Summer Mix: Part Deux

The reason I haven't posted in a while is because of this terrible school called grad school. But since I have now turned in my last paper (remember that feeling? yeahhhhhhhhhhh you do), summer is officially here, so I'm posting my response/companion to Nick's mix. Here is what will be circulating on the giant boombox I have duct taped onto my segue, as I cruise the summer streets of Cambridge:
1) "The Inspiration," Young Jeezy
This song now opens every mix tape I make. It makes me feel inspired, then ashamed at how easily my emotions are manipulated by chords, then fiscally poor, and then inspired again. What I look for in an opening jam.
2) "Walk Like and Egyptian," The Bangles:
This tune got me through some times last semester. Title says it all.
3) "Hustler Muzik," Lil' Wayne:
Makes you want to break out the silk sheets and fuck a piece of silk. And open a successful silk franchise.
4) "Will You Be There," Michael Jackson
You know when you make friends with a whale who seems cool, but you're not sure if he'll always be there for you? This song really speaks to that.
5) "Ghetto Superstar," Pras and Mya
What do you get when you cross Clinton-era non-politics, highbrow 8th grade date movies, and synethizer baby noises? Answer: a song that already felt nostalgic the day it was released.
6) "Are You That Somebody," Aaliyah
See above. And RIP, girl.
7) "Got to be Real," Mary J. Blige and Will Smith
You know when you make friends with a shark who seems cool but you're not sure if he knows how to keep it real? This song really speaks to that.
8) "Dirty Mind," Prince
Song bridges are usually letdowns, because they seem like the musical equivalent of me going "shit, this paper is three pages too short. I'll just change the font to Courier New." This is one of the few tunes I can think of where the bridge (+key change) completely ties a ribbon around it, and the present is that babe from Nick's post.
9) "I Love My Life," Cam'ron
I love your life too, Cam.
10) "Put on Your T-Storm Hats," Liz
This song only exists in my head. But I highly recommend it. Especially if your brain totally loses its shit when it sees the T-Storm icon on weather.com.

It's all a blog.

I was just thinking about political blogs and "The Daily Show" and old time political cartoons. That blog would really write itself, though. Just stew on it for a second.
My skills as a playwright of imagined histories -- though I prefer "situation creator" of imagined histories-- have really been growing lately [sound of all readers pretending like they didn't notice] so I thought I'd share with you this latest scene I wrote about hanging out with your friends during yesteryear...if one of your friends during yesteryear was an old time political cartoonist.

Political Cartoonist: Hey guys. I was just thinking: aren't taxation and tariffs almost exactly like two tiny pigs dressed in baby clothes? And what about these industrial monopolies? Could they be more a giant fat person with skinny legs and a top hat and a thousand arms?
Friends: [gales of laughter]
Political Cartoonist: And everything is well labeled!
Friends: [gales of laughter]

laughter dies down

Friend 1: On a more serious note, we have got to do something about this infant mortality rate.
Friend 2: Agreed.
Friend 3: Seriously. At the very least it's just incredibly depressing.

GOD’S SUMMER MIX 4m: Nick

Is it just me, or is the best part of summer that time when you’re out cruising a lonely highway in the dry heat of the season’s sun, you’re stopped at a red light, and a blonde babe pulls up next to you in a red convertible? Esp. the part when she looks over at you, drops her shades down and gives you that wink, and then speeds off, leavin’ you in the dust? Here’s a tip: follow her, motion for her pull over, and get her digits. Then take her on a date and make love to her.


So worth it.

Anyway, for me that’s the part of summer that really says it all. Summer is God’s blockbuster, God’s number 1 pop chart hit with a bullet. It’s the only time being in the world feels good, and I can truly believe He loves us or isn’t a huge fuck up. Remember winter? What a colossal fucking failure. One cool thing about this year’s summer is that I’m pretty sure that it’s going to last forever. Really. It’s not going to let us down this year, guys. This time it’ll be different. This time God means it. I know he’s let us down in the past, but I really feel like he’s changed. Just a guess, but sometimes you just get that feeling and you have to trust it with everything you have or could ever hope to have and bank on not ever being disappointed again. So, to celebrate God finally learning what maturity is and understanding what it means to be in a real, adult relationship (a.k.a. never-ending, pure, true, magical, constantly pleasurable and erotic love) I’ve made Him a summer jam mix CD. Here’s an EXCLUSIVE sneak peek at the track list. [Note: You’ll notice I didn’t dig very deep, but like I said, summer is about hits, and hits are the greatest because they are the best. God mostly listens to indie rock (Autumn much?) and pretty gay shit (sunsets much?), and Jack Johnson, so this is my attempt to gently coax him into realizing that Summer God is the God I likes most.]

