Impossible Is Nothing

Table Tennis Clip Art. Of course it exists, dummy.

As 2012 approaches, so do the "Top ____ of 2011" lists. None of them will be as glorious as the one I'm about to comment on. I've watched this video way too many times already, and at first, I wasn't going to write anything, but then I started watching the video, and about a minute in, I was like, OK, I'm writing a blog post.

Then, after two minutes, I was like, no, this is just a Tumblr post, not a whole blog post.

And then I got the end and I had so many ideas and questions, I was like, I just have to.

Subtle Sexist Symbolism

How would this image differ if Watch The Throne was the creation of two female artists?

So now that Hot 97 and Power 105 have finally stopped just straight up looping Watch The Throne (Drake much?), I think it's safe to start writing about it, at least in some form, just because it's not often that All Star Teams are put together and succeed in winning a championship.

But I'm not going to do that here. Instead, I just wanted to take a minute to highlight something that occurred at last night's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show (apparently I'm supposed to capitalize fashion and show).

Incredibly Unlikely Celebrity Friendship Pool

Late January? Or pre-Halloween?

Snowstorms That Disrupt Halloween

My personal winter storm forecast model is as follows:

-If they predict big far out, e.g., a Monday forecast of 8-12 inches on Friday, expect it to underwhelm.
-If they start out on Monday calling for a rain/sleet/snow mix, and then on Wednesday up it to 1-3 inches, with more north and west of The City, and by Thursday, they've gone to 6-10 inches in The City, and there's a Winter Storm Warning on Friday morning, expect it to pack a punch.

14 inches of snow, two downed trees, no electricity for 120 hours and expected to be near 192, and two stuck vehicles later, I believe that my forecast model was, once again, accurate.

The Canadian Government Has Apologized For Bryan Adams On Several Occasions

On 12/5/11, a posthumous Amy Winehouse album, Lioness: Hidden Treasures, will be released. Naturally, the cover art was photographed by none other than Bryan Adams, apparent "rocker-turned photographer," he of Everything I Do, I Do For You/Summer of '69 fame. Oh, but it doesn't stop there, as SPIN reports:

When Winehouse died on July 23, the Montreal Gazette traced her "unlikely friendship" with the Canadian musician, who reportedly let Winehouse stay in his Caribbean home during a tumultuous period of her life and wrote her a song called "Flower Grown Wild."

If you had the Amy Winehouse/Bryan Adams combo in your "Incredibly Unlikely Celebrity Friendship" Pool, then I guess that today is your lucky day.

Scott Weiland Is Putting Out A Christmas Album

Sometimes the headlines write themselves. Kudos to SPIN for putting the obligatory "White Christmas" pun front and center.

No, seriously. Scott Weiland. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Really.

Two Things

And because nobody blogs about how to be a better human anymore, if they ever did, just remember that we've all got two things in common: we're all going to die, and we all have no idea when. A simple concept, sure, but thinking and internalizing these things because I said it, rather than because of first-hand experience, is better, believe me. Apply both of those fundamental truths to every aspect of your day that you can.

After, watch The Tree of Life. Buy the Blu-ray, actually. Shut your phone off, put your computer in the other room, leave behind every preconceived notion about what makes a movie a movie, and just bask in it. Haven't seen anything like it in quite some time, and I don't plan on it any time soon.

Products That Deserve Exclamation Points

There's usually about a two hour gap between the time I leave work (5pm) and the time I get home from going to the gym (7pm). As an obsessive checker of Twitter, this is a scary time, as it always seems to be the case that big news comes to the surface precisely during this time when I'm unconnected from the system.

On Wednesday, October 5th, that gap was widened to about three hours. Danielle and I were trying a new recipe, and with the Yankees not on until Thursday, and after spending the past four days engrossed in baseball and football games for basically the entire night, I felt a responsibility to shower as quickly as possible, and help her get dinner ready.

After cooking and eating and cleaning up, I sat down with my MacBook Air at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Danielle was finishing up the last of the dishes (My post-dinner cleaning responsibilities include clearing the table, putting stuff back in the refrigerator, getting anything that needs to be washed to the sink, clearing out the drain board, and cleaning all cooking/eating surfaces), her back to me. For some reason, the last full-screen app I'd used was Reeder, my RSS reader. Normally, I don't like to look at Reeder before Twitter--in my head, all the links people have tweeted are "spoiled." I glanced down anyway and saw the news, repeated maybe six or seven times in a row, every recent story the same:

Steve Jobs Has Died.

--

I won't get into what followed, or the tributes, or the coverage. It's all been done to death, no pun intended. Much like the coverage of a new Apple product, the news of Steve's passing was met by an outpouring of grief, quickly followed by a negative response to the grief, and now has settled into what will most likely be the main narrative for some time, that he was an innovator, a genius, an irreplaceable piece of the American puzzle, who like the rest of us, had flaws of both character and personality.

I felt guilty at first, I'll be honest. I was stunned and upset. I'd deluded myself into thinking that his stepping-down as CEO of Apple wasn't necessarily confirmation of a worsening condition that had obviously been wearing him down over the last seven years. I'd treated his physical health the same as the lead-up to an Apple release, ignoring what was obvious and in plain-sight. I got over my guilt, accepted that I was truly saddened, and watched all the videos, read all the articles.

This was our Edison. For better or worse, Steve Jobs changed the way we approach life on a day-to-day basis. Not many people who've spent time on this planet can say that.

--

I am one of the 1,000,000 people (literally) who pre-ordered the iPhone 4S. And even though I know the phone won't be available until this Friday, I've checked my "Order Acknowledgement" email, clicked the little link to redirect me to Apple's website, just to check my order status, about fifty times since Friday.

On that page (Your Orders. clearly stated at the top in the "This is the Apple headline Font and Style" font and style), everything is either white, black, grey or blue, and what little blue there is are all hyperlinks of some sort. Bold black on a grey background says, "Preparing for Shipment." With Apple, there are five different levels of order purgatory:

We've received your order
Processing Items
Preparing for Shipment
Shipped
Complete

But for the obsessive, what do these mean? Each level has an explanation, an explanation that you can see if you hover over a little icon, a blue circle with a Play Button-esque white triangle in it, next to the bold black "Preparing for Shipment." A rectangle appears, and your order's current status is highlighted in a slightly paler shade of blue (a different shade of blue because they want to highlight it for you, but not make you think the block of text itself is clickable). Anyone familiar with iOS will recognize the rectangle as what Apple calls a "popover."

Up until yesterday, my order status was "Processing Items," which, as the popover explains, means that:

We are preparing your item(s) to ship. While your order is being prepared, we are unable to modify your order details. Once your item ships, we will email you a Shipment Notification with complete order details.

