Sexy Results!

this is the way, step inside

2009-09-06T10:19:00.003-04:00

I think I've made this post every single year since Sexy Results! existed, and damn if I'm gonna let this opportunity pass me by. It's not like AOL is gonna give me that fat $8-per-post money anymore...

It's bad enough that Sexy Results! progenitors like Patton Oswalt, John Stewart and Travis Morrison went to William & Mary and that certain Sexy Results! correspondents described the W&M experience as such- "I thought their students just sit around all day depressed, studying for their pointless liberal arts exam and discussing the latest Death Cab album." For eleven years and running, I've always wondered whether I made the right choice in attending UVA over William & Mary...most of what I remember from my visit to Williamsburg was a bunch of frat boys hating the shit out of UVA, which I somehow thought really wasn't my style. I just never thought that in 2009, I'd regret not going to the school with the better football team.

y'all respect the one who got shot, i respect the shooter

2007-02-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

I'm afraid of the future

They're not gonna make it easy for any of us, will they? Such is the nature of Virginia basketball in the 21st century where you can have ten conference wins and spend all of your time waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yeah, that's a six-point win against the bubblicious Yellow Jackets, but that's also the second time they've had to pull a a ridonkulous game-ending run (13-0 today, 15-0 against Clemson) to secure something they had no business winning. Here's hoping 30's the new 20 in the RPI.

Actually, I'm comforted a bit by UVA slipping out of the 4/5/6 seed that most projections had them at before they lost to Miami. Did you see some of those matchups? We were up against Santa Clara, Xavier and Winthrop more times than I can remember. And if those scenarios actually panned out, the Hoos would be the biggest "mortal lock for every first-round upset pick" in the history of college basketball. Or at least since the last UVA team to make the tournament; thanks to those guys, the seeding committee realized they should never make Gonzaga a #12 seed ever again. Maybe as a #7, we can get one of those big-conference teams that tanked the latter portion of the year (USC, Alabama, Michigan State) and a #2 that clearly doesn't deserve it (Kansas?).

In other news, there's nothing more sobering than hearing "Sittin' Up In My Room" at the gas station and realizing that Brandy has actually killed someone in the city where you live.

Also, if you read this blog, can you please write to Electronic Arts and beg them not to put LaDainian Tomlinson on the cover of Madden '08? I know he's an obvious choice and it might momentarily cheer him up, but he's dealt with enough shit already this offseason. If he's the coverboy, he'll be framed for murder by October.

Virtua Fighter 5 on PS3, The Besnard Lakes, John Caparulo (the funniest dude I've seen live since Lewis Black blazed UVA right after the 2000 elections), Dungen's new album and Trader Joe's BBQ Chicken Salad: file under "The Realest Of All Deals."

you're not at all a baller

2007-02-22T00:34:00.000-05:00

Locks get lazy and lose to Miami

Fuck this. Not the mood I need to be in before I see Dave Attel at the Improv and then Ghostface at the Key Club. Those are pretty much the brackets of the Sexy Results! aesthetic, no? The club says Starks will be onstage at midnight, meaning I'll be lucky if he's up there before next Tuesday.

we hug the block on president's day

2007-02-19T18:27:00.000-05:00

Gettin' that money the American way

Nope. Not gonna write that "UVA is on some Jada, Styles and Sheek Louch shit" post. Just gonna let that slide until March.

Anyways, having spent seven of my last eight years in some sort of educational program, I had no idea just how many people don't have to work on Presidents Day, despite it registering somewhere on the holiday scale between Flag Day and Task Force Tuesday. I work at a talent agency. I have the day off. My gal works at a public university. She does not. Sounds about right.

So, I've honored the holiday the best way I know how, mostly by watching episode after episode of "24" (currently, I'm watching Lou Diamond Phillips at his most icy) and walking down Sunset to Ralph's because driving there wouldn't kill enough time. After doing such, I have to say: I completely underestimated the promotional muscle behind "300" (no Hardaway). My preparedness for glory is off the fucking charts right now.

It's the pot of gold right here man this is it, man this is glory

(Update: listening to "Why You Hate The Game," it's dawning on me: why does Nas sound so nice on jams that are about 8 minutes or better?)

all you jealous punks can't stop my dunks

2007-02-18T16:55:00.000-05:00

Dwight takes 'em to chuuuuch. This time, in a non-literal sense

My gal knows me pretty well. If you've been following this blog for any amount of time, you know that for the time being, we are on opposite coasts (funny, I listened to Transatlanticism far more often when I didn't have a girlfriend on the other side of the country). One of the side effects of this is that she'll know three hours beforehand how often I'll be yelling "ballin!" at the screen whenever Jack Bauer does something badass. And yes, during the intros where they show people's names, they should have the word "BALLIN'!" replace "Jack Bauer" every now and again. Anyways, another side effect is that she'll be able to tell me when I'll need to avert my eyes. In a ridiculous coincidence with all of my shows this week, it involved a drill each time. You won't see your boy up in Home Depot for a while.

The great gal that she is, she bought me the first season of "24" for Valentine's Day, since I haven't really watched the show until now. The one thing that immediately strikes me is how I don't recognize anyone other than Jack. Meaning that I can look forward to each and every one of them dying somehow. I choose to blame it all on perimeters somehow.

The thing is about "24" is that it pretty much goes against everything I usually like about TV or movies. And that parenthood can preclude bad-ass federal agenting. Oh, and also that I'm fucking ecstatic that I have a real job, because I'd be the worst henchman ever. Then again, the henchmen never seem to get paid very well, or paid at all. Anyways, my DVD collection is so female-repellant, it's virtually porn. Two SeaLab collections, nothing in AFI's Top 100 Movies of All Time. Basically, I'm not buying it unless it's funny, and that definition stretches to include "Falling Down," plus "American Psycho" and "Boogie Nights," two movies which have first halves that can fuck with any comedy ever made before getting all depressing and shit in Act II.

After a pretty impressive stretch of "24" watching, I can only come to this question: which is a worse source of comic relief, "24" or Bloc Party?

Um, hey...I'm black, gay and British too, y'know? Where's my "Outside The Lines"?

(Disturbing sidenote: the lack of rap references to "24." No, I'm not counting "24s." I dunno, "I'm like Jack Bauer, got drama every hour" or whatnot. Maybe I just haven't heard Lil' Wayne's The Palmer Mixtape yet, if such a thing exists. And it probably does.)

Speaking of comic relief, might as well throw my hat into the ring with another Slam Dunk Contest post. I said last year that getting pissed about the scoring methods of this thing is about as useless as complaining about the strike zone in Rock 'n' Jock Softball. Well, it didn't make things any easier in 2007, and yes, I can extrapolate this to explain why I don't consider gymnastics, ice skating or diving a sport.

I find the treatment of Nate Robinson to be kind of odd. Yes, I know that little dudes like Spud Webb, Earl Boykins, Muggsy Bogues and, to a certain extent, Khalid El-Amin are often beloved by fans who aren't particularly interested in skills so much as resemblance to Phife Dawg. 'Cos everyone loves Phife.

Height of Muggsy Bogues, complexion of a hockey puck

Nate's not like those guys. Nate will punch people in they face just for livin', even in the shower. Word to Tim Hardaway, you're more likely to get coldcocked in an NBA shower than....never mind. And let's not forget that Nate played the Steven Jackson role in the Nugs/Bricks brawl. Paul Pierce brought that cardboard cutout on the floor and I feared that he'd end up being the only guy in the NBA to get stabbed two non-consecutive times.

I beg of you David Stern: please let this be the last time Nate is in the Slam Dunk Contest. I really can't take this shit every single year. We've seen everything this guy is capable of, and unless you let him use a trampoline, that's not gonna change. Maybe Stern can't take much more either. You know how much he hates stalling during the Slam Dunk Contest. How else do you explain planting that ecstacy in Chris Andersen's locker?

A distant #2 in "Birdman most likely to kiss another man"

Honestly, I'm not all that surprised in retrospect that Dwight Howard ended up getting screwed far worse than Iguodala did last year. Was the concept behind the dunk hysterical? Of course it was, particularly the part where he got Prodigy to grow eight inches and throw him the alley oop pass.

I break bread, ribs, hundred dollar bills

But can you think any NBA superstar more humorless than Michael Jordan? Well, how about Kobe Bryant? "NBA Posterized" was quite possibly the greatest show in television history; does it get any better than hearing the likes of Shaq, Darryl Dawkins, Kevin Johnson, Tracy McGrady and so forth discussing the greatest in-game dunks in NBA history? And would you believe that one of the four best was by Tom Chambers?

And yet, whenever Kobe got on there, it came to a screeching halt. It was "Christina Applegate in 'Anchorman'" bad. Not because he was brutally butchering jokes (I'm looking in your direction, Magic), but instead of enjoying the moment, he'd talk about the X's and O's, like "I did a high post move and switched to my offhand." Despite the rumors, I can't believe he and his wife and swingers; he just seems like the kind of guy who does superhuman shit at work and then goes back to the lab and broods for the rest of the night on some House shit.

So think about it: Kobe and MJ constitute 40% of the judging panel. A stunt like Howard's had no chance at all. So I beg of you, David Stern: get these guys off the case next year. Personally, I'd roll with Shaq, Noreaga and Clinton Portis and go from there.

It's not like they'd do a worse job; for whatever reason, the guys somehow thought jumping over a table-that-really-isn't-a-table is more impressive than jumping over Nate Robinson while reenacting a dunk so ill, it got Dee Brown his own fuckin' shoe. At least they got shit right on Tyrus Thomas. A lot of people were disappointed in his performance, but I didn't see that as being any more or less indifferent than anything else he's done since he became a Bull. Even the most thoro Thomas skeptic couldn't foresee him becoming Stromile Swift this quickly.

I'm all for Gerald Green becoming that new dude, but he just doesn't seem to have the same swag that the guys of the past did. Say what you will about Shawn Kemp (particularly how he looks like post-dreads Busta Rhymes nowadays...which should be of more concern to Busta Rhymes), but his performance on "Posterized" was surprisingly hysterical. Shit, everyone's performance (other than Kobe's) was. From the sound of Green's interviews, I'm guessing with a great degree of certainty we were only getting one year of college from him. If I remember correctly, he signed a LOI to Oklahoma State, but they should be glad he never made it. Between him, Bryant Reeves and Dexter Manley, they'd probably lose their accreditation.

Stillwater, but apparently not very deep

kill! your! television!

2007-02-10T13:29:00.000-05:00

Nothing like a little Ned's Atomic Dustbin to start your Saturday off right, no?

Don't quote me on this, but doesn't the average person watch some ridonkulous amount of TV per day? Like, 7-8 hours or something? I always take those studies with a grain of salt because you never know about sample size and as Homer Simpson once put it, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that.

I'd be lying if I said my men weren't committing crimes

But mostly, it comes down to the fact that you'd literally have to come home from work, turn on the TV and not stop until you eventually go to sleep in a Michelob/Funyon-induced daze. While I'm sure there are plenty of people who are into that kind of thing, I think there are a lot of people like me who simply don't watch a lot of TV.

I feel conflicted about saying that I don't watch a lot of TV (or didn't watch a lot of TV, as I later explain). Whenever someone makes a point about "oh, I don't watch TV," I automatically (and most of the time, correctly) assume that this person is a complete douchebag. Because you never say that kind of thing without trying to imply, "yeah, I don't watch TV because I spend all my free time reading Tolstoy and being all cultured and shit...so, are you gonna make out with me or what?"

It's a little different for me, because when I say I don't watch a lot of TV, I use the term "TV" to mean "non-sports programming." I'll sit and watch six straight hours of college football like it's nothing, but I barely could get past thirty minutes of prime time sitcoms. And moreover, for the last three years, I was in law school, which imbues you with the guilt of always having something you could do, and probably should do. You could really be finished with all of your reading, and yet, you still could benefit from studying or outlining or polishing up your resume (later, this would change to "blogging").

This is no longer the case right now, and three nights out of the week, I have an hour cordoned off for my "stories." "House," "24" and "Grey's Anatomy" are certainly different in approach, but they're all tied together by one characteristic: they all require Herculean suspension of disbelief.

For "24," it's pretty obvious why. Combine your skepticism surrounding the continuing triumphs of James Bond and McGyver, and you've got what it takes to pick up what Jack Bauer's throwin' down.

Two on the waist, two on the ankle, two to just spank you

And I'm not the first guy to mention this, but Wayne Palmer is threatening to knock Warren Harding out of the ranks of "worst president ever" in spite of being a fictional character. Let the punishment fit the crime. Some people have argued that "24" is hawkish because it legitimizes the use of torture and almost always portrays foreigners as being the terrorists. But I think it has a Republican agenda for more subtle reasons; Palmer is singlehandedly setting back the cause of electing a black president by about a century. Barak Obama could run against Mark Foley in 2008, and all we'd be thinking about is that speech Palmer gave when rejecting Tom's proposal.