1. “I’ve Done Everything For You ( You’ve Done Nothing for Me)” by Rick Springfield. This is just kind of a “fuck you” for the last 9 months to start things out and prove that I’m not vulnerable in any way.
2. “Country Grammar” by Nelly. Forget about it.
3. “I’ve Done Everything For You ( You’ve Done Nothing for Me)” by Rick Springfield. Just to hammer it home.
4. “(She’s Got) Legs,” by ZZ Top. Not only does this song make me want appetizers, it’s secretly got a really sexy vocal, a clandestine disco beat and insanely ripp-tawdy guitar lines that have been engineered to perfection. Give it a second listen. And who doesn’t know someone who’s got legs?
5. “Smoke Weed All Day (I’d rather be your nigger)” by Tupac. This song says everything about why God sent his angel-prophet Tupac to us and then had him die for our sins. 6. “Summertime” by R. Kelly. According to the internet this ft.s Aaliyah, but according to the internet “Crimson and Clover” is by Simon and Garfunkle and every song by a black woman is by Aretha Franklin. Anyway, this song is a pleasant reminder that summer is about kickin’ it like “Aaaayy!!! Ooohhh!! (repeat).”
7. “Summertime” by the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Essentially the exact same song.
8. “Slow Motion” by Juvenile. One other great part about summer is the non-stop bikini carwashes.
9. “Hey Lady” and “Houses of the Holy.” Thanks again for the Zep, God.
10. “Takin’ Care of Business” by BTO. When is this song ever inappropriate? A: What? I can’t hear you. I’m too busy taking care of fucking business!!!!! WOOOO!!! WoOOoOo!! Wooooo!! Woo! wo. w’…
…
…
…
WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11. “Center Field” by John Fogerty. How sexy is this one?
12. “Drive” by The Cars. Not a big fan of some asshole telling a girl he just met that he’ll be there for her more than her boyfriend, but this one is great for after the sun goes down. It’s on pretty much every mixtape ever made. I refuse to be an exception. Ever.
13. “Tonight” by Ready for the World. Also great for after the sun goes down.
14. “Bad Case of Loving You” by Robert Palmer. Nothing makes me want to play an electric guitar solo on top of a sports car driving through the desert like BCoLY (besides reader e-mails and Jamba Juice). This song is the shit. So is this album cover:

15. “Night Moves.” God actually co-wrote this. The pregnant pause before the second “waited on the thunder” gives me such a major boner it should stop acting like it doesn’t know why it always gets pregnant.

I’m ending it here. You think God will like it? He better fucking give me one back.
<3zzzzz

Add tracks in our comment section, or send me some mp3s at millennial.crier@gmail.com. This is a community, folks.

In "There. I said it." news

Suzanne Fields, at TownHall.com, is longing for the past.

"The "debates" between the current crop of presidential wannabes bear little resemblance to the stirring intellectual drama of Lincoln and Douglas, but they accurately reflect our times. Short answers to trivial questions for short attention spans. There's little opportunity for eloquence in a sound bite and it's not likely that television audiences would stay tuned if there were.

Politics is a victim of the electronic culture, just as the voter who chooses his candidate based on it. When body language becomes as important as verbal expression, when intellect is reduced to image, caricature inevitably becomes substance. In less than half a century, our culture has undergone a radical transformation in how we process information. That's the good news. The bad news is that it can only get worse. "

So am I, Suzanne.

The Millennial Crier officially endorses

this poster:


Millennial Crier FunFakz #14: After every post Liz and I quietly hug for 30-45 seconds.

People are such terrible liars

"Ok, I accidently searched for Duck Vagina on Google."

Mitt Romney: Hunk Factory

Here are Mitt Romney's top 6 myspace friends:

#1, his lovely wife Ann Romney

Music: Oldies, Norah Jones, Garth Brooks
Movies: Almost all -- but no scary ones

I find that charming.


#2 Tagg Romney

Harvard Business School '98
Music: Love it all-country, rock, 80s, 70s, you name it; especially Billy Joel, Jack Johnson

#3 Josh Romney

Harvard Business School '05
General: Surfing, waterskiing, snowskiing, reading, travelling and playing with my three children


#4 Matt Romney

Harvard Business School '03
Look out!
Music: Cake, Ozomatli, Shins, Iz, White Stripes, Beck, Coldplay, Led Zeppelin, Luna, and Bob Marley.

#5 Ben Romney

Modest med student


#6 Craig Romney

Occupation: Music Producer

They're all married.

Romney is the only presidential candidate who has his family in his top 8. It not only shows me he's really family-oriented, but it continues his (so far really effective) campaign to make me feel like a huge faggot. Every time this guy talks I feel like he's throwing me the winning pass, and just letting me soak up the glory of being a real man for one fleeting second while he jumps on the back of an eagle and goes to a Habitat work site. Now I find out the dude had 5 OTHER DUDES that could out-dude me equally well -- INSIDE HIS BALLS.

