Stop Not Making Any Sense

David Byrne, I don’t understand you at all. Sometimes you are the best, and then other times you are the guy who gets millions of dollars to make art in a cool building and comes up with this.

When you get both hands busy on the keyboard — as anyone who comes to see the work will be allowed to do — the room roars and clatters to life, seeming to harbor an invisible band playing something written by Phillip Glass in collaboration with the Stooges, a Japanese sho virtuoso and a kitchen full of 3-year-olds with pots and ladles.

Sounds great!

No it doesn't.

And then you say things like this:

"I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down."

It’s about time. I’m sick of those professionals, always walking around with their noses in the air, acting like they know everything about everything. Stop pushing your filthy commodities on me!! Why don’t you just go back to your corporate headquarters and keep polluting the planet with your child labor corporations corporations homophobia oppression. Jerks.

I do still want to see that building though. Who wants to come with me? Afterwards maybe we can rent American Beauty and learn to open our eyes to the beauty everywhere around us. Look closer, guys. Look closer.

Pandora

Do you guys like Pandora? I made up a fun game to play with it. Here’s what you do: create the wackiest combination of “favorite artists” you can think of, and then see what logic it uses to connect them. (WARNING: things might get *pretty* wacky.)

You can also approach it as a creative writing exercise: make up a character who is practically an alien from Mars and then see what Pandora recommends to them. For instance, I made up Jordan “Tails” Sharpton the third, whose three favorite bands are P.Diddy, Fleetwood Mac, and Deathcab for Cutie. Based on this, Tails was recommended the latest single by The Kooks, because it had in common “pop rock qualities, a subtle use of vocal harmony, minor key tonality, and a distinctive male lead.” While it’s true that P.Diddy’s vocal harmonies are nothing if not subtle, you can see the beads of sweat on Pandora’s little electronic forehead trying to come up with that one. “Come on Pandora, you can do this. Just come up with some bullshit. Anything is better than nothing.”

My next character, Denise Talbots, loves Xzibit, Everlast, Harvey Danger, and the musical stylings of Jennifer Love Hewitt. When I entered that into Pandora, it started playing screeching noises and said “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because xiadidshgwbipawqjfewhi...” Then its eyes started spinning around and steam came out of its ears.

They should make a Pandora 2.0 where you enter in bands you like and it gives you your psychological profile or it tries to draw a picture of your face. In spite of the fact that this technology fails me in all the things it was intended for (when I did it the real way it literally played me a Sting song followed by an REM song. Then it called me a faggot and pushed my face in the mud), it still has so much promise as gaming technology. Please try to tap into that promise, nerds of the world. Tails is counting on you. We’re all counting on you.

" 'Sup, I know what it's like. "

That song was so real. They should have made it the theme song to The Wire.

full disclosure

I had a lot of fun with that last post

T.G.I. HIGHDAY: OBAMA INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE

Unless you've been living under A ROCK for the past few weeks, you've probably been seeing Barack Obama's face everywhere you look and turn. Though his name isn't a household name, "Space Martin Luther King" seems to be the most popular kid in school! These days. I recently visited him in his space house to find out who this asshole really is.

The Obama house


Nick: I was really "hoping" you wouldn't "change" your mind about this interview, Senator Obama.
Obama: (laughter)
N:(laughter)
O: (laughter)
N: (laughter)
O: (laughter)
N: this eye contact is intense
O: (laughing) I am so drunk


Barack, Michelle, Rudy, and Vanessa happy at home

conclusion after the jump

what I love most about Lil Wayne

1. That he's clearly going to be alive for a long time to come.
2. Relationship with Robin Thicke.
3. Artistic.
4. That he's dead.

Fairies

I love that Wolfgang Schivelbusch. Here’s part of an essay he wrote about electricity:

…at the beginning of the century, electricity and modernity were equated -- electric current was viewed as nothing less than the medium and energy source of modernity, and the industry it produced and nourished to life was still perceived as something that had little in common with the capitalist industrialism typical of the preceding period. In contrast, electricity was widely associated with the miraculous. Indeed, the fin de siècle imagined this new form of energy as the "electric fairy" that would free the industrial world from its gloomy accompaniments, creating an effortless, agreeable, and, above all, work- and exploitation-free society of pleasure. It promised redemption.

Why did people used to think that everything new was a type of fairy? Like how in the nineteenth century they called photographs “fairy pictures.” They probably also called cars “fairy wagons” and movies “fairy movies.”

Speaking of fairy movies, anybody want to go see a play?

S-N-A-P

“What is this marvelous fairy book before me?”


It’s just a newspaper. Calm down, olden times.

“What is this thrilling yet dangerous fairyland of foreign wonders?”
What are you a newborn infant? It’s just a newspaper. Take a pill. Jeez.



"Holy fucking shit! A newspaper!"

China: Playing it cool

I'm sure most of you read this in Business Week

"Because of government restrictions on the channel, most Chinese never see [CNN]. Yet it has become such a popular target that an amateur song has become a hit on the Internet entitled, "Don't Be Too CNN." As the song's refrain puts it:

"Don't believe that lies will become mottos if they are repeated a thousand times,/
What's the purpose of racking your brains to turn fraud into truth/
Don't be too CNN/
I would rather believe you were silly and innocent."

Did you know that song is actually about Dave Coullier?

Have I Got a Screenplay for You

How Bill Clinton Got His Groove Back

This was the headline when I opened the NYT website today. Can you imagine what a good sequel that would make?

In case you can’t, I wrote out the plot summary for you:

"Bill Clinton (Bill Clinton) is a very successful forty-something African-American stock broker living in San Francisco, who is persuaded by his colorful New York girlfriend Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg) to take a well deserved, first-class vacation to Kingston, Jamaica. As he soaks in the beauty of the island, he encounters a strapping young islander, Winston Shakespeare (Taye Diggs). His pursuit of Winston turns into a hot and steamy romance that forces Bill Clinton to take personal inventory of his life and try to find a balance between his desire for love and companionship, and the responsibilities of mother and corporate executive.”