Palmer is the pres, but I voted for Shirley Chisholm

"House" is different in that the formula the show follows has become so strict, that it's almost like watching science fiction instead of a medical drama. I'm not sure how quickly word spreads around that part of the country, but I imagine some newspaper or magazine would've got the scoop on the amazing shit this guy does. I'm waiting for the episode when one of his patients says, "look, I'm completely prepared for all the unnecessary surgery I'll be getting while you eventually find the real problem. Can you just make sure I'm doped up real good in the meantime?"

Don't blow my high when I'm sippin' on purple rain

But when it comes down to it, no show requires a greater suspension of disbelief than "Grey's Anatomy." And with that, I've officially made it OK for women to read my blog again. But really, no show infuriates me in the unique way "Grey's" does. I enjoy watching it, but I really wish I could channel the energy I spend trying to constantly suspend my disbelief into something that could help humanity, like making Cisco more readily available. In the debate as to whether "House" or "Grey's" has more credibility, I side with "House" every time. It has nothing to do with either show's scientific accuracy or inordinately attractive medical staffs. It comes down to this: based on these two shows, Seattle is the worst city to live in America. Comparatively, "The Wire" looks like it was made by the Baltimore Board of Tourism.

How can that be? I've never been to Seattle, but it seems like the kind of place everyone wants to move to. It's actually third in line, but it's more sensible than the usual alternative desirables, those being Portland (Seattle's got more job opportunities) and Vancouver (do you really have the balls to move to Canada)? And yet, New Jersey looks infinitely more attractive than the Emerald City based on their medical dramas. Yeah, Princeton's got worse scenery and it's usually cold, but at least the medical atrocities are the individual type. Meanwhile, if we're to take "Grey's" on its word, it's got more mass casualty events than Beirut, up to and including train wrecks, utterly absurd bomb scares and now, ferry boat disasters. Not to mention the dozens of metaphors that are completely brutalized by the show on a weekly basis.

Worse yet, you'd better hope you don't have a coed team working on you. Because at some point, they'll leave you open on the table because the chick realizes that she's working with the only male in the hospital she hasn't given head to yet; so she better get on that. It's even worse if you're black. Once again, if I'm to take "Grey's" on its word, either black people (particularly couples) are exponentially more likely to suffer major injuries, or Seattle's population is 75% African-American. And we all know the latter ain't true.

And that's before you get to the staff itself. As one of my Seattle connects put it, you can easily tell "Grey's Anatomy" is fiction because the only two corporations that employ more than four black people at a time are the Supersonics and the Seahawks. Besides that, they're wholly unrealistic, particularly in a physical sense. If you are employed by Seattle Grace, there's a good chance ya ass is either gon' get shot, stabbed or knuckled down, one of the three, so don't gamble wit' your life, duke.

Definitely got the gat on me

Add to that list, "nearly drowned." Or "having the ability to lift concrete pylons." And yet, they pop right back up for more as if nothing happened. In the end, despite Shonda Rhimes' attempt to portray a medical staff as diverse and emotionally open as possible, these aren't surgeons: these are Nazi ubermensch.

UPDATE

More news from the Seattle correspondent of Sexy Results!:

But commuters like my father ride that thing everyday, and to my knowledge the worst injury that ever occurred on the ferry was a sprained ankle. It in fact it did crash at one point into a marina on Bainbridge (I think the captain was drunk) and has collided with another ferry in the fog, but again no real medical emergencies emerged from that.

Because of all of this, I was already amused when I saw Merideth fall off the pier. When I saw that "dramatic" "to be continued moment", I wanted to hurl because that pier is only 8-15 feet off the water (depending on the tide). Therefore, the worst injury she should get from the fall were some wet panties.

Also, good thing I waited on writing that Virginia basketball post, what with us getting the business from Seth Greenbergsteinwitzberg.

cleanin' out my closet

2007-02-09T20:50:00.000-05:00

Couldn't pull one drag off RZA's blunt

The announcement of the first openly gay NBA player this past week was disappointing on several levels. For one thing, I think a lot of us were secretly hoping it was Kenny Anderson or Patrick Ewing or something. Secondly, it made me a little sad inside thinking how difficult it must be for John Amaechi to find someone special; if you saw a profile on match.com or whatever saying "6'10" GBM, loves basketball and The Klaxons," you'd automatically assume they're lying. Third, you stole Kanye from Dame (sorry, there can't be a discussion about homosexuality without a Cam'ron quote). Fourth, I haven't heard any opinions on this yet from the NBA's answer to dead prez, Jermaine O'Neal and Etan Thomas. Oh sure, when David Stern fucks with the dress code, it's a race thing and you're totally against the war, but just how liberal are you guys when it comes down to brass tacks?

Lastly, and I think a lot of media outlets are picking up on this, in terms of courage, John Amaechi is slightly below Private Joker and slightly above the protagonist of "In The Air Tonight." This really doesn't strike a blow for gay rights so much as it ensures that John Amaechi will be far more famous and profitable than he ever was or had any right to be. All those book deals, TV appearances, etc.- those weren't really poppin' off when he was merely a more British Greg Ostertag.

Of course, the real boon in all of this is getting to hear other NBA players react, proof positive that you should never ask a pro baller opinions about anything remotely important. This article should permanently end any possibility of Charles Barkley becoming a politician. At the very least, it unquestionably posits the Sixers as having the most homophobic front court in the NBA. All that was missing was Sam Dalembert calling him "batty boy."

I seriously doubt we'll see an openly gay active player any time soon, and that's a shame, because NBA players should really see the big picture here. I'm not really talking about embracing different lifestyles because it's the right thing to do. But think about it; most of the players' concerns (other than getting ass-raped in the shower) revolve around whether a homosexual would be "manly" or physical enough to be a good teammate. Look, you could probably guess this from watching a gay episode of "Next," but homosexual men have far more exacting standards when it comes to physical appearance than straight women do. I've never been to Muscle Beach, but I can't imagine it doing more damage to my self-image than going to the West Hollywood L.A. Fitness already has. Let's be real: Stanley Roberts would be the loneliest gay man alive.

If I were a GM, not only would I completely accept a gay guy on my roster, I would actively try to find one. If John Amaechi came out while he was still an active player, hopefully he would choose to do once someone other than Larry Miller was signing his paychecks. And if he did, I guarantee you he'd be an All Star, and probably a Hall of Famer. Think for a second- the guy plays center. His opponent posts up in the paint, and all of a sudden, he's trying to box out by putting his butt into a homosexual's crotch. If that above article is any indication, that guy will go as far away from the basket as possible to avoid this. If openly gay, John Amaechi would neutralize any post presence. Even on the offensive end, it works. We saw what happened when Magic came back to play in the All-Star Game after he admitted having HIV. No one would go within six feet of him. Most NBA players probably assume all gay guys have the high-five anyways, so what would stop Amaechi from scoring at least 30 a game? Bill Simmons was totally wrong again; an openly gay John Amaechi could totally be the next Bill Russell.

But even off the court, having Amaechi around would've worked. Look, I'm not saying that NBA players have trouble pulling tail. But John Amaechi's gay and he's British. By my calculations, that would probably put him in contact with the kind of chicks that probably aren't hanging outside the locker room, ready to blow Peja Stojakovic right when he walks off the court after playing 42 minutes if it lets her get closer to Chris Paul. Maybe it's me, but I assume that most NBA players will eventually get tired of passing around the last three years of XXL's Eye Candies of the Month. I mean, would you hit it if there was a chance Michael Finley got to it first?

tell the freaks to find a man of they own

2007-02-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

After witnessing the latest batch of reviews for the new Bloc Party and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah albums, I've come to the realization that I really miss the old internets. Don't get me wrong; I think both of these albums are really great, but it brings me back to something I read back in August. I was in between two job interviews in Beverly Hills, and even though I was rocking a suit at the time, I felt more comfortable wasting an hour reading a magazine than I was at the Bentley dealership (what advantages does this motorcar have over a train? Which I could also afford). For whatever reason, I picked up Wired, which was running a Pitchfork profile. I recall them saying that after they gave Travis Morrison a 0.0 and subsequently ruined his career (despite his sterling track record in Dismemberment Plan, a lot of college radio stations wouldn't touch his album), they realized that they've gotten too big to really pull something like that anymore.

And as is the usual case, many sites are following suit and completely wussing out when it comes to taking out indie sacred cows. Let me repeat: "A Weekend In The City" and "Some Loud Thunder" are great, but they're just begging for the kind of withering, unnecessary and ultimately entertaining backlash we used to get back in the day. The going theory is that the blog community is populated by sweatpants-wearing haters who praise bands like Arcade Fire for their resonance and then pan them once they resonate with too many other people. If anything, we're becoming too nice.

I recently had an album review pitch turned down by my Stylus editors. If you've spent any time on the internet, you've probably seen an ad for this group called Young Love. My interest was piqued, seeing as how he looks like he belongs in Teen People and yet, he's popped up on Stereogum and Losanjealous. I gave the album a listen. Observe my first two paragraphs from the aborted review;

I don't feel particularly guilty about beginning a discussion about Young Love by mentioning its ad campaign. Let's be real: if you read Stylus, you probably frequent a battery of other music sites that have been absolutely plastered by Young Love promo. This is a mission with laser-guided precision; go to the Island website, and you'll find an obviously popular indie-leaning girl who could be anywhere from 16 to 25. She's in varying degrees of undress, getting prepared for tonight's festivities. In 2003, she would've ended up slumped on her bed, doing her damnedest to imitate Natalie Portman. In 2007, she won't be doin' the standin' still; she's ready to go out to the discotheque (does America even have these?) and dance, man.

Young Love wants desperately to be her new favorite band. The most prominent blurb about the Dan Keyes vehicle is how they find a middle ground between Bloc Party and Justin Timberlake, which is not as audacious as it wants to sound. For one thing, many people (Stylus writers in particular) hold them in almost equal regard, and if I'm not mistaken, these are nearly the exact coordinates that get you to Panic! At The Disco. Of course, there are also stubborn assholes like me who, all four-on-the-floor disco beats aside, realize that alienation is Kele Okereke's most pervasive lyrical theme and think most of FutureSexxx sounds like it comes from the perspective of a date rapist. So if these are truly the elements of Too Young To Fight It, that makes sense, since this is an album that's supposed to get the party crackin' in spite of the fact that it's the kind of music that has no relationship with a dancefloor whatsoever. As a matter of fact, it'd make great intro music for boxers, as Young Love inexplicably does what M.O.P. never could: inspire me to fucking coldcock a total stranger.

It was ultimately rejected for being too much of a hatchet job, and that most reviews of it would probably pan it anyways, so it wasn't worth the space. Man, do you think that would happen in 2002? I'm getting too old.

Here's one of the points I made in the last paragraph"

Then again, from this review, you might just assume that Young Love will be someone else's problem, but there's a reason he's on Stereogum and not Teen People; the Great Crapshoot of 2006 proved that everything's fair game with the indie kids these days, but it hasn't been liberating so much as the full-blown realization of Talib Kweli's sentiment on "Hater Players".

Which quote am I talking about? Reverse psychology got em scared to say when shit is whack/out of fear of being called a hater, imagine that!

C'mon, people. Even the 19-year old self-described "emo girls" who intern at my office think they're shit. It's one thing if Rob Sheffield rides for their cause, seeing as how he's the father of the "if you can't beat 'em, join' em" thread of music writing that found Limp Bizkit and Korn being critical darlings in 1998 (this happened. I remember it). But unless you are a teenage girl, please stop making excuses for this band's popularity and start telling me why they're actually good. Are the lyrics good? No, they're the most irritating in all of rock music. Is the production good? No, it sounds like a Bon Jovi record. You get the idea. Your teenage years were good. Stop guessing at what today's kids are supposed to like. "Siamese Dream" is still a fucking awesome record. Go listen to that instead.

In other news, the first real job I ever had was working as a cashier at Dollar Express. I say first "real job," because I had two previous side hustles. The first was babysitting my cousins, which was how I got that Genesis money up back in the day. They had Super Nintendo and the Playboy Channel. As a 12-year old, that's pretty much all the perks you need. Before that, I worked at the country club across the street, picking up the golf balls from the driving range. I got to drive the cart around and I had access to all the pretzels and soda I wanted. As an 11-year old, that's pretty much all the perks you need.

But anyway, fast forward to your boy at the Dollar Express. Didn't end up lasting too long; I got fired because I rung up a transaction incorrectly and forgot to circle it on the receipt. Who knew that a store that charges the same price for everything were such sticklers about finances? Anyways, the joke was on them, since the guy who gave me the axe was a cokehead who was embezzling money from the company.

