My Favorite Songs of 2010

Inspired by Oprah's "Favorite Things" I present:
My Favorite Songs of 2010!

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#5 Nicki Minaj featuring Eminem - Roman's Revenge

The energy of this song is undeniable to me. The excitement builds with the unrelenting beat. As shown by the many videos on Youtube of people dancing to this song. Eminem is back to his full absurd Slim Shady mode on this song and gets downright disgusting in the lyrics.
As ridiculous as his lyrics are he does spit them with the utmost TIGHTNESS.
"Go take a flying leap of faith off a f*cking balcony before I shove a falcon wing up your fly ass"
Also nice to see Nicki finally respond to Lil Kim's constant beef over Nicki taking the mantle as best female rapper alive (no contest). Nicki splashes just a couple lines throughout her album dissing Kim, but kills the debate
"So f*ck I look like gettin back to a has been?"
Nicki also does her part for redefining gender roles :)
"I am not Jasmin I am Aladdin"


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#4 Black Dub - Ring The Alarm

Off of one of the best albums of the year, which I got exposed to thanks to my job at Barnes and Noble's CD & DVD department.
The unrelenting rhythm and flow of this song is carried along by its only lyric,
"Ring the alarm! Another sound is dying"
taken from Tenor Saw's dub hit by the same name.
It's a reference to the theory that tinnitus or ringing in your ears is the dying response of auditory neurons. As in, if you hear a ringing in your ear, it's the last time you will ever hear that note again.


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#3 Kanye West featuring Jay Z, Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross and Bon Iver - Monster

Unquestionably the best hip-hop track of 2010.
If you have any ear for rap then you've got to love the pounding beat and the A-Game brought by Kanye and Nicki. Jay Z is his usual strong self but his verse doesn't compare to Kanye's career verse ("I'm livin' in the future so the present is my past. My presence is a present, kiss my ass") or Nicki's stream of schizophrenia which helped her become the year's big breakout star. For a first class verse from Jay Z check out Drake's Light Up ("Triple entendre, don't even ask me how. Con Edison flow, I'm connected to a high power")
I can wait for the eerie video for this song which has been previewed online to finally drop.


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#2 Ray Charles - Loves Gonna Bite You Back

This track is off of an album of previously unreleased Ray Charles material that came out this year. Another cd I got to listen to because of working in Barnes and Noble music. Ray Charles singing right to my soul from beyond the grave, what more is there to say.


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#1 Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Company

This song is everything I love about music all rolled into one. The piano's rhythm is subtle yet constant, the building of instruments, the crooning of Joanna's voice during the slower movements, and then the last minute or so of the song being just a kind of tribute to the work you just heard. It's the perfect song for when you're driving, on the subway, dancing, scrapbooking or whatever you may be doing. Full disclosure, I may be biased since she's my fiancee (Tho I havn't told her that yet).
From the Youtube comments for this video:
"I think if I were to die, at the ripe old age of 19, with this song playing, it would be okay."

Crazy By Choice

I find it satisfying when I see a person walking around seemingly talking to themselves, then I think,
"Oh, they must be on a bluetooth headset or something"
Only then to realize that they are not.
They're just plain old crazy.

A throwback to the good ol' days when crazy meant crazy

This would be a good time to externalize an idea I've had ever since I moved to New York a few years ago, I call it "CBC"

Crazy By Choice

It is essentially when a person, who really has no business talking, yelling or grunting to themselves or others, partakes in such activities openly for one of two reasons.

Case 1 (less common) - The CBC desires increased attention.
One could see how acting crazy might bring you some attention, however as acting crazy attracts pretty much the last attention one would desire, this type of CBC is usually completely bonkers, longtime homeless, or some other type of undesirable who would otherwise be completely ignored save for their crazy behavior, quite a crazy paradox.

Case 2 (more common) - The CBC wants to be ignored.
This type of CBC was the reason I coined the term. Someone who just doesn't want to be bothered by the aggregation of people they are forced to interact with. While this is especially acute in the over cramped hustle and bustle of New York City, it is really the result of the alienation that permeates and eats away at our whole society in America. I first noticed it as a street canvasser in New York City where I had to attempt to make contact with everyone who passed me by on the street. While most people ignored me by pretending to be on the phone or listening to music or just too busy, the CBCs (mostly old men and women on the Upper West Side) would...well...do their CBC thang. They would rather have their fleeting correspondence be one of "okay I'm gonna leave this crazy person alone" that an actual human interaction.

To quote Kanye West "No more drugs for me, pussy and religion is all I need"
If you didn't get why that quote is relevant, maybe you're crazy and you should start acting like it!