If he were the fake president in an action movie I wouldn't believe it for a second. He's too much. Put him in a wheelchair or something. I can't stand it.

Can we really imagine an American first family that looks like this?:

It'll be tough.

In the way that running for President is running for Greatest Man in America, I don't know how this guy can be beat. O, wait. It's called light-skinned black, salt-n-pepper 'round the edges, and every hope I've ever had for the future in single eye-twinkle.

If Obama loses I vote he marries Beyonce (or MJB), and they run for King and Queen of the World.

Create Your Own

In my neighborhood café today, I overheard a man place the following order:
“Can I have two slices of whole wheat bread to go?” then adding as an afterthought: “and can you put some peanut butter and some jelly on them?”
Sure.
We even have a name for that.
I have been puzzling over this for hours, and all I could come up with is that being a grown man, he was embarrassed to just order a PB&J, but his desire for one was too intense to be repressed. To this I can only say: well played, sir.

Most Powerful Images of 2007 Awards

It's that time again. Firstly, prose:
Images. Power. Mere words, or so much more than that? We may never know. They say "a picture is worth a thousand words." But then Indains say "a picture steals your soul out of your eyes." Who do you trust? If you're ashamed to answer out loud, we've added our e-mail address to the blog.
Here are the awards.

First Place:


Second Place:

Third Place:

Fourth:

I know what you're thinking. "I was struck with this image's power 30 years ago."
I was too. But then I was struck with the power of the thought "It's a shame there isn't a way to make it sepia-toned." Hello 2007, and hello power. 4th place power.


Until next year, readers "seeers."

Cruisin' for Justice

This Nation Cruise ad/concept blows my mind in the same way as that Chase Freedom ad with the technofied version of the Rolling Stones’ “I’m Free” playing in the background. My initial conclusions were: 1) words don’t have meaning; 2) neither does anything; 3) the 60s are a collective April Fools' joke, made up by our parents to play on their children, that went too far. Then I realized I am going to be buying this cruise for my parents someday, and in a strange way, the joke has come full circle.
Here’s an epilogue (or prologue??) to Nick’s “An Historical Reenactment”:
An empty room. A technofied version of “I’m Free” begins to play, alongside projected images of Iraq, Woodstock, the World Bank, and Katrina Vanden Heuvel talking about blowjobs on the Colbert Report. Liz enters, looks around, pauses, and then cautiously backs out.

Great News for Barbie Fans

The 3D printer is going to revolutionize daily life and overhaul the relationship between private and commercial spheres. Or at least, provide 24/7 access to Barbie dolls, plastic Gumby figurines, and weird plastic seashells.
The main reason I’m trying to be a professor is so I can say things to the New York Times like “In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home.” Incidentally, that professor also helped develop the 3D printer.
Here are some lines I’ve got prepared for the next time the Times needs an expert opinion:
“In the future, everyone will be constantly reading novels, studying their history and theory, and doing anything else suspiciously in line with my own professional interests.”
“In the future, everyone will drive flying cars, eat food in the form of pills, live on the moon, destroy themselves by their own military technologies, have headaches from dealing with Cosmo G. Spacely, replace real pets with gigapets, work in a bureaucratic world of cartoonishly menacing machinescapes, speak Esperanto, be fascists, have computer chips built into their brains at birth and be on TV all the time, and own a 3D printer. I’m glad you asked, New York Times.”

So Hot Right Now: Penises

This has been a great week for penises, which were coming up all over the headlines.
1) Ducks have always creeped MC out (Scrooge McD excepted), and knowing now that they are savage rapists with crazy penises is just the last piece of the puzzle.
2) This reviewer of a book about impotence proposed a gender utopia in which manhood is predicated on being good at crosswords. If our options are that or cyborgs, let's go with cyborgs.
3) Christopher Hitchens talked cryptically about his dick, and also referred to himself in the third person. And has a scary face.
4) Finally, in the LRB, Colm Toibin reviewed Ian McEwan’s penis. I heard it’s kinda ornate and affected.

An Historical Reenactment:

A Response to the Republican Presidential Candidates' Debate.

In this historical re-enactment, the part of "Nick 5-7 years ago" will be played by Charlie Romanelli
.
The part of "The General Opinion of the American Populace" will be portrayed by stage veteran Swoosie Kurtz.



SCENE 1.