During my brief stint there, the best way to pass the time was to listen to the quiet storm shit on the PA and try to pick out if it's been sampled in any rap track. Being that it was during the heyday of Bad Boy, the chances were often pretty good that it was.

This is something I still enjoy to this very day; why, just the other day, I was in Rite Aid and, while holding a box of Q-Tips, I was all of a sudden paralyzed. As in, "oh shit...I've been looking for that shit they sampled all this time!" To answer your question, the track is "So Free"...on Diplomatic Immunity 2. No, I'm not embarassed by this. I go into the liquor store to get some wine, and I hear "Ain't No Woman Like The One I've Got" (stay in school if you can't get the reference). And I just stand there and let it run.

Of course, post-DipSet, the doors have been blown open and now we've got Billy Joel and Phil Collins as likely to get sampled as Patti LaBelle. This had me thinking: everyone's already made jokes about how there should be a DVD that collects all the reactions of NBA players to the Slam Dunk Contest. Well, what if you got a show where you got Cam'ron, Ghostface (because that's the only NYC rapper Killa hasn't clashed with), Jim Jones or whatever and put them in a room with an XBox 360 and whatever liquor they wanted. The premise of the program is this: you randomly spin selections of '80s R&B, hair metal and blue-eyed soul and just watch them react to it. Would this not be entertaining? Sure, by episode five, you'd hear nothing but, "oh shit, that had me open back in the day!" Still, those four episodes we could get out of this would be the most priceless television in history. We can make this happen.

a kilo is a thousand grams

2007-02-03T16:38:00.000-05:00

Oh yo, Troy- I can't feel my face

Kudos to ESPN for using the most appropriate headline possible in order to announce Michael Irvin's induction into the Football Hall of Fame: "Cowboy Yea." The only way that could've been better is if Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson also got in today.

As far as the Super Bowl goes, we all know the main storylines: Peyton Manning, '85 Bears, two black coaches in the Super Bowl and two in the unemployment line (it probably should be three, but Romeo Crennel is presiding over the "classiest" four win seasons this side of Sylvester Croom), Bill Belicheck clearly establishing himself as a complete asshole (yo, Ted Johnson- next round's on me), etc. Those are all heartwarming, right? Well, ESPN's like, fuck that noise! If you want uplift of the human spirit, I suggest you go here and read of the gripping tale of a child born into ridiculous wealth, never working a real job in his life, ending up in rehab and fulfilling his spiritual needs by getting in his private jet and dropping millions on pop culture paraphernalia. Seriously: Jimmy Irsay's like some sort of weird combination of Bill Walton, George W. Bush and The Game, if The Game constantly name-dropped poets instead of members of N.W.A.

Wouldn't get far

meanwhile, he flashin' his face like denzel

2007-02-02T00:39:00.000-05:00

Yeah, even in the JPJ, Duke gets all the fuckin' calls. S-Dot's gotta eat, though. And I'm hoping enough NBA squads watched game tape of this, because if any team picks McRoberts (or Hansborough) in the Lottery, I need to know what GM has access to the best drugs. Something tells me that Chris Mullin's #1 with a bullet.

i'm tryin' to kick the shit you need to learn, tho'

2007-01-28T13:42:00.000-05:00

Brolic

For reasons I'll explain in the post to follow, I've waited until February to make a list of "most slept-on albums of 2006" (if I'm still writing in 2008, Apostle Of Hustle will definitely make next year's list. Just a feeling). But in reminiscence on things that have gotten overlooked, I think "Dr. Katz" might as well come with its own Craftmatic. It sort of has a similar level of fame that, say, "The Critic" has, but unlike the latter, "Dr. Katz" hasn't been overplayed in syndication to the point where buying the DVD would be redundant. If you live near a Best Buy, you can get Season One for a very reasonable $14.99, and remind yourself that Ray Romano and Dom Irerra can actually be pretty funny sometimes. Honest injun!

I shouldn't have to go over the premise again, but you have to admit: it's rather genius. For the most part, what is stand-up comedy other than the airing of one's neuroses? What I can't quite get a grasp on is the concept of Squigglevision; something this weird usually gets a justification along the lines of, "it's intended for people who are very, very stoned." But then I remember that this aired on Comedy Central, and not Adult Swim and its humor is about as dry as Southern Cracker (still possibly tied for sixth with Table Time and Allied Biscuit).

My question to the reader: what happens first?

a) An Atlanta rapper names himself "Lil' Young."
b) MF Doom samples that tasteful jazz ish that constitutes "Dr. Katz" theme music

pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hoed us

2007-01-21T12:01:00.000-05:00

We can talk, but money talks...so talk mo' bucks

10-4, good buddy- Paper Chase got his money up. It's a good thing too, because even though the Fightin's once again came ohsoclose to the promised land of the playoffs, you couldn't help but check out Utley and Scrapple Dun Dun's ESPN player cards without getting nervous. We've been searching for proper nicknames for a long time, and we might as well just call these two the Cold Crush Brothers, considering how they've been rockin' crowds for chump change. The NL's MVP and premiere second baseman combined for 90 home runs, 251 RBI, 385 hits and 235 runs...and made a grand total of $885,000 last year, or about as much as Danny Tartabull got for every at bat he made in a Phillies uniform.

Still, Ruben Amaro, Jr. had to talk a gang of bullshit about why they decided to lock dude up for the next seven years:

"He's a hard-nosed, full-throttle player who exemplifies the spirit of Philadelphia. He is tailor-made for this city and we couldn't be happier to lock him up for years to come."

Ignoring the fact that he grew up in Pasadena, this is exactly the kind of stuff that makes what I said in the last post true as hell. Stop perpetuating the myth that Philly would rather have their guys be scrappers than people who score a lot of sports points; we loved the 1993 Phillies because they got to the World Series. Nowadays, most guys in the city know Lenny Dykstra as a juiced-up gambling addict, Curt Schilling as a sanctimonious Fox News shill and John Kruk as being someone who's trying so hard to be baseball's John Madden but is really baseball's Tony Siragusa. And then there's Darren Daulton, who's spent the last decade doing a better job of being Kool Keith than Kool Keith himself.

Now my helmet's on, you can't tell me I'm not in space

These guys almost certainly cheated back in the day and almost certainly didn't care about putting in extra hours for practice and conditioning, and no one gave a shit- Philly fans just want to see their teams win! Can anyone say for certain that Chase Utley is really putting in twice the work that Steve Jeltz or Juan Samuel did? What was Utley's "effort metric" in 2005 (David Epstein's was an astounding 18.5 grizzlebees)? Maybe that "we can dream that the '80s never happened" tagline is better applied to Jeltz; back in 1988, you could hit .187 in 148 games and still be the starting shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies the very next season.

What we can say for certain is that if The Jet managed to put up a 35-game hit streak, people in the Illadelph wouldn't give a shit if he spent more time with his Soul Glo than at the batting cages. Of course, that cheese-eatin' surrender monkey did spend more time with his Soul Glo than at the batting cages, so that's probably the reason he hit .218 in his career.

Rumor has it it's an S-curl accident

disappear here

2007-01-20T11:27:00.000-05:00

We can dream that the '80s never happened

Taking a trip round my sorely neglected blog circuit, one thing seems to strike me: 2007 is finding people being pretty fucking optimistic. And I have to jump on that bandwagon. Maybe it's the fact that Pitchfork's #1 albums of the '70s, '80s and '90s all came out in the "-7" years, but something about 2007 seems like some good shit's gonna pop off. In the span of two weeks, I've gotten promoted in two different jobs (if you want to qualify my AOL gig as a "job"), almost sealed the deal into moving into my own place in El Segundo and saw My Morning Jacket in Downtown Disney (I had to be sober in order to make the drive back, but it almost feels negligent to be in Downtown Disney and not be balls-out tripping). And, for reasons I'll explain in subsequent posts, I already feel like I've heard more great albums in 2007 than in 2006, and it was just fuckin' MLK day.

Of course, the flipside of all this is that people are pretty jazzed about 2007 because 2006 pretty much sucked on all fronts. Okay, let's be clear: a year can't itself suck. Not one where I pass the Bar and move to a new (relatively) exotic part of the country and discover that Tab is still sold there. But the reason I moved from LiveJournal to Blogger was that people should be more concerned with what happens in the world of music and sports than my actual life. Because most guys who blog about their life do so thinking they're the new Tucker Max when they're just a bunch of swag jackers who think any night they down more than two Coronas was "the craziest shit ever." I can't blame 'em; Max has weed carrier-types seriously cakin' off their book deals.

But considering that Sexy Results! is, for the most part, a music and sports site, there's no question that if 2006 wasn't worse than 2001, it's the closest one. My God, did you see a year-end Top 20 list where you liked half the shit on it? I don't even write for a site that accomplished that! Although to our credit, Stylus had a better list going than just about anyone else, even if by showing our true colors, i.e., gay/technophile/Brit, sometimes all three, led to Pet Shop Boys being at #19 even though I had no idea it was a new album.

On top of that, sports peaked within the year's first couple of days. Vince Young was the kind of guy you could pull for even if you didn't give a shit about college football. Not only did he almost singlehandedly vanquish a monolith of Sportstainment!, but in contrast to USC's pretty boy knobshining, we had a straight H-town repper who managed to infiltrate one of the most tradition-heavy programs in the nation. Imagine an Alabama quarterback who went into interviews talking about how he got his O-line hyped up by listening to David Banner or Dirty or whatever.

But after that, we were subject to the least interesting bunch of championship teams I can think of in recent years. It wasn't even uninteresting in the Yanks/Bulls mode...at least you could actively hate them. The Steelers and Seahawks both scored about 5 on the pH scale, and some people even resorted to backlashing against Jerome Bettis because they couldn't think of any other reason to care. The Mavericks, Suns and Clippers heralded a bolder, brighter future in the NBA replete with daredevil athletic moves and colorful role players. And then the Mavs suffered a complete (and possibly referee-induced) collapse that resulted in one of the most loathesome champions in years. Look, I love Shaq. Everyone likes to talk about the Redman episode of "MTV Cribs," but Shaq deserves a lifetime achievement award from that show. I can't knock that. But D-Wade is by far the least compelling of 2003's godbodies, and Alonzo Mourning is a fucking asshole who demanded to be bought out from a playoff team and predated Shawne Merriman's pointless arm flexing. I don't think Gary Payton could find fun in a Chuck E Cheese.

So when I think if I'm mad the Eagles lost, I can't say for sure. Many have said the Eagles were basically playing with house money, which is a strong candidate for "Least True Thing of 2007." Yes, rallying to the NFC East crown was unexpected, but there weren't too many Philly faithful who looked at Seattle and Chicago and didn't think, "I don't care if any of the remaining AFC teams would run us off the field. But we can definitely get on that field." Not to mention that if a Philadelphia team was going to bring home a championship, now would be a good fucking time. It's gotten to some "40 Year Old Virgin" shit.

The Sixers fooled themselves into thinking that they could be competitive and ended up like an expansion team two months later. And yes, Andre Miller strikes me as being someone who'd be the best player on an expansion team. Meanwhile, the Flyers figured that a good way to bring fans back into the fold after the strike was to keep evoking memories of what brought them there in the first place: NHL '95. Of course, ten years later, guys like Derian Hatcher are the biggest liaibilities possible and they became the worst team in hockey so quick, it made my fucking head spin. I mean, I always thought that hockey's regular season was like classes in college; failure wasn't the result of shit luck so much as the active pursuit of failure. You have to try to be that bad. Worse yet, Flyers tickets are readily available for the first time since pre-Lindros, and I'm on the other side of the country.

And then there's the Phillies who spent the offseason deciding that upgrading from David Bell to Wes Helms and Mike Lieberthal to Rod Barajas was the best way to keep pace in an increasingly competitive NL East. Scrapple Dun Dun had to go sign with CAA. No one even knows if Temple basketball is good anymore, and I'm not sure anyone even cares. So that "house money" theory was bullshit; Philly fans are looking at teams that might not be competitive for five years.

But it was certainly a different feeling going to war with Jeff Garcia instead of McNasty, but this is essentially the same guys we've been dealing with since 2001, i.e., Reid, Westbrook, Funyan, Trotter, Dawkins, Akers, snouts and entrails at wideout, some mediocre defensive tackle we draft in the first round, and so forth. Rooting for the Eagles for the latter part of 2006 wasn't like learning to love again after your heart's been broken. It was like having sex with your girlfriend after she got a radically different haircut.

And I can't see Garcia leaving, even if McNabb's job is secure. Jeff picked a bad year to be a valuable backup, as the teams most likely to pull the trigger on a QB are...the Lions and the Browns. As they say, fool me once...

There are two reasons I haven't taken the loss so hard. For one thing, it seemed to be exact karmic realignment for the Packers game of 2003. Allow me to refresh your memory on what had to take place in order for the Eagles to win that game;

1. The Eagles had to stop Ahman Green on a 4th and inches in their own territory the only way possible: by praying to God that Mike Sherman would call a timeout and punt instead. Now, the defensive coordinator ended up getting blamed for this loss, but this set the wheels irreparably in motion. It was a phenomenally dumb call; Green was running through the depleted Eagles' D with a machete (Deuce was similarly unstoppable).

2. Against the Packers, The Eagles had to convert a 4th and 26, and to do so, Freddie Mitchell had to make the catch. Due to the game's relative lack of importance, I don't think this is talked about as being one of the most unbelievable occurrences in modern sports history. I know this was only three years removed from Kurt Warner's entire 2000 season, but still...name five things that have happened since then that were more shocking than the creation of "First Down Freddie"/"The People's Champ" (yes, I miss the guy).

3. If you've seen a lamer duck thrown in playoff football than the one Brett Favre put up in OT, you're probably watching highlights of Super Bowl VII.

Fast-forward to this year when six games of evidence pointed to that actually running the ball more than twenty times a game might've been a good idea for the Eagles, a team not really known for 4th-quarter competence. Yet on a 3rd and 1 within the red zone, Reid decides to get cute and throw a screen pass against a reeling Saints D in a game that was clearly not going to be won with field goals. Andy, you've watched too much Mark Simoneau and Hollis Thomas to not feel perfectly secure about your team's ability to pick up a 3rd and 1 on the ground.

Meanwhile, minutes later, Andy Reid decides to punt on 4th and 15 even though the Eagles have more plays over 20 yards than any team in the NFL, two time outs and no idea how to stop the inevitable Deuce McAllister runs.

I realize that it sucks, but it might be for the greater good. You shouldn't root for the Saints simply because you, unlike our boy in the booth, care about black people. You should root for the Saints if you give a shit about the NFL being watchable.

As I've said before, the NFL is pretty much a giant sorority; there's some marginal differences, but at the core, they're all the same thing. I'm amazed that Madden is more popular than NCAA 2007 for that reason. When you're deep into dynasty mode, you can always switch to Rice or Air Force in attempt to win a bunch of games in a different way than you've done it before. Meanwhile, it doesn't matter whether you've got Antonio Gates or Ronald Royal as your tight end in Madden...he'll end up with over 100 catches by the end of the season.

But the Saints can help change this, and you should be rooting for them. Okay, let's not forget that the other three guys aren't exactly the most enticing. I'd hate to think that Bill Simmons will be walking around my city with a 24-hour erection in the event the Patriots win, and even though I'm not the biggest Peyton Manning fan, I'd rather see his agony be fully transferred to Eli for the rest of his career. And I've got no real beef with the Bears, but I can't fully support them as a Super Bowl champion when they strike me as a team that's perfectly capable of losing 37-3 any given week. There's not too many playoff teams I ever really felt that way about.

And I'm not sure the Saints can really come through, because they're pretty much a less criminal minded version of the Bengals. Like, every time the Saints didn't score against the Eagles, I felt relieved, but I still feel the sting of defeat because the Eagles probably should've scored just as often.

Here's the problem with the NFL; coaches are on a shorter leash than they are in college. The only goal for a team in the NFL is to win a Super Bowl, and every team has a decent chance to do it every single year. If Al Groh managed to even lose the Fiesta Bowl, he'd probably have a statue put up on campus. Meanwhile, NFL coaches can achieve quicker success, but they can get fired a lot quicker, because firing a coach is an easy way for owners to prove that they actually give a shit about their fanbase's input.

And as the Jets and so forth have proven, the quickest way for an NFL team to get good in a hurry is to use defense, an ugly-time consuming running game and an easy schedule to get into the playoffs. And it wouldn't hurt to hire the least charismatic coach possible. Everyone will of course rag on the Texans for picking Mario Williams with the first pick, and while it wasn't the right choice, as I've said before, it wasn't really wrong either. Of course, it's harder to say that in retrospect seeing as how they need a RB (drafting Adrian Peterson would do some serious damage control in terms of position and local flavor, but I don't know if Gary Kubiak, a Broncos disciple is into that) and a new QB.

Meanwhile, the Saints are on some money shit, successful out the blue. They basically got a bunch of new toys during the offseason that were all on the offensive side of the ball and became the most fun team to watch in the NFL. It doesn't matter that Reggie Bush is averaging about nine feet per carry; do you not get a little excited every time they give him the ball? Brian Dawkins said that it's actually a little easier to defend the Saints when Bush is in because they shrink their playbook in order to get him outside. But then you realize the Eagles have to shift their entire defensive mentality just for one guy.

Well, of course, there is the matter of the whole Katrina thing as well. Seems like New Orleans could probably use a Super Bowl more than the Eagles. I've said before how I can't really fathom being a hometown fanatic when so few pro sports teams embody anything about their city. I might have absolutely nothing in common with Jameel Sewell, but there's at least the common thread of us voluntarily picking the same institution. Yes, you can say Drew Brees picked New Orleans, but if Miami didn't feel like cratering their QB situation for the next five years, I don't think Brees would've cozied up to the Big Easy so easily.

But the Saints are pretty much inextricable from their home city, and it's not just because when Fox cameras panned to Joe Horn in street clothes, I thought for a split second it was Juvenile. It really comes down to hope of rebuilding and finding a new way to do it. I'm probably talking out of my ass here, but the old school method of disaster relief is relying on the governmental help...in other words, the same people who fucked you in the first place. One thing I've learned from law school is that if you knew the kind of people who planned on working in politics, you'd learn to never trust the government to do anything competently. When was the last time you dealt with anything governmental (be it the DMV or post office or whatever) and ended up satisfied with your experience?

Meanwhile, the Saints have rebuilt themselves seemingly from scratch (really, I wondered whether Goodall was going to have to allow N.O. extra draft picks because no free agent would want to go there), and they've done so in the most exciting way since the Greatest Show On Turf. Bill Simmons comes off like a whiny bitch in his latest defense of the Patriots, but he accidentally reaches the right point: we're bored of corporations winning the Super Bowl. Yeah, the Patriots are scandal free since Zeke Mowatt (BALLIN'!), but they pretty much are the embodiment of rooting for clothing. You can root for the players on the Saints; McAllister for being at the center of the tragedy, Colston for proving that drafting WR's is a bigger crapshoot than QB's, Brees for turning a free-agent deal with the Saints into something reasonable, and, I never thought I'd say this, Reggie Bush for embodying the NFL we wish we had. Yes, I'll watch anything that's playoff, and the NFL is by far the most popular sport we have, but I just worry that it'll eventually turn into the NHL, getting surpassed by the video game version of itself.

Of course, this whole post ensures that Rex Grossman becomes the new Neil O'Donnell in Super Bowl XLI. T'anks for nothin'.

and i front like my doo-doo don't stink

2007-01-08T00:48:00.000-05:00

Instinct like Cuba Gooding, jumpin' out the latest toy (no Kordell Stewart)

Um...but if you do a Google Image search for Jeff Garcia, you're likely to find something where "silk shirt and my chest show, what a flirt" is more appropriate.

You know, I got all kinds of respect for Tiki, but let's be real: he was rockin' a "Portland Trail Blazer in February" face that entire game. As in, "I could clearly not give a fuck whether or not I win today." And I don't know what it is, but why does Dr. Hahn from Grey's Anatomy look like Tom Coughlin rocking a wig? Yes, that's a Sexy Results! exclusive right there.

Find the reason Peter King shouldn't make any more references to Megadeth.

From one ethering to another, it's like an AIDS test...what's the result? Not positive. Now that your year-end lists are turned in, let's begin the national healing process of actually liking stuff you actually like.

So yeah, even though I stand by my opinion that "The Takeover" was a far better and more effective track than "Ether," the latter's kinda more fun to quote, mostly because it's a lot more scattershot, leaving plenty of choice nuggets that are nice to pull out of context. Your man stabbed Un and made you take the blame.

Also, there have been a lot of reviews bandied about for Nas' "Hip Hop Is Dead," but until mine, none of them have been right. It didn't really shine through in my first paragraph, but Nas might well be hip-hop's Madonna; not so much in the chameleonic sense, but more because no one gets better reviews when their album manages to not suck as bad as its predecessor.

It's no surprise that Nas continues to rap over second-banana beats, but my bigger issue is that my favorite Nas personae fail to show up at all. Those being irrational shit-talker (the guy who absolutely aired out Noreaga and Cam'ron in 2002) and irrational rich guy. Particularly the second part. Weiss will argue this point to no end, but who didn't enjoy his guest verse on "It's Mine"? Or "Let My N***as Live"? How long would it take you to come up with a boast as fly as "the only n***a Sade dated"?

sexy results! most disappointing albums of 2006

2006-12-28T03:42:00.000-05:00

Yeah, maybe I could give you the best of 2006, but you can already find it over at Stylus. I'll say this, though: I was posted up at the McDonald's in LAX and I overheard from afar a synthy, sorta-Euro, vaguely reggae sounding song that I knew I was familiar with. I thought to myself, "hey...this sort of sounds like 'Marble House'...are they really playing The Knife here?" Turns out it was "All That She Wants." So make whatever you want out of that, aware that it still clocked in at #19 on my list and Stylus finally put up a #1 that didn't immediately embarrass us. And hey, two brown people at in a row at the top spot without having to resort to TV On The Radio!

But Sexy Results! has never been about, you know, being all praiseworthy and whatnot. Disappointment? Right in my wheelhouse, baby. So, in a year that certainly saw no shortage of albums that made me wonder whether I liked music in the first place, I present to you the ones that stood out the most...

The Futureheads- "News And Tributes"

I've been listening to the new Bloc Party album a great deal, even though it's a rather shitty rip that makes it sound like they recorded it aboard a moving train. For what it's worth, it's very good. Very, very good, even if Kele's becoming a pretty mushy lyricist. But more importantly, it's distinctly different from "Silent Alarm." Let's face it: they probably couldn't have made an album that sounds like "Silent Alarm" that's better than "Silent Alarm." As a matter of fact, the only way to improve "Silent Alarm" is to take the last three songs off of it. Not because they're bad, but they don't really fit, "So Here We Are" sounds like the kind of song that deserves to close out an album, and "Silent Alarm" sounds like the kind of album that's stronger at 11 tracks than 14.

But anyways, the fact that "A Weekend In The City" doesn't follow directly in its predecessor's footsteps (irony: they have to drop off the Panic! At The Disco tour because the drummer got a punctured lung, and yet 85% of "A Weekend In The City sounds like it was made with a drum machine) is important regardless of whether it's met with backlash. Because there was every indication from prior "angular"/Brit-or-Brit-sounding bands that you have to follow up your debut with a paler imitation of it. "Room On Fire," "You Could Have It So Much Better," "Antics," and now, "News & Tributes." And the reason I'm happy with Bloc Party going the route they did was because this bowl of flavorless root marm is what happened when The Futureheads were faced with an almost exactly similar situation.

The Larry Levan Story- Journey Into Paradise

I'm not big on compilations, but when there's something that can sum up a genre I'm completely unfamiliar with and it's getting outstanding reviews, I'll give it a shot. Well, after listening to this joint, I'll say this: not since my first prostate exam have I been more certain that I'm not gay.

Ryan Adams/Conor Oberst

Honorable mentions. How did neither of these guys end up making an album in 2006? Running trains on Winona is not a good excuse (seriously, has she gotten around to fucking the dudes in Roman Candle yet?). Oh, "Noise Floor"...if you have the patience to get past the first three tracks, you were a hostage in a previous life.

Kelis- "Kelis Is Here"

I usually have no use for R&B albums, but Kelis has always tried to give off the impression that she's different than most people in her genre. The most egregious way she goes about doing this is making it abundantly clear that her rapper boyfriend actually fucks her. Well, do you wanna know why this shit completely disappeared after "Bossy"? Because it's mostly filled with anonymous ballad bullshit and almost no sass. So, can we flip the script and say Nas emasculated her too?

Killer Mike- "I Pledge Allegiance To The Grind"

Stop me if you heard this one before: Dixie also-ran releases album that's fairly popular regionally, but mostly ignored by critics and mainstream. Releases angry mixtape that talks about nothing but coke and industry rule #4,080 with assorted beef raps and the occasional flicker of political insight. Mixtape viewed as underground masterpiece. Just make sure you give Pitchfork invites to your listening party, and you're guaranteed an 8.5. Killer Mike's ceiling was the Dungeon Family's Beanie Sigel, but now he sounds like a less versatile 40 Cal. This could easily be a parody of blogger rap if it wasn't so damn sincurrrr.

Grizzly Bear- "Yellow House"

Umrph...huh...wha? Oh, sorry...I was in the middle of my twelfth spin, trying to figure out if this is actually good or not. Must've been resting my eyelids. In all seriousness, this band really impressed the shit out of me live, but next time you make a record, give the drummer some.

Scott Walker- "The Drift"

The male answer to "Ys," except actually worse. There's a 99% chance you'll never meet a person in real life who can get through two straight songs of his.

Rilo Kiley solo projects

The cans are real, but the twang is not. Christ, would it be that embarassing to own a Carrie Underwood album (no Romo)? As for The Elected, if Grandaddy was capable of releasing only one good album (they'd make this list too, but I keep thinking "Fambly Cat" is a figment of my imagination), what chance do they have?

Swan Lake- "Beast Moans"

Too many MC's, not enough mic's. Exit your show like I exit the turnpike.

Deftones- "Saturday Night Wrist"

Note to Maverick Records: maybe you should have funneled that "Hole In The Earth" video money into buying enough cocaine and Domino's pizza to ensure these dudes recaptured even a sliver of "White Pony"'s magic. My only guess is that the Deftones and the Raiders offensive line decided to switch places in some sort of NoCal reality show hijinks. It's not like anyone would notice.

The Walkmen- "A Hundred Miles Off"

Fifteen playful otters get clubbed every day the world at large pays more attention to these guys than The National.

The Streets- "The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living"

When I think back on my college experience, what stands out is that my best friends during first year are people I haven't spoken to in years. Imagine having that kind of social fluidity when you're 26. It's a pretty common thing, I presume. These are the kind of people you usually meet during Orientation Week or Rush, when you're actively looking to meet all the people you can; you hit it off with someone immediately and spend about the next month or two hanging out all the time. And then, they slide out of your life because it becomes abundantly clear that you've already heard everything this person has to say.

It's tough to lump Mike Skinner into this category after one album that's probably not as bad as I remember it being, but the shoe certainly fits. Right after I graduated college, "Original Pirate Material" was up there with "Lifted" in terms of being albums about the 20-something experience I was really susceptible to liking. I played "OPM" pretty much all the time whenever I went to DC for the weekend. My mans an' 'em Neil lived in an apartment complex in Georgetown that looked exactly like the album cover. Likewise, "A Grand Don't Come For Free" was the sort of album I was susceptible to liking after a tumultuous first year of law school. However, here I am getting on with the rest of my life, and here Mike Skinner is making the second best PSA against cocaine since "Be Here Now." It's right behind the intro to "Kilo."

The Stills- "Without Feathers"

Band accused of being a shameless Brit-rock ripoff decides to make a roots-rock album. Those who forget Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are doomed to repeat them.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead- "So Divided"

Dude, I stood up for you clowns and made "Worlds Apart" #13 on my Stylus Top 20 last year. And yet you're making an album for "a few pretentious farm equipment-wielders whom I won't mention" (his words, not mine) that tried to ruin your fuckin' career because giving a 10.0 to a mainstream alt-rock album embarassed the shit out of them? Yeah, well played. Turn Swedish or gay, and we could've nudged you into our Top 50 at the very least.

The Roots- "Game Theory"

The best album released in 2006 that I can go months without listening to.

Oh, and if you're looking for Jay-Z, Nas, Ludacris, Method Man, Clipse, Jeezy, Cam'ron (in retrospect, was "Killa Season" that disappointing considering what came after it?), OutKast, and just about any other mainstream rapper that dropped in 2006 (really, what's left for 2007? Common? Fiddy? "Detox"?), you can't consider an album a disappointment if you got exactly what you thought you would.

spending time with my family, like the corleooooones

2006-12-22T17:35:00.000-05:00

So yeah, I spent today getting my teeth examined by an Estonian lady at the Temple Dental Clinic while it rained all day and clocked in at about 45 degrees. Nope...don't miss Cali at all.

But as far as Temple goes, it might not have the most aesthetically pleasing campus, but maybe you place more importance on the availability of curry goat within walking distance.

Oxtails chopped up in Caribbean spots

Also, I got the indelible experience of going to the Trenton airport. Now, if you've ever driven past Trenchtown, you probably saw a bridge that states, "Trenton makes, the world takes." Once you get past the Jim Jones "did he just say that shit?" nature of this slogan, it's actually kinda true that Trenton's been picked clean. Talk about a bare-bones operation; that shit looks like a Ross with airplanes in the parking lot. Speaking of which, how is it that a certain Rick hasn't hooked up with these guys yet for an ad campaign?

Everyday we hustlin' to bring you the hottest new brands at the lowest prices

But I guess Trenton appreciates the business, as they brung 'em out for what was apparently the first Delta flight to ever come by. I think I might've shook hands with the mayor. There were free mugs and danishes. Hey, gotta get on your grizzly when you've got one terminal to your name.

Still, it's a far better experience than being at the Trenton train station, which I've forsaken for Greyhound whenever I need to get to NY for under twenty bucks. The train station's been on my shitlist since they closed down the Roy Rogers. Just a theory: after indulging in one of their high-viscosity roast beef sandwiches, too many people were faced with the difficult choice between shitting their pants and taking their chances with a Trenton train station toilet. Too many people understandably chose the former.

But you can't really knock Greyhound when it's an affirmative choice rather than one of desperation. Taking it to New York from Philly is worth the hassle, certainly a better option than the Chinatown buses...word is that fucking coffins with people in them show up on those shits. But if you gotta rock those down to Florida, you've hit rock bottom. Either that or you're storing a ki of Peruvian white in your colon and you're shook by the jakes at NJ Transit. Either way, that's rock bottom.

Just a question in light of the current weather conditions: if you're homeless and you're down to your last twenty or thirty beans, why not take a Greyhound down to Miami so you can be homeless somewhere warm?

So, in essence, Greyhound bears a lot of similarities to Cisco. Not the food corporation or Yancey Thigpen's mans an' 'em, but that shit Biggie was talking about in "Going Back To Cali." I'm utterly astounded at how few people have actually heard of it, but then again, it's an incredibly rare find. Just do the knowledge at this site and pay extra special attention to the former slogan. But yeah, it's the Greyhound of fortified wines, allowing dudes like me to brush up on hobo culture without actually pickling my liver in the process.

Freaks from Frisco not included

i bent my wookie

2006-12-18T22:58:00.000-05:00

I was expecting my review of "Hip Hop Is Dead" to be up at Stylus, but we've held off on running new reviews until January 2...but now that I think about, I only recently came up with the best way to summarize 2006 in the world of New York hip-hop. Allow me to explain:

You remember that episode of "The Simpsons" where Allison Taylor enrolls in Springfield Elementary and starts beating Lisa at everything she excels at? Well, the uncomfortable tension comes to a head in the climactic Diorama-Rama, the second most anticipated event at Springfield Elementary next to Hearing Test Thursday. Both Allison and Lisa are working at a maddening pace to beat the other, and in a crisis of confidence, Lisa finally decides to sabotage Allison's presentation by stealing her diorama, hiding it under the floorboards and replacing it with a cow's heart.

As Allison struggles to explain to Principal Skinner where her diorama went, Lisa has a change of heart and allows it to be presented at the very last minute. Skinner's evaluation: "sterile...no real insight." As for Lisa, "well, this doesn't deserve to win." As Skinner approaches Ralph Wiggum's diorama, he laments, "ugh...now we're in the dregs." As it turns out, Ralph brought in a box of unopened Star Wars figurines, much to the delight of Skinner. And since they've run out of time and don't really care much anymore because it's almost lunch, Wiggum is awarded the blue ribbon. He later brags in a sing-song voice, "I beat the smart kids!" despite not being aware of what a diorama even is.

Ladies and gentlemen, Allison is Nas, Lisa is Jay-Z and Ralph is Jim Jones. Once again, "The Simpsons" apply to everything.

What's a battle?

In other DipSet-related news, this was probably my favorite brawl news of the weekend. Not just because the guy involved in the altercation is named Cam-Ron, but because they included this line:

Cam-Ron Clay takes it hard to the hoop before taking it hard to his coach

The "no homo" writes itself.

everyone choose sides

2006-12-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

Don't worry, the DipSet Christmas album review is coming. You absolutely have to love Jim Jones; only he can release something like "Jim Jones Presents: A DipSet XMas" and only have the first five songs be about the actual holiday. Seriously...by track six, he's calling out "bitches," "faggots" and the "hip-hop police."

Not only that, but he has three "bonus tracks" on there. I'm always against classifying something as "hidden tracks" or "bonus" or whatever; it always seems like a cop-out to me. If it wasn't good enough for the album or it didn't quite mesh, make it a B-side. Why did Jones call these "bonus tracks"? Because he felt they didn't fit in the narrative?

And yes, there's a song called "Ballin' On XMas." And yes, it's a reinterpretation of Run-DMC's "Christmas In Hollis." One can make the argument that by playing this song about 10,000 times every December, BET has ensured that it'll end up being the most influential song the group has ever made. There's a good chance I've seen that one video more than any other in my lifetime. And the dough was for me!

Jim Jones- "Ballin' On XMas"

In the meantime, might as well let you in on the second-most important ranking process of the year. We'll leave the BCS out of this for now, because that's its own post. I get the feeling that Florida is going to go up against Ohio State and get a beatdown of mythic proportions, which is a good thing, because I need all 5,324 Michigan blogs out there to bitch about it. Gotta kill the time until next season some way or another. Just remember, Florida fans: the last time you won a national championship, it was in a rematch. The ironing, as they say, is delicious.

But anyways, I just had to turn in my Top 20 albums list for Stylus, and while #1 hasn't moved since March, there's a bunch of jostling in the teens that will make me instantly regret the list five days from now. To be honest, I couldn't put much thought into the singles list, because no one ever really remembers that shit. My favorite song can change at the drop of a hat, and if I was given another week to make the list, I bet "Reppin' Time" wouldn't have ranked so high. I have to remind myself that they (I didn't vote) made "Since You Been Gone" as the winner of 2005, though I probably would've groused on the message board how it ripped off "The City."

The Dismemberment Plan- "The City"

(that's right...we know how to use Sendspace now)

You want to know how quickly it was patched together? I had to put "Chain Hang Low" as my #11 and I still don't know if I actually like it. I'm thinking that Jeff and I should've bloc voted just to get "Fry That Chicken" in there. That would've been fun. But really, I'm not so certain what's so bad about the song. It's easily my favorite track by a woman who used to be a dude since "Oh." And moreover, in the end, it's about frying chicken. How does liking fried chicken end up being more embarrassing than your average DipSet song, which manages to place black people and homosexuals in the worst possible light? They make these songs all the fucking time in country music. Sometimes you just like what you like. Am I ashamed that I work with three other people named "Cohen" and that we have bagels in our office three days a week?

But anyways, I plan on bashing out my Top 20 on this site in the next couple of days. And no matter what happens, I'm sure Jenny Lewis will get her proper due should we make a list for "Best Alternative Cans" (and yes, I will cop to completely stealing this line from Buddyhead, and that they said it about Meg White). In the meantime, the usual...

- Even at the tender age of 46, Albert Pujols is, as Kent Brockman would say, a cantankerous old geezer. Let Scrapple Dun Dun live. Besides, if you had choice to ride rims with one of them in the MVP Escalade, who are you goin' with?

I'm 27, so is the duuuuuuuuubs

- A couple weeks ago, I went and saw the Wrens and Asobi Seksu at the Troubadour. Two things have been confirmed: without the chick, Asobi Seksu is the ugliest band in the world, and that every Wrens fans were the most miserable group of people in 2003. Listen to any one talk about how much the love "The Meadowlands" and it will inevitably come down to "I could relate." For those who've forgotten, "The Meadowlands" is a document about grown-ass men who have failed in their careers, love lives and possibly parenting as well. It's an incredibly candid and powerful document, but one whose resonance ultimately comes down to your ability to see yourself in the songs. First year in law school...verrrrry easy to think that you've made an enormous mistake in your life. I mean, the songs are catchy and all that, but so is Panic! At The Disco (which, as I'll probably explain at some point, are nowhere near as bad as I was led to believe).

Oh yeah, and there's no other way to so it: The Wrens are really fucking old. Okay, they play with a lot of energy that belies their age, but there's no ignoring it. They brought up a bunch of people onstage to help them sing "Boys, You Won't," which seems incredibly weird until you realize that the exact same thing happens for "Lover I Don't Have To Love" and "Tiny Vessels." I've seen both Bright Eyes and Death Cab and the kids seem to sing along those songs the loudest. Them indie boys- they looove their misogyny disguised as heartbreak!