Then, maybe around 2 o'clock, I was walking past my MacBook Air, I thought to check, and I saw I'd moved up to, "Preparing for Shipment," which I immediately let Danielle know about.

Okay--actually, I sang it.

--

This morning, the word on the Internet was that people were already receiving "Shipped" emails. Some even had tracking numbers. This led to a flurry of checks on my part. As of writing this, I'm still stuck at level PFS.

A few minutes ago, for no real reason, I looked at what came next on the popover. Shipped. The explanation?

Your order has shipped! Your carrier tracking number will be updated in online Order Status and the carrier’s website within 24 hours.

What struck me when I read this was the exclamation mark. As a writer, I hate them, as 99% of the time, they're used to give emphasis because none exists to begin with. Or to spice up a Facebook status, usually in blocks of five or ten. I like to imagine that Steve Jobs wasn't too fond of them either, for similar reasons. So what was one doing in this obviously carefully crafted webpage?

I thought about how I'd just read the explanation, how I'd heard it in my mind. I thought about how I'd read it when my order finally did ship, thought about how someone who isn't as tech-minded, or literary-minded would read it. I thought about my reaction just to finding out that my order, a phone, mind you, was preparing for shipment. I thought about what my reaction would be when the phone was finally delivered, and I opened it, and used it, and started thinking about the next one, and so on.

While the realistic, rational part of my brain wants me to go in a different direction, I'd like to imagine that Steve Jobs had something to do with the placement of that exclamation point. Because that's his legacy to me. He made sure, in his too-brief time, that he created a company that paid attention to the details, to the small things.

He took the lead in creating products that deserve exclamation points, because he knew that people like me would care enough to get up at three in the morning to pre-order them. He knew that we would check the status of our order far too many times, even when we already pretty much knew what the status was.

He knew that we would be that happy -- exclamation mark happy -- when we checked, and the phone, or the computer, or the whatever, finally read: Shipped.

Time To Let The Tributes In: A review of SPIN's Newermind

Click here to download the album.

What does a tribute album hope to achieve?

If the participating artists stay faithful to the music they are paying homage to, we’ll pass the album off as boring; a bad ripoff.

If they strip the originals down to the bone and build them back up in a new way, we’ll declare the attempts heretical, disrespectful, maybe even a bad case of “trying too hard.”

Nirvana is one of those bands that, as horrible as this may sound, benefited, and benefits, from having ended quickly--a shooting star of sound. When you stop and really take a hard look at their catalog of music--basically four albums--they’ve got:

1. Bleach, the typical Indie Label release that showed glimmers of future successesm, but was still mostly raw.

2. Incesticide, the stop-gap B-Sides collection.

3. In Utero, the sometimes-underrated, sometimes classic album where they finally realized what it is they wanted to accomplish (technically their sophomore release, no less).

4. And of course, the big guy, the crossover success, the coming-out party.

I was born in 1984. Nevermind came out in 1991. I won’t even pretend to be a part of the late teen/twenty-something crowd that claims emotional ownership of the “time and place” that is attached to Nevermind. I had no idea about it (Nevermind, that is), didn’t know it existed,had never even mistakenly seen a Nirvana video on MTV. In 1991, I still thought Bryan Adams was a badass, Billy Joel was high art, and to be honest, I’m not even sure my parents had cable TV yet.

I don’t even remember how I came to hear Nirvana for the first time. I’m pretty sure it was my friend Kenny in the 6th grade, (you should check out his band Gameday Regulars. Their debut EP is extremely good.) who had the infamous “Drunken Smiley Face” Nirvana t-shirt that I was always too scared to ask my parents to buy me, because of this graphic on the back:

I eventually settled for this much-tamer t-shirt:

To put it bluntly, and for the sake of brevity, Nevermind literally changed my life, saved my life, had that effect on me that people often claim music can have. It did. I swear. I’ve listened to Nevermind, I would guess, a few hundred times in my life. Really. I know every scream, every word, every note. I know all the trivia behind it, all the inside jokes, everything. In Utero is my favorite Nirvana album, and if I had to rank them, I might even put Unplugged in New York at number two, but that’s only because Nevermind is just--on a different level.

It’s not their best record. The mixing is too slick, too radio-friendly. All the lines I thought were so ingenious, so insightful, I now know to be word mashups from poetry books, picked because they fit a melody and a theme and a tone. But every time I hear it, or even just a song from it, I’m instantly reverted back to a time and a place, one of the ultimate goals, one would believe, of great art.

So when I saw that SPIN had put Newermind together, featuring thirteen artists, the majority of which I’m not even familiar with, to cover these classic songs (again, classic not because they are the best songs ever, or even the best Nirvana songs ever, but because they are a part of something bigger), I thought:

Well, this will probably be awful.

Which is the SOP response for fans like me. Honestly, he only reason I even gave it a try is because I saw that somehow, SPIN had convinced the Meat Puppets to get involved, and that they were the ones going after “The Hit.”

Before writing this, I listened to Newermind several times--a couple of casual listens, one in-depth at home, and once while I wrote this piece, but none of the listens affected me as much as when I listened while I drove home from work, during my new commute, back to my new house, 26 years-old, soon to be 27. I couldn’t help but think about Nevermind and who I was when I first started listening to it. It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, but when I do the math, I realize--that was 15 years ago.

It’s old. I’m old. Everything in my life, and the world, has changed.

Maybe it’s time to let the tributes in.

Smells Like Teen Spirit
Performed by Meat Puppets

This was a really smart move. I’m sure the list of bands who would even want to cover one of the biggest songs of the last 30 years is short, let alone be able to pull it off, and the Meat Puppets do. It’s a fairly straightforward verison of the original, with just enough hey-we’re-doing-it-our-way spirit to accept it as worthy. The vocal strain evident in the beginning of each line of the chorus highlights just how “produced” the original was.

In Bloom
Performed by Butch Walker & The Black Widows

This is, by far, the track that most fully captures why tribute albums can be a good thing. It reminds me of a moment on some random season of Top Chef, when Grant Achatz was a judge, and the contestants had to make a dish in his style--a molecular gastronomy/playfulness/de-and-re-construction of a classic dish. One of the dishes chosen was the humble s’more. I don’t remember how whatever TC hopeful botched it, but Achatz’s breakdown of why it didn’t work was classic, something to the effect of, “Look, the whole point is to isolate the individual sensations of the s’more--the elements, beyond the ingredients, that make it A S’more. And there are three--crunchy graham cracker, melted chocolate, and burnt sugar. The rest is up to you.”

This version of In Bloom is a complete re-imagining--on the surface, it’s completely different--but the main elements are still there. I love it.

Come As You Are
Performed by Midnight Juggernauts

It’s crazy--in the first three tracks of the album, we’ve got a complete range of emotions. I’m not familiar with Midnight Juggernauts, but their decision to take a classic song, and just push it through the filter of “their” music, was a poor one. Where’s the burnt sugar? Where’s the melted chocolate? There might as well have never been an original.