Curtains open. It is 5-7 years ago. Nick's apartment. The stage is bare, save a bong, a copy of "A Lover's Discourse," and some rare T. Rex on vinyl. "Nick," dressed in freshly laundered navy blue sweatpants and a plaid long-sleeved button-up, Polo and rendered in a color pattern subtly bolder than expected, sits upon a wooden stool, real "cool and casual." Sounds of popular songs, political speeches, TV sitcoms, and police sirens blare, simultaneously, in a cacophonous, disorienting, and familiar barrage of corporate media bullshit. "The General Opinion of the American Populace," dressed in a black unitard with a tinfoil-covered cardboard box on her head that creates the illusion that she is a "talking head" on a television news program, enters stage left. Silence.

TGOotAP: Is it just me or is John McCain the only one in Washington who makes any sense? He's the only guy who isn't playing politics and is just telling it like it is. I love him. Everybody loves him. I want to hang out with him so bad it hurts. It's a shame he isn't a front runner in the Presidential campaign, because he is exactly what Washington -- what this entire country -- needs right now. He was tortured in a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp for 6 years. He is the REAL. GOD. DAMNED. DEAL.

Nick: Hold. Up. If you were tortured in Vietnam for 6 years I'm gonna venture that I cannot understand you at all. I think you should be a candidate for maybe working on dealing with that(at your own pace), some serious relaxing, and just spending as much time as possible with your family. Your psyche is, as the least I can say, radically different than that of almost everyone else in the United States, and is probably extremely fragile and/or extremely volatile. I really don't think you should be trying to run a country.

TGOotAP: YOU WILL SHUT THE FUCK UP, NICK! YOU WILL SHUT UP AND NEVER SPEAK AGAIN! (in a robot voice) This message was sponsored by corporations.

Blackout



SCENE 2.Curtains open. Present day. Silence. Silence. Both actors enter stage right and stand tall before the audience.

TGOotAP: John McCain is so clearly clinically insane that I find it unnerving to watch him speak publicly.
Nick: I told you that guy was nuts.

Each slowly removes their wig and reveals a bald head.

Nick and TGOotAP: And we both have breast cancer.


THE END

Marmaduke

Approx. 8 months ago:

Last week:

Yesterday:

Today:

Yeah, I do. Keep questioning him, assholes.
I like how time can change everything about Maramduke, and, all the same, change nothing at all. I'm just putting this out there and loving it. I invite you to love too. Always.

Porn is the new gay

Tonight, as part of CBS News's "Trapped in the Web" series we learned about Craig Gross.

Gross is a suburb-Christian youth minister with Fall Out Boy hair who tours super churches and invites suburban dads and their sons in to talk about how much they hate themselves for loving Internet porn. Nothing creepy about that. Just a room full of fathers and sons talking about how much they understand how easy it is to devote yourself to Internet porn. Gross also runs XXXChurch.com, where you find out being a young, hip Christian teen fighting a porn addiction is cool.
Analysis time: You know what? It pretty much is (cool). I don't think I'm the only one who looks at suburban Christians and sees the future. I mean, Bush was elected to lead America into the new millennium twice, and as painful as it was it made too much a sense on an abstract aesthetic/emotional level. There's something hyper-clean and flatly, cartoonishly, purely loving about mega church Christians, but they also carry with them something self-hating and psychological-repression-loving and very dirty, just below their surface, which leads me to believe they have awesome sex. Like Civil Rights era interracial sex, or student/teacher sex. The kind of psychologically twisted power-game emotional sex people fully at peace with themselves in the Liberal way can't have anymore. I'm inclined to call them on their porn-hating bluff, but I think their apparent communal obsession with Internet porn makes sense to all of us, including them, and the apparently intense presence of forums for discussion about it proves they are not only totally okay with the open secret that they love Internet porn, but that it fits in with their worldview perfectly. It's the perfect counterpoint: dirty on the surface and wholly sterile and naive just underneath. Suburb-Chrisians and Internet porn is a match made in heaven. What's the news flash, Couric?

More like lucky me

I’m excited to see “Lucky You,” partly because of Eric Bana’s explosive charisma, but mostly because my favorite movies are ones that pick a metaphor and just run with it. And if it's a metaphor that compares love to a competitive sport or hobby, it basically has me at hello.
I have a bet going on whether the last line will be “I’m all in” or “I’m royally straight for you."

More Political Funnies

Who's ready to lose sympathy for some hot political others?!! Here goes: after his recent lecture and discussion of humor and national identity at an art museum here in Minneapolis, I was talking to a "visiting philosopher" about jokes in the Middle East. He relayed this chucklefest he heard from an Afghani colleague while he was doing work in Tunisia shortly after September 11th, 2001.

A woman walks into a bathhouse and is stopped at the door by an attendant who says "You can't go in here. This bathhouse is only for men." So the woman says to him she says "Is Saddam Hussein in there?" and the attendant says "no." So she says "O, is Osama bin Ladin in there?" and the attendant says "no." So the woman walks right in!

The joke is that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin are the only real men.

And then this was one of last week's "Maramduke"s: