in epic fashion:

Levon Helm - Single Girl, Married Girl
I love this song for its simplicity and the lead/chorus style (especially that wailing chorus):

Levon Helm - The Blind Child

Dntel
Jimmy Tamborello is Dntel, minus vocal contributions from artists including Ben Gibbard, of Death Cab for Cutie, who wrote/sang for (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan (below), which they liked enough that they collaborated to form Postal Service and give us the great Give Up album as well as other singles/B-sides/remixes. I thought I'd give Dntel a try because I'd heard good things about it...some of the same things I'd heard about the instrumental group Explosions in the Sky. Other than the Evan/Chan song, though, it mostly seemed like random noises. Still, I gave it multiple tries and the benefit of the doubt because of my love for Postal Service, and I'm glad I did. I'd still have trouble explaining to people why some songs aren't just noise, but I think it's something that needs to be experienced, preferably with a good pair of headphones that also block out or cancel outside noises--as much of the sound is atmospheric--and preferably with one's eyes closed. I sometimes grow tired of certain Dntel songs when I pay close, critical attention to them, but when I don't, I find it easy to get lost in them. It's like you can't miss the forest for the trees with Dntel songs, like the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, which don't make as much sense on their own.

Dntel - High Horses Theme
What I love about this song is how atmospheric, how ethereal it sounds, the lush fades and the tight snare beat underneath them.

Dntel - Tybalt 60
This song reminds me of Track 13, I believe, of the music from an old Wu-Tang video game, though I'm hard-pressed to figure out a way to play that for you:

Dntel - Casuals
Answer me this...how can you listen to this song and not tap your foot and drum along in any way you know how?

Dntel - Jewel States
This reminds me of Old Goats, which reminds me of Gotan Project. See below for both.

Dntel - (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan
So this is the song that started it all for the side project that came to be known later as Postal Service. The lyrics are so sweet, and the description of a dream brought to an end by a ringing phone..."Your eyelashes tickled my neck with every nervous blink. And it was perfect...until the telephone started ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing off."

Dntel - (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan (Superpitcher Kompakt rmx)
This is my favorite remix of the song.

Dntel - (This Is) The story of Evan and Chan (Lali Puna Remix)
I often feel remixes do nothing more than make a song playable in a club if it wasn't otherwise so. I'm learning more about electronica-type music and appreciating it more, slowly getting to the point where I can pick out real gems from what I described just now. This is a remix I really enjoy because it takes this song that I really love and retains its preciousness even without the lyrics or Ben Gibbard's singing:

Old Goats
...weird...I can hardly find any record of this band or its album 22 Songs From Brazil, online. Does it no longer exist? Hmmph. Wow, even iTunes and CDDB.com have no record of it. Well, you can hear their song Marinheiro here, as well as the band and some of their music here.

As for Gotan Project, they're a French tango group and I was very happy to see the following song of theirs featured in the Chuck episode "Chuck vs. The Tango."

Gotan Project - Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre)

Gotan Project - Triptico
Now, I haven't recently rediscovered Gotan Project. I've appreciated them for a while. But I was reminded of them while listening to these other songs, so I might as well also share this song, which makes me want to get up and dance...and I don't even really like to dance:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
I actually got to know Nick Cave through his writing of the wonderful movies The Proposition and The Road before checking out his music, about which I'd heard great things. If you like Tom Waits' music for its deep, dark themes and honest beauty, or if you appreciate the music/singing from Murder By Death, you'll probably really like this. The following are just four random songs that happened to play together when I searched for Nick Cave on Grooveshark, and they're all beautiful. (haha, Nick Cave is comically awkward and unintentionally hilarious in his videos, so try to ignore that and just pay attention to the songs if his expressions and movements and hairstyle are turning you off to his music)

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Where the Wild Roses Grow (featuring Kylie Minogue? Wow, that's random)
Apparently from an album called Murder Ballads

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Henry Lee (featuring Polly Jean Harvey)
(also from Murder Ballads)

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - As I Sat Sadly By Her Side
This simple piano melody, which could easily be found in an R&B song on the radio, is put to much better use here:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Red Right Hand
I like the sparse, effective arrangement, and that it reminds me of the Tom Waits song that served as The Wire's theme song. This is the only Nick Cave song with which I was already familiar, because of the cover below from the Arctic Monkeys:

Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys - Red Right Hand
I've heard a bunch of covers of this song, but I think only my beloved Arctic Monkeys got it right, as they don't lose the emphatic, through restrained, energy, even as they amp things up.

While we're here, I might as well share some songs from their new album, Humbug, which I really enjoyed, and for which Red Right Hand is a great B-side. The album veers toward the dirtier, slower songs they've done on their previous two albums, and I'm tempted to put every song on the album here, but I have to resist that urge.

Arctic Monkeys - Dangerous Animals
This is representative of the cool guitar parts and darkly jaunty beats they've had in songs before.

Arctic Monkeys - Fire and the Thud
This is more representative of the pace of this album, with things a bit more deliberate and the themes personal, but still cynical, or at least presented askance (did I use that word properly? Well you know what I meant).

Arctic Monkeys - I Haven't Got My Strange
And this is another B-side or bonus that I really enjoy, especially as its strangeness matches the titular theme.

Reverend and the Makers
I loved the first album from these guys for some of the same reasons as my love for Arctic Monkeys, though their music seems more electronic and their world view more contently cynical. This first song should make that latter point clear. This album seems to be less pop/electronica than the last, if my impression/memory of them is based on anything substantial, and it took me a while to get into. I was disappointed at first, and am now hooked. Go figure. I sometimes fall in love with the sound of a band so much that I don't tolerate even the slightest changes.

Reverend and the Makers - Hidden Persuaders

Reverend and the Makers - Professor Pickles
I absolutely love the sound of this and the song just below it, starting with the great music.

Reverend and the Makers - Manifesto/People Shapers
I especially love the great hits in this song, and the wonderful transition to its second part. Lest you think these guys say the same thing all socially critical high schoolers say with a bit more linguistic skill, this is the band's statement against the far-right British National Party. "Since when did it get passe to be having a say? Retrospective rebels aren't enough."

Reverend and the Makers - Hard Time for Dreamers
These guys can do slow and pensive as well as Arctic Monkeys, even ramping up the energy in a similar way at one point. As with the Arctic Monkeys album, I'm so fond of all the songs here that I struggled to pick just a few.

The Strokes
These NYC rockers' debut album, Is This It? made a lot of Best of the 00s lists, so I checked them out again. I realized that there were a lot of times in recent memory when I had heard a song that reminded me of The Killers or Franz Ferdinand or something, but seemed better, more confident, but I couldn't remember what artist made those songs...and they all turned out to be by The Strokes. I don't know enough to be able to say why this album deserves to be on all those lists. It's especially hard for me to compare albums/artists from this style/genre of music, but it's definitely good. The music is catchy, energetic, dynamic (a big factor in separating the real bands from the posers...do they play just chords and have very familiar song structure or do they actually vary things, layer their music, have drumming that can't be replaced by the same from any other random group/song?). The singing is surprisingly subdued, muffled in sound, laid back and nonchalant for the subject material. It and the title of the album seem self-consciously modest. Here are a few samples:

The Strokes - The Modern Age

The Strokes - Soma
Is the soma mentioned in this song a reference to the drug from Brave New World? Anyway, I like how the music is so catchy and in contrast with the lyrics and the way everything slows down for "stop...and go."

The Strokes - Someday

The Strokes - Alone, Together
The music in the beginning reminds me of Take Me Out (also really good) by Franz Ferdinand, especially at the 0:45ish point in that song. Granted, the Franz Ferdinand album came out later, but I knew it first.

The Strokes - Last Nite
Probably one of the more recognizable songs by these guys that I still didn't realize was them until just a few days ago

The Strokes - Hard To Explain

The Strokes - When It Started
This reminds me of The Fratellis' album, Costello Music, only I like this better. As before, the other songs from this album are also great, but I have to stop posting them at some point.

The Weepies
The Weepies - Can't Go Back Now
This is kinda random. I happen to love The Weepies already, but haven't listened to their music lately. I just stumbled upon this great video while looking for the videos above, so I'm sharing this song as well.

Okkervil River
I also relistened to Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy album and saw the glimpse of something special that I saw way back when, but both times, I listened in my car and didn't keep my focus through the album, so I have to check it out again to get a good sense of it as a whole. I'm tired right now and need to lie down, so I don't feel like commenting on the following songs, but they're a good sampling of what I really like from this album.

Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
Okkervil River - For Real
Okkervil River - In a Radio Song
Okkervil River - Black
Okkervil River - Song Of Our So-Called Friend

On Music Worth Checking Out

2009-12-24T10:44:00.000-05:00

Before I get to one of his recommendations, if you love music (or if you love good, humorous writing), you should read Paul Shirley's writing. Here's his archive.

Kurt Vile - Blackberry Song (I don't know what's up with the ending or if this is his video):

Here's Jeremy Feist's Top 10 underrated albums of the Aughts. I'm glad to already love some of them. The rest, I shall check out.

I've already introduced you to Vahsti Bunyan's Train Song. I don't know if I ever heard or linked to Ben Gibbard and Feist's cover of it. I was apprehensive about it, as I love the atmospheric original, but I really enjoyed it and all the harmonies and such.

Ben Gibbard and Feist - Train Song:

And here's another song Vashti Bunyan made with the same music, entitled 17 Pink Sugar Elephants:

On Your Need for Daily Links

2009-12-24T00:09:00.001-05:00

see below

Youth In Revolt redband trailer:

Youth In Revolt Red Band Trailer - watch more funny videos

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=17067606&ch=4226713

Haha, the first US review of Avatar comes with groundbreaking spoilers such as:

The first thing I want to reveal about Avatar is that it's a musical. That was a complete surprise. I knew it was in 3-D and groundbreaking CGI but I didn't know that director James Cameron was a songwriter in the tradition of Cole Porter and Alan Jay Lerner. All I can say is, get ready. If you loved My Fair Lady, think My Fair Lady in 3-D. Imagine Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison plunging into your popcorn. That's what it's like.

And the fact that the movie's really all about the planning and construction of the NJ Turnpike. Who knew?

An improv group got a bell choir to just show up unannounced and give support to a solitary Salvation Army bell ringer in NYC:

Keith Olbermann might be smug and both overtly/subtly condescending with his righteous indignation, but he's far from without a point, and I enjoy so many things about this story of Law&Order: SVU taking a shot at O'Reilly, Beck and Limbaugh:

Amir's latest prank on Streeter involves a skydiving gone horribly wrong:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

For anyone with a child with destructive tendencies (or with easily startled pets), here's a robot that will terrorize your action figures and assorted styrofoam products:

Hahaha, Ricky Gervais can't go out of character (man, is he like Stephen Colbert in that sense?) even when he's on Sesame Street torturing Elmo:

Roger Ebert just gave me a bunch of movies to see with his top-10 mainstream and top-10 indie films of the year. I didn't recognize a single independent film, but that's a little less surprising when you consider that Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant is considered by Ebert to be a mainstream film. Turns out he means in terms of studio and not in terms of who's actually watching it.

One man's top 10 list for 2009...of douchebags, that is.

Lessons to learn from Goodfellas

I've never heard this Christmas Shoes song, but I do enjoy Patton Oswalt's rant about it:

Five gaping movie plot holes, with examples.

I assume you've seen the Dove commercial showing how an ordinary looking woman is made to look gorgeous for a billboard. Here's Alyssa Milano being made up to look like a Jersey Shore skank:

Alyssa Milano's Evolution: Jersey Shore from Alyssa Milano

Yet another person gives me books to read when I am woefully behind in the reading already on my plate, so to speak (I'm doing great in terms of movies and TV shows, though).

Shaun of the Dead cast reunion photoshoot!

Robert Downey, Jr. on Letterman, engaging in some friendly verbal sparring:

Awesome! Jason Segel still goes around performing with Puppet Dracula (from Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Here he is on Craig Ferguson's show:

Hahaha, I loved this. This guy films his wife after they watch movies together, as she cries at the end of almost every movie...including these, which feature only the obligatory amount of emotional content:
Star Wars

Back to the Future

Lord of the Rings

Practically every newspaper front page from The Simpsons (I really enjoy the smaller secondary article headlines):

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

MST3K has all its shows online. If you have to ask what MST3K is, then don't bother with the link.

Haha, awesome...for fans of Always Sunny and fans of Christina Hendricks (sorry to leave The Waitress out, but seriously...Christina Hendricks!), here's proof that the D.E.N.N.I.S. System works.

Haha, I don't know anything about this, but I don't tire easily of humor mined from this...here's Bobby Bottleservice's audition tape for Jersey Shore:

Bobby Bottleservice - Jersey Shore Audition Tape - watch more funny videos

Sketchysantas.com

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-12-07T23:21:00.002-05:00

Ramayana, Facebook style!

ANOTHER great 100 The Wire quotes:

This is a real news show, from Japan, giving an animated reenactment of what happened to Tiger, pretty much a day or two after news broke that he'd been in a crash and any more details had gotten out:

SNL's jab at Tiger:

Haha, more Nic Cage humor...here's him "watching his own performance from Wicker Man" (I assume the footage is from Wicker Man and 8mm)

Haha, someone dubbed random phrases expertly over Star Trek (Next Generation) footage:

Quentin Tarantino in a ridiculous Japanese commercial:

25 Creative WiFi Network Names (mine is no longer creative since Fios forces you to use their names, which consist of random letters and numbers. Also, I wouldn't tempt my neighbors with my network name, lest they turn out to be vindictive hackers).

Frosty the snowman set to inappropriate HIMYM dialogue:

LG gets James Lipton to lend his beard to teens, encouraging them to "give it a ponder" before texting. Just watch and you'll understand:

More funny counter-protesting

Possibly the cutest kitten ever:

Wow, a bunch of original names for celebrities who changed theirs.

Roger Ebert's humorous list of ethical considerations for movie critics. Not a problem for me, as nobody knows I'm doing any critiquing over here.

Norm McDonald on Conan:

The "Trinity, help!" scene from The Matrix, done in Legos:

And again, side-by-side with the actual video clip:

Oh, if you haven't already seen it, The Muppets' take on Bohemian Rhapsody. I was considered about the "Mother, I just killed a man" part, but, of course, The Muppets made the song their own:

Outtakes for the pictures at the end of The Hangover

On Luck and Choice

2009-11-28T03:05:00.004-05:00

As much as I believe, in the big picture, that the law of karma makes a lot of sense--perhaps not in the "what goes around comes around" way that people in the West generally describe it, but in the way my culture, whose law it is, describes it (too much and too far off topic to delve into here)--I think that in this life, what people get has little to do with what they've done and what kind of people they are. I don't mean this in a blatant sense. When I talk to conservatives about the need for social programs, they point out that they and I have worked hard for what we have, whether in school or at a job, and so we deserve what we get and people who ask for handouts don't. While I don't want to get into all that politics, I'll say now that while these people are right about the amount of hard work they've done, they don't realize that most people are working hard out there in some way, and the haves, I would argue, are generally not working as hard as the have nots. Anyone who thinks that life is easy when you have so little that you qualify for welfare and such should try it. What I'm talking about here isn't so much what people receive relative to how hard they work as much as how they work and how they are. Take my two closest friends for example...

Shardul and his family have had a bunch of setbacks recently. His mom lost her job of many, many years. His dad lost his administrative job at a university and took a teaching job at a community college. They have three kids, all in college, one of whom is in med school and another who is about to start med school. They have Shardul's wedding to plan and fund within a year, and Shardul, who is doing his rotations in Chicago, went into a night shift after being weakened by a bout with food poisoning, and made it out relatively unscathed, only to be hit head-on by a drunk driver traveling on his side of the road. Shardul's car suffered a broken windshield, broken steering wheel, and deployed airbag, while Shardul suffered a double break (both ulna and radius) on his left arm, a fractured orbit, bruised hips and lacerations on his face, including split eyelids. His family flew out, his mom stayed with him for a week or two, before they flew back to NJ, since he wasn't about to return to his rotation or anything. The other driver? Walked away, unharmed. My students explain to me how the slowed reaction time and overall relaxed state of drunkenness helps lessen the impact of violent collisions, while I'm reminded of the saying that God protects drunks, fools and children. Car insurance is paying for Shardul's medical expenses, but his father, a believer in good karma, doesn't want to sue the other driver for their other expenses--flights, lost time, pain and suffering (Shardul, upon entering the hospital and being asked how he's doing, asked, simply, for morphine), a totaled car, and items from Shardul's car that were stolen while it sat at the impounding lot.

Meanwhile, my boy Amit has had a rough go of it. It'd be hard to describe all the problems he's had with his health, but imagine you were the Dutch boy whose finger plugged the dike and saved the village, or whatever, only the dike kept springing leaks and no matter what method of repair or implement you used to stop the flow, new leaks kept springing up, old leaks would spring anew, and you never caught a break for the sake of a breather or a chance to get help. That's essentially what he's going through with his health. The poor guy always says to me, "This can't last any longer because I can't take any more of it," and then, in the hollowest of victories, continually proves himself wrong as his symptoms persist and he keeps on enduring. His dad's health is poor as well, and he's not working because of it (neither of them are), and his mom, who's usually the rock of the family, gets overwhelmed. Amit tells me that he'd do pretty much anything to get better and to have the life of the luckier people around him, that he'd give up all the championships his teams had won (and he's a die-hard fan), that he'd eat meat or do pretty much anything else, be anyway else. I believe the championships thing but not so much that he'd change who he is to have external success, though he reminds me that it's little use being a good person and growing on the inside when you don't have the good health or good luck to enjoy any of that externally.

Which brings me to my point. There seems to be little connection between how things go in people's lives and what kind of people they are and what kind of lives they've lived. As Lewis Black said in a standup routine, "The good die young, but pricks live forever." We say that people get what they deserve and that everything happens for a reason, but I think that that's just our attempt to put a positive spin on things. We don't really know that there's any connection between any two such events, and if we look objectively, a lot else didn't work out and doesn't make sense. And in the words of a friend who'd gone through a lot of health problems of her own and to whom people always said, "Well, you'll grow from the experience," "I've grown enough. I just want to be better now."

So I don't really do what I do because of a fear or appreciation of "What goes around comes around." I work to be the kind of person I aim to be not because things will work out for me or because people will appreciate that. They don't. I make the decisions I do because, in the end, that's all I have...a choice. I might not have much reason to smile or be happy,* but if I have a choice--and what I'm saying is that I do--I'd like to be smiling, happy, joking around, even if my only reason is for the sake of being so. That's a pretty good reason. People who feel that the world and its people are cruel and so they have good reason not to do good and treat others well and do the right thing have good, empirical, reason to do so. The "Anyway" Paradoxical Commandments, written by Kent M. Keith, and famously found in an abridged version on the wall of Mother Theresa's children's home in Kolkatta (Calcutta), India, might be inspirational, but it also details how people will respond to our good deeds. Don Marquis had a parallel sentiment when he said “If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you, but if you really make them think, they'll hate you." In my life, I've seen that the two qualities I value most, honesty and sincerity, are highly lauded, but truly given little value in society. It's better to do and say what is seen as being honest and sincere to actually be those things. For my part, I can say that both these qualities have given me little benefit and a lot of harm. I can say without reservation that I'm one of the most honest and sincere people you will ever meet. I'd say this is a boastful statement to make if it weren't really rather meaningless. We don't really set the bar high when it comes to these qualities. After all, we admire children for their artlessness, but so much of what we consider to be "adult" is tied up in our ability to deceive. If you don't believe me, go around vocally giving people the benefit of the doubt and being honest when you have the chance to press an advantage and see if you're considered to be saintly or naive.

*I do have things to smile about, though. I've made it into med school by a bit of Providence (granted, I definitely deserve to be in med school, but I mean in terms of the reality of things--nobody was willing to give me a chance until one woman did), though I haven't had much real luck since getting in. My health makes it such a big struggle that it hardly seems worth it. I have a few close friends and family members who give me a lot of love. Most of all, though, the one thing I wouldn't trade for anything, not even renewed health, is the change that came in my parents, especially my dad. Never in a million years did I think it was possible (shoot, I think I've said all of this somewhere else on this blog. Oh well), and it matters to me THAT much to have supportive, compassionate, understanding parents, or just people, in my life.

So it really comes down to what kind of person I want to be at the end of the day. I'm honest because I feel that's the only way I can be. I can't accept that which I get dishonestly. It kills me to do so. I'm painfully honest, as if I haven't a choice in the matter, but I do. While some people do have it really easy, and many of us don't have it as hard as we think we do (I've been there. I used to complain incessantly. It was really just a self-esteem issue and an issue with valuing myself properly and making myself my top priority, which I still struggle to do fully). But life is difficult for pretty much all of us. I try never to scoff at people who complain about their lives or see no reason to smile and be positive. I wouldn't go and give them empty advice about, "That's no way to think, blah blah blah" (as so many do with me). Does a five year old child have a point when he says to the president, "Don't worry, be happy"? Sure. But can he really know the weight and extent of the latter's worries? No. And empathy means at least giving that person the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his troubles. Rather, when faced with a scenario in which it seems as if there is and will never be any good reason for being hopeful and optimistic and kind and so on, I like to remind myself and others that we still have a choice in the matter. A child acts in a reactionary fashion to any negative stimulus, reasoning that he is right to act as he feels. An adult, even one who may be very justified in feeling very negatively, realizes that how he acts is still completely a choice. I'm not calling for us to be blind to the realities of the world. Trust people in this world and you're going to be screwed over. All I'm saying is that, that said, there's still much that is given up when trust is lost. I might have every reason to be distrustful and still choose to trust.

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-11-24T11:18:00.001-05:00

First up, a new Digital Short from SNL:

Dunno how long NBC will allow this to stay online, but here's a great monologue from Joseph Gordon Levitt on SNL, and a great commercial mashup of 2012 and Sarah Palin.

Oh WOW, Pixar made a short about the two Shady Oaks retirement employees and what happened to them after Mr. Frederickson went up, up and away in Up:

Oh wow, a funny, original song by Jason Segel in which he gives his actual number. People have called it and talked to him about his shows!

Aww man, I read this story about a night walk with Obama and was amazed and found it hard to believe. Well, that's cuz it wasn't real. But it was still awesome to read it as if it was.

On Music Worth Checking Out

2009-11-23T23:43:00.002-05:00

We'll start with a recent Travelers Insurance commercial whose music I liked and looked up. Here's the commercial first:

And the song, Worries by Langhorne Slim

Okay, Tom Waits isn't for everyone. I first heard about him when Jon Stewart gushed about him during an interview with him on The Daily Show. Then he started singing (last song below) and I was blown away by how inexplicably bad it sounded. This is probably how you will react. Shame on us both. Waits is an incredible musician, composer, song writer, story-teller, and even singer. He uses a rough voice and does a lot of spoken word, but man, when he really sings, he's like an old-school blues/jazz singer. He's amazing and it's no wonder critics love him so much. Here are some of my favorite songs of his.

Tom Waits - Hoist That Rag - Man, this song gets me psyched.

Tom Waits - Clap Hands - I feel like it's impossible not to bob your head and tap your foot to many of Waits' songs, like this one.

Tom Waits - Jockey Full of Bourbon - Hey little bird, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children are alone.

Tom Waits - Time

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs - A rain dog is a dog that wanders away from home and, when it rains, loses the scent and path back home, and so is left to wander for the rest of his days. This song reminds me of the sentiment shared by Bob Marley in No Woman, No Cry.

Tom Waits - Day After Tomorrow (lyrics)
This is the performance from The Daily Show, uncut, and with no Daily Show symbols or Jon Stewart. Close your eyes, or right click on the lyrics and open them in another tab, and listen to this song. It's one of the best songs about war I've ever heard. Waits wrote it for Joan Baez, but made his own version as well.

P.O.S. is an artist you need to check out if you like good rap but lament how bad the rap on the radio is these days. He's from the Midwest (Twin Cities), raps about everything from Bush and activism to being a father and the mistakes he's made...and he has great music that he makes himself, as far as I know.
P.O.S. - Stand Up

P.O.S. - Audition Mantra - I like complex beats and I like when the people who make them construct/deconstruct them in this way.

P.O.S. - Bush League Psyche-Out Stuff

Grishma introduced me to Greg Laswell, whom she got to know through Greys Anatomy (which has some really good artists on it, and I'm glad it exposes people to music they wouldn't ordinarily listen to...but, taken together, it's a really melodramatic, heavy-handed mix, which makes me think that that's what the show is like...unsubtle and overwrought). He seems to exhibit most of the characteristics I mentioned parenthetically above, to write lyrics that seem more profound than they are and to make music that can be very repetitious and pop-y (in the bad way)...kinda like The Fray, essentially. But when he's good, he's very good, as he is when he seems to be singing inside your head in his guttural, sleepy, slow almost-drawl (that's the best description I could give) and when his music is a bit eerie and haunting, kinda like a lot of the music Eisley made. Here are my four favorite songs of his from what I've heard:

Greg Laswell - Comes and Goes (In Waves):

Greg Laswell - Days Go On and On (I love how desperate he sounds, his wail, and how the whole mood/music shift upward after the first chorus and those subsequent mirrored interludes following the choruses. This song makes me feel bad for feeling so indifferent toward a lot of his other songs).

Greg Laswell - Sing, Theresa Says (original music video) I pretty much love everything about this song...the female backing vocals, the way he seems to be singing in my ear/head, the strings/static with which it starts, the lyrics...I even dig the video.

Greg Laswell - Come Undone (As with that last song, he starts the song by telling someone to sleep while he does what he will...just something I noticed. I love the ebb and flow of this song. That electrical guitar noise crescendo-abrupt-decrescendo before the second verse [and reappearing later] reminds me of something like DNTEL...how some artists can use even loud noise without losing the loping, mellow feel of the song.

I feel guilty about posting more songs from one Matt Hires (another Grishma-Greys recommendation) album than from two of Greg's. Greg's highs are much greater than Matt's, and the guilt I experience with Matt's songs are from the faint aftertaste I associate with catchy pop fluff. Still, the songs are instantly memorable. After just a couple listens, seemingly, I feel like the lyrics are quite familiar.

Matt Hires - Honey, Let Me Sing You A Song - I like how his voice seems to waver (on purpose) like Langhorne Slim's. And I'm a sucker for songs that seem to be sung to someone and are meta in that they're sung about singing them to someone.

Matt Hires - Turn the Page - I like the feel of the song, how he seems resigned in his singing, and how that fits with the imagery of the Earth on her knees.

Matt Hires - You Are the One - And I'm a sucker for his chorus here.

Matt Hires - Out of the Dark - Okay, so I picked out six songs to share of Matt's but only ended up sharing four. I felt like I only thought of sharing the other two (State Lines and Listen To Me Now) because they were so catchy. I'm a sucker for this chorus as well. It's like a poor man's knockoff of Death Cab's I Will Follow You Into the Dark. A very poor man's.

I listened to Modest Mouse's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank album recently with wiser ears than when I first heard it. I don't know how I could miss such wonderful music and lyrics before.

Modest Mouse - Dashboard - This song is good for the music much more than the lyrics, but the singing is great all the same. The video's great fun too. As for the music, I especially like how everything drops out at about the 2:17 mark, but there's that driving beat with the drums pushing things forward.

Modest Mouse - Missed the Boat - I love the clever and somewhat bittersweet lyrics and the video is a sweet accompaniment.

Modest - People as Places as People - I really like these lyrics too. Surely, Obama was thinking about this song when he said that "We're the people we've been waiting for." Good taste in music, man.

Modest Mouse - March Into the Sea - This reminds me of the Modest Mouse I got to know from their previous album (I haven't listened to their other albums yet). It's raw, emphatic, but full of ups and downs all the same.

Modest Mouse - Florida - Ditto for this...and James Mercer of The Shins lends vocals! I could add and comment on the other songs from the album as well, but I'll leave just these as highlights.

Pinback - B - Somehow, I never heard this Pinback song until just now. I love that recurring musical part, especially the way they use that one piano note. This isn't the official video, btw:

I think that'll do for now.

Oh no it won't. This doesn't really count as new music, but check out Thru You. Here's a great example and a very clever one too. Not sure if the link will work for you since it's not working for me. But anyway what these videos consist of is a song comprised of excerpts from music found on You Tube.

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-11-21T13:49:00.000-05:00

Does he look like a bitch to you? - An appropriately named post featuring an excellent Pulp Fiction-themed pumpkin carving. Checkit

Proposition 8 - The Musical (not sure why I never posted this):

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from Jack Black

100 Greatest The Wire Quotes:

Wow, cool...guidelines for dealing with an introvert.

A fake NPH twitter page...oh wait, not really fake. It's a fake Barney twitter page and it's quite good. NPH himself liked it.

Here's Actually NPH.

If you've heard about the movie The Blind Side, check out this article from NYTimes about the real story of Michael Oher (whose story is told in the movie, though the focus is more on Sandra Bullock's character as the woman who most helped him along his journey). The writing is rather clunky, but the story is unbelievable.

A sign of the [TV] times

I present to you the adorable Octopus In Love:

A hilarious real-time review of the first Twilight movie

The Best 30 TV Shows of the aughts, presented by the AV Club. It made me so happy to see all the love given to underappreciated works of genius. All the stuff I hadn't already appreciated, I put on my to-do list of media.

If you don't appreciate gratuitous gore for the humor of taking things too far, perhaps you'll at least pick up on all the great little gags in this video:
Chainsaw Maid

A great reaction from a childrens TV contest winner...I love that she's all grown up at first but then has an Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine moment:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Haha, I love these photoshop contests. Here's Alec Baldwin doing all sorts of things he hadn't intended.

Aww, I really like Family Guy...but I still enjoy this revealing of the secret behind Seth McFarlane's TV shows:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

In case you didn't see or hear about this, here's former Miss California, Carrie Prejean, making an ass of herself while trying to be principled on Larry King Live.

If you're too lazy or spoiled by cookie-cutter movie endings to appreciate or stomach the more ambiguous ones, here are a few of them resolved. Warning, this might ruin the endings of movies you haven't yet seen:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The XKCD guy has a book out!

Ooh, I think they missed a few good ones and many of them aren't as good out of context, but still...I love me some Roger Sterling (from Mad Men...you didn't already know that? What are you doing with your life?) one-liners

Taylor Swift has a sense of humor and did a great job on SNL from what I've seen. Here's her musical opening monologue:

...and a sketch of The View, with her playing Kate Gosselin:

In another episode of Conan having William Shatner read asinine things aloud, here are Levi Johnston's Twitter updates:

Ha, a montage of movie scenes in which they say the name of the film:

A bunch of examples of Charlie getting intense. Man, I don't even remember a lot of these:

Charlie Gets Intense - watch more funny videos

Oh wow, a website that streams many of your favorite childhood cartoons. Between the potential for time-wasting and the ruining of childhood memories, this will not end well.

Haha, awesome. Douchebags reclaim the word, rendering it powerless to hurt them:

Ha, someone calculated how much the experience from The Hangover would have actually cost.

Haha, Christopher Walken gives a dramatic reading of Lady Gaga's Poker Face:

Things Disney movies taught us growing up

Kittens running up a slide, set to music from Pulp Fiction:

More photoshop fun...with board games

5 Classic Horror Films As Reviewed By You At Ages 10 and 24

On Kobe - Part II

2009-11-07T23:36:00.004-05:00

It never ends. Here's what I wrote to Amit just now while reading Bill Simmons' "The Book of Basketball," which I'll have finished and reviewed soon:

#15
that's where simmons ranks kobe. u'd be surprised at how positive much of what he excerpted from past articles of his about kobe was. i was always amazed by kobe, but never liked him. and in a list of the greatest players in nba history, if i'm not going to put stockton and malone up high (both lower than kobe in simmons' ranking), i'm not going to put kobe there either. i mean, top 15 isn't shabby. these are the very greatest players ever. i think kobe, like arod, never figured out what he wanted to be or if he could be that. kobe and arod want to be the best ever but don't really have the qualities to be. both are easily one of the very best individual athletes of their sports...but the very greatest players in sports that are team games to greater (nba) or lesser (baseball) extents? i wouldn't think so. i might fear and respect kobe's skills, but my heroes will always be people like montana or duncan, and i won't be amongst all the people who are happy that a peyton manning or a kobe bryant "got his ring." u have to sell me on why guys like them went beyond being great players/passers to being great leaders who truly made the people around them better, rather than just tolerated the people around them as long as they could win a title. but i don't need that same convincing about a duncan or a montana or an mj. most fans still don't understand duncan's greatness, but nobody needs explaining for most of the other guys i know are ahead of kobe on this list (i haven't looked ahead. i don't want to spoil the surprise). plus, it just bugs me that kobe is so contrived, such an innately self-conscious, selfish, me-first guy who wants us to believe he's something else. and again, while i shouldn't blame kobe for what announcers say, if he's not these things, or, as all the kobe fans like to point out, if he's truly changed, why must i be told that all the time? if he's a killer (as much as i see that he appreciates "the moment" and knows how to silence away crowds and such) and he wants it and he's in the zone and all that, why do i constantly have to be told it? i am more wary of contrivance in people than any other thing, and every ounce of me has told me for all the time that we've seen kobe after his first couple years that he is contrived. is that such a terrible thing? no. but it does mean, if it's true, that he's not what people say he is or what he tries to tell me he is. i wish he and everyone else would stop desiring for us to think so anyway.

kobe is the hardest working guy in the nba, quite possibly. how else would he have earned the respect of this last olympics team? but i'd hardly call that team a grouping of nba greats, even if it does include a lot of really great players. i think the reason why i don't rank him higher and don't mind (yet..perhaps I wouldn't put some of the players above him quite there, but I haven't seen who they are yet. Don't forget that Bill Russell, Jordan, Bird, Magic, Shaq, none of these guys have been mentioned yet while Simmons has been counting down from 96 to 1. Of course, you don't know that since you're not reading the book, so I can't forget that I guess) Simmons ranking him at #15 is that i never considered him a true alpha dog. when he won championships with a stacked team (the shaq/kobe combination ranks higher than any other combo in this book and pretty much anyone's book), he worried/complained/sulked about being the one who gets the credit, when a true great would have asserted himself with the confident knowledge that he's #1 and that's it (of course, kobe wasn't the #1 player on those teams), and when he got his way and had his own team, he whined then too. should we expect him to have won with those teams? probably not. but some greats actually have won with teams like the ones he's had between shaq and gasol, and most were much more classy and dignified about it. now he's back to being not-so-selfish, even though the 81 point game and the beatdown on the knicks show that he's missed the point even quite recently (in striking a balance between individual accomplishments and taking your team along with you even as everyone's aware that you're the best and the foundation and all that), and i still have to hear about how his team really isn't that good compared to the teams of all the great people of the past. granted, he doesn't have anyone like pippen on his team, but while the league is more even than it was in many of jordan's years, it's more diluted as well (well this is my perception. im not sure if that statement makes sense and if ihave facts to back it up). nobody's had a team as deep as the lakers post-gasol in some time. it's crazy, unfairly stacked. while the gasol trade isn't the fault of kobe and his fans, it made me so mad in its unfairness that i felt any lakers fan who ever complains about that team again should be served with a big helping of STFU. the amount of talent on that team, the luck the lakers have had during the shaq and gasol eras when it comes to their bench is unreal. so u know what? if the supporting cast misses its shots, i don't take that as an excuse for bryant. i blame him. jordan's teammates, other than pippen, have almost no historical significance except as part of his teams. maybe ron harper or horace grant get a little bit of talk. but they were mostly small players who came up big in big situations because jordan wouldn't have it any other way. he wasn't responding to players around him screwing up by pointing out that it wasn't his fault. he was giving them shit for screwing up their small parts when he was doing great with his big part. he was telling them that he believed in them and needed them to win...not in a, "you're better than you think" kind of way, but in a "you have a job to do if we're gonna win, so effin' do it" kinda way. but he never threw up his hands and also never tried to convince people that he was liked. everyone loved him because he gave them confidence, because he killed the opponent and himself to win. and i think it's mostly the same for bird and duncan and magic. magic didn't have anything close to kobe's defense, and was childish when he was young, but he elevated the game of his teammates to a degree that kobe will never and has never even approached. but yeah, this might sound funny, considering they just won a championship (personally, i'd like to see no manning or bryant get any ring, but if i were a lakers/kobe fan, i wouldn't exactly find last year's victory to be satisfying. if he were to beat a really good spurs team this year and then top a really good/balanced celts/cavs/magic team in the finals, i'd find that much more convincing), but kobe needs to finally start taking his team's and teammates' failures as his own. i've never seen him do that. that doesn't mean blaming himself or his fans blaming him (this will never happen) when he hits 15 for 33 but his teammates go 10 for 43 or something. it's not literally his fault if his teammates miss their shots when he's passed them the ball. but if he thinks it's not his responsibility to figure out why they're missing and how to get them to take and make better shots rather than, oh, just upping his shots, he's sorely mistaken. if he's a true leader, he's long overdo for this realization. mj had it very early, and he's far from a saint.

sorry to give you so much crap about kobe. i know u feel like we'll just never see eye to eye on this, but i truly believe what i'm saying and don't think i'm being biased. u know how much i am un-happy for you yankees fans, but i would never hold anything against a jeter or a rivera. i just cannot think of a-rod in the same way. no matter his numbers, i'd create a team around jeter any day over a-rod. and, in a more apt comparison, i'd create a team around duncan over kobe any day. no matter how many rings kobe wins, i'll probably consider duncan the greater and more successful player. do i think duncan stands a chance against kobe one-on-one or that he's a better individual player? no. but he gets it. he always has. and kobe still doesn't.

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-10-19T23:31:00.007-04:00

Didn't take four months this time

"Do Me," a song by someone named Dylan on a show called Modern Family on ABC. I don't know anything about all that, but the song and video are all kinds of awesome:

Al Franken proposes a bill to remove a clause in government contracts disallowing employees who get raped from complaining...and 30 senators voted against it:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Rape-Nuts

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Awesome...Neil Patrick Harris plays Music Meister on a new Batman animated series. MM is a villain who controls people with the power of his singing voice, and he turns a normal good guys vs. bad guys fight into a musical brawl:

As much as I love Pixar, I couldn't help but find this funny and very well done. Here's an expose of the Pixar lamp:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

"Yo, Spike Jonze, director of Where the Wild Things Are, I'm happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but the short film, We Were Once Fairy Tales, that we did together was the greatest film ever." Here's a weird and still timely(considering it was made months ago) film made by Jonze and Kanye, while Kanye allows it to stay online.

Very cool...a graphic of all the billions spent in the world for various things.

On Your Need For QUARTERLY Links [MEGA edition]

2009-10-19T11:39:00.004-04:00

So studying all summer for an exam, then camp and planning a trip to Cali/Hawai'i and then editing and uploading pictures from said trip took up so much time that I never got around to posting all the great things I'd come across in the last 4 months. I'm still probably missing a lot of stuff, but here's enough to keep you busy for days.

Asteroids Galaxy Tour - Around the Bend (from iPod Touch commercial)

Wow, so I watched this back in...August, I believe, when I got it from a friend's fiancee's maid of honor for their wedding, and I still haven't posted this list of links 2 months later, but it was just referenced in the Jim and Pam wedding episode! Kudos to The Office's writers and characters for not letting it suck, but I have to say, the original is so sweet and makes me so happy every time I see it.
Reception Introduction - Grand Entrance

JK Dancing Divorce:

A charming little animated film - La Maison en Petits Cubes

La Maison en Petites Cubes from dorsumi on Vimeo.

Seth Rogen gets rejected by Megan Fox

MadMenYourself.com

Mad Men, Sesame Street Style:

Mad Men in 60 Seconds (I LOVE the show and still enjoyed this)

50 Most Badass Moments In Sports History

Iron and Wine - Boy With A Coin

Apple Bottom Jeans - Bhajan remix

Prequel to Twinkle Twinkle

Supposed Best Commercial Ever is actually pretty good:

iGun Rampage - I can relate to this guy's ire:

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Little kid parallel parks like a badass:

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

I have no idea what just happened here:

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays

I don't know if you've seen the email conversation between an account representative and the account holder, David Thorne, who tried to pay off his balance with a drawing of a spider that he made and which he valued at the exact amount of his balance, but the rest of his website contains equally clever and childish writing/antics from him. The link I included goes to perhaps my favorite exchange of his, regarding pets in his apartment violating an agreement with his complex. David has a bit of a mean streak, but it's amusing to me that he doesn't even stop at estranging people who might meet him on a daily basis (see his great Party in Apartment 3).

Above I have a song by Asteroids Galaxy Tour. Here's another one that I really like, from her delivery to the feel of the music, which reminds me of something else that I can't put my finger on. Oh well.
Asteroids Galaxy Tour - The Sun Ain't Shining No More

I finally listened to Amy Winehouse's first album, Frank, again, a bit more carefully this time. I really liked it. Here's the first song, which is just one example of how Amy lives up to the title of her album. She doesn't feel her man is living up to his role and asks him at one point if he's gay, tells him at another, "I'm not gonna meet your mother any time. I just wanna grip your body over mine. Please tell me why you think that's a crime." The video couldn't be embedded here, but that's fine. I didn't like it much anyway, even if it did remind us how Amy used to look normal and attractive not so long ago.
Amy Winehouse - Stronger Than Me

Also, I really like this song. I absolutely love how she sings in it, how her voice accompanies the dynamics of the music. I'd have a hard time convincing anyone who's been raised on Beyonce and Britney that Amy can really sing, but she totally sucks me into this song.
Amy Winehouse - Take the Box

I started listening to other Janis Joplin stuff, other than what I've already bought (much of it seems to be stuff I already have, though, just on different compilations). It didn't introduce me to anything new really, but did remind me how awesome Janis was. Here's a song that I got hooked on this time around. I don't remember if this is my favorite version, but I really like every rendition that I've heard (others showcase the abilities of Big Brother and the Holding Company much better than this one, though).
Janis Joplin (sometimes with Big Brother and the Holding Company...not sure if they're on this recording) - Ball and Chain

From Simmons: "...the famous clip of the Edmonton Oilers fans singing "O Canada" before a 2006 playoff game, one game after Ducks fans booed the Canadian national anthem in Anaheim. Name me another sports clip that can give you chills for over a minute straight. You can't."

5 Myths About Foreign Health Care

I don't think I ever linked to this before, but in honor of the new GI Joe movie, here are some spoofs of the PSAs that they used to have at the end of the cartoon episodes. Just to show you how random they are, I'm going to first include a real PSA before its spoof.

PSA - Don't Take Drugs Without Parents

PSA - Reggae

I think this is my favorite fake PSA because it's so funny to imagine a GI Joe saying this and it highlights some of the odd animation of them speaking and inherent awkwardness of the PSAs.
PSA - Porkchop Sandwiches

Sand Art - Ukraine's Got Talent

SICAF Seoul 2003 - Sand Art

This is way cool. Right click on this and open in a new window/tab. Then click on the image you see here.

Mumm-Ra - She's Got You High (I think this played during the closing credits of (500) Days of Summer)

Another great song from Andy Samberg. Didn't seem promising at first until I saw where he took it. Here's "I Threw It On the Ground" Andy Samberg is not a part of your system

Andy Samberg - I Threw it On The Ground - watch more funny videos

Ten Best Newscast Gaffes
And don't forget this, or this, which is downright awesome.

Always good to see Jon Stewart getting mad about news networks:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

CNN Leaves It There

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Ron Paul Interview

Pajiba's "Other" Best 100 movie quotes, for the ones you really love or quote, not just the ones that are most famous and cliched:

Oh and since they ended with a clip of some classic Nic Cage overacting, here's something I enjoyed way too much...hilarious impression of him by a comedian. It's exaggerated and ridiculous and I love it all the more for it. I love the Face/Off reference too:

A site dedicated to movie title shots

Dramatic readings of asinine celebrity twitters:

Interesting: A quiz of "Who said it - Gandhi or Angelina Jolie?"

A corny but still impressive video about a neat dog trick:

Karl Pinkington reviews The Invention of Lying

Speaking of Ricky, here are some of his best moments.

Matthew McConaughay has trouble standing, at least according to his movie posters.

I liked a lot of these films, or pretty much all of them (at least the ones I saw), but still, I enjoyed this boiling down of indie films to a bunch of cliches, and how one of the singers falls for the hopeful unreality in the same way that, presumably, awkward lovers of indie films do.

A very cool and most awesome website, God Hates Protestors features funny protest signs, including counter protests like the great LOL counter protesters and the Kanye impersonating counter-protesters.

The youngest, most adorable movie critic you'll probably ever meet.

Haha, 66 horror movies worth of "Oh no, no cell phone service!" cliche.

Because it's always fun for people who care about acting and stuff to make fun of Nic Cage, here he is doing injustice to a Superman costume.

Because I'll watch Christopher Walken doing pretty much anything, and because you might need a chicken and pears recipe, here he is doing some cooking:

EMBED-Christopher Walken Cooks a Chicken - Watch more free videos

Wow, Andy Richter totally owned Celebrity Jeopardy and Wolf Blitzer, who I thought was supposed to know stuff. Maybe not this stuff.

Shoot, I did the newscast gaffes a while ago, but don't remember if I had this.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Intro - Ernie Anastos' Catch Phrase

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Ron Paul Interview

Ha, this is wonderful and illustrates why I call Dan Brown a good story-teller, but not at all a good writer. He's just not good with words. If you care at all about writing ability, see for yourself.

Ha, President Obama weighed in on Kanye stealing Taylor Swift's spotlight by calling him a jackass:

Haha, I'mma let you finish the website, complete with many iterations of the joke I love making ever since seeing Kanye be an ass about a week after he did it (I was driving through California and didn't see any TV, so you can't blame me. That's why I'm getting to this stuff now). The best part is OJ's face at the bottom of the page mirroring Kanye's at the end of his hijacking.

And some more in the same vein

Apropos of nothing, except that Patrick Swayze apparently died during my trip...here he is with Chris Farley in an SNL Chippendales dancer audition sketch:

Chris Farley - Chippendales

The Anti-Myth Rhythm Rock Shocker | MySpace Video

Ha, truthful Amazon suggestions

As you can see, I'm going backwards through all the things I missed putting up. And I've gotten to 9/11/09. Here are some things that some people and I remembered on this day:
Jon Stewart addresses his audience and 9/11:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

September 11, 2001

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Ron Paul Interview

David Letterman does the same:

People remember the 2,996 victims of the 9/11 attacks, one by one.

On a lighter note, children sharing their favorite euphemisms for, you know, pee-pee and poo-poo.

Kids Talk Poop and Pee Pee
by RichJuz

Cool, Zach Galafianakis is famous now, but not too cool to keep doing his Between Two Ferns interviews with gorgeous celebs like Charlize Theron:

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

A very clever and enjoyable review of Enemy of the State

Impressive: Al Franken drawing the continental US free hand

With Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are coming out recently, here are his best music videos. The top two are favorites of mine. Buddy Holly by Weezer (set in Happy Days) and Sabotage by Beastie Boys. Also from the Boys, Sure Shot.

I enjoyed this live-action Paperboy, though I could have sworn there were other adaptations of video games that they had up that I liked:

Haha, the Snuggie Sutra...I guess there are uses for that retarded thing.

Awesome - I Hate My Parents, replete with all those embarrassing pictures our parents took of us as kids.

Ha, the Governator keeps his Conan sword in his office.

Witness: Steven Seagal in his reality TV show called Lawman (not sure if this is real)

Haha, imagine if commenters on the internet wrote movie titles?

For women on the go, introducing the Red Bull Energy Douche

Red Bull Energy Douche with Mandy Moore from Mandy Moore

Ooh, Tarantino's top 10 characters. I expected Jules Winfield to be #1, but this makes a lot of sense and I agree.

Haha, here's Flipping Off Zoo Animals:

Funny Homeless Guy Signs

Inglourious Basterds parodies. I really like the Inglourious Toddlers one.

Quentin Tarantino lists his favorite 20 movies made during the time that he's been making movies. I mostly love those of these that I've seen, so I promptly added the rest to my Netflix queue, except for The Blade, which I can't seem to find.

Not bad: A comedy PSA from Megan Fox for Jennifer's Body:

PSAs...from the FUTURE!

Ha, accidentally racist company/product names

If all the news gaffes above weren't enough, here's a blog full of more.

Have I shared this already? Girls in bikinis reading movie scripts? Here's Star Wars:

Instead of watching the G.I. Joe movie, I watched this video, which gives me behind-the-scenes looks at all the characters, with better acting...or at least better actors. Plus, Jules Winfield's wallet makes an appearance.

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Haha, how simple. A site for men and fans of Michael Bay movies, presumably, called Boobs and Explosions. Click on the pics for more.

Along the lines of all those honest presentations of product that we saw above, here are movie posters with blurbs from bad reviews.

A promo for It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia:

OOH, I remember this...Sarah Palin's indecipherable speech being read by William Shatner on Conan:

And then Colbert got in his digs:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Sarah Palin Will Be Missed

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Michael Moore

Man, I really need to watch American Psycho because I keep seeing references to it and haven't seen it yet. Here's a music video for Miles Fisher's pop remix of Talking Heads' This Must Be the Place (which, if I've heard, I don't recognize in this incarnation), starring Miles in his best Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman impression during some of the most sensational scenes of the movie. Luckily, I got a phone call and turned off the sound and stopped paying attention. I've already seen too much and read too much about the movie without actually seeing it.

In the same vein as Cake Wrecks, I Hate My Parents, Unnecessary Quotes and so on, here's a blog with pictures of poorly done conversions for restaurants and possibly other businesses.

An adorable commercial promoting the facilitating of reading amongst children. We need to make some form of this for promoting and facilitating reading amongst adults.

Awesome! Open letters to annoying people - the person who linked to this site complained about people who are too good to use their signals while driving, but unfortunately, nobody has written that letter. I should really do it myself. God, those people make me mad.

I enjoyed this Alanis Morissette/Alicia Silverstone fake indie coming-of-age story trailer and immediately wrote down all the hipster artists their fake soundtrack would feature.

My Mother's Red Hat w/Alicia Silverstone & Alanis Morissette from Alicia Silverstone

I really think they almost entirely did this video to share music recommendations with people, and that's just fine with me.

Aww man, I really enjoy these Hitler going berserk about random things videos, but one of the ones that was posted with this one is no longer available. Oh well, here's Hitler's Subtitler Buys a Cheap Font CD on Ebay:

Never mind, found it:

If you ever get annoyed at stupid comments/conversations between people on facebook, here's a site where you can vent or rest assured that you're not the only one who feels that way. Introducing Lamebook...

More facebook drama, this regarding weddings.

Facebook Manners and You:

In case I never linked to this already, here's James Franco showing us the speech he was going to do for UCLA's commencement, if only he were allowed. God, I'm so amazed with this guy and how well he can do stoner idiot and how much range he has outside of it.

James Franco's Rejected UCLA Commencement Speech from James Franco

There I Fixed it dot com - commemorating resourcefulness/cheapness/creativity

I was just in the city for Lion King the musical (awesome, btw) and we talked a bit about this. So here are Rules for Walking in NYC

10 things that children and drunks have in common.

Oh my, close your eyes and listen to this stripped down version of Sia's Breathe Me:

A clever personal ad in graph form

Ha, clever editing once again...Heidi and Spencer Pratt interviewed by Tosh.0

Tosh.0

Thursdays at 10pm / 9c

Heidi and Spencer Interview - Extended

www.comedycentral.com

Web Redemption

2 Girls, 1 Cup Reaction

Demi Moore Picture

This is, of course, very late, but, then again, right on time for people who wait for everything to come out on DVD--here is a flowchart to determine your favorite summer blockbuster.

I really need to start using this already. It's a site that helps you compile a list of your favorite movies by pitting them head to head and making you pick which one you like better in each case. I've seen variations of this with other topics, but this is probably a lot more fun and a lot harder as well, especially when you have to pick between movies of completely different genres or that you like for completely different reasons. Flickchart

Haha, ruined photos gallery. How childish of me to love this.

Ooh, dueling diaries from Johnny Depp and Christian Bale from the sets of Public Enemies

Regarding the racial stereotypes in Transformers 2, hey, it could have been worse.

Haha, Zach Galafianakis shocked and confused by Ellen's dancing crowd and unaware that he's being video taped:

Oh snap, honest album covers, including some from groups I like, making me sad.

Ooh, have you seen this? It's funny because it makes s lot of sense:

Patricia Clarkson gives a touching and funny speech about gay marriage:

Having finished all of Battlestar Galactica, I can now read (without worrying about spoilers) this incarnation of the original FML: Frak My Life.

What the Blue Man Group did before they were stars:

Blue Man Group: Before They Were Stars - watch more funny videos

Ten Commandments of hospitality for customers, including the following example of what not to do from The Statesman (with Hugh Laurie as the waiter!):

Along the "honest" lines again, here's What the Book You're Reading Really Says About You

How can she slap?
If you haven't seen the lead up to the slap, here's the video:

Here's the slap and the aftermath:

So this guy slaps that girl back and gets the crap beaten out of him by a bunch of guys. Everyone piles on this guy and I don't understand why. This is a show in which they're supposed to be able to dish out and handle verbal abuse. This completely full of herself girl dishes out a bunch of crap and then, when asked, "You go?" in response to her "Go eff yourself!" declarative, she can't handle it and slaps him. All he did was slap her back. I'm normally opposed to men hitting women, but this one definitely had it coming and did a lot more to him than he did to her.

Transformers 2 came out a while ago now, but here are some jokes aimed at Michael Bay that I enjoyed:

On Art and Pretension

2009-08-22T00:35:00.002-04:00

So I got into a debate with Shardul today (8/10-8/11)--it was inevitable and overdue. I think it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing because I don't know if I've made Shardul self-conscious about his tastes in art and now he is defensive about his preferences before I even get a chance to say something, or if he first started commenting on how sad some of the stuff he consumes is and then he got upset when I pointed it out too. It's probably a combination of these things and much more. And since he's a good friend, I am both more upfront and demanding of him than I would be with any random person. And since I don't go off on these things as often as I'd like to, Shardul gets more than his fair share.

I don't know why people get so worked up when I call their tastes into question. When people tell me that an artist or movie I like is no good, I'm always intrigued to learn why, the same as when someone likes something that I really thought little of. I want to learn more, to improve my understanding and tastes. But people react when I criticize the movies they like as if I called their children dumb. And hell, if their children are dumb, then they're dumb. I'm not going to lie and tell them otherwise. Since when do we all have to feel good about ourselves exactly as we are? When did truth become less important than our need to think we're awesome exactly as we are? What about striving ever upwards?

People make it seem as if I'm missing out on all the enjoyment they're getting. But they're trying to get me to enjoy and appreciate fast food when I'm trying to introduce them to fine cuisine. And sure, they're not going to love all of it immediately when their taste buds, like mine, have been raised on the lard-infested, the saccharine, their eyes on the gaudy, their ears on the cloying and obscene. Like all good things, appreciation of art requires effort. But it's so worth it. It's a common and not altogether undeserved criticism that movie critics no longer have fun when they go to the theater, and I know that aficionados of any good thing have to keep from growing bitter. And there are certainly critics in all fields who are just too in love with themselves, on their being considered experts, and on their ability to turn phrases and determine what art lives and dies with a turning of their wrist, much like the Emperor mentioned below. But the vast majority of critics and--'cause who cares about them anyway--I hate because we care. I kid. What I meant to say is that I love movies, music, TV shows, etc. intensely. While I'll be the first to say that most of what comes out of Hollywood or Bollywood is crap, I would never say something like, "They don't make movies like they used to," (especially because of the inappropriate use of the word "like") and that there aren't good movies still coming out. I just saw a movie day before yesterday (The Hurt Locker) that did everything right and was enjoyable and entertaining on every level. It blew away pretty much every war movie I've ever seen. Even the most hardened critics are much like the food critic in the movie Ratatouille. All it takes is something truly inspired and unique to bring out the kid in them. And works like that abound. You just have to look for them and work to understand them. But it's worth it. The easy answers, easy emotions, pat little lessons summarily and tidily gift wrapped for us to consume and feel good about ourselves and remain the same inside always...they hold us back.

I get worked up about this and try to make a big deal of it because I feel people are being extremely lazy about something that's really holding them back. And while they'll call me pretentious, there's an undue and bloated pride that they take in refusing to expand their horizons, challenge their beliefs/tastes and learn a little. How do the arguments that Shardul makes on their behalf make sense when coming from someone who refuses to just go and read some criticism and consider some alternative viewpoints and even some deeper analysis of things they've liked or disliked? How does it serve us to decide that regardless of how I am, I'm going to think I'm great because that's what I want to believe in myself rather than to be critical and accept criticism enough to reevaluate myself and strive for greatness? It starts with looking at something we already love in a new way and appreciating it that much more. We've all done this with various little things. Why not with these forms of art that are so potentially great and consumed in such a large amount? Why not work from there to see if there isn't more and better stuff out there than that to which I've limited myself? I don't want to tell you that I'm right and you're wrong. I want to open your eyes to new things, not even so you'll agree with me. Once you start thinking about what you like/dislike/believe/experience, you'll be in a better position to help me improve in this, and to open my eyes to all new things. I try to consider what anyone and everyone has to say and recommend, though of course I weigh what you say based on what you've said and done in the past. But even if I'm critical, I'm not dismissive. I can't afford to be, not with my obsessive and inexhaustible desire to understand and experience all that life and art, through each other, have to offer me. I can't afford to dismiss any source, can I?

Oh, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with someone one day. I went to a show and a couple of after parties with some classmates because I would get the chance to see a friend I haven't seen in a long time. That part of it was nice, but I don't care much for parties, especially the drunken idiocy that got stale in my eyes pretty much as soon as I first experienced it. A friend from my school asked me if I had fun and I said something like, "Ehh, parties aren't my thing." Her friend, also a former classmate of mine, scoffed and asked me what my kind of thing is then, implying that it's retarded not to like parties and whatever I like to do is equally retarded. I replied that I'm more of a quiet conversation kind of guy. I didn't explain further, but this is one of the reason that parties and bar-hopping doesn't appeal to me. There's no meaning in what people say and do in those environments because you can't hear anything anyone says while you're screaming over loud music, and no one is sober enough to say anything of intelligence or import anyway. This sort of celebrating for the sake of celebrating, going wild and crazy so you can talk about how wild and crazy you and the night were, reminds me of the song "This Place Is A Prison" by Postal Service (look up the lyrics). Granted, that's my opinion and other people have very different opinions of these activities, and many of those people have a great deal of respect from me. But here's the thing. These two are 4 years younger than me, and I run into the same error in logic that I notice when discussing good music with people much younger than me. Do they expect that four years from now, they'll like exactly the same things exactly as much as they do now? I personally would be disappointed in myself if that turned out to be the case. I should still be able to enjoy ice cream and pizza now, but if I lost my mind in exactly the same way as I did about those things when I was 5, if I placed as high a priority on those things now as I did then, and if my tastes hadn't changed or improved at all, what kind of growth was I experiencing in my life exactly?

Anyway, let's move along. Everything below is our conversation by IM. I wrote frantically, so I probably contradicted myself many times as well as made grammatical errors and whatnot, but I think I did a decent job of explaining myself considering this topic makes me upset enough to just want to scream incoherently. Oh, and I wrote "ironic" at one point when I meant to say "fitting," and that's just unconscionable. Also, if I remember correctly, Mr. What's his name is Charles Shaw. I have terrible recall, especially when I have to recall something quickly. Since it's by IM, there are times when there's a lag between one of us saying something and the other finally responding to it. Also, I don't mean to imply that everything I said is right and everything Shardul said is wrong. I'm leaving this as an IM conversation not just because I'm lazy but also because he makes a lot of good points, especially in regard to me.

Me: i don't call u pretentious for speaking the way u do about everything else, u know.. cars, food, cooking, gadgets, clothes
Him: youre right you dont
Me: well this is something about which i know a lot
Him: but at the same time I dont say my view is the "best
Me: u imply it
and anyway i'm not contending it
Him: ok
Me: even though some of the stuff u speak that way about is quite random
Him: ok
Me: but like cars for example, i'm not about to tell u that my accord is better than the cars u rave about
Me: art isn't as subjective as u and other people would like to think
Him: if you told me you liked your Accord better than a Zonda...
I wouldnt say youre "wrong"
Me: but if i said my accord was better than a zonda
or zonda's are whack cuz i don't like them
that wouldn't be very accurate or reasonable
Him: aight well in that you can kinda compare quatifiable criteria...
if I say I didnt like a movie and I said it was whack...
and you loved it...
I would jsut be wrong
Me: well u're right in not liking it.. that's ur subjective impression
Him: right...
Me: that's all
Him: and you'd follow that up with some comment about how I like crap movies or something
u can fill in the blanks
Me: yeah
but that would be an accurate statement on my part
Him: so then how is it inaccurate of me to call you pretentious cuz you think my taste in movies is beneath you?
Me: calling people pretentious for reaching is spiteful
like calling upwardly mobile african americans uppity
art is something that should make us reach higher
Him: Im nto calling you pretentious for reaching... Im calling you pretentious for looking down on other peoples tastes
Me: if i don't understand and therefore dislike shakespeare, i should strive to understand it. my not liking it doesn't make it crap and people who like it pretentious
Him: I think art can appeal to everyone in different ways... even 'bad" art appeals to someone... and its not any less art than the good stuff
Me: no it is
it absolutely is
there's such a thing as crap art
or just plain crap
Him: do then why is the "art" I like crap... but your art not?
so then*
Me: it's not about ur liking something defining it as crap
u just happen to like some crappy stuff..or a lot of crappy stuff
but obviously not nearly all
it just confuses me that u can speak equally highly of such disparate work
Him: see the thing is Im not looking for everything to speak to my soul on some deep level... if it happens it happens... but if i come across something that I simply like... I'll find a way to enjoy it
Him: I wotn just cast it aside as "crap" and say its beneath me
Me: but i get worked up about art cuz when people say things like, "there's no such thing as crappy art.. it's all good to someone" that's like when we tell kids that no matter how they do, they did excellent. no, if they did badly, they did badly. rewarding and exalting mediocre work serves nobody
Him: youre right
but art isnt quantifiable the way school work is
Me: neither is cooking but there's crap cooking and good cooking
i'm not just talking about quantifiable stuff
your taste in art isnt gonna be the same as someone else's who could be an authority on art
and w/ art it's often VERY easy to tell if it's art or just fluff
b/c u have everything that's come before it to compare it to
not in a sense of is this better than what's come before it
but in the sense of.. did this person even try to make something new
or is this the same stuff we've seen a million times before, the same formula recreated b/c the "artist" knows if we've consumed it once we'll consume it again?
i can applaud that as a business venture but not as art
Him: i didn't get ur last comment
but why cant that just be entertaining?
Me: i think mindless entertainment is dangerous
Him: how so?
Me: cuz it's important that we not shut our minds off, let alone value doing that
it's ironic [this should be "fitting"] that i can't refer, with most people, to 1984 to make a point, but i can point to gladiator, which itself was a piece of hollywood fluff, formulaic, self-important, unnecessarily epic... and inaccurate
what commodus did was genius
distracted his people with mindless games. worse still, the nature of the games further decreased their humanity b/c they featured the capital punishment of those people who were too poor or politically unconnected to get out of such a sentence
but this is the same sort of thing that's been described in one way or another in 1984 and brave new world, amongst other works
and cited as the real way that people are controlled in countries like america
and classism is allowed to persist w/o being apparent
mediocrity and mindless entertainment in arenas that would otherwise be considered art are destructive in many ways. they hold back the artists and the consumers alike
Him: I aggree with you to an extent
but sometimes a movie is just a movie... a show is just a show... it doesnt NEED to be anything more than that
Me: and i would argue that mainstream mentality keeps people from using art in its intended, or at least highest purpose, which is to explore and reaffirm life
it's not sometimes [emphasis on "sometimes" in reference to what Shardul just said about sometimes a movie being just a movie]
sometimes a movie is art
and that's rarely
usually it's just this that we talk about
and i would disagree, i feel it does need to be more
it can be crass and stupid, but it should still be inspired, as in the hangover
mediocrity and poor work serves no one
and harms plenty. when people find the most sappy, melodramatic, manipulative movies/books/music to be "life-affirming," they miss out on what life actually is
and when we look at why people in scandinavia, for example, are happier by far than people here, though we have more, it comes down to culture, and this is a huge part of culture
our creation, appreciation, understanding, consumption of art
Him: I aggree with that
america has no culture
its bleh...
Me: it gets drowned in our consumerism/mass media
Him: so the rest of the world is how you would like the US to be? [bleh, why must people always say this? Can't I point out examples of the rest of the world that we should pick up without my argument being that they're perfect and we suck?]
is that what youre saying?
Me: regarding art, i feel like, it's like the example dadaji gives. to an ant, a rotten, stepped on banana on the ground might be cuisine, but to a human who's eaten a fresh, clean banana, barring extreme circumstances, he can't go back to (if he ever was there) eating smashed, stepped on bananas
Him: so I like rotten steppedon bananas while you only like the freshest?
Me: i'm not saying everything i watch/listen to is perfection, and my tastes/understanding are evolving, improving. so i might like a movie like supertroopers b/c i think it's inspired in its own way and others might disagree and say that there's nothing inspired about it. perhaps we'd figure each other out better if we described in detail why we felt that way about the movie, but i would never like it knowing that it's crap or mindless diversion. i'd consider that a terrible waste of a medium
ha, u're taking this so personally. perhaps i'm a bit harsh and i don't recall every [ever] saying u have terrible taste across the board. i never said that everything u watch is crap. but i have said that u've watched crap when i felt that's what u were watching
Him: see the thign is I dont think the "crap" I watch is great... I know its not good... but I find it entertaining... I find it takes my mind off whatever is going on in my life that I find depressing... thats why I like the things I like... and im sure thats why alot of people like all the "mindless" stuff you find to be a waste of a medium...
Me: like a show like heroes, i simply cannot stomach (not that i've seen every episode. perhaps there are bright spots). whatever i've caught has had horrendous acting and the explanation i get is that it has good stories. i'd argue that a few plot points and surprises does not a good story make, but still, if that's what it comes down to, there are better mediums for something that simple
very well. i think i've explained why that kind of diversion isn't a good thing, and how when people do that a lot and never seem to rise above it, what happens
Him: u imply that everyone who watches crap as mindless diversion from their lives realizes that that's what they're doing
no there are people who genuinely think a show like Heroes is a great show
but if they like it... they like it
Me: I dont think they are wrong for liking it
but my ire comes not just from what i've said, but also many discussions or arguments in which people tell me that transformers and gi joe are wonderful pieces of art and entertainment and that the stuff i watch is crap and if i disagree that it's cuz it's just completely subjective and that my tastes are boring and bad compared to theirs
Him: if it "speaks" to them in some way... no matter if tis some deep level or on a superficial level... how can anyway say that it is mindless?
Me: u might think that that's a fitting turning of the tables, but my thinking's based on, well, a whole lot of thinking. anyone who's read, thought and written as much as i have on this stuff for as long as i have has some more weight behind what he says
Him: Im not trying to say you dont know what youre talking about I know you do... and when it comes to movie critiques and what not youre much more of an authority than me...
Me: ha again, this gets into like people's feelings. why would i go and deny people what they feel is great? the same people who say that for this would not say it for things about which they are more knowledgeable, or at least ocnsidered more knowledgeable
Him: I just think its harsh and kinda messed up to talk of other peoples likes and dislikes as crap...
crap.. or mindless
or whatever else
Me: bleh i was going to make a point about objectivity in medicine but i lost how i was going to formulate it
Him: people's life experiences make them relate to things differently on a more personal level than others
its not wrong if they do...
and Alan doesnt [Shardul's referring to Alan Sepinwall, whose reviews for TV shows I really like and refer to when telling Shardul about things I really liked about episodes of certain TV shows. Usually, that's the only way I refer to anything Alan's said and I don't believe I've ever said to Shardul in response to something he said he liked/disliked, "Well, Alan disagrees..." but perhaps that dynamic in our discussions is just so strong that he associates Alan with me and my pretentiousness]
Me: so it comes down to being harsh? again, i don't see why i should be like, "oh, well whatever u think is equally valid and we're all right" when i think that it's far more objective than that
Him: or you dont
Me: again, what u're describing is not as commonly the case as u make it seem
Him: I think it might be more common than you think...
I think people find ways to relate to fantasies to make them their own
Me: and it's one thing when someone says, "i like this movie because it reminded me of this time in my life when..." and another when someone says that the movie was well-made and good, etc. etc.
Him: I think alot of times people tend to like movies because they try to relate to the main character
Me: haha yo seriously this is so PC and coddling
Him: whether it be Josh Duhammel in Transformers... or Kal Penn in harold and kumar
Me: if someone listens to soulja boy and then says soulja boy speaks to him more than hendrix does, then fine
but soulja boy is not good music
not in any sense
Him: no its not
but it doesnt mean they cant enjoy it
Me: and hendrix, whether anyone likes it or not, is much much better music
Him: so fine ifthey enjoy it, but their tastes are crap
Me: i don't care if it's harsh. it's true
kids might like pure table sugar better than swiss chocolates
but that doesn't make their tastes good
Him: but it doesnt raelly make them wrong either
if they prefferr it they prefer it
Me: i'm not talking about preference though
i'm talking about quality
Him: but in this quality can be very subjective
Me: nowhere as much as u'd like to believe
Him: the quality of a 3 dollar wine versus a 40 dollar wine
Me: and it's not like i'd argue something like the wire vs. deadwood
yeah we're not talking about differences like that
three buck chuck IS a lot better than a lot of 40 dollar wines
Him: yeah it is
Me: that's what's so magnanimous about what's his name [Charles Shaw]
but i'm not talking about money either
and wine is far harder to compare than what i'm talking about
i like 1800 better than um.. i forget what it is.. oh patron.. at least the way i've had it. i like jack daniel's better than johnnie walker
but i'm not about to argue that that makes them better
esp. since i don't have much experience or knowledge in these matters
the thing w/ movies and music is, everyone consumes these things
even if they don't consume them as much as i do, they consume a lot
Him: see but the thing I would never say you waste your money drinking 1800 or Jack...
Me: so everyone thinks they're an expert. they'll acquiesce when it comes to things they haven't experienced much. but not in those things
u wouldn't? if i got some real crap stuff u wouldn't tell me i wasted my money?
aside from the point i'd argue that wasting money isn't as bad as the things u waste in consuming large quantities of crap movies/shows/music and then exalting them
i want for people to use their brains more when they experience these things. to not just stick to the same formulas forever. u think it's very common for people to think and feel and experience genuine stuff when they experience these works of art. but that's not what box office returns and music sales show for the most part
Him: aight we're both gonna argue this and not really get anywhere... and its getting late
Me: the people hwo know what they're talking about are the only ones talking about the greatest artists of our age and any age while the people everyone knows and feeds don't compare
aight
Him: goodnight
Me: peace

Shardul wrote to me the next morning after thinking about what I'd said and said that he mostly agreed with me, but reiterated that while he might overestimate people's recognition of quality vs. crap, that everyone should not be required to like or insist on quality. Here was my response:

Yeah I don't mean to invalidate your or anyone else's experiences, your pleasure from watching/listening to whatever. But art is something in which there's always more to appreciate. Even if someone--and such a person is in the minority--can see that The Wire is great television, he can always pick up more and more. For most of us, there are more themes, more elements of how it was shot, more aspects and depth to the acting, etc. than what is immediately apparent. I know enough to pick out the difference b/w inspired and lazy filmmaking, for example, and the same for music, but there's still so much more for me to understand. And I just don't want people who consume art to be so complacent, so lazy and so satisfied with substandard stuff when there's so much better stuff out there. I want everyone to know enough about acting and filmmaking to be able to pick out the brilliance of a movie like Brokeback Mountain, because such a movie comes around only once a decade, but it's far too subtle for people to pick up on and something like Crash, which hits you over the head with easy conclusions and in-your-face-in-case-you-

missed-it emotion, is both much more highly considered by lay fans and even awarded best picture over a movie like Brokeback Mountain, and people don't know enough to see how much an absurdity that is, or to be able to make more of the movie [Brokeback Mountain] than to reduce it to a punchline. Sober discussion about art doesn't make anyone try something new [here, I mean from practice and in regard to people who have little appreciation/understanding of art already], so partially, I am more aggressive in my criticism (and partially, I'm just worked up) in the hopes that someone will think, "Wow, this guy's so sure that Kings of Leon is much better than The Fray. Maybe I should check them out." For my part, when people criticize my tastes or just criticize works/artists that I like, I try to get an explanation out of them. When people praise something that I'd dismissed, I try to get an explanation from them. Cuz if there's something lacking in my understanding, then I want to learn about it so I can better understand and appreciate all this stuff. But people treat art like family members and favorite sports teams, like they've decided to like it and so that's it, it's beyond reproach and wherever their understanding is, it is the ultimate. I want people to reach higher, to not be so satisfied with what amounts to ignorance. I don't mean this to an extreme, like i know everything and everyone else knows nothing, but an attachment to an understanding that is lacking seems irrational, and I think you're right...I would not assume that people know as much about what makes good music/movies/books/TV as you seem to assume. I just want more for people, man. No matter my methods, don't confuse my intention. [end of email]

I still feel that as much as I've said, I could say more and explain this all better. I don't think I emphasized enough why I'm concerned about more than just technical achievement/recognition in art, that I'm especially interested in the art imitating life/life imitating art dynamics of their relationship. Not everything in art is supposed to be an accurate representation of life. If it were, there would be no room for surrealism, fantasy, etc. And there are always aspects of art that are meant to appeal only to our senses (though even there, there's good and bad art, as, for example, too many people confuse the polished look of a non-Pixar Disney movie for technical brilliance when the more raw look of a Miyazaki animated film is indeed brilliant and far more mature). But it is almost all, I feel, supposed to comment on or relate to life. If it had nothing at all to do with anything that we experience in life, I think it would be rather pointless. What's especially dangerous is when a movie purports to be about life when it mostly isn't. What I want from consumers of art and entertainment is awareness (for more on this, check out David Foster Wallace's wonderful commencement speech at Kenyon College, which was made posthumously into a book called "This Is Water"). Racism is something much bigger and more serious than what's in Crash. While When Harry Met Sally is a very funny movie, romantic love is much bigger than what is described in it. It's so big and complex that entire movies can be made about specific experiences or aspects of relationships, as Annie Hall, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and (500) Days of Summer, amongst others, have. Any of these three addresses love and relationships in a much more mature and accurate way than did When Harry Met Sally, which, at its essence, was quintessential Hollywood fluff.

If you think that such a movie is just a diversion and doesn't mean anything, you're wrong. Unfortunately. Far too many people who were raised on Disney princess movies and Bollywood love stories that are essentially the same thing think that that's what life and love are. They seek out movies like that because they reaffirm the conclusions they've come to through this kind of conditioning, and the more they reaffirm them, the harder it is for them to break out of that cycle and, worse, they end up being poorly equipped to deal with life as it is. There is ugliness in life and there are hard truths, and these things need not only to be dealt with, but also they add to the range of our experience. Like the contrast ratio on a flat screen TV, an awareness and appreciation--in a sense--of ugliness in life informs and enhances the beauty in it. This is what makes a Pan's Labyrinth so affecting and moving and blurs the lines between fairy tale and reality. What made Freaks and Geeks such a great TV show, amongst other things, was that it accurately, and yet entertainingly and movingly, depicted what our actual experiences of high school were. At least 90% of movies about high school or college or life, for that matter, are mostly fantasy and don't reflect much on life. I'm not saying that movies that are exaggerations or fantasies about reality shouldn't exist, but shouldn't the ratio be 90% in favor of reality and not fantasy? What? Don't believe me? Take, for example, how sex/love-making in movies is so slick, so without awkwardness, mistakes and screwups--even when between people who've only just met and aren't long-time lovers--and so exactly the same from movie to movie. It's to the point where the conventions of the sex scene, like the sheets that cover the man from the waist down and the woman from the upper chest down, are so laughably familiar and unrealistic as to make the sex scene pointless and a more savvy filmmaker would skip it altogether (well, aside from how skin sells only if we see it) and jump right to one or the other lover walking out of the bathroom in a towel or leaving after donning a pair of shoes to inform us that they just had intercourse. At least 90% of movies are iterations of the same formulas we've seen forever. People call Bollywood movies formulaic, and they're right, but Hollywood differs from Bollywood mostly in that there are more formulas to choose from here. Why else would we have such terrible sequels and remakes all the time in theaters if our filmmakers had not stopped thinking and their audiences with them?

Movies "speak" to people more often than not because of the reaffirmation of the conditioning we've all received than because we're actually aware and introspecting during movies. As Don Marquis (whoever that is) aptly said, "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." I need no better explanation for why most of the best movies/music out there is not anywhere near the top sellers lists, why I can go see Sufjan Stevens most any night I want for about $7 in NYC though his last full album was the best reviewed album of the year and reminded me of Dante's writing. So, I think it's rare that movies really DO speak to people and change their world view for the better, or even in a deep, significant way. I'm happy for art because it hasn't just helped me pass the time (which it absolutely has), but it also has made me grow as a person. The love and more that I give to others is passed on not only from that which I've received from people in my life but also from all the heart, courage and acceptance that filmmakers have poured into their work. People who cannot distinguish this from those filmmakers and films that don't recreate and evoke as much as they parrot and manufacture are missing out not only on art, but also on fitting heroes, on meaningful goals, on life.

If you made it this far, surely you can read a bit more. One of the critics at Pajiba.com recently wrote about the need for honesty in stories, an objective good and bad in movies, and why people watch bad movies. Regarding honesty, here's a bit of what he said about The Wire, with which I wholeheartedly agree both in regard to that show and all storytelling and art:

It is honest to a fault, honest to its heart, and honest above all things. It is recognizable as a perfect story not because it defines quality but because it adheres to the definition passed down through all art, to hew as closely as possible to the beats and rhythms in the heart and soul of every viewer, and to make a made-up world feel like it's right outside the window. I look for honesty because that's what's worth seeking.

I agree with his conclusions, though not always with his explanations (for example, most of the people who saw Transformers 2, from what I heard, loved it and thought it was great). But he makes good points and probably does so with much better and organized writing than I managed above.

On The Legend Of Nilam Patel

2009-06-23T23:01:00.017-04:00

How well do you think you know Nilam (pictured here in the middle of a fierce kung-fu battle set to a Tan Dun/Yo-Yo Ma score. This is her shadowless tight-lipped serpent technique, famed in all the lands of the white flag)? If you've even heard her speak for 30 seconds, I bet you'd think you know her quite well. Really, what more could there be to her? There's a LOT more, trust me. Here's a story about her past that few know. It is but part 1 in the 548 part series, Better Know a Nilam:

Nilam Patel was once the head of the guerrilla armed forces in Nicaragua. This might come as a surprise to you, as she seems to be pretty non-violent, but anyone who's been burned by the searing heat of her "scary eyes" knows better than to underestimate her ability to inflict pain. Still, Nilam brought a "paradigm shift," as she likes to call it, to the usual methods of the Contra. As she once said, "When you've killed 30 or 40 people and it's only noon, it's really time to call it a day. After that, it's just showing off. Na'mean?" (I really don't) This change did not come without resistance. The leaders of the forces suspected that Nilam was po-lice and tried to force her to kill a captured member of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in plain sight of everyone to prove where her allegiance lay, but Nilam stood tall (so to speak) and, advocated that, instead of killing, they effect revolution through "tough love," with many lightning strikes of "hugging it out," in an unprecedented attempt to shock and awe the opposition.

Nilam cannot be completely absolved of culpability in the death and destruction heaped upon the people, livestock and countryside of Nicaragua, however. Much as Che Guevara was but a peaceful, peasant doctor early in his life but later assembled and trained armies around the world, never were the Contra as efficient and intimidating as after Nilam took over their leadership. Ever the peppy go-getter, Nilam would have the troops up at 6 AM, intoning, "Rise and shine, bitches. The people of Nicaragua aren't going to murder themselves!" The extremists' resolve also grew as a result of her efforts toward unity and respect for the chain-of-command amongst the ranks (of course, this came only after Nilam bested and vanquished the former leaders and any insubordinate officers in a martial arts tournament that lasted 4 days and 3 nights and ended with her ripping out the heart of a fallen opponent with her bare hands--after which she promptly sanitized said hands with Purell), foremost of which were her changes to the uniform ("Camo fatigues are so passé," Nilam explained in an interview with the Managua Sun-Times. "Our uniforms were of the latest styles and sleekest cuts. The linen breathed fabulously in the sweltering Nicaraguan heat. We were color-coordinated and organized by rank, astrological sign and favorite bubble tea flavor. I also did the troops' makeup. A little eye cream and blush can go a long way to reducing signs of aging and fatigue"), as well as her chocolate-covered strawberries, which were always a hit at the weekly pot-luck dinners.

Asked recently if she regrets any of her actions from this past life, and what ever possessed her to do this in the first place, Nilam said, simply, "Leadership experience, baby! Med school, here I come!"

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-06-16T10:49:00.003-04:00

Checkit:

NY Times article from Nilam on the rush/clarity we get from near-death experiences and how that fades.
I love not only the clarity and verity of the article--it reminds me of David Foster Wallace's essay on consciousness--but also just how great the writing is. Here's a sampling:

I wish I could recommend this experience to everyone. It’s a cliché that this is why people enjoy thrill-seeking pastimes ranging from harmless adrenaline fixes like roller coasters to suicide attempts with safety nets, like bungee jumping. The catch is that to get the full effect you have to be genuinely uncertain that you’re going to survive. The best approximation would be to hire an incompetent hit man to assassinate you.

and

It’s like the revelation I had when I was a kid the first time I ever flew in an airplane: when you break through the cloud cover you realize that above the passing squalls and doldrums there is a realm of eternal sunlight, so keen and brilliant you have to squint against it, a vision to hold onto and take back with you when you descend once more beneath the clouds, under the oppressive, petty jurisdiction of the local weather.

Pixar's animated short Partly Cloudy

As a Mac user and future Linux Ubuntu user, I find this funny. You, on the other hand, probably won't find it humorous that
The Matrix Runs on Windows XP

One person's ranking of best Pixar movies. I haven't seen Up, and put Wall-E ahead of Finding Nemo atop my list, but really, it's like choosing between children for me.

Ha, another completely inept Naive's Guide...this time...to The Beatles.

Even if this is publicity for a show with MC Hammer, it's just great:

For XKCD fans, here's some geeky fun.

He doesn't seem to post often, but his posts are quality when he does. Here's the blog of an acquaintance of mine, Dev.

Rich is definitely correct to say, yesterday, that this song, "melodically represented a super-chill day out in the first beautiful day out of way too many crappy ones and today, as well, is no exception."
Here's Animal by Miike Snow:

Here's another song that's made me very happy recently. I've been going through Common's stuff, so there's plenty that's worth sharing, but I especially liked this song because of the style, music and the references to people like Billie Holiday and Bob Marley, and for the passion Common has for his craft. Here's I Am Music by Common, featuring Jill Scott:

On Kobe

2009-06-09T14:57:00.004-04:00

Amit's always confounded that I hate on Kobe so much. I've been meaning to put my thoughts up on this. Here are some of them.

First, read this Bill Simmons article. He's much better than me at presenting the sources of much of my ire, like how he can poke fun at Kobe for his ridiculous "fierce" look that nobody has the guts to call him out on on TV, while I just want to slap the guy.

Amit had this to say in response to the article:
haha, interesting article though i can't ever take what bill simmons says seriously. i still don't get why you hate kobe so much or the lakers for that matter. is he a little cocky...yeah but all his teammates past and present RAVE about him sooooo much. so he can't be that bad of a teammate. i've only heard people say not just good but amazing things about kobe....well except shaq. i just wanna know if you hated jordan too b/c if you hated jordan then it makes sense why you'd hate kobe b/c i think both come off...personality wise in teh same way. later man. hope you doin well. it's parth's b-day today.
amit

To which I said:
nah i didn't hate jordan, though i know he's not a wonderful person either. jordan wasn't a phony
jordan never would have done what kobe did against the suns [Ed: During a deciding game in a series the Lakers had no business losing to the Suns, Kobe passed up almost every single shot he had the chance to take in the 2nd half and the team lost. Bravo, Kobe, you can't be the top dog on your team unless everyone knows and admits that that's the case. When you had a superstar with you, you two got rings but couldn't coexist because you need the credit--not that Shaq's any more mature--and when you don't have a superstar teammate, you and all your fans want us to know that you have no support] just to prove how good he is
jordan wouldn't have gotten caught cheating and thrown his teammate (shaq) under the bus when, in fact, he was cheating... kobe was all like "c'mon guys, u know me"...what bs
and i don't know where u find this kobe is the best teammate ever crap. jordan involved his teammates because he wanted to win. he didn't want to be liked and i don't think he was. he was only respected. kobe wants us to think everyone likes him and who's going to say that he doesn't like him while still being his teammate? he's such a lil girl, they'd have to go with [I meant "through"] all that kobe/shaq crap w/ him
12:10 PM
besides, who gives himself the nickname black mamba...what a loser. nobody else would give him a good nickname so he gave himself one?
kobe and a-rod are alike. they both have/had the chance to be the best ever, but were overly concerned, for people of their enormous talents, about what their legacy would be and whether they'd be liked. people like jordan and bird didn't worry about what people would think about them, they didn't have fierce looks and they didn't need all these stupid commentators to say that they really want it. they went out and destroyed opponents and that's how we knew

So yeah. Also, people who've seen the Lakers play live all say that the chemistry on the team is forced. Not that they're all at each other's throats (consider, though, all that Phil Jackson went through with Kobe and how he felt about him and you need no more evidence about what kind of team player Kobe is), but it's not exactly natural. Compare how they play, goof around and celebrate with each other to how the Cavs are (except when they play as terribly as they did against the Magic...not that they turn on each other, but they're not exactly jovial either) with each other. Kobe needs to accept that he's not a Lebron/Magic-type player and stop trying to portray himself as that. He also needs to stop giving himself nicknames and stealing Jordan's fist pump and picking a number in order to try to literally one-up Jordan (don't give me that BS on it being his old number). Kobe is very good, good enough to be alpha-dog on a talented Olympics team, but not at the level, mentally, that the great superstars were at...or he wouldn't crave acceptance so much. He's learned to keep his mouth shut a bit more lately, which is good. Whatever his on-court play and acting might be, he won't call out opposing players and refs in press conferences and is careful in how he speaks about his own teammates. And he does deserve another ring in the sense that he works harder than anyone else out there to be prepared on an individual level and has such otherworldly talent that he could, if so inclined, bring even a team that wasn't so stacked to a championship. But please, Lakers fans and sycophantic TV commentators and writers of sports fluff pieces, stop trying to shove all this crap down my throat. He's a very good individual ball player. He's not a great guy, he's not beloved except by rabid Lakers fans and the same crowd who loves the A-Rods and Peyton Mannings of the world of sports, he's not "fierce," even if he has learned to make shots in order to sway momentum--he's not even a deadly shooter...look at his shooting numbers in all his high scoring games...he's putting up 30+ shots and getting all kinds of charitable foul calls to get up to 30+ and his line in the 60+ game against the Knicks was horribly selfish, let alone that 80+ performance, in which he glared at teammates when they dared to shoot the ball rather than pass to him. When Kobe has a hot hand, there's no one like him, even now that he's past his prime, but when he's not hitting his shots, that's when you really get to see what kind of teammate he is, how unwilling he is to adjust, to involve other teammates and help out in any way he can. That team is so stacked--with Kobe leading it, there's no reason for them to lose or be anything short of an unstoppable force, and certainly no reason for a lot of the cheap play some of their players participate in.

Oh, one last note. Kobe gets a lot of superstar calls, but he has to work harder than other superstars these days (partially that's his own doing, since, as he's aged, he's been more reluctant to drive and settles for jumpers a lot more). I also have to give credit to Kobe over Lebron for not changing his game so much in reaction to how refs are calling games (again, that might have to do with his age). It's very frustrating for me to watch refs bending over backwards to give superstars and favorites the game, and to watch Lebron take 7 steps back behind the 3-point line in order to barrel through the lane (Wade careens through the lane, but to the same basic effect), get called (not for an offensive foul, no, never!) and get to the line. Lebron can't change how the refs call the game, but he can improve his game to not be a bunch of bail-me-out off-balance drives or drives in which his goal is to get a foul call rather than to score primarily. Since Kobe's remained a jump-shooter, he still has to work for his points and foul calls to some extent, unless the refs are in the Staples Center and feel the game slipping away from the Lakers. Then all bets are off.

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-06-02T15:15:00.008-04:00

Checkit:

Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions - as documented by Andy Samberg

MTV Shows

Keep Your Fridge Stocked and you can get girls the way this guy does

Autotune the News #4 - My favorite by far of the ones they've made to date. It's not only clever and funny, but I'm actually hooked on the song.

Dave Matthews GPS - despite his inability to keep from laughing while making jokes, Fallon's pretty good with his Dave impression.

NPH gives the Top Ten Signs That You've Hired a Bad Tony Host

Dear Hip Hop:

Colbert is in Iraq this week! And he's guest-editing Newsweek for this week's edition. Here's his explanation in said magazine for why he took the crummy job. His first episode was great and included...well, a certain President making a surprise appearance and Colbert having to part ways with one of his favorite body parts. Here's an interview/article with Colbert in which he actually talks about his character, which I've never heard him do before.

Here's Pajiba's recap of the Roots Picnic, the amazing concert I attended on Saturday, in parts 1 and 2. I can't comment on the stuff covered in the 2nd part since I never made it into the tent. We were way too close to the main stage to risk leaving. Here are some of the pics I took that night.

Some stuff from Letterman, including Bruce Willis as an intern...skip ahead to minute 5:

Instead of the usual hot wife/slob husband dynamic on sitcoms, this guy has a revolutionary new idea:

High School commencement speech given by comedian Eugene Mirman:

Joe Jonas doing the Single Girls dance isn't good in the same way JT's rendition was...his dancing isn't good, but his attempt at being really "diva" is classic:

Haha, here's the literal video translation for Total Eclipse of the Heart:

I'm not the type to think that any home video with an animal in it is funny, but this is...you have to admit, the guy had it coming:

Remember the great comments on this shirt posting on Amazon? Here's a video inspired by the shirt/comments:

So this artist created a blog on which his daughter critiques his work. It's adorable. Checkit

Omigod, as if the blanket with sleeves wasn't bad enough:

Ha, this is a bit late, but the new tech guy at Cyberdyne's a bit confused.

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-05-21T14:29:00.002-04:00

First, check out Conan's new late night digs:

Check out the hilarious user reviews for this shirt at Amazon.

This is one of the best Daily Show interviews I've seen...with Larry David of all people:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Larry King

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

And finally, it turns out that there is an entire YouTube channel dedicated to inappropriate soundtracks for movies. Here are a few examples, the first two of which I especially love:

On Autotuning the News

2009-05-20T01:32:00.002-04:00

Who said autotune is annoying? Oh yeah, I'm not a fan of it. Nor am I a fan of the news, which I rarely watch. These guys have managed to make me like both though, sorta. Check out Autotuning the news:

I like Katie Couric the best so far
Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-05-18T11:41:00.002-04:00

checkit:

Celebrity Jeopardy (from this past Saturday)

Intel - Ajay Bhatt

Meet Hazel, Mayor of Mississauga, Canada, 88 and awesome:

FML's milder and funnier spinoff: My Life Is Average

The trailer for Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law and Rachel McAdams:

On Yeasayer - All Hours Cymbals

2009-05-13T11:48:00.005-04:00

This is the debut album from the Brooklyn group Yeasayer and I love it. Music, lyrics (from what I've paid attention to so far), and the entire sound. I even find most of it to be good listening while doing cardio, that's an unexpected bonus.

Mostly, this album reminds me of Fleet Foxes' self-titled album. From the whiny styled vocals in the first two songs to the harmonies to the overlapping or canon-esque vocal parts. They create such lush soundscapes, both musical and vocal, often wordless, as in Ah, Weir. The music is often quite energetic without an obvious driving force, so complex is it. And, at times, the group can really rock, like in Wait For the Wintertime, which sounds to me like something Serj Tankian might have created. At this point, I think my favorite songs are 2080, Germs and Wait For the Wintertime.

Oh, I also enjoy what sounds to me like a sitar in Wait For the Summer. I could point out things that I like from each song, but I feel this would get too detailed. So I'll leave you with these lyrics and the album:
I'm so blessed to
Have spent the time
With my family and the friends
I love
In my short life I have met
So many people I deeply care for

Check it out:

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-05-10T17:13:00.009-04:00

Mother lover, the sequel to Dick In A Box. I love the cameos by Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson, btw:

Immigrant Tale (starring JT):

Cool virtual tour of NYC

A great Miller Lite commercial starring Phil Leotardo:

Here is a cute/creepy video by Chris Ware for This American Life Live, about Quimby the Mouse and his friend the disembodied head (I like the song a lot. It's "Eugene" by Andrew Bird):

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

An awkward and uncomfortable interview with Natalie Portman from "Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis"

Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

Stand By Me, as recorded by artists all over the world. See if that don't put a smile on your face.

This reminds me of another great rendition of a classic song. Somewhere Over the Rainbow as done by Israel Kamakawiwo'Ole

Pregnant Women Are Smug by Garfunkel and Oates

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...first, watch this:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Bill Posey Alligator Rumors

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Gay Marriage

Then, read this and then this.

A great Japanese commercial for a tea that lowers blood pressure:

The Muppets version of Oceans...11, I believe:

Here's Megan Fox writhing about for no other reason, from Esquire. I like the song, "Climbing Up the Walls" by Chris Cornell. Probably a bit disappointing from him, but a good pop song.

Good Morning, Megan Fox | Celebrities | SPIKE.com

On The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love

2009-04-25T13:04:00.001-04:00

I listened to and loved this album almost as soon as it came out but was too busy to post anything about it, so here we go.

So this is not at all what I expected from The Decemberists. The first time I listened to it, I wasn't really paying attention. I cringed when I heard the electric guitars but didn't listen for what was being said and what was going on. The second time, I decided to lie back and pay attention, since there's too much detail in their albums to not give it its due. And I loved it. I then proceeded to listen to it another 40 or so times in the next few days.

Progressive rock is not for everyone, I guess, and certainly not for anyone who wants radio hits, songs that stand well on their own, and songs that encourage singing along. But for people who like their music to tell stories, and for anyone who's liked the kinds of stories Colin Meloy creates, this album is a treat, a complete, cohesive story told from beginning to end. If you've never heard his songs, keep in mind that they're often like fairy tales, only the dark kind...something akin to Pan's Labyrinth or Coraline.

The story is this: Margaret is in a fairy tale Scotland. She meets a shape-shifting fawn/man named William in the fields one day, tends to his hurt leg, watches him transform to human form, copulates with him, and discovers later, upon returning to the bower, that she is both in love and with child. Margaret retreats to the taiga and calls for her lover. William concurs. But the Queen of the forest is not pleased, and she approaches as the lovers spend a night together. William pleads with his mother, the Queen, to allow him to be with his lover, at least for one night. She recounts how when he was a baby, she saved him from the treachery of men by making him a creature of the forest, and laments that this is how he repays her love. She agrees to give him one night with his lover, but that's all. Then, we're introduced to The Rake, who tells of how he was once married to a woman who bore him three children before dying in childbirth with the fourth, and how he killed all three and is now free to pursue new love. So The Rake abducts Margaret and the Queen encourages him because she considers her to be the distraction that draws her adopted son away from her and the forest. She provides protection across the turbulent Annan river. William flies after The Rake and pleads with the Annan waters to spare him and promises that the waters can dash his bones on his return. After all, his mother, the Queen, won't let he and Margaret be together, so what use has he of living? Back at The Rake's fortress, he works towards having his way with the captive Margaret as she calls out to her love. Instead, the ghosts of The Rake's dead children visit him and somehow exact revenge, though whether they actually kill him or just drive him away in fear is unclear. William and Margaret are reunited and they unite forever by drowning in the Annan River rather than to let the Queen successfully separate them in the morning.

Here's the whole album, followed by the individual songs.

1. Prelude
For whatever reason, the album/song takes its time to get started. This reminds me of some other song that escapes me, but also it seems to hint at the Wanting Comes In Wave songs to come.

2. The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
And then this song hints at the inevitable theme of this story. This is not going to end well, no matter how beautiful and sweet Margaret may be. Incidentally, Colin found a copy of Anne Brigg's 1966 EP entitled "The Hazards of Love," which didn't have a title track. So he set out to make one, then made four, and an entire story set over 17 tracks in all.

3. A Bower Scene
By the way, these are not family members talking to Margaret. It's a nun. Though we hear electric guitars throughout the song, this is also where we first hear power chords, and the first time I can remember that from The Decemberists (though there's surely an earlier song of theirs that I'm forgetting). There's nothing to be foreboding about just yet, but it's the first hint of what we'll get when The Queen arrives.

4. Won't Want For Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
Oh my God, I love this song. Listen to it with headphones and your eyes closed. I love the way her crystal clear voice soars for "And all this stirring inside my belly won't quell my want for love." Anyway, so here, Margaret declares that she won't be apart from her love, even if she has to trek through the taiga to get to him. She calls to the leaves and buttercups to aid her during her journey and William too calls for her.

5. The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)
Sure, Colin voices both the Rake and William, so it's technically the same voice (also for some other characters, apparently), but compare the sweetness and softness of William's singing with the way the Rake relishes in recounting his misdeeds in his song.
And here I am, softer than a shower
And here I am, to garland you with flowers
To lay you down in a clover bed
The stars a roof above our heads
Colin seems to enjoy doing this...creating a character who is so hopeful and optimistic, so innocent, and then throwing him into a doomed situation. On paper, I hate when this is done in most movies, but Colin's always pitch perfect in his execution.

6. The Queen's Approach
Uh-oh. I love that they actually make banjo music foreboding here. Of course, it helps to have the string instruments bending their notes so sinisterly in the background.

7. Isn't It A Lovely Night?
Huh. Turns out, "little death" is an archaic way of referring to the orgasm. The lovers made love and enjoyed the evening. I actually don't like listening to this song much because I know how it's all going to end.

8. The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid
So here's where William first makes his stirring plea to his mother, the Queen, though we don't know yet why he needs to. And then we have her somewhat startling rock introduction. The Queen's voice is a little deep, a little thick, a little masculine. Over the course of the song it gets more and more deliciously vindictive and powerful. I love that when she holds words like "Remember [when I found you]" and "Now [...this is how I am repaid]," she seems to be driving the drums rather than vice versa. In response, William pleads more desperately than ever. I'm not sure why the Queen relents somewhat, but her voice becomes even more sinister in tone. And the "repaid"s at the end are a bit maniacal.

9. An Interlude
We get to catch a little breather in between two such powerful and disconcerting songs.

10. The Rake's Song
Should I feel guilty for making this one of my 2 favorite songs of the album? I just love when Colin plays this sort of part. I've enjoyed it in so many songs previous and it's just as great here. The guitar and drum parts are simple, but provide energy to his delivery. I love phrases like,
Until her womb start spilling out babies
Only then did I reckon my curse
I like how simple and yet effective the chorus of "All right, all right all right" is.
I love how he enunciates words like "reckon," "curse," "pests," "divest," etc. It's especially effective when he speaks of burning Isaiah's body "For incurring my wrath." When the Rake speaks of Myfanwy "mercifully taking her mother along," he showcases both his love for classically powerful phrases and enunciation.
The Rake was a bit mistaken when he calls himself "No more a rake," I mean, considering the title of the song. And he's a bit premature when he says we should expect him to be haunted, but it never really bothers him. Oh, I also like the background for the chorus. It sounds like those other voices that come through when someone is "possessed."

11. The Abduction of Margaret
The music from A Bower Scene returns here, where Margaret is in a bit more immediate danger. This album is like a musical. Musical themes and sometimes entire exact phrases repeat. Here is another one of Colin's voices that I'd forgotten. He's some omniscient narrator in this song.

12. The Queen's Rebuke / The Crossing
The villain, who has Margaret slung across the back of his horse, must negotiate a crossing of the wild Annan river. I really love the music that heralds the Queen and her rebuke. She retells the story of her saving of William, but not without coming off as wicked and consumed with power. Even as she lyrically points at the Rake when turning the focus over to her gratefulness to him for removing the distraction from William's life, I imagine she scared the crap out of him with that long "And Youuuuu..."

13. Annan Water
Omigod, I forgot all about this song when mentioning my favorite two (the other being Won't Want For Love). While the music throughout matches the happenings and emotions of the story, this is, purely speaking, my favorite part of the album musically. Close your eyes, put on your headphones and listen to the rich layers of the music in this song. I imagine the horses in the river in The Lord of the Rings. And in the face of all that frantic energy, we have the little innocent voice of William pleading earnestly, both bowing humbly before the river's power:
O grey river, your waters ramble wild
The horses shiver and bite against the bridle
and also saying,
But I will cross if mine own horse is pulled from me
Though my mother cries that if I try, I sure will drowned be
and promising that the river may have his precious bones on his return. I loved how the music added layers upon layers in the first half of the song, then everything but, pretty much, an organ cut out for his plea, then started again.

14. Margaret in Captivity
God, I love Margaret's voice. The Rake shouldn't be so cocky here. He can't imagine what awaits him.

15. The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)
The first time I heard this song, I thought it nice to hear young voices (I don't know if they're actually children singing, come to think of it). I didn't realize until the second listening what they were saying. The music is from The Wanting Comes In Waves (sped up considerably), at first, but it switches abruptly at the half-minute mark. I love how innocent the lyrics are:
Charlotte:
Father I'm not feeling well, the flowers me you fed
Tasted spoiled for suddenly I find that I am dead
But father don't you fear, your children all are here
Singing oh, the hazards of love
while at the same time quite creepy. And that's just when Charlotte's singing. The scratching, discordant strings start after the first verse. Near the end of the song, a carnival theme starts up. This all seems like something out of Coraline or The Nightmare Before Christmas.

16. The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)
Back to this theme, which is all harsh and discordant at the end, I'm not sure why. The Rake's out of the way, the lovers reunited.

17. The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)
This has a feel that reminds me of Sons and Daughters, which ended their last album. I love the "Didn't I? Didn't I?" they exchange back and forth. But then, considering what ultimately happens, as sweet as it is, this song is more like "Of Angels and Angles" and "We Both Go Down Together."
And these hazards of love
Never more will trouble us.

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-04-22T00:53:00.011-04:00

Check out Music Is My Hot Hot Sex! for new music everyday and other related fun stuff, c/o some of my friends from last year's class. The first video is something I got from there.

This is a great rendition by a bunch of elementary school kids who really get into it.
Coldplay - Viva La Vida cover

Remember the music video from the last post? This seems to be related, at least in animation:
Royksopp - Remind Me (remix) Video

Remind Me from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

Snakes on a Plane, TV Edit is even funnier than the original:

Top 10 plays against the wall (baseball) from SportsCenter:

Beyonce's Singing Unprocessed:

Britain's Got Talent indeed. Here's Shaheed Jafargholi singing Valerie...er...scratch that. Who's Loving You? by Michael Jackson:

Not everyone's excited about Earth Day:

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-04-17T13:15:00.004-04:00

Southwest Airlines Rap

Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant Rap

Feist/Ben Gibbard - Train Song (cover)

Portable Sewing Machine - The Onion

Macbook Wheel - The Onion

Nic Cage commercials...even more fun than Cage in movies

Bruins Fight Rangers' fans

The 15 best Family Guy Cameos

So this woman comes on Britain's Got Talent and she looks all frumpy and like she's lost her mind, thinking of getting up and singing in front of the nation. But then she opens her mouth to sing and absolutely kills. Here's her rendition of I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables:

Susan Boyle - 47-letnia śpiewaczka z brytyjskiej wersji "Mam
by luloczek

This guy had to make a music video that reinterpreted the Little Red Riding Hood story. Here is his very clever project. Plus, I love the music.
Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored By Destiny

Click here for the video in better quality

The Egg - Walking Away (Tocadisco Remix) (a song that reminds me of that last one)

A WWI reenactment using dogs:

20 shots that should be retired from film.

This blogger doesn't like the tagline for the new Crank movie and gives some other notoriously bad examples from movie posters. The Crank 2 tagline should have just been something like, Watch Statham kick ass...or he'll come kick yours.

I don't even know what to say about this. Frankenhood, starring Charlie Murphy, Wee-Bay, and some other people.

An interesting animation about the annoyance of cell phones:

Okay, a whole bunch of Michael Bay related stuff coming up:
First, an amateur video that might make Bay proud:

Second, another similar video:

Third, insane workplace safety videos that might make Bay proud

And finally, "kids" send letters to Michael Bay.

Ha, a funny, facetious explanation fo the origins of April Fools' Day.

Oh man, remember Sandwich Day from 30 Rock? Here's the shop where those subs came from.

I like the posts from this blog, with its serious, sincere, but idiotic, authoritative looks at all sorts of things. Here: Whiskey.

Haha, "White People Problems":

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

Some great April Fools jokes. I especially like the flying penguins and Taco Liberty Bell.

Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee:

Iron Man vs Bruce Lee - watch more funny videos

Haha, "Renowned Hoo-Ha Doctor Wins Nobel Prize For Medical Advancements Down There"

Ha, I enjoy this rap video from a rapper named "1/2 Price"

An animated clip from CBS comparing blogging today with newspaper reporting from back in the day:

Watch CBS Videos Online

A look into Paris Hilton's mind through clips from My British Best Friend:

Portia de Rossi "apologizes' publicly for her marriage with Ellen:

Silence of the Lambs, the Lego musical:

On Tinariwen - Aman Iman: Water Is Life

2009-04-16T17:02:00.006-04:00

24 hours ago, I listened to this album for the first time and in the hours since, amidst sleep, work, errands and TV, I've listened to it another 7 or so more times. I haven't a clue what the singers are saying or in what language, or where they're from, but the following is the scene this album conjures up in my mind and you really must listen to this and see if it does something similar for you.

Imagine evening in a village in a dry, hot land. The people who've gone to work and those who stayed behind and worked in town meet up, worn out from their daily labor. Only, instead of bickering or having a drink, or plopping into bed, they gather around in someone's yard or around a fire in the cool evening air, instruments in hand, and they unwind with music. Someone takes the lead, and though that person changes from song to song, the whole group joins in to echo in a lead-chorus style. Everyone's shoulders are swaying, everyone's heads nodding, and someone busts out parts on an acoustic guitar. He might as well be Jose Gonzalez, because he creates impossibly catchy rhythms that you'd swear exist only in his head, only everyone claps and stomps along. And when someone pulls out an electric guitar--surely an odd sight in this scene--everyone's cool with it. Even when the guitarists veer into the blues, even dipping into some Hendrix-esque squeals and funk, no one skips a beat. You have no idea what anyone's saying, only that they mean it, and that they're happy to say it. And you're happy they did.

A very good and helpful documentary providing a lot of the answers I didn't have about this group and these people:

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-03-08T19:36:00.004-04:00

A couple of videos. I feel like there was more...ohh...I remember. Okay, so a couple videos and then something else that deals with food.

I liked this sketch of Demitri Martin's in which he kept taking a simple joke to higher and higher levels of improbability. I love that David Cross is in it too. Big fan of his.

Important Things with Demetri MartinWed 10:30pm / 9:30c

Chairs - Urinal Talk

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

Free Online Games
More Funny Videos

Also, I love this commercial, especially for Jimmy Rollins' expressions after he gets hit:

Finally, here's a paper that someone from NJIT wants to do on Platters, the little food stand in NYC that makes so much money.

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-03-02T19:26:00.003-05:00

First, Roger Ebert writes about the role of snarkiness in the Oscar backlash. I like this piece, though my problem isn't that so much as pretension towards the droves that make movies like Paul Blart and shows like Two and a Half Men so much money. Perhaps the lesson's the same, that I get a lot of joy out of these forms of art and I just need to remember that.

Also, though I didn't really watch many music videos in the 80s, I love these videos. Here's the literal video translation for the song, White Wedding:

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-02-27T22:28:00.002-05:00

Some videos and Stars' music...checkit

First, if you haven't seen it, a "Clean Coal" commercial made by, believe it or not, the Coen brothers.

And...this is either funny or disconcerting to me because I'm currently looking for a whole home theater system for my parents, complete with a flat screen TV. Anyway, here's The Onion's report on Sony's newest product. It's very emphatic, with very emphatic grown up language:

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

Also, I listened to Stars' album, In Our Bedroom After the War and loved it immediately. Only, that love somewhat wore off after the first few songs. Everything else got too...ballad-y and overly earnest. I dunno, I have a hard time describing it. I loved the music in the first few songs so much, though, that I should really stick with it and see if I don't change my mind. Here are some great songs in the meanwhile. You should listen to the first song with something that has some base, if possible. Like your car or a stereo system. I'm just saying...I listened to it on my computer without my stereo system attached, and it was so tinny. Yeah, so here are The Beginning After the End, The Night Starts Here, Take Me To the Riot, My Favourite Book, Midnight Coward, The Ghost of Genova Heights and Personal. Hmm, come to think of it, that's more than half the album!

On Incompleteness

2009-02-24T12:21:00.003-05:00

I am complete as I am. I need nothing and no one to complete me. This is the mantra I need to repeat to myself.

As is often the case, Dadaji spoke to me directly this Sunday in Pravachan...meaning he spoke about something that I've recently realized (probably not for the first time). He said we should all ask ourselves if, in life, we are predators or prey. He pointed out that though we all say we're the latter, our relationships with objects, and even people, say otherwise. When we say or feel that we cannot live without something, we're basically saying that we're incomplete and that that object would complete us. I'm not sure that I do this with material things so much, and it's hard for me to not do this with things like my health. But I need to work on how I think about people. I've wanted so badly to get married and have the kind of married life that I've desired...for quite some time now. I don't desire to get married because I'm lonely or because everyone else does it. It is important to me because of the kind of life I want to lead and am trying to lead. But still, I'm approaching this all wrong and it's causing me great grief. As Dadaji said, I should say [in my head] to whatever I desire, "I want you and to have you would be great, but I can do without you and am complete as I am."

I've spoken about my feeling of longing before. I have to work on that. I look at every couple as if they have everything I want and need, and I know logically that that's not the case. Everyone doesn't want and cannot [oh man, an aside..."Mr. Brightside by The Killers is now playing on the radio show I'm listening to as I write this. This song always makes me sad because it reminds me of a similar situation in my life to the one in the song. It's fitting that he says, "He takes off her dress now, letting me go..." That's what I have to realize about my life. That people let go...of me. And I have to be able to do the same when necessary and appropriate] have/accomplish what I want in my life. I have to focus on what I want, not to try to make/wish people I meet in my life to be(come) what I want. I understand this logically, but I need to put it into practice.

It's important if I'm to do that to realize and remind myself that I am not completed by any of the people who are or whom I wish to be in my life. I especially should not want to be with anyone who thinks I need to be completed, or to think that way about myself. I've written and talked a lot about "doing my own thing," but this is the underlying issue with that. I can pick and choose what I want to adopt from other people's lives and opinions and to join and leave their company, but I don't owe anything to anyone who would think or imply if I'm incomplete, that I'm lacking as I am.

I feel like the things that I need to work on have got to be simpler than the things everyone else works on, or that I have got to be the slowest learner in the world. Like, really? This is what I need to work on? To realize that I'm special just the way I am? Didn't Mr. Rogers teach me that when I was a little kid? In this issue of relationships and marriage, it's difficult for me. I know logically that there aren't too many people out there "for me," because so many really deep things really matter to me. People think it's hard to find someone hot, but looking for just a whole lot of physical attractiveness would still be easier than finding someone I'd really be happy with. But it's hard for me to not just ache for that special someone now and to not convince myself that each girl I meet is that person or could be if I tried hard enough. I've tried plenty hard. When it happens, if it does, it won't need to be forced, even if I'll undoubtedly have to work a lot throughout. Until then, I can want it strongly, but I can't feel like my life is lacking or incomplete or on hold.

As for how much truth lies in my feeling that I am slower than everyone else in this stuff...I know it's not true implicitly, as I know that many students in med school are struggling and burnt out and feel like they know nothing and are the only dumb ones in school, and I know that they're wrong to think that, but that they don't realize it. It's got to be the same way with people in life. A lot of people are oblivious to how many faults and shortcomings they have that I think are so patent. Many of those faults are much greater than anything I have, and more damaging to other people around them. But I still envy them for their obliviousness. That is, there's a certain type of people I really admire and a certain type that I really envy. The former is people who are unafraid to admit that they make mistakes and are students in life, not masters or teachers in life. The latter is people who are somewhat shameless about their mistakes. Many in the latter group really are inconsiderate people because they just don't care to improve, but the combination of those two qualities is beautiful. I have no problem admitting my shortcomings and ignorance in things. My problem is just that I do so with a twinge of sadness and regret, and it's this reason that I seem to go through life as if always apologizing for my existence. This is one of the reasons I seem younger than I am more than just how I dress and what I do or think. It's not certainty in beliefs or anything like that, it's acceptance of oneself. Others might fake it and that might work for them. I just need to accept myself as complete.

On Slumdog Millionaire

2009-02-24T12:06:00.002-05:00

I don't know if the backlash has begun for Slumdog. I wouldn't be surprised, considering it won 8 of the 9 Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including Best Picture and Best Director. I'm glad it got some recognition because I definitely want more people to see the movie. But...

...I feel kinda bad. 8 awards for it when many great movies lost in those categories? I could see Best Director and Best Song and I don't know enough to complain about things like Sound Editing, but I don't like this business of a movie winning based on reaction and momentum. It trivializes what was good about the movie and makes it all about hype, while also hyping it up even more to levels that it cannot (and does not) reach. Slumdog was very good throughout, as I've said here, but Best Picture? I know that it's far better than a lot of the films that won that biggest award in this decade, but it's still far too Hollywood (or Bollywood) to do justice to the rest of the movie and reach what I consider to be the Best Picture standard. I'd give it Director and Screenplay because this story was brutally real and beautifully done. As for original song, I do like the soundtrack a lot and think it's mostly very fitting, but I didn't like the song they chose. Jai Ho is far too Bollywood (with a cheeky-terrible dance to match) to be a really good original song for the movie. Perhaps that's why it won, for the same reason that Bride and Prejudice wasn't panned by critics...because it was colorful and "exotic." I'd much rather have had the following song make it, especially considering how it was used in context.
Mausam and Escape - From Slumdog Millionaire (Train station platform chase scene)

On Your Need For Daily Links

2009-02-22T14:37:00.001-05:00

A couple videos

The whole Quest for G with King Garnett and crew:

Conan has dinner with Jordan Schlansky (Associate Producer of his show):