Breed
Performed by Titus Andronicus

What a lot of the covers on Newermind wound up doing for me was highlighting just how good the original was. Breed is a good song--not a great one. It’s energy is the highlight, and while there’s no doubt that TA has energy, it’s just--not the same. Their lo-fi feel should pair well with Nirvana’s aesthetic, but it just winds up feeling like a rip-off, even when it’s obvious that that wasn’t the intention.

Lithium
Performed by The Vaselines

The Vaselines are another group that pops up frequently in Nirvana folklore, so it’s pretty cool that they were involved with this project. As somebody who took the leap and explored their music beyond Nirvana’s cover of Molly’s Lips, I agree fully with their (or SPIN’s?) decision to take a shot at Lithium. And it’s a success. The only way I can describe it is like some bizarro fucked-up hipster church (No, really, they exist) sermon. The plodding bass line puts even more of an emphasis on one of the better lyrical efforts on Nevermind.

Polly
Performed by Amanda Palmer

*Donning my best Aziz Ansari impersonation* If you were like, Joe, what song on a Nirvana Nevermind Tribute album would they choose to do a whisper-acoustic version of, what song would you guess, then I’d totally be like, Polly!

The banjos save this effort from its obviousness. This was a tough undertaking, as even the most cursory of Nirvana fans have already heard Nirvana do this song about three different ways.

Territorial Pissings
Performed by Surfer Blood

This is the song where you realize that Dave Grohl knows what he's doing behind the drums. The first drum roll into the chorus is really, really bad. Like, laughably bad.

Besides that, the vocals are downy soft, in a song that needs to be backed--fueled, even--by anguish, and the feedback sounds like a pre-programmed sample.

Drain You
Performed by Foxy Shazam

Drain You might be my favorite Nevermind track, so this is a tricky maneuver. No cover of it is ever going to feel “good.” That being said, the best way to go about it is probably to just go in the complete opposite direction, which is what Foxy Shazam does. The choruses work more than the verses, and the breakdown before the final chorus is missing the sonic brilliance of the original, but it’s not--terrible.

I guess.

Lounge Act
Performed by Jessica Lea Mayfield

This is an underappreciated track on the original album. The lyrics are rivaled only by “The Hit” in the random-poetry-book-couplet category. I’d even argue that the chorus is better. The harmonizing, combined with the tempo change, in the chorus was a great idea. Plus, who doesn’t love shimmery backing guitar stabs?

Stay Away
Performed by Charles Bradley & The Menahan Street Band

Yeah, well, this happened.

At least I know what the actual lyrics are now.

On A Plain
Performed by Telekinesis

Now this is a proper lo-fi cover. Intentionally shitty guitar tones. That papier-mâché drum kick feel. Perfect rendition of the chorus. I can almost see Telekinesis intentionally giving a shit about not giving a shit.

Something In The Way
Performed by JEFF The Brotherhood

I've always loved--loved--SITW, ever since reading the quote in the Michael Azzerad book that, when writing the song, KC wanted to capture “living under a bridge, dying of AIDS.”

Has there ever been more of a Seattle-in-the-early-90’s statement?

Besides the fact that there’s literally two guitar chords involved, and the “Something/In the way” bit is an unabashed ripoff of The Beatles “Something," I still love this song and always will, and in this instance, JEFF the Brotherhood just squats over it, grunts, and takes a massive shit on it. Even their blurb about it from the SPIN web page is douchey:

"The idea was to take the least heavy song on Nirvana's least heavy album and give it the JEFF treatment -- make it real doomy. That's all we know how to do!" says guitarist Jake Orrall, who, with his drummer brother Jamin, make up the Nashville duo.

Oh--the JEFF treatment.

Of course.

Endless Nameless
Performed by EMA

I go back and forth on this, SPIN’s decision to cover the “secret” track, which, future trivia answer here--my copy of Nevermind does not have. I’ve read that the initial pressing did not contain the track, but there’s no way in hell my copy is from the original pressing. Unless it is. In which case, I probably should have taken better care of it.

Anyway, as of writing this, I still kind of think it’s lame. I mean, it’s a noise jam. A joke. The fact that you wait out a sustained period of silence just to hear detuned guitars and feedback is the punch line, so to give it this treatment, like it’s part of the artifact--it comes off looking like SPIN is trying too hard (told you that would come up eventually).

I know--maybe they should have given it the JEFF treatment.

--

So, for the Nirvana fans out there, old and new, give Newermind a listen.

I mean, it's free.

And even if you hate it, it will make you want to throw on Nevermind (throw on--a reference to vinyl--probably not the best way to end this moving-forward-regarding-my-past piece), and if you’re anything like me, you'll wind up back in a time and a place that, no matter how you got there, will always be worth the visit.

"Rex Is Hot"

Think Rex Ryan is ready for the season to start?

Don't you wish your head coach was ripping his headset off over wasting a timeout during the FIRST GAME of the preseason?

You do, you can admit it.

And for what it's worth, you know you wish your starting QB looked like this:

What? He wears tight white pants for a living.

It just happens that he looks damn good while doing it.

Overdressed Pet Owners: A Review of Mac OS X Lion

Reviewing an Operating System is Impossible.
If I review the purest, out-of-the-box (the MAS, actually) form of Lion, then this review will exist in a vacuum. No one uses their OS like that.

If I review my version of it, after I've made my changes and tweaks and adjusted the seat and mirrors, then my review will be an opinion piece of the worst kind, so I'm hoping that by admitting my flawed-no-matter-what standpoint from the start, that you'll be able to actually take something from the rest.

Pretty serious shit, right?

2
With the whole OS X meets iOS thing, I thought it would be interesting to review Lion in a similar way--staring and pecking away at my MacBook Air, but thinking how I tend to think on my iOS devices.

3
I'm also paying homage, for no real reason, to Mary Robison's "Why Did I Ever," which you should read.

Factory Settings
Every time I do a clean install of an Operating System, I reinstall fewer and fewer applications. Imagine if this was a life option? The ability to go back to factory settings and rebuild from there?

I know more than a few people who could stand to have their indexes rebuilt.

New Features, Pt. 1
Two days into Lion and I had to keeping remembering to remember to use the features I wanted to use.

New Features, Pt. 2
By Day 5, it's as if I've been using them all along.

Change is the Only Constant, Pt. 1
We live in a beta culture. Nothing is ever finished, and it shouldn't be, because it never was.

How Far We've Come, Pt. 1
Remember when your cell phone didn't work? And you'd take it to your carrier's store and you'd explain the problem, and the person behind the counter would take it and come back and say, "Well, your phone has a software update, so we're going to do that."

How Far We've Come, Pt. 2
And you'd walk away saying to whoever you were with, "Yeah, a software update. Because that'll work."