And if I haven't driven you over the edge of madness yet, then this former A-list cast of stars singing Let It Be for Norwegian television surly will


I realize that this post may be offensive to crazy people.
If that is the case I apologize.
I myself am crazy.
And I've always been told it's okay to make fun of your own kind.
For example I can make Holocaust jokes
because my grandfather
was a Nazi

Saturday Night Live Steals My Joke!

I am an aspiring comedian.
Albiet I may not have a lot of jokes written yet, but to see one of my few jokes stolen makes me wonder. How many degrees of separation are there between me and my blog where I posted a joke a few moths ago about cooking up a Walruphuckenakecargotbleick and the writers of the heralded comedy show Saturday Night Live which made an unfunny joke in an otherwise unfunny sketch utilizing my comedic brilliance? The video of the clip starring Bobby Moynihan on the 11/20/2010 edition of Weekend Update can be seen here

If you'd like to be refreshed on my joke, a videotaped version of it from a show on 3/27/2010 can be seen at the 3:00 minute mark of the video below

(Yes I do realize that at the 4:06 mark when I said "snake" I meant "snail", which should be made more obvious by my referring to it as escargot a moment later, but this is the only recorded version of this joke and Night of The Rabbit were kind enough to offer me drinks throughout this evening)
Now part of me thinks positively: am I that tapped into the pulse of American comedy? Am I within only a few degrees of separation of the writers of Saturday Night Live? Is the fact that Bobby Moynihan seemingly unnecessarily references a "Baby Cow" far too similar to my seemingly unnecessary inclusion of a "Baby Elephant or Dwarf Elephant" in my joke a dead giveaway of theft? What is the difference between a duck?
All of these questions lead me to believe that perhaps this is a sign of my road to the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor being easier than I thought.
But then another part of me fears: Are my jokes so dumb and predictable that they can be co-opted by people I've never interacted with? Are my jokes as quasi-funny and not worth the annuls of Saturday Night Live as that sketch so clearly is? Is the premise of making a joke about an even more ridiculous version of a turducken too easy? Do Zebras have striped penises?
These questions produce fear in me about my future in comedy. But luckily my trepidations are somewhat alleviated by remembering that at the end of the day, my comedy will always have places to go for I am ridiculous...as documented by the video below

I should post-script this post by noting that while I have ridiculed Saturday Night Live for their failure to achieve peak humor in the recent years the way they have in the past, I do feel like Saturday Night Live has been VERY FUNNY the last few years. Tho this year has been a little lacking particularly because of the heights reached in the last couple of years.

Ladies LOLler Derby

I love 30 rock. It's the funniest series being made right now save for The Thick of It which is said to have another season being made soon. The writing wit of Tina Fey and impeccable character execution by the likes of Alec Baldwin Tracy Morgan and others make this weekly half hour nugget a downright LOLler derby

Tina Fey was recently awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Now there's an award to aspire for! The ceremony was LOLthazar

Watch the full episode. See more Mark Twain Prize.

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Mario Cuomo is the new Govorner of New York. And his partner the new "first lady" is Sandra Lee, a Food Network host who is probably the most ridiculous host of any such show I have ever seen.  She calls her cooking style "Semi-Homemade" which paints the picture of a Martha Stewartesque transformation of some kitchen scraps into culinary gems using only ingenuity. However Lee is a bumbling moron with the cooking sensibilities of a 16 year old girl from Dallas (offense), who ends every show with Cocktail Time a celebration of her rampant alcoholism, so her vision of "Semi-Homemade" ends up turning into forced truck stop Ghetto Fabulousness. 

Note that she is throwing a Thanksgiving party and yet she says "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year"

Oh Goodness!

Take Me Home Slow Loris!

E - no courage

What's a Meta For?

P*RG has a tradition in their canvass offices which they call "Hot Nights". A hot night is when a canvasser raises at least double their daily fundraising quota. The next morning they are recognized during the morning staff meeting and get to put some piece of construction paper cut into some themed shape with their name and fundraising total up on a fancy wall where the office's achievements are cataloged by an ever growing collage like they were in the 3rd grade.
Themes in the past have included little leaves to be put on an office tree, flames, little solar panels, rays of sunshine (F'realzies). And consistently being the most profitable office in the country, we grew and outgrew our collages fast.
One year I suggested we use this classic drawing about organizing

It worked pretty well and remained the permanent hot nights theme in our office from that point on. This is what it looked like on my last day at work

The theme caught on in P*RG offices around the country. Here's a shot of one of the IllinoisP*RG offices this summer

I think this hot nights wall is unintentionally a great metaphor for of the big flaws with the modern left:
There's the fish on the one side organizing to chase the big fish in the center that was chasing them, but hen there's ANOTHER group of organized fish on the other side also going for the big fish in the middle. They both seem equally fixated on the big fish and seemingly are ignoring each other. There seems to be no intent to work together nor to share the big fish. It seems like they're about to fight over it and most likely the big fish will get away.
And that's how a bill becomes a law.