But anyways, there's this young-ish looking hipster chick who's dancing incredibly close to one of the guys in the Wrens (I don't know which is which, only that one of them took a "Mexico" surname long before Michael Vick did) and I'm just thinking to myself..."is that girl going to fuck the Wrens? Do they still get down like that?" Look, I know things ain't what they used to be, but you never want to think of your favorite rock bands as dudes who have "matured" past the point of scoring easy ass.

The Wrens- "Boys, You Won't"

- In other news, I made an attempt to see the RZA at the Key Club, forgoing to buy tickets in advance because if you think I'm paying $28 to see just the RZA, you're off that honey dipped spliff. Unfortunately, I underestimated L.A.'s interest in the performance and the shit was sold out. Obviously, there's a big difference between trying to hustle a ticket for a RZA show and doing the same for Grizzly Bear, although I guess if the Grizz had RZA's security, they'd probably still be on tour. I shouldn't have changed my clothes after work; that way, I could convince the people I was with the label. Except I might've got caught in a lie...is RZA on Koch yet? And if not, why not?

But I guess I should've expected more from Wu diehards in the L.A. metro area, because after seeing this MTV Cribs, they probably gave Bob Digi a key to the city. The best part about the Busta Rhymes cameo? That's Spliff Star right next to him on the couch! Peter King made an argument about possibly getting Steve Tasker in the Hall of Fame because he was far and away the best special teamer of all time. I say that Spliff deserves some sort of recognition in Cleveland. His weed carrier aptitude is unapproachable.

Do they still have MTV Cribs, by the way? Look, we've always had to deal with shitty mainstream rappers (more now than ever), but now they can't even get rich enough to even get on "How I'm Living." Say what you want about Sisqo, but wasn't it fun to see his mansion and immediately start a pool to see when it would end up on "MTV Cribs: Repo Edition"? I'm sure it's gone down by now, unless supposed sugar daddy Yancey Thigpen is paying those bills. And no, I can't tell you where I heard that Thigpen was DL like that. This is not something you can actively learn.

- And by the way, considering Diddy's album has about twelve consecutive tracks with a different R&B bitch, it's become obvious why he did "Making The Band" parts 2 and 3: he misses Total about as much as I do. "Trippin'" was the fucking jam. Why does everyone have to start out with a solo career in hip-hop and R&B? Just look at Destiny's Child and Leaders Of The New Schol, to name a few. If you're bankable, people will ultimately find out. But even if there isn't a breakout star, you can still have an En Vogue or SWV. Who couldn't go for one of their likes in the 21st century? Shit, at the very least, you'll end up with 702, which, if I remember correctly, dropped "Where My Girls At" (also fucking jam-ish) and then one of them got knocked up. For shame. Wouldn't your ears perk up if your favorite rapper's favorite rapper got En Vogue on a track in 2006? Shit, if Khia can make it to a Janet Jackson album (wait, her boyfriend didn't shoot her because she gave him AIDS? That was such an airtight urban myth!), anything's possible.

702- "Where My Girls At?"

- The new Ghostface album (which by the way, is fucking phenomenal) has a track called "Miguel Sanchez." I gotta hand it to him...that's a far more esoteric Simpsons reference than calling your band Fall Out Boy. I guess you gotta step your game up around the Def Jam offices if you want to be involved with Pete Wentz and Jay-Z's weekly playdates.

Ghostface- "Greedy Bitches"

it seems the artists these days are not who you think

2006-11-26T17:20:00.000-05:00

- I don't know if you're as excited as I am, but tomorrow's internetting will make a lot of parents incredibly proud that their college tuition did not get spent in vain. Unless we all decide that the new Incubus album is more worthy of Monday's lead review, we're about to see the most hysterical overanalyzing of an LP that expresses so little, it makes a Big Tymers album sound like a "Plastic Ono Band"-style exercise in introspection. I mean, just read this and tell me tomorrow won't be awesome (seriously, Julianne...you might want to listen to the first verse of "Triumph" or something). Talk about putting words in their mouth. All that's left to decide is whether it will beat ol' Joanna's Metacritic score.

Speaking of her, remember what I said about "Ys," like, two months ago?

an impression of an overwrought Bjork trying to remake "Astral Weeks" with nothing but Disney incidental music and Kate Bush's worst unicorn fantasies.

And here's the thing- all these rave reviews of that album seem to agree with me. Different strokes, I guess, but if you can put this album on in a room full of normal people without their last words being, "what the fuck is this happy horseshit?," I'd really like to meet them. I mean, check out this...

He said; someone come quick!
The horses got loose, got grass-sick!
They'll founder! Fain, they'll die

What is now known by the sorrel and the roan?
By the chestnut, and the bay, and the gelding grey?

You're telling me that if some chick in a college poetry class started popping that shit, she wouldn't be ridiculed into an eating disorder? Kids really are soft these days. Actually, this album makes me wish I was still in college, because it reminds me of the process of using a certain CD to tell people to get the fuck out of our fraternity house and take your drunken hooking up back to the freshman dorms, where it belongs. I think I used Aphex Twin for a while, but eventually Burrows took that over by playing whatever doom metal crap he happened to be listening to at the time. Then again, we tried to make a party mix that everyone could agree on, and that dude ended up putting fuckin' "The Stars Are Projectors" on there.

But back to the lecture at hand, I'll just say this: if you think "Hell Hath No Fury" is an event or even an above-average rap album, you don't listen to enough rap. Simple as that. As a matter of fact, that's the album's biggest problem: it still sounds unfinished, a non-event. While I appreciate an album erring on the side of brevity, that doesn't change the fact that two out of the twelve songs here are "Wamp Wamp (What It Do)" and "Mr. Me Too." And other tracks feature such brilliant hooks as "bitch, I'm trill" and "dirty money, dirty money."

Topically, it's like Biggie said: "now they on some money shit, successful out the blue/They light weight...and you still recoupin', stupid." Has Kanye and his sweater vests changed the game to the point where Pharrell can be your best pal and no one questions your drug dealer credentials? Because that's the main problem here; Clipse, while they can come up with some fairly decent punchlines, never tell stories or narratives that can separate them from their characters. Once again, I have to compare it with "Fishscale" to show you the difference between being clever and creating a classic; listen to a song like "Shakey Dog" or "Crackspot." Ghost has the ability to turn them into mini-movies, replete with supporting characters, story arcs and eye-bulging images. Not to mention his voice is possibly the most expressive in hip-hop history. It doesn't matter that Ghost isn't dealing drugs anymore. But he can tell some ill stories. Clipse fail on that fundamental reason: it's not so much they spend an entire album lying to you or that they may be role playing the whole time. It's just that these characters are boring and aren't all that different than any other in the hip-hop game.

Then again, you'll accuse me of being a hypocrite for being a lyrics guy and liking the latest Game album. Ah, but lyrics are just a part of the equation. The Game actually reminds me of "Marshall Mathers LP" Eminem (in attitude, not lyrical acuity), and his one-man army routine is actually refreshing. Although I must say I find his overuse of the word "motherfuckin'" as a space-filler a lot more annoying than the name dropping. Not that I'm against cursing; just something about filling four syllables with that word rubs me the wrong way. GZA did this a lot on "Liquid Swords" too, which will always put it behind "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..." for me.

Anyway, either of those two (at least they got rid of those other Re-Up Gang asshats for the most part) get on the mic, you get a couple of plays on words and you're right back where you started. Multiple listens to Clipse reveal nothing. And by the way, we were calling Ritalin "diet coke" in college, which is a lot more appropriate. Nice try, boys.

The whole Pharrell thing bites them in the ass on beats as well. Let's face it: a lot of the appeal behind "We Got It 4 Cheap" was that it was able to cherrypick some of the hottest instrumentals of the last decade. Fuck, even I couldn't fuck up the "Daytona 500" beat. And who didn't hear something like "I'm A Hustler" and immediately think, "God, I wish anyone other than Cassidy could rhyme over this...just an above-average guy, and we've got a classic"?

Can you think of twelve decent Neptunes beats that came out since "Grindin'"? Five? For all his virtues (which have deserted him since 2002), there are only a handful of producers capable of handling an entire album. RZA in the mid-90's, Organized Noise, Dr. Dre perhaps...but guys who are known for singles can't do it. Even at his best (say, "Miss E...So Addictive"), Timbaland would throw in one or two truly dud beats.

Pharrell's going for minimalism at a lot of points, but they just sound like beats that have instruments (like, say, bass) on layaway. He's cannibalizing "Drop It Like It's Hot" worse than he did "Superthug" in the late '90s.

Of course, this album is extra fun to champion because it lets you express antiquated anti-corporate screeds. Look, we're all aware of Rule #4,080, but I feel as much pity for the Clipse as I do for Edgerrin James right now. They knew damn well what they were getting into. Jive will be living off "Oops...I Did It Again" money until the end of time, and didn't they spend the majority of the '90s signing everyone who happened to share studio time with Too Short or E-40. I just think it's pretty delicious irony that a couple of guys who paint themselves as Godzilla hustlers got jerked something terrible by a bunch of people who peddle Britney Spears albums.

Particularly at this point, any artist with a decent business acumen knows that you don't go major label until your indie can't do anything more for you. Why not go Koch if you're really getting $8 an album? How many copies of "4:21" were bought because of Def Jam's marketing strength? And how can anyone possibly use the "record labels are evil" line when "The Crane Wife" had two 12-minute songs on it? You think Colin Meloy ran up in Capitol with guns drawn to get that? If you prove you deserve autonomy, you'll get it.

Clipse keeps getting fucked over because they've proven that they'll do club shit even though they absolutely cannot write hooks to save their life. "Wamp Wamp" and "Mr. Me Too" were dead on arrival, which shouldn't surprise anyone who heard "Ma, I Don't Love Her," which might have the worst chorus of any song in the 21st century.

But all this is irrelevant, because places like Pitchfork and, of course, my own damn website basically begged Jive for this album and we'll all look real stupid if it turns out to be the 7.0/B album that it so is. What you'll read tomorrow is the critical community lying to itself, but I guess that's appropriate after listening to an album that's 50 minutes of lying to the listener.

Okay, you may be thinking: "why care? Just ignore it." Well, I'm not one to overstate importance of music criticism, but it does serve as a counterpoint to typically popular stuff. If the only thing that changed about "Funeral" was that it got a 7.7 instead of a 9.7, you think they cause the same hubbub? Do you remember reading about "Madvillainy" in Rolling Stone? Does MF Doom get on a Gorillaz album without internet hype? I fucking miss the days when 'fork and 'em could at least admit to being elitist. We've all gone from breaking Broken Social Scene and The Wrens to giving B.G. a second chance at a major label deal. Really, nothing sums it up like a choice quote that got lumped into our review of Dave Chappelle's Block Party...

But I never like seeing an entire subculture sacrificed to groupthink, even when I agree, for the most part, with Village Voice blogger Tom Breihan when he calls indie-rap (ED- in other words, anyone in the movie) “rap reimagined as half-articulated boho worldview rather than, like, a way to have fun.”

The reviewer then later goes on to call "like ranch, I dip" a "lethal punchline." I'll let you guess who he quotes. But yeah, Black Star was a whole lot less fun than Clipse. Common never wrote a party song. Fuck the Roots trying to broaden hip-hop's instrumental pallette. Fuck rap doing anything other than presenting and reinforcing negative stereotypes of black people for white internet pleasure. I love how Clipse had a line that went "all I see is blackface and you singin' 'Mammy.'" Was he looking in the mirror or something? Maybe they're introspective after all.

This wouldn't be so bad if there were less people in positions of power (influentially) that take their opinions unfiltered from the internet. Is there any coincidence that ever since praising shitty coke-rap became cool, you've heard more complaints about how there aren't any good rap albums anymore? Shit, "Kingdom Come" could very well be a top-ten major label hip-hop album of 2006 because I have a lot of trouble thinking of nine others that are actually out there. "Late Registration" may have been Time-hop (need to think of a better term), but if the same guys are gonna ride for "Hell Hath No Fury" one year later, I'll say all is forgiven.

- Speaking of which, I planned to make this a separate post when it happened, but hey...you get your fill on Sundays now. Make this last all week if you have to.

We all know what happened in the University of Miami brawl against Florida International. There's no need to rehash any of it. But have you heard anything about this? Really, go ahead and read the story, if for no other reason than the following line:

He is known as one of the few Southern rap artists who compose thoughtful lyrics.

Because I think we all know Tom Breihan slept outside the offices of the Baltimore Sun for years just so he could shoehorn this quote in.

The bigger question is this: suppose that event happened at your alma mater. Further, suppose it was your school wildin' out against FIU on the gridiron. What would be more embarassing? It's pretty tough; I think most of us feel as if the football program at our schools represent a separate arm of the university. Yes, I went to school concurrently with Aaron Brooks, but I'm pretty sure his life was incredibly different than mine. He had an armada of tutors and coaches ensuring that his stutterin' ass got to class and made decent enough grades. All I had were my parents (keep in mind, the dorm phones didn't have caller ID in 1998).

But what if your fellow classmates were injuring themselves chasing dollar bills at a Lil' Wayne concert? Ignore your appraisal of Lil' Wayne as an MC; this could be a Jibbs show for all I care. Odds are, the one thing you take the most pride in when it comes to your alma mater is its educational reputation. While football woes may get more media attention, you can always figure that the team operates on a different level than most students. Here are your fellow classmates literally beating each other up for one-dollar bills. Any thoughts?

- Speaking of which, there was a lot of exciting football being played yesterday, but for cursory watching, nothing will top the Bayou Classic. Everyone knows about the marching bands, but there are more subtle pleasures to keep you hooked. For one thing, there's the special teams. If you want to see an extra point shanked five yards wide left or a punt from the endzone falling out of bounds at the 25-yard line, you'll be a pig in shit here. I know that a lot of HBCU's are under financial strain, but can't they get a strength and conditioning guy? A lot of offensive lines just look like the coach went around campus picking the five fattest people he could find.

But best of all are the uniforms. Now, I've always made it a rule that if I've seen a color combination on an NFL uniform, it matches in real life as well. But this is why I don't include the college ranks...

Still I stay dipped like the first day of school

That shit looks like the Karl Kani gear that ended up in Marshall's when my brother worked there...in, like, 1994.

- Glad to see that Roger Mason is back on his grind with the Wiz. I can't wait until he gets dealt at the trading deadline again. He's shaping up to be this generation's Rick Brunson.

- Also, glad to know that I don't have to commit to watching any more Eagles games this year. I certainly hope those linebackers didn't get paid. Maybe Andre Waters saw it coming. R.I.P., Dirty. I'm just hoping Izell Jenkins is taking this season a little better.

Probably will be subject to more updates.

hopefully they'll menage before i reach my garage

2006-11-22T10:33:00.000-05:00

I guess I shouldn't have to remind you that I'm still kufi-smackin' at Stylus, and today I handle Jay-Z's new album. That, in and of itself, isn't so interesting, but this comment should lure you there...

How is "sex with both Beyonce and Rihanna in the last year alone" an accomplishment? Both women are something like half his age, Rihanna in particular. That's gross on his part, not great.

Word?

I mean, rilly? Lest we forget, this is Jay-Z...

As a matter of fact, that's the most impressive shit he's ever pulled off in his lifetime. And that includes "Get This Money." And the remix.

like eric b. for prez...

2006-11-18T00:18:00.000-05:00

Respect me in this bitch

Your boy passed the Bar...fuck knowin' a lil' bit. The Results come back with a vengeance on Sundays.

EDIT: Just not this Sunday...have to do a lot of Stylus writing.

we matched schedules on october 9th

2006-10-09T00:26:00.000-04:00

Um...had a few posts here and there to update, but that seems like wishful thinking considering I start my job tomorrow (which is today under EST). Which represents the first time I went into an office building and got paid for it since 2003. Moreover, I appear to be offering my subject matter to other forums like a Marlins-style firesale. Want album reviews? Go to Stylus.. Live show reviews? Soon to be at Mish Mash Magazine. And by the way, this means I won't have to pay for a concert ticket or a CD for a looooooong time. And my various and sundry bitching about UVA's bottomless ineptitude, go to AOL Fanhouse.

That really about covers it, I guess. Besides, most of you who read my blog have jobs by now. Get back to work!

go away...i'm 'batin'

2006-09-28T12:12:00.000-04:00

There once was a time where you cared about whose ass it was on the screen and why it was farting.

Seriously, go see "Idiocracy." Don't be 'tarded. Plus, there needs to be people who spot the numerous references I plan on making in the near future. Just remember the lessons from "Office Space": get on the bandwagon before dropping a line from this movie makes you a played-out douchebag. In this day and age, the window's smaller than ever.

A lot of people wonder what Mike Judge did to piss off movie execs to the point where it was dumped in theatres with Koch-level promotion. Well, because in terrms of illustrating the precipitous decline of human intellect, I guess they thought he was preempted by "Chain Hang Low."

like lyric records, i ain't tryin' to hear it

2006-09-26T22:14:00.000-04:00

Music criticism isn't a full-service industry. While you'd like to think that most websites you frequent are compassing all facets of the art, it's obvious that each one has their bread and butter stuff. In any given year, there's a good shot that Pitchfork or Stylus will name a Sub Pop or Merge or Matador release their #1 album of the year (this year, it probably should be Frenchkiss, but I'll get to that soon). PopMatters and Paste cotton to the upwardly mobile white woman and Aimee Mann may as well get some lifetime achievement award from them. If Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones made an album, pencil it in for a five-star review at Rolling Stone. And if it sucks, odds are, it'll make the cover of Spin eventually.

What I'm getting at is even if someone claims to listen to "everything," it can't possibly be true. The Stylus message board is a supersmorg of new releases, all of which I can have for free. But I nonetheless have to pass on a lot of them because there's simply not enough hours in the day for it all. And this is coming from someone who won't start his new day job until October 9.

The way I usually figure out whether or not I can take it is if I can honestly ask myself, "is this from a genre where I can tell the difference between the good stuff and bad stuff?" You'd be surprised how much this eliminates. No matter how much my forthform chums rave about Hecker, Xela and whatnot, all ambient/white noise/experimental post rock sounds exactly like Fennesz to me, no worse or no better. And let's face it, the only reason I tried to get into Fennesz in the first place was because it ranked so highly on both 'Fork and Stylus' top albums list of the new decade.

But sometimes, I'm willing to give things a shot out just for the hell of it. As I've said, I've got a lot of time on my hands right now. So, without further Apu, Ian's 2006 In Review, the "I can't believe I listened to this" Edition...

John Mayer- "Continuum"

I've written before about how it's hard to believe that songs like "Get Ready For This" or "Who Let The Dogs Out" were ever new. They're so woven into our cultural fabric that it seems impossible that they actually climbed charts and gained public awareness as opposed to just appearing from the ether.

I'd throw in most adult-contemporary music into the ring as well. At some point, guys like Steve Winwood and Bruce Hornsby were in the process of being hitmakers as opposed to mainstays on radio stations that get played in banks ("that's just the way it is, indeed"). Of course, most people also forget that even during our halcyon days of MTV, you'd be just as likely to see Richard Marx rockin' out in Wrigley Field as you were to see Dr. Dre or Nirvana.

And by the way, I saw a placard up the other day which advertised the new N.W.A. book...from Jerry Heller's perspective. I thought he'd wait for the rest of the group to die out before actually releasing this, but I guess he figures that most of them are too rich to really give a fuck about the guy anymore (this is probably not true of M.C. Ren). Is it possible that Jerry Heller is modern day Colonel Sam Phillips? Dude was absolutely immortalized in the "Dre Day" video; "I work for Sleazy E..." God, those videos were great. They really just don't make 'em like they used to. I always agreed with the premise of the "What They Do" video, but not because diamonds and champagne and video ho's were a bad thing. It was because the Hype Williams/Little X era was when rap videos stopped being funny.

The greatness of the videos from "The Chronic" stemmed from the fact that they had hilarious ideas and nowhere near enough video-making savvy to ruin them with production values. Watch a hip-hop movie and the outtakes are always funnier than the movie itself. Hip-hop's always at its best when there's a certain lack of pretension involved. There's a big difference between that girl getting sprayed with 40s at the end of "Nuthin' But A G Thang" and Dame Dash pouring Armadale on a bunch of girls in bikinis.

Oh, right...John Mayer. Anyways, I wanted to give this a shot, not just because it's getting oddly reverant critical acclaim, but because it's my chance to experience the release of a Bruce Hornsby album when I'm old enough to know what it means. Let's face it: pegging this dude as a Dave Matthews clone was dead wrong. John Mayer is wise beyond his years when it comes to being ready for adult-contemporary rotation.

This isn't "sensitive white boy with an acoustic and a story to tell" anymore, but it just might be worse: smarmy Papa Soul belting with the sort of anaesthetized Blueshammer riffs that are described with faint praise like "tasteful" and "restrained." I've said before that you shouldn't let his music interfere with the fact that he's kind of the Man, but you'd probably be better off avoiding his music in full. Listening to this makes me wonder who actually picks up a guitar for the first time, dreaming of one day making music like this. But I guess I'm in the minority; as long as American Idol retains its popularity, I'll always know the answer to the question I found myself asking for years before it became a TV smash: "is there really anyone out there who dreams of being the next John Secada?"

I guess you can say this stuff is pretty well-written. The guy certainly doesn't betray his Berklee training, and there is a melodic complexity inherent in his work. The problem is that it's unimaginably dull. There isn't even a "Your Body Is A Wonderland" or "Daughters" in there to rile you into a murderous rage. It's so polite and unhurried that you wonder what he ever did to make you hate him in the first place. Except for "Waiting For The World To Change," which is his "political song." I was thinking about live-blogging this album, and here's the lyrics that made me think it could've been a wonderful thing:

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance

now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door
and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got
cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want

Oh, and this is by far the best one...

one day our generation
is gonna rule the population

But why not throw in the last verse, just for kicks?

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could
now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

Then he goes on about drowning in your secret garden or whatever, but there you have it. John Mayer: political firebrand. Lovely.

And to answer your question, no, I couldn't get through the whole thing. And fortunately, since I'll never have to be in the car with my old boss from the GLA, I'll never have to involuntarily be subjected to it ever again.

N.O.R.E.- "Y La Familia Ya Tu Sabe"

Forgive me for prejudging, but I had my doubts about the guy who's said the following being a cultural liaison:

"Yo, let's get loose, Hennessy straight with tomato juice

"I gotta keep my mouth shut and don't say 'what what'"

"Fuck a closet, I keep my fuckin' gear in the truck"

"I don't really like to fuck...you see, you's a big diesel dude. You probably got a lot more energy than me."

Oh, and there's the matter of the two most ignant skits of all time ("Shows!" "Wet Willies"), possibly topping that "I'm A Ho" joint from the Ruff Ryders compilation I can't remember off the top of my head.

But here we are. Rather than playing to his strengths (Swizz Beatz/sub-Cam'ron thug bluster), he's made a reggaeton primer, I assume for people who would never buy a reggaeton album. So what is this, like, the "O, Hermano, Donde Esta?" Hard to say. It's all based on pretty much the same beat, and I can't really tell what anyone's saying in Spanish. Then again, with N.O.R.E., that's probably a good thing; I'm told that a lot of the Pitbull and Daddy Yankee stuff is actually mind-bendingly filthy. A year ago, this may have gotten some interest, but I can't imagine anyone who isn't Hispanic actively seeking a reggaeton album in October of 2006.

Mastodon- "Blood Mountain"

Metal is a tough nut for me to crack. With the pop stuff, if it's catchy, I can go with that. With the instrumental stuff, it's all prettified and I can chill to it, that works. But what about metal? What can even the best stuff do for me?

I've tried though, for the most part using the Metacritic filter in order to see which stuff I could get down with. I tried that drone-metal stuff like Isis and SunnO))) and laughed my ass off. Well, we're seeing a bit of a metal uptick as of late with bands like Lamb Of God and Mastodon getting major label deals. Apparently, these guys might be more in common with stuff on Headbanger's Ball back when it was watchable, but then again, I have a copy of "Vulgar Display Of Power" that I haven't played in years. Even if "Fucking Hostile" is the jam, I always thought Pantera was for people who wished Metallica was more overtly racist. Like how Bob Seger was for people who thought Bruce Springsteen was a pinko fag.

But anyways, if your favorite music site doesn't have a "metal" guy, they definitely should. To me, it's just as necessary as the "jazz" guy or the "techno" guy; there's a lot more to the genre that you think, and you need someone who can parse it out for the rest of us, particularly since they are far more "insider" cultures than indie rock or hip-hop, which have tons of crossover fans. A Wolf Parade fan is far more likely to be into Three 6 Mafia than they are with Jesu.

I can say without a doubt the best "metal" guy out there writes for Stylus. And Cosmo Lee's the best because his reviews are the most informative; you will definitely come out of anything he writes feeling like a foremost expert on the band and most importantly, he tells you what it sounds like. He's reversing the damage that decades of music critics with more education than Congressmen have done.

But he was a little lukewarm on "Blood Mountain," and quite concerned about what a major label would do to them. Since it's "outsider metal" with major label backing, I guess that makes me a good canary in the coalmine for something like this, and I gotta tell you: it's kinda awesome. It probably is the equivalent of hearing an old Metallica album for the first time, particularly since it starts off with a ridiculous drum solo and a Motorhead riff. The important thing about all of this is while there's no "Enter Sandman" to be an entree for guys like me, the instrumental work is very melodic and exploratory into light and shade. It's probably not the kind of thing I'd play for other people or even love, but it rocks in a proggy "Mars Volta if they didn't blow" way and I'm glad this is gettting the attention it has.