How Far We've Come, Pt. 3
I haven't heard much chatter about the ridiculously simple Lion installation process. Sure, I made it harder on myself, but for the majority of the 1,000,000 people who bought it the first day? Scary simple.

You're Either The One Sawing People In Half, Or The One Getting Sawed (How Far We've Come, Pt. 4)
None of the bloggers and the gadget writers want to talk about it because the people who are reviewing Lion aren't too thrilled that people like you can update your system so easily.

If everyone knows how to pull a rabbit out of a hat, then the magicians are just overdressed pet owners.

12
Mission Control is making me realize how much money I'm spending to basically use Email, the Web, Twitter, and as RSS reader.

All of which are free.

When You're Right, You're Right
The only time "reversed" scrolling feels wrong is when I'm on my Dell at work.

Mom, Pt. 1
Launchpad isn't for those who use Spotlight or Alfred-type application launchers. But if you already use them, you already knew that.

Mom, Pt. 2
My mom will love it though.

16
Three finger swiping between desktops is my favorite feature that I didn't think I'd care about.

My suggestion: set up full screen apps, and then give your favorite apps their own desktop, and just swipe all day.

17
You could swipe your life away, although being able to name my desktops would be nice.

18
I mean the label of the desktop.

Of course I already named them.

The Customer is Always Right
Don't like disappearing scrollbars?

Systems preferences.

Don't like inverted scrolling?

System preferences.

It really is that simple.

20
Any bugs, or slowness, or unnameable desktops?

21.5
An update's coming.

Change is the Only Constant, Pt. 2 (21.5.1)
An update is always coming in Beta Culture.

Missing What You Never Knew You Had
If you do a clean install of Lion, you lose your Snow Leopard wallpaper. Not that I would be caught dead with a stock wallpaper anyway, but for those of you who care.

Sometimes A Cigar Is A Penis
Full-screen apps are not the same as an app running in a maximized window.

The Destination, The Journey, and the Stops Along The Way
One of my favorite apps, Reeder, has already been upgraded to include support for full-screen mode. Full-screen Mode is definitely the future, and not because of the fact that it overtakes the screen--the getting there, that's the future.

25
As a user of Twitter's Mac app, I'd love to see fullscreen support soon. Something similar to the iPad app.

It's funny how much time we've spent going up and down on our iPhones, and how that has translated to going from side-to-side on our iPads, and how we'll need to use both of those skills on our Macs now, almost like we've been training for this all along.

Sticking Feathers In Your Butt
I've seen a lot of comments about how to tweak Lion into acting more like Snow Leopard. If that's what you wanted, why did you upgrade?

Fables Involving Mice and Lions
Lion should come bundled with a user who comes bundled with a trackpad.

We're All Getting Old
I've seen how Versions works. I know it works. I know it will save my work, regardless of how hard I try not to. I still can't break the habit.

Yet.

The Bottom Line
For $30, Lion initially feels like a bargain. The new look, the new buttons, the new wallpaper, the new features. But considering that most of the new features still need to be built into many of the apps you use, if you stop and think about it, you're basically paying to be part of a larger beta testing group.

That's the thing, though--we don't stop and think about it, just like we spend money on tickets to magic shows, rather than on books on how to do the tricks ourselves.

And that's the beauty. That's how good Apple is. That's their trick.

Apple knows how to make $30 seems like $0.

"I Think I Dedicated My Life To This."

There's that saying, the one about sex and pizza, and how both, even if done badly, are still good.

And then there's Danielle, who calls me The Pizza Monster, because no matter what, I'll always eat (probably overeat) pizza. Doesn't matter from where, or when, I'll eat it.

We recently visited the original Frank Pepe in New Haven, so I don't know if I've still got pizza on the brain, but I saw a post on Serious Eats for the documentary The Best Thing I Ever Done, and not to be overly pun-ish, but watching this 16 min. documentary on Di Fara Pizza on Avenue J in Brooklyn, well, it's the best thing I...you get the point:

I'm telling you, if you have an appreciation for pizza, or honesty, or a life lived in pursuit of a singular dream, a nose to the grindstone (or the oven, as it may be), if you spend time wondering what the fuck is the meaning of waking up everyday, and happiness, and all that bullshit--then, I think you will really, really appreciate this 16 min. homage to what it means to do one thing and do it well.

And there are also the pearls of wisdom, straight from the mouth of Domenico DeMarco:

I think I dedicated my life to this. It's what I wanna do, you know. You must love what you do, if you no love what you do, don't do it. Some people, they say, "I hate my job." So what do they do it for, you know?

And please don't suck your teeth at what, on the surface, looks to be more of that bubble gum psychology, self-help banal-ness. The above italicized quote is the broken English credo of a man who looks down at his hands and estimates that he's made over a million pizzas, has taken one vacation in twenty years.

There's an honesty captured in The Best Thing I Ever Done that is indescribable.

You'll feel it, I promise.

Cutting Granite & Bee Hive Removal

"A face that makes you curse comprehensive nuclear disarmament."

Not posting, I know. Small things are going up at:

Not Stolen. Permanently Borrowed.

I'm tweeting with some regularity in the usual spot.

Big personal things going on, adult things, like Home Ownership and moving and painting and using spackle and compound and cutting granite and bee hive removal.

I live in the country now.

You should read The Pale King.

You should listen to The Gaslight Anthem and Odd Future and The Rolling Stones.

You should stop complaining so much and just listen.

You should buy my book.

What did Oprah say? Not goodbye, just see you in a bit?

Or was that Jesus?

Either way.

A Good Time For Great Music

So with Baseball season starting and the NHL and NBA playoffs (finally) starting and The Pale King being released (early) and a lack of Apple products (besides the iPad 2, which is a fantastic device, worth selling the first iPad for, and also doublespeak-worthy, in that is really is everything you/I loved about the first iPad, except better), and settling into reading 10 or so submissions a week for PANK Magazine, and tinkering with Whitney (actually doing a draft I called 2.1, since I made some changes, but only to three chapters), and then sending that out to some more agents, and after also deciding I needed to "finish" a new short story, I've been busy.

And with Twitter acting as an outlet for my in-the-moment snark, frustration, and literary quotes, and with Tumblr allowing me to post single pieces of media, I've realized that this blog platform falls strangely in-between--deserving of more attention, but not too much attention. Edits, but only one or two. Pictures, but not focused-on pictures.

To focus, to focus.

At the moment, there is an abundance of new music to keep me distracted, via an old favorite, a newer favorite, and an even newer favorite, all fresh offerings, and all, in my singular opinion, worthy of your time and money.

First is the latest from Atmosphere, their seventh album, The Family Sign. This is a really solid release. I've listened to it four times and each time wound up liking it more and more. It's a hearty, mature record, which, when combined with Slug's ever-increasing comfort in his own skin and something always bordering on braggadocio, makes for an interesting combination. A fuck-you-this-is-the-record-I-needed-to-make-regardless-of-what-the-me-10-years-ago-would-think vibe that I, as I go through similar life changes, can really appreciate.

This link provides a bunch of places to purchase The Family Sign from, and here's a couple of videos that have already been released of the songs She's Enough (one of my favorites) and Just For Show, respectively:





To be fair, the next two albums I haven't actually listened to yet. Just haven't had the time, but from all the reviews I've read, and historically-speaking, both are incredibly solid and again, deserve your money.

First is TV On The Radio's latest, Nine Types Of Light. There's all types of stuff to collect from this release--the album itself, iTunes-only bonus tracks, the film that accompanies all of the music on the album:



which is a just-shy-of-60-minutes never-ending music video, and don't forget the concert that they did for Letterman. Considering how good everything else TV On The Radio has ever put out is, I don't expect to be dissapointed.

Then, there's the latest release by Animal Collective artist Panda Bear, entitled Tomboy. If you don't have PB's '07 release Person Pitch, get that too. I refuse to link to PB's MySpace page, so just search for it in the iTunes store. This is next-level music that never fails to inspire me. I always want to use the word "lush" when I hear it.

And as a bonus, because I am always in a rush to go back and understand the music that came before what I think now is just the cat's meow, I've been digging through The Rolling Stones' catalog over the last two months. I have only begun to realize just how great of a band they are. Just because Let It Bleed is where I'm currently positioned, here's a tiny sliver of a sample:



If you're interested, start with the really early Stones stuff, like England's Newest Hit Makers and 12 X 5.

And as always, feel free to get at me with thoughts on my recommendations, and anything you might have.

An Open Letter to The Book Publishing Industry

Dear Book Publishing Industry,

I purchased The Fighter on DVD when it was released on Tuesday, 15 March 2011. More specifically, my wife Danielle purchased the "Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy," as it was listed, on her day off, from Target. After tax, Danielle paid $24 (rounded). Please note that this was a first day sale price. The same package is now retailing for $30.

With the rise of Netflix/Hulu/Apple TV, my DVD purchasing ways have slowed, and just in time, as the five DVD towers in my living room, which currently hold 262 DVDs, are beginning to take on a life of their own. But from time to time, I still get the urge to buy the "real" copy of a film, especially when I see the Blu-ray/DVD/Digital combo.

Why?

Well, the Blu-ray part is obvious. The Standard DVD I probably won't ever use, but the Digital Copy is where I get excited--I open the iTunes Store on my computer, plug in the little code from the card that comes packaged with the two discs, and download the file. That file can then be synced to the various iPads and iPhones and iPods that live in my home, as well as streamed to my Apple TV.

Now, I could have purchased The Fighter, via iTunes, for $20 (this price will drop over time). I also could have rented it via iTunes for $5. I could have watched that digital copy in all of the same places as the $24 physical copy, and I (Danielle) wouldn't have even had to leave the house. But I didn't want the digital copy.

Why?

I don't know, really. Sure, it's partly because I still appreciate the quality of a Blu-ray disc of a film that I enjoyed as much as The Fighter, but is that really it?

Or is it that by going with the physical combo pack, it basically feels like I'm getting three copies of the film for the cost of one?

To be fair, it's probably a combination of both.

So, BPI, why am I going on about a DVD?

I'm a huge fan of David Foster Wallace. On 15 April 2011, his unfinished novel The Pale King will be released. Pre-orders for it have been live for about a month now. I haven't pre-ordered it, though.

Why?

When I read DFW's magnum opus Infinite Jest, I read the physical copy (soft cover). All 1,079 pages of it. As I read, I kept a finger tucked in the back of the book, a placeholder for where I'd left off in the footnotes, which, if you haven't read Infinite Jest, is an essential part of the experience (there are almost 100 pages of footnotes). I'd flip forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, over and over, for the entire time it took me to finish the book, probably around two months.

As you can imagine, reading a book that weighs 1,106 grams (2 pounds, 7 ounces) in this manner is annoying, to put it mildly.

Enter the iPad.

I've read two of DFW's books on the iPad. Both contained footnotes. I was able to access them by touching a hyperlink in the text, which whisked me to the corresponding footnote in the digital "back" of the book. When I was done, I was able to press a return prompt, which took me back to (roughly) where I had left off (both ebooks had a weird quirk where if the footnote was at the top half of the page, it took me back to the previous page).

Needless to say, this made the experience that much more enjoyable, and it was much easier on the wrists.

Hopefully, you're starting to see my dilemma.

BPI, I know The Pale King contains footnotes. This alone should be enough to sway me towards pre-ordering the digital version.

But a part of me still loves the physical presence of a "real" book, especially one by one of my "Desert Island" authors, just like I still buy CDs from my Desert Island musicians, just like I still buy Blu-ray discs of my Desert Island films.

If only there were a way to combine the two urges.

If only the industry capable of this was hungry enough to realize that the winds of change are a-blowin', as iPads and Kindles and Nooks become more and more popular.

Enough of the nonsense, BPI--on 15 April 2011, why won't I be able to buy The Pale King Combo Pack?

Why?

I've tried to look at it from your aging perspective and it still doesn't make any goddamn sense. Presumably The Pale King Combo Pack would be a shrink-wrapped physical book, inside of which is a card that has three codes on it--one code for iBooks, one code for Amazon, maybe even a code for Nook users--which would allow the buyer to download the ebook of The Pale King from the virtual bookstore of their choosing.

If that doesn't work for you, this card could be inside a smaller shrink-wrapped pocket on the inside of the back cover, if you don't want to take the time (read: spend the money) to shrink wrap the book. Shit, the card could be kept at the register if you don't want to change the book at all.

And yes, BPI, it would be for "free," if by "free" you mean that the presence of this card does not increase the price.

I know, I know--tough for you to swallow.

But here's what I, the consumer, who at the age of 26 already has 4 full-sized bookcases in my one bedroom apartment, is trying to point out to you:

In the iBooks store, The Pale King costs $15, and this price will decrease over time.

In Barnes & Noble, on 15 April, after my Member Discount, I will probably pay close to $20 for the hardcover of The Pale King, and this price will increase eventually.

(And just so you know, and this isn't as fact-based as the other points here, but for the first time in a long time, I'm considering not renewing my B&N membership. Why? I don't do 100% of my book buying at B&N anymore. Not even close.)

And even after taking all of this into account, I would still gladly pay the $20 for the physical version (remember The Fighter on Blu-ray?)--but even more so if I got the ebook too.

Yes, BPI, I know what you're thinking--there's a good chance I'll still buy the hardcover version over the ebook, since I already expressed an unconscious desire to own the "real" version of an admitted favorite.

And I know what else you're thinking--why should you start giving me more product for the same amount of money?

Well, here's what it comes down to: Are you really willing to risk the $5? (Really more, because you don't profit from the B&N Member Discount.)

Better yet--are you willing to risk it for each member of the ever-dissipating group of people who think like me?

While I can't tell you for sure what I will do on 15 April, I can tell you 100% what I will not do:

Purchase both the physical copy and the ebook.

So I guess you're going to wait it out. In a way, that makes sense. No rush to judgement, and all that jazz.

But while you're waiting to see how it all shakes out, I'm going to be falling more and more for the iPad (I got the 2, BPI. So thin! So light!), and iBooks (which I recently started using on my iPhone too--you would be amazed how easy the Retina Display makes it), as well as all of the little conveniences the switch to ebooks brings to my obsessive reading life: Sick in bed? No problem. Wife asleep next to me? Who cares. Started reading on my iPhone, and want to continue reading on my iPad later? It syncs where I left off.

Cool, right?

(And I don't know if you noticed, BPI, but the iBooks catalog just got a whole lot deeper.)

Also worth noting, BPI--I never saw Winter's Bone, an Oscar contender that I absolutely loved, in the theater. I streamed a beautiful HD version of it to my Apple TV. For $5. I watched it on my 42" television, on my nice, comfortable living room couch, my wife next to me in her leather recliner.

Oh, and the new Kanye record? (I know, I know--I'm a slightly hipstery douche who still calls albums "records.") Got it it in the iTunes store. Eleven bucks. The second it was released to the public. Came with a really slick .pdf of the album artwork and all the liner notes, which I was able to check out on my 20" iMac.

This is not a letter asking you to set a precedent, BPI.

This is not a letter asking you to be the one who creates a New World Order.

I just want you to make it easier for me.

I just want to be able to justify spending more money on a less superior version of your product, because it is a product that I can't live without.

Musicians got the message.

The film industry even seems to be coming around.

Are you listening?

Sincerely,
A Reader

Backbone, or the story formerly known as The Boy

A couple of days ago, I began re-reading D.T. Max's New Yorker piece on David Foster Wallace. Someone had reposted it on 21 February, DFW's birthday.

Yesterday morning, I posted a link to the story on my Tumblr--after finishing the piece, I was enamored with this quote:

He wrote to DeLillo that he thought he knew what was missing to get his fiction moving forward: “I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.”

Coincidentally, yesterday was also the day that someone on Twitter alerted me (us) to the fact that DFW has a new story in the most recent New Yorker, and that the story is now available online. See:

Backbone

Now, if you're an Artificial Night reader, or a reader of 454 W 23rd St New York, NY 10011—2157, the story Backbone isn't new to you. As both of those hyperlinks prove, you know this story already as The Boy.

Apparently, the story has been edited, and is now officially being billed as an excerpt from The Pale King, which is due to be released on 15 April.

Being the awesome people that they are, 454 W 23rd St New York, NY 10011—2157 already has a document ready for us that highlights the additions/subtrations that make Backbone not The Boy.

It isn't a secret that DFW struggled to finish The Pale King, but the fact that Backbone--prose DFW had already written and was reading publicly in 2000--is part of the text really highlights the amount of time he spent with it.

15 April can't come soon enough.

What A Writer Thinks When They See Poorly Branded Technology

Yesterday, Apple refreshed their MacBook Pro line, taking them from drool-worthy to We’re-going-to-get-high-and-listen-to-Miles-Davis (ding! Mad Men reference!). As per the norm, I’m admitting up-front that I’m not qualified enough to espouse on the what and why behind the increased computing power (if you’re anything like me, you’d benefit much more by getting yourself a MacBook Air and/or waiting until they make MBPs more like MBAs, but that’s another blog post). Instead, what I want to do is focus on one specific new feature.

--

Thunderbolt. It’s a new technology from Intel, new to Apple products, and is used, in the most basic sense, to transfer data. Dumbing it down even further, this is what Intel, and Apple, since they’re standing behind it, hopes will eventually replace (be used in conjunction with) your USB port and/or your FireWire port. For people who use external displays, it will also used for that. Thunderbolt is actually pretty neat, as you can see in this info from 9to5 Mac:

Light Peak is significantly faster than any of the other connection technology currently on the market. For comparison, Firewire 400 is 400 Mbps, Firewire 800 is 800 Mbps, USB2 is 480 Mbps, and USB3 (which never appeared on a Mac) is 3.2 Gbps. Light Peak comes in at a whopping 10 Gbps making it close to three times faster than USB 3, and over 10 times faster than Firewire 800. Although this won’t matter too much for Mac users, Light Peak can transfer an entire Blu-Ray movie in under 30 seconds.

Now you’re probably thinking: Wait, you said Thunderbolt. What is Light Peak?

Light Peak is what Intel used as a "code-name" for now-officially-branded Thunderbolt. So I should say, Thunderbolt is Light Peak.

Enter: my frustration.

Any decent writer knows the importance of a good name. If Fight Club had been started by a guy named Gerald Stricklenbocker, rather than Tyler Durden, would it have been quite as believable as an underground boxing cult that was capable of taking over the world? Exactly. The same principle is applied in product branding. Time and time again, products with “good” names sell better than products with shitty names.

Simple. So what’s so bad about Thunderbolt?

First, what we’re talking about here is data transfer. Which we (the unassuming computing public) think of in terms of--speed. Apple’s Thunderbolt info page confirms this. With a connection like this, we use words like “time,” and “seconds,” and “over”: “I’m transferring it over USB.”

However, Thunderbolt, which appears to be a portmanteau of “Thunder” and “Lightning Bolt,”*** which is confirmed by the symbol used in the logo and on the computer:

is comprised of two words that don't help us to instantly think of speed. We've got an auditory descriptor—after all, we hear thunder, and “bolt” which does nothing to help our sense of speed, because it is a visual descriptor--we see lightning.

***It was just pointed out to me that "Thunderbolt" is actually a word:

So while it is not a portmanteau, it still doesn't make sense.

So what about what we see when we hear Thunderbolt? The logo/icon above, compounds the confusion. If it looks familiar, it should:

OK, maybe not the last one, but the first two? That’s the symbol (international?) for DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!, which I suppose could be seen as a symbol of speed (maybe? like in the TOUCH THIS AND YOU'LL DIE FAST sense?), but I’m not sure it’s got the connotation that Intel/Apple wants, even if it could. To me, it has, and always will be synonymous with—DANGER! Even Marilyn Manson thought so:

And DANGER!, or Marilyn Manson, isn't what you want people thinking of before they plug in their $1,000 external monitor, or transfer their collection of 1,600 cat pictures.

--

So Thunderbolt doesn’t sound right, and it doesn’t look right. What would work better, you ask?

How about what Intel “code-named” it?

Light Peak!

Because the data transferred over it (OH MY GOD! REMEMBER THE TIME WE DRESSED THE CAT UP LIKE A POLICE OFFICER!) moves at the speed of—light!

When you use it you get—peak performance!

If you do a Google Image search for “Light Peak,” 5 of the first 20 results include this photo:

We still need an icon, right? That image, specifically the ends of the 4 wires, each bursting with light—would be goddamn perfect. I made an (incredibly) crude drawing of it:

It’s got marketing built into it, too:


It’s not USB 2, what we use now, or USB 3, what’s coming, it’s Light Peak—it must be faster—IT’S GOT 4 WIRES!

(And I’m sure people who know way more than I do about technology are shaking their head right now, but c’mon, you know it’s true—this is how people (your mom, my mom, his mom, her mom) think.)

Maybe, as usual, I'm putting too much thought into it.

Since there aren’t even any products on the market (yet) that can take advantage of Light P—Thunderbolt technology, it is impossible to speculate how successful it will be. Maybe it will be great, after all, speed junkies will be speed junkies, regardless of the name.

But technology isn’t thought-up and marketed for/to speed junkies. They will always buy the latest and fastest. Technology and the accompanying marketing strategies are crafted very, very specifically so that your mom and my mom and his mom and her mom will have an easy-as-pie choice to make when faced with something they don't truly understand, but know they need, all while not wanting to look stupid:

2? 3? 4! Yes, 4! That’s what I need!

The technology enthusiast in me is excited for the speed Thunderbolt promises.

But the writer in me can’t ignore the possibility that Thunderbolt might turn out to be a—power outage.

Media Purge

I've posted before about my love for Instapaper (shit, I'm pretty sure I've started a post with that exact sentence). Besides using it to read long articles on my iPad/iPhone, I also use it as a staging area for ideas/inspiration for future posting--bigger issues that I can blog about, or single bits of media that I can post about on Tumblr (tumble about?).

Sometimes, I get a bit of backlog--too much cool shit at once. The internet moves at a pace that doesn't allow for one tumble (?) a day, so I'm breaking my (newish) rule and devoting a blog post to a few single bits of media, mostly because I'm tired of waiting.

First, via my good friend @ViralRobby, is:



Arcade Fire's win at the Grammys made my fucking week, so naturally, some humility is probably in order. Also worth checking out is Who Is Arcade Fire??!!?

Next, via Brian Francis, who's been introducing me to quality, thought-provoking shit since High School, is:



At 19 years old, Tyler, The Creator is about to, at the very least, change hip hop, at least for a little while. Also worth mentioning is this video:



Kanye West has already proclaimed it the video of 2011.

Next, via Daring Fireball, is:

Click to enlarge

So cool.

And last, but not least, via one of my favorite Tumblrs, 454 W 23rd St New York, NY 10011—2157, is:

Some more and less helpful things for the lucky jerk reading ‘Infinite Jest’ for the first time.

Dope.


Hope you enjoyed this media purge as much as I did.

A Review Of The Suburbs (And the suburbs)

Maybe I'm so in love with The Suburbs because it came at the perfect time in my life.

--

Arcade Fire's third studio album The Suburbs was released on 2 August 2010, a Monday. I don't think I purchased it until that Saturday, though. I remember Danielle had worked the nightshift on Friday, so when she came home with the car that Saturday morning, I drove to Best Buy and she went to sleep.

I unwrapped the packaging (the Best Buy in Hartsdale only had one of the 8 different covers, so I didn't have to make any tough choices there) in the car and put the CD on. I was familiar with the eponymous first track, as it had been released earlier that summer along with "Month Of May," the album's tenth track.

The two songs were an odd marriage, which, probably not coincidentally, are an apt description of AF's music overall--loud and soft, sweet and sour, gentle and brash. The songs were intentional though. They highlighted the fact that neither represented the album as a whole and were intent on laying the ground rules for what the extremes of the album would be.

We just didn't know that then.

--

After completing "Ready To Start," probably the album's most free-standing track, I figured I should probably drive home. By the time I'd pulled into my parking space, I'd made my way through maybe two or three more songs. It hit me that as soon as I went inside, I wouldn't be able to experience any more of what was already obviously an outstanding musical performance, as my midwife fiancée was asleep inside after spending the night delivering babies.

(I've got this thing--I don't like experiencing albums for the first time wearing headphones. I'm a sonic range guy, and no matter how good your headphones are, they will never compare to a pair of well-placed speakers.)

After spending five minutes debating sitting in the car for 50 minutes to finish the album, I went inside.

My first listen of The Suburbs was hushed--one volume notch on my computer's audio level, huddled close, following along with the lyrics, my pointer finger keeping the lines straight.

(I should, at this point, take the time to explain that in August of 2010, I was two months away from getting married, a certain amount of time that I don't remember--more than a year and a half at least--into quitting smoking, eating right, and exercising frequently, if not obsessively, and generally moving away from a mental state that could be described as precarious to stable. I'd graduated with an MFA in fiction almost two years prior and was still forcing myself to tell people I was a writer, rather than an administrative assistant. I lived--live--we live, where I work--on the Manhattanville College campus in Purchase, New York. A big zip code for not so big incomes, but for two kids from The Bronx, the quiet is deafening in all of the best ways, even if from time to time it is a bit--intimidating.)

(Out the front door of our building, maybe fifteen steps, is a field, maybe 200 yards across, until the residence halls across the way. Danielle and I, in the two ((three?)) years we've lived here, have taken to "sitting out," a practice that followed us north, the best kind of childhood nostalgia, no longer on the front stoop of our homes in the big bad crumbling definite article-preceded borough, now facing out on what is, to us, an expanse that offers--peace? Is that what it is? In the summer, and in the spring, and in the fall, we sit in our fold-up chairs and I can't speak for her, but I know that I sit and I fight the urge to say something. I feel it. I have it in my mouth, the feeling that comes right before I say--something, but then nothing comes out. And that felt wrong at first, like realizing I was grinding my teeth. I can't speak to what I'm feeling, because it is only expressed in the sounds around us, sounds that I'm sure you could guess what they are, and the feeling.)

(And there is always the sense, not that I've "made it," because making it means an ending has been reached, but that this is where I'm supposed to be right now. It takes a long time to reach that place. 26 years in my case. But when you realize that not everybody does it that quickly, and that, shit, some people never reach it at all, you take the time to inhale it and watch it and stich it into your memory and maybe smoke a cigar or two in celebration. And I could bore you with our conversations about the meaning of happiness and how it isn't about finding what it is that makes you happy, but instead, taking the time to realize that you already are happy, and making peace with the this-is-as-good-as-it-gets factor. But this was supposed to be a review of The Suburbs, and is instead becoming a review of the suburbs.)