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On another note, here is yet another amazing example of the brilliance of The Daily Show with John Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

[Get Out of There]

BLOG???
Where have you been?
Ok, lets put that behind us.
I'm going to dump off a wonderful video montage that someone made in what approaches a semblance of historical documentation.

A thousand words worth of reasons why Brooklyn is the planet.

(Adrienne/Me/Jessca(sp?))

Buggy's Last Days

We're gonna take Buggy for what very well may be his last veterinary appointment tomorrow. Just in case it is I made kabob tonight for all of us, which happens to also be the first thing both he and Tori ate in our house. I don't think they would have appreciated the awesome broccoli rabe I made tho so I didn't give them any of that.

Boy is it ever a weird pickle to deal with death.

I cannot express the degree of resentment and dislike that Tori has for Buggy right now. After being bullied around by buggy his whole life, he's now burdened by him. Buggy's near incontinence has meant sequestering for the dogs, which means Tori get's locked up too when no one's home. The general isolationism which has befallen the dogs since Buggy has gotten so sick has resulted in a lonelier world for Tori and he doesn't really understand why. But what is clear to see from their interactions is that Tori wants nothing to do with Buggy. If Buggy stomps over to the cushion or blanket Tori is sleeping on (as gracefully as a blind 18yr old dog with serious mobility issues can) he will more often than not be kept a few feet back with snarls and barking from Tori. The two of them have not shared a moment of joy or playing or anything other than quarrels in over a year since Buggy's mobility issues first arose.
And while it's clear that Tori is gonna have a more comfortable and relaxed life once Buggy is gone, and it's clear that Tori appears to feel nothing but anger and resentment towards Buggy, he's gonna miss him when he's gone.

Tori, you're gonna miss Buggy when he's gone.

Tilla Milatae Machiee

In honor of Rusted Root finally bringing some good music to Stamford's Alive @ 5, Here's Omar Ipodriguez, Vermoutha Salt and Bob E Kielbasa presenting their tribute.


*****
And Here's pretty much the greatest video ever to grace internet:

Devious Stares at my Erection

Omar Ipodriguez's tribute to Marcy Playground and their hit "Sex and Candy" (15 weeks at #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks!) soon to be played to an otherwise disaffected crowd at Stamford's Alive@5 concert.

SHPUNKEN

Upon viewing the plants episode of the fantastic nature documentary series Life by the BBC

I've come to realize not only the amazing beauty and scope of the faunal reproductive process,
But also the simple fact that the vast majority of faunal reproduction is in fact a process of:
Party A publicly displays it's pollen, or SHPUNKEN
Party C saunters over to Party A, rubs all on it's biznass, and acquires said pollen(SHPUNKEN) as detritus on it's person, or on it's party, or whathavenots
Then Party C continues in it's pollen induced haze towards Party B, whom it rubs against furiously yet with apathetic nonchalance.
As a completely unintended side effect, the SHPUNKEN originating from Party A, which Party C has rubbed on Party B, has now pollinated Party B's bidnass and has produced a sexifyed vegan, locally grown, pesticide and hormone free offspring, namely Party D!
What I'm essentially trying to express is; run this sort of natural reproductive nonsense through your mind a few times and then try and tell me that the sweet glory of reproduction is still a sensible reason to vilify gay people

Stamford, CT or NOW That's What I Call the 90's!

In honor of the Gin Blossoms and Soul Asylum playing at Stamford's Alive@5 concert series last week (which I wouldn't have been caught fatally wounded at).
My friend Omar Ipodriguez decided to record a cover of the Gin Blossoms' 1993 hit Until I fall Away (#13 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart!)


and also Soul Asylum's 1994 hit Runaway Train (Winner of the 1994 Grammy for Best Rock Song!)


I don't know why Stamford is so fond of inviting bands to come play in their summer concert series whose careers peaked in the mid-90's. This year is a little better, while Seven Mary Three and Marcy Playground will be Stamford's guests on July 1st, later weeks bring us Rusted Root, George Clinton and P-Funk, and the Beach Boys. Much better than last year's early 90's lineup of Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth, Fastball, etc.

Oh yeah, I live in Stamford now
(SHOTGUN!)

In The Kitchen - Part 1

Wasteland

An ode to giant metropolises by Dan Bern

The Credits Roll

A film by my friend Henry.

If one stops looking, one finally sees...

Put Yer Money Where Yer Moral$ Are

I finally moved my money today.

I have long wanted to ensure that my money wouldn't be used to buy the credit default swaps and dangerous derivatives that tanked the world economy, its just that what little money I had in my Bank of America account was just kind of sitting there for the last few months. Well not so much sitting there, since they just can't help but to take it as often as possible. After closing my checking account a while back so it wouldn't be bled dry by their monthly fees, I got a notice saying that my savings account was roughly $60 over drawn. Mind you I hadn't taken any money out nor put any in for months. It turns out that, while the savings account has "no fees", if you only have a savings account then you have to have at least $200 in it or suffer a monthly fee. Of course I was not told of this eventuality when I closed my checking account. So my account was sucked empty until there was nothing left, and then the fees continued until my account was overdrawn (a weird term to use since I did no "withdrawing" since late last year). Once my account was "overdrawn" they then charged me an overdraft fee and then sent me the notice I mentioned earlier. I promptly called to find out what the F was happening and since they hadn't told me about the fees I got them to close my account and send me a check for the last positive sum before it was overdrawn, $2.34. Now that I have a new job starting on monday working for The Feds I figured I'd open a new account with the Fairfield Country Federal Credit Union. And boy am I glad to do it and not be aiding and abetting the inside job that screwed over so many in the last couple years and caused such hardship the world over.
On Earth Day 2010, just a few weeks after opening up our coastlines to further drilling for oil, Obama spoke in New York City on the need for basic banking regulations.
If Obama is unable to get regulatory reform of the banking industry passed, then this is the least I can do to distance myself from these greedy bastards.

America is an angry country. We are so quick to lash out at most any "enemy" that is pointed at by our leaders or the media. If you don't believe me just check out the Tea Party.

The Teabaggers have boundless anger at being taxed by our nigger president Obama despite the fact that he has cut taxes for 95% of Americans.
Ask the families of hundreds of thousands of dead innocent Iraqi civilians if Americans are willing to lash out at a perceived threat and see what they tell you. And yet, in the face of a crisis that has wrought havoc on the world economy and the lives of most people in America everyday, most people in America are remiss to show anger towards the people responsible. As for doing some part to ruin the ordinary lives of Americans, nothing in the last 50 years has come close to doing the damage of our current economic crisis. And this is a crisis with clear villains. Very straightforward fingers to be pointed along a clearly left behind paper trail (For a not so clearly paper-trailed, yet jarring and scary example, click on the words "inside job" above). But there is little demand for these peoples' heads, little demand for accountability. Where are the people with "Don't Tread On Me" flags marching on Wall St.? Much of that is likely owed to a few key factors. Primarily, the groups we are dealing with have an incredible capacity to lobby our lawmakers and of course they have long had a foothold in our media. Take one of the biggest players in this crisis, Goldman Sachs. They are the largest campaign contributor (to BOTH parties), and you don't even want to know how many key figures in government worked for them (not least vital of which being both Obama's and Bush's treasury secretaries). But of course the most frightening fact of all is that it appears that almost all of the insane gambling that caused this crisis (click on "credit default swaps and dangerous derivatives that tanked the world economy" above) was legal!
Immoral of course, but legal.
So if Obama can't pass regulatory reform, which will surely be met by our Teabagging brethren letting out a sigh of relief in the realization of their nostalgia for a time when white presidents didn't legislate morality upon the dangerously immoral, MOVE YOUR GODDAMNED MONEY!

Jack White

A sight not seen for a decade...MY CHIN!

Also the mustache is a sight only seen for a few months of 2004, certainly never seen without the beard. I apologize for the look on my face, I was doing an impersonation of a friend of mine who I reminded myself of once I had shaved. I am truly sorry for my look of joyful astonishment.

Sometimes you eat the kid, and sometimes the kid eats you

Walruphuckenakecargotbleick

Sky Rock

I'm so blessed to have spent good time with my family and the friends I love in my short life I have met so many people I deeply care for.

Do What You Can

Last night I saw Sarah Palin on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Later that night I dreamt that I was the other guest on the show and kept replaying in my mind the meeting between us in the green room. I don't remember too much more from the dream other than at one point I smothered her to death with a pillow. Her folksy conservatism is so frightening. I picture all the fools watching her while cleaning their assault rifles with their shroud of turin replica shammies and saying how much she speaks to their values so plain spokenly. Just terrifying.
I need an amazing video of doggies to get my mind off of this.

Whew!
Now to further distance my mind, lets talk about that non-local sports team...
I hate the San Antonio Spurs.
I hate them for many reasons, not least of which is the boring dominance of Tim "The Big Fundamental" Duncan.
But I think the player who solidified my hatred of them was Bruce Bowen. Bowen will always be remembered for his "defense". And while he was tenacious in covering whatever high scoring star they put him on, I think that he crossed many a line in his time in the NBA. Bowen not only tried to stop these stars from scoring, but also seemed intent on taking them out of the game, possibly permanently. As the video below shows, Bowen was always willing to stick his foot under a player as they were coming down in the hopes of rolling the players' ankle, or kneeing someone in the balls, or what the hey, doing a leaping jump kick into a players face. And not only was he payed millions to do it, but the Spurs won 4 championships in the last decade and no one thought to maybe press assault charges against this lunatic.

And now for a third topic, I'd like to talk about Soul Plane...

Less Than Perfect Storm

In case you don't follow the news, it's snowing in the northeast US. Yes thats not only the top story, but its also pretty much taking up the ENTIRETY of all the newscasts today. As absurd as the local media can be, its really amazing that they can spend so much time covering something that they could have basically summed up with "look outside, see that foot of white stuff, well it's gonna keep coming for the rest of the day, be ready: moving on to the decade long war in the Congo that has taken over 4 million lives..."
I only watched the news because NY Governor David Patterson had just succumbed to over a year of pressure and mudslinging from his own Democratic party and announced that he would be dropping his re-election bid. After 24 minutes of snow "coverage", they spent about 33 seconds on the Patterson story before closing the show with a few minutes of recapping the previous night's Olympic results. They literally spent about 3 times as much time talking about the previous night's women's figure skating bronze medalist than they did talking about the capitulation of the Governor of New York, which had JUST HAPPENED. You know what they used to call important things that had just happened back in the good ol' days? NEWS!

Needless to say, waking up this morning the driveway had to be shoveled. My mom had to leave for work and my octogenarian strongman uncle had been out in the driveway already attempting to clean the area around my mom's car. I went out and realized that while the snow was very powdery and likely easy to scoop away, stepping on it compacted it quite effectively and made it exceedingly more difficult to shovel. My uncle had walked several times back and forth from the door to my mom's car, compacting the walkway, and then was walking circles around her car attempting to rub the ice off of the windshield with his hands, not wanting to use a tool that might scratch the windshield. I realized that I would have to immediately take over if this job was not going to continue to be made more and more difficult as he compacted more and more of the snow. Prying the shovel from him proved to be a very difficult task, as anyone familiar with the Iranian mannerism of Tarof would understand. When I did get the shovel and began working I confirmed my fears about the difficulty of shoveling the packed snow and likewise the ease of shoveling the unpacked snow. When my mom asked me to start her car and allow it to heat up I knew I had little time before the entire driveway would be marred by two lines of snow packed by the car's tires.
I'll break from this tale for a moment now.
Please enjoy the pregnant man.

One of my main concerns this year has been my health and weight. Taking a load of my fanny if you will. According to the digital scale at my mom's house I've lost 30 pounds this year, although according to the upright "doctor's office style" scale at the gym I've lost 50 pounds. While I would tend to consider a computer more fallible than the doctors office style, I don't trust the bastards at my gym as far as I can throw their 'roided up asses. I digress. I bring this up because I have found myself weighing myself often, often several times a day for no particular reason other than to see the crazy fluctuations in weight that happen throughout the day. So for some reason I had weighed myself just before heading out to shovel. And knowing I didn't have long before my mom rolled through the driveway and made my job much harder, I started shoveling like I was digging someone out of an avalanche.

I cleared the entire driveway in 10 minutes. It took me another 10 minutes just to clear the walkway which had been packed down by walking. When I came back inside dripping with sweat I weighed myself again. I had lost almost 3 pounds!
!!!!!BREAKING NEWS!!!!!
It's still snowing

Why?

While listening to a radio discussion about science and religion I found out that in the Tamil language there are 2 different words for "why?"
One references causation.
The other references purpose.

I love Dawkins' take on purpose. It's similar to his ideas on natural beauty. That is to say he is often hit with criticisms about atheism restricting his capacity for joy. If everything can be broken down and explained, then where is the joy in living? What he and I see as more accurate is that the very externalization of things like purpose and natural beauty to an Other is what threatens joy in life.
"Atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of a next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have; an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention; begs us to explore; to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity...We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here in my place outnumbers the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here: the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world."