Thursday- "A City By The Light Divided"

For a while, I thought I was going to review this for Stylus, and I'm glad it didn't happen because no matter what grade I gave it, I would've regretted it in retrospect. Not since Slipknot's "Iowa" has an album been so awesome, yet clearly kinda suck at the same time.

A big part of that has to do with Dave Fridmann. I'm a huge fan of his work (even though "The Soft Bulletin" is probably my third favorite album of his, behind "Deserter's Songs" and "Hate"), but when you consider the whimsical, funhouse LPs he's known for, it seems like a bad fit for the most dead serious rock band in the biz. Ah, but neither know a thing about restraint.

And that's pretty much a prerequisite knowledge before entering this experience: it's the loudest album I think I've ever heard. Stylus writer Nick Southall has done an incredible series about the modern trend of overusing compression and whatnot (READ!), and I just wonder if he's ever heard this album. Probably not, because it'll make his head explode.

I can't front: this is a great album to listen to at the gym. Probably because the gym is so noisy that you have to push the volume on your iPod to the point where this starts making sonic sense. But otherwise, Fridmann uses volume like a blunt object, breaking every bone in the sonic structure to the point where it's just a distorted blob at times. This is the kind of album where you see the second-to-last song is called "Into Blinding Light" and you just know it's going to build into defeaning distortion. Which it does.

But I imagine this is the best album Thursday will make; there's a lot less screamo than in the past, and even if Fridmann works to their disadvantage at times, he stills makes things a lot more interesting. If nothing else, it's just more proof that when emo bands go for "atmospheric," they almost always end up sounding like U2. Plus, "Counting 5-4-3-2-1" really fucking rocks, almost singlehandedly making up for the inclusion of "We Will Overcome." That's the sort of ballsy but misguided appropriation of black culture I'd usually expect from Greg Dulli, but here, it's simply used as a lazy catch-all because Geoff Rickly mentions "Strange Fruit" and the Iraq War and can't think of anyway to tie them together.

So we're back where we started really. Great for an album of its kind, but it'll do nothing to change your mind if you're not actively trying to like Thursday. It just makes me think of what Jonathan Bradley once wrote; in essence, if critics are so hyped up about music intended for teenage girls, why is music for teenage boys completely marginalized? People should've cared a lot more about this album (Island/Def Jam included). Hey, speaking of which...

Justin Timberlake- "FutureSex/LoveSounds"

I remember some day in October last year being an enormous release Tuesday; I think "Z," "You Could Have It So Much Better," "Extraordinary Machine" and some other stuff came out all at once, and I spent the day skipping law school to give 'em a spin while watching the MLB playoffs. It looks like September 12th was that day this year, as there's an unheard of amount of major-indie stars dropping. And that's in addition to TV On The Radio and Junior Boys, whose albums have been leaked for months.

But you know which album is probably got the most attention? You guessed...Well, here's the thing: your favorite critic is probably going ape for what is essentially the male answer to Christina Aguilera's "Stripped." Seriously, have you read some of the shit this guy is saying? He spends the first part of his Rolling Stone interview talking about how much weed he smokes, and then there's this kicker, in regards to how he wants people to approach this...

"Maybe everybody was coked up, but who cares? It was hot. It was all about sex."

Come the fuck on. Okay, so he's done drugs and likes sex. 99% of my friends have done drugs and enjoy fucking. Remeber this past week as the exact point where your major internet outlets completely lost their fucking minds (Jeff does a better job of covering it here). At least when Lance Bass was trying to distance himself from his 'N Sync past, he was sincere about it, and there's a good chance JT's sucking more black dick than he is. J.C. Chasez works with Basement Jaxx fer cryin' out loud, and he can't get one lick of attention. Okay, he did have a song called "Some Girls Dance With Girls" or whatever.

But it's not like that's any less blatant than the shit going on here. Justin Timberlake wants you to think he's some modern day version of Prince just because he shows up to a Rolling Stone shoot with a guitar and uses the word "sex" about 12,000 times throughout this album. Elevate him to "King of Pop" or "King of Sex" (Rolling Stone, eww!), but I'll finance your hearing test if you think anything here has the melodic sense of "Take Me With U," the lyrical resonance of "When Doves Cry" or the rock dynamics of "Let's Go Crazy." Granted, this may seem like an unwinnable contest, going up against what's easily one of the best albums ever made. But hey, if you're gonna liken him to Prince or Michael Jackson in the first place, you'll look as foolish as you did when you compared Kanye to Stevie Wonder last year.

And for all the talk of this being a party album, this whole thing is about as sexy and fun as date rape. Come on, are you that scared of being called a "rockist" if you're honest about this album's merits? For those of you who read blogs rather than write them, imagine Sammy Davis, Jr. was 25 years old and an internet music critic. Now, suppose you call him the n-word and then go on to say, "and you're a fucking kike as well." The next thing you call him is a "rockist." Which one would offend him the most? It's a lot closer than you think (although I'd say "kike" is a distance third).

Back to this pile, it's one man trying to prove to the world that he's a cool guy. And cool don't advertise. It's got all of the eerie gloss of Daft Punk's "Discovery" or Missy Elliott's "So Addictive," but rather than being a paean to E-enhanced love, it's as dead serious in its artistic pretensions as any Radiohead album. And here's the funny part: for a person with his background, you can't even fall back on the singing. You just get his bullshit mack posturing and uncomfortable innuendo in a weedy falsetto and Timbaland absolutely coasting on his beats. I can understand why people would be into "Rock Your Body" or "Cry Me A River"; I remember hearing the entirety of "Justified" because when I was visiting my friend at Penn State in 2002, his girlfriend was the designated driver one night. At least those were, respectively, airy, MJ-aping fun and one of Timbaland's more interesting productions.

But here, the backing tracks are flavorless (we can't even get a "Dirt Off Your Shoulders" anymore) and the sense of fun has been replaced by a positively predatory vibe. Yes, ladies and gents, it's come to this. I have to explain to you why a Justin Timberlake album is worthless. C'mon, y'all: this sucks and you know it. I guarantee I'll hear comments about "it's fun!" or whatnot, but when it comes to hipsters (you know who you are) pounding Sparks and shaking their asses to JT, I'll believe it when I see it. When push comes to shove, they're at the Serena Maneesh show.

The Rapture- "Pieces Of The People That We Love"

Every music publication has a moment that'll make you think "they'll never live this down." It happens just about every time Rolling Stone trots out a five-star review. Spin picking "Bandwagonesque" over "Nevermind" as their #1 album of 1991 is like the bassist from Interpol having herpes: you'd be amazed how many people know about it, and even more amazed how frequently it's brought up. I write for a publication that picked "Blueberry Boat" and "Arular" as their last two #1s. Unless "Ys" ends up at the top spot (prediction: no f'in way), I doubt we'll see a repeat.

Obviously, this is leading up to "Echoes" being named Pitchfork's #1 of 2003. It seemed like a pretty big shock at the time, because it was a divisive album of the highest order. Not in the "oh, they're just ripoffs of Band X" way, but in the "these guys can't play their instruments and they really fucking suck" way.

In retrospect, it's not as bad of a choice at it once seemed. I like "Echoes," but it's not perfect. I'm not sure how they could be called "dance-punk" when "Heaven" and "Open Your Heart" would clear floors out like Agent Orange. But when you look back at 2003, what else was there? The Shins are outstanding, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to take four years to make 30 minutes of recorded music, but I don't consider "Chutes Too Narrow" to be life-altering. "Michigan" was good, but clearly a stepping stone for the superior-in-every-way "Illinois." "Decoration Day" is among the most underrated albums to come along this century, and will probably remain the only Drive-By Truckers album that doesn't require liberal use of the skip button. I probably would've voted for something along the lines of "The Meadowlands" or "Transatlanticism" at the time, but let's not forget: I was undergoing my first year of law school. I still think they're great albums, but they're nowhere near as resonant as they used to be.

It's doubtful that the new album will be anywhere near as galvanizing, even though it's probably better. Just know beforehand you're not getting a "House Of Jealous Lovers." But you're not getting a "Heaven" either. The closest you get to a dud here is "Calling Me," which was produced by none other than...ta-da! Danger Mouse.

Elsewhere, you get the feeling that Gang of Four was a pretty poor comparison for these guys and they're actually more like the Happy Mondays; music that's far funkier and funnier than it should be. I imagine the day we find out for certain that Luke Jenner is retarded will be about as big of a non-story as the day we find out for certain that Cam'ron is actually gay.

New eyeliner, you was flirtin' with a gay designer

Obviously, this sounds like an insult, but you need to lack a certain guile to make the kind of music Rapture's peddling (the same could be said of New Order). Especially when the first words on your new album are "high...high as the sky. Low....low as it goes. Purple dragons fly into your eyes. Milkshake shimmy, cry and cry and cry." Or when you base a six-minute song on the hook "my, my, my, my Mustang Ford." And then the colored girls sing...

But this is probably one of my favorite albums of the year because it works so well within its boundaries. They've pretty much figured out that they're a party band and no one could care less about Rapture themselves; although that may not be true on the possibly-Goodie Mob-quoting "W.U.H.Y.," which is either complete genius or the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Really, this will probably end up in my Top Twenty at the end of the year, mostly because of its consistency and the fact that it knows its limitations and is far funkier than it has any right to be.

Fujiya & Miyagi- "Transparent Things"

Yes, I realize Chuck Klosterman preempted me on this, but really, there's so little that can be considered "guilty pleasures" in an artistic sense. Killing a hobo because it gives you an erection: guilty pleasure. Anything else is fine as long as it's sincere as opposed to trying to put on a front for imaginary girls who want to have sex with music critics for their views on Justin Timberlake.

Nonetheless, I really didn't want to like this album. First off, there's that name and the dudes aren't even Japanese (they say as much in one of the songs). Then, the two names that kept coming up in describing it were "DFA" and "Neu!". But yes, while it's music critic music of the highest order, it's surprisingly danceable stuff. And here's why (as well as the reason why I don't mind liking this): a good portion reminds me a lot of "C'mon Ride It (The Train)." Obviously, not the singing. But for whatever reason, if you think of the backing track (particularly the bass) you're part of the way there. So for all of you who picked "ten years" for the amount of time it would take the influence of Quad City DJ's to fully manifest itself in indie rock, take a bow.

Also, the subject title and some of the quotes contained herein are tributes to Kool Keith's "Sex Style"...when you're in California, here's what you need to know: don't drive anywhere near some place you recall from "The Chronic." If it's referenced on "Sex Style," however, it's likely very safe (no foolin'). Also, on my way to the gym, I pass by Fairfax High School. I wish I could go back in time to tell this to the Ian that regularly listened to "One Hot Minute"; this fact would completely blow his fucking mind.

well, i thought about the army

2006-09-23T23:32:00.000-04:00

I was ready to enlist in the Armed Forces today. It has nothing to do with patriotism, honor or boredom. Rather, I felt a strong need to defend the American way of life, because living in this nation is the absolute shit. How can I prove this? Well, just today, I wrote the first, and likely last, post that used "Chicken Noodle Soup" as a reference point for UVA football. But here's the best part: I'M GETTING PAID FOR IT. What a country.

This is the best blog ever, although this one deserves consideration.

I am utterly amazed that I was able to get Serena Maneesh tickets two hours before the show. I need to stop thinking that people rely on the internet to tell them what good music is. 97% of the people who read this blog probably don't know who Serena Maneesh is, let alone the world at large. But if you want to get familiar, read the worst album review in the history of ever, followed by a better one.

I hope everyone's as excited as I am about John L. Smith's postgame press conference. We're getting a Jim Mora-esque quote fer sure. Sparty's fucking up big time, which is about as predictable as Tom Breihan creaming himself over a bullshit Clipse freestyle. Dude should know that they're recycling lyrics from "We Got It 4 Cheap," right? Hey, maybe the reason "Hell Hath No Fury" is never coming out is because it takes a long time to make up all new fake stories about how much drugs they say they sell but don't really. And they can't cherrypick the best beats of the last five years. Face it, calling your first single "Wamp Wamp (What It Do)" and getting Slim Thug on the chorus (and you thought "Bong Bong" was lame) not only guarantees that it'll suck (it does), but it lets everyone know that you have no new ideas.

Now, let's all bask in the warm glow of a Ryan Howard-led playoff run. Currently, our best nicknames are Ryan "Scrapple Dun Dun" Howard (Philly nickname divsion) and Ryan "Prominent Dominant Islamic Asiatic Black Hebrew" Howard (RZA division)...

Six million devils has died from the bubonic flow