--

So this birds-are-chirping, you-are-exactly-where-you-should-be state is where The Suburbs entered my life and promptly became the soundtrack of said life.

I took these pictures during one of our "sitting out" sessions that August, as we re-played The Suburbs again and again through our tiny cell phone speakers:

When I posted them on Twitter, I captioned them "She was shocked in the suburbs" and "He was shocked in the suburbs," paying tribute to what should be a throwaway spoken-word line in the beginning of "Month Of May," but what has remained for me as one of the defining moments of the album.

Watch Arcade Fire perform, especially tracks from The Suburbs. Tell me they aren't soaking it up, even if they're playing whatever track they're playing for the umpteenth time. They are smiling, basking in the glow of musical composition, the celebration of a time and a place.

As we watched their Grammy performance last night, Danielle said, "It just looks like they're having fun," and while she was right, I don't think she realized the depth of her comment.

Just have fun. Youth sports. Little League. Bike riding (think their stage design was a coincidence?). Simple. Nostalgia.

The mistake I made was thinking that once one manged to wrangle happiness, it would remain there, submissive. But it doesn't. Just like The Suburbs, it ebbs and flows, has loud moments and quiet moments, and eventually, ends.

But then there is the living--for those ups and downs, for those moments like at the end of their "acceptance speech" last night, which was really just Arcade Fire's Holy Shit, We Really Won? sputterings, when Win Butler said:

Thank you. We're gonna go play another song--'cause we like music.

Like somebody and a million others once said, "Just go out there and have some fun."

And then there are the words echoed on multiple songs on The Suburbs, at first triumphantly displayed, and then whispered by the end:

Sometimes I can't believe it/I'm moving past the feeling/Again

That notion--of not being able to believe in something you've already experienced, but that you know you will likely experience again--it sticks with you. The meaning changes each time, maybe because the music plays in your head, or maybe because you bring something different to it each time, but it stays.

As I said earlier, maybe I'm so in love with The Suburbs because it came at the perfect time in my life. And maybe you shouldn't trust this as a "review" of the album, because I'm obviously one biased motherfucker.

Or, maybe you should believe me.

Maybe I really was exactly where I was supposed to be.

The Conversation In The Car Park Afterwards

If you don't know who Banksy is, I'm not going to be the one to tell you. There are plenty of people out there who know way more than I do.

What I am going to tell you is to check out the documentary he made, "Exit Through The Gift Shop."

"EXIT tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. The film charts Guetta's constant documenting of his every waking moment on film, from a chance encounter with his cousin, the artist Invader, to his introduction to a host of street artists with a focus on Shepard Fairey and Banksy..."

If that's not enough to get you interested, read this All These Wonderful Things interview, which was what inspired me to post about EXIT. One of my favorite bits:

All These Wonderful Things: What do you think that you discovered about the form of documentary while making this movie and is there any correlation to your other artistic work? Were you a fan of documentary prior to making the film and, if so, what were some of your favorite films? Did any of them influence what you did on EXIT?

B: I’m from a generation for whom documentary isn’t a dirty word. It doesn’t have to mean endless shots of penguins set to classical music. Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock seemed completely punk to me. And the most punk thing of all was they brought their story undiluted to the multiplex.

Documentaries have an important role in recording culture that’s unlikely to make it into the history books. DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS was the Bill of Rights for skate culture. Having said that, my film was never going to be an authoritative history of street art. Or even an authoritative history of the selling-out of street art. We realized halfway through the edit that the ending needed to be as unresolved as possible. I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it. If we’ve done our job properly with EXIT, then the best part of the entire movie is the conversation in the car park afterwards.

The bold is my addition, included because in this writer's humble opinion, that final sentence highlights what should be the aim of every film, regardless of genre, maybe even of art in general.

Oh, and because we're a visual culture, here's EXIT's trailer:



And if you don't check out Banksy's official site, you're a fool.

Because God Loves Ugly. And Family.

So here's some good news--12 April 2011.

That is when Atmosphere will release their latest LP, "The Family Sign."

While the double EP "To All My Friends, Blood Makes the Blade Holy" filled the space since their last LP, "When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold," and it was a good effort, but not a Lucy Ford-esque EP effort, there's nothing like a proper (yup, Pitchfork, I jacked your adjective. Don't be mad though. It stuck out because I've still got Animal Kingdom slang in my head.) LP release.

This morning, Pitchfork posted an interview with Sean Daley, who already appears to be on his online media grind.

Here's one of my favorite snippets:

Pitchfork: On the last record, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, you seemed to be rapping more about people other than yourself. From what you say, this one is more about you and the people around you.

S: Lemons was an exercise for me-- I needed to see how far I could go with these eighth grade creative writing skills I got. And there are a lot of fictitious narratives on this one, too, so I don't know how to categorize it. I'm seen as the guy that creates autobiographical songs and I let people run with it. But let's be honest. If those songs were autobiographical, I would've died from, like, whiskey poisoning. So they're really my interpretations based on details. Ultimately, I'm a rapper and I have to try and make myself cooler than I actually am.

Yes.

12 April can't come soon enough.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Check out of the official Rhymesayers PR here.

The MacBook Air--Now Made With Real Air!

You say you want to know how light the new MacBook Air is?

This light:



Boom!

(Actually, maybe even obviously, this isn't real. Here's the long-winded science behind why it isn't possible. You should read it if you want to feel smart. Or dumb, depending on your situation. Otherwise, here's the spoiler, as you probably guessed: really thin fishing line.)

Still cool, right?

The King's (Real) Speech

Taking a cue from yesterday's Oscars-favorite themed post, I decided to follow-up with another video, also from Devour.

The King's Speech is a great film, even if it is somewhat predictable. It features three great performances from Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter, and highlights a story that most people aren't aware of.

As was the case yesterday, while a bunch of facts were distorted in the interest of good story-telling (never let facts get in the way of a good story), what can't be ignored is that King George VI did have a stuttering problem, a problem that is painfully evident in the following video--actual footage of King George VI delivering a speech in Scotland.

No date is given.

Micky vs. Marky

If you haven't seen The Fighter yet, put it at the top of your must-see-before-my-Oscars-pool-ballot-is-due list. Christian Bale's portrayal of Dicky Eklund is phenomenal--maybe the best performance of his career.

As is the case with most films, especially when actual sporting events are involved, and even more so in the boxing world, The Fighter is filled with slight inaccuracies and dodges and burns meant to make a really cool true story into a believable, money-making narrative tale.

Posted on Devour today, "Micky vs. Marky" is a video by Kevin B. Lee that compares the fictional fight between Micky Ward and Shea Neary against the actual footage of the real fight.

Considering this video is basically all copyright-protected content, I would suggest watching it as soon as possible, as it won't remain up on the internet for long.