ball so hard

As a footnote to my earlier post. Why, Jay? Why is it that you can be so crass, and all I can do is nod and say "nice play"?

Here's the story about Rocawear shilling occupation-ist t-shirts. Here's the follow up, in which he apparently pulled the shirts from Rocawear's site due to public outcry that he was keeping the profits instead of donating them to the occupation. Here's the correction: apparently the shirts just sold out. Of course they did.

Wu Lyf

Wu Lyf is here this week.  After watching this video...

I'm feeling like a Wu Lyf/Liars comparison is apt.  Perhaps not so much on their musical stylings...more in a weird, arty kind of way.  Hopefully they do a better job of translating things into a live act.  I'm really looking forward to it.

McDonald's

I'll start this post off by saying that I eat fairly well.  I make 90% of the food that I eat from ingredients bought in a grocery store.  I eat lots of vegetables and less meat than I used to.  I don't get super stressed out about reducing fat or avoiding carbs, but I think that largely avoiding pre-packaged food gives me that right.

That being said...man...I love me some fast food sometimes.  I watched Supersize Me.  I honestly think that I walked up to McDonald's and bought some french fries right afterwards.  It was like a 2-hour McDonald's commercial for me.

We watched a couple of episodes of the Jamie Oliver show where he attempts to explain to Americans that they're too fat.  At one point, he took a bunch of chicken fat, bone trimmings, gristle and bones and showed it to a bunch of school kids.  They were disgusted.  Then he ground it up in a food processor.  They were disgusted.  Then he formed it into a patty, cooked it and explained to them that was how McNuggets were made.  They wanted to eat them.  I kind of get that.

Anyhow, here's a story that McDonald's is nothing more than a commodities trader, bringing out the McRib when pork prices are unnaturally low.  I didn't eat my first McRib until about a year ago.  I didn't enjoy it.  It wasn't good.  I read about what goes into it.  It sounds terrible.  But the more I read about how gross it is, the more I want one.  I see that photo at the top of the article and I'm thinking about how badly I want some french fries.

What the hell?

This is Satire

It's a reverse Borat.  Please watch this Hamster Wheel interview of a crazed right winger.

I don't know, guys...

First watch this.



So we're in a weird spot now, Black Keys. It took me a little while, but I got over the fact that you're two white guys from Ohio channeling Muddy Waters. The history of pop music is the history of racial appropriation, and by the time you guys got to the blues it couldn't have been about the money. So fine. Fine, too, that your version of appropriation has none of the ironic distance of, say, Jon Spencer. You're a straight up tribute act. Fine. And you want to take on the blues, the musical form most overtly about racial dispossession, slavery, and suffering. Okay. I'll look past it. Because you're a pretty good straight up tribute act.

But this video: I'm sorry, flag on the play. First appropriation, now ventriloquy. First, you gave us the incongruity of white hipsters playing pretty good blues; now you give us white hipster blues being lip-synched by a black guy for a mostly white viewership. It's all a little... minstrel-like, isn't it?

I'm beginning to think you guys are the most insidious band in America. You are the liberal, post-racial utopia that NPR listeners think they live in.

"Well, this isn't very good."

Maybe I'm overcompensating for that highbrow crack, but I just wanted to point out that these guys came back, and I couldn't be happier.

NHL Hockey Teams as Bands

Wow.  This is pretty amazing.  The Canucks one hurts a bit though.