SAM TOPIC V. 2: You should analyze Papa Roach's last resort video for your blog. It is one of the best examples of late '90s culture ever. [via BBM]
Let it be known that, prior to this moment, I don't believe I have ever seen this video (when it came out I was moving from Massachussetts to Portland and was TV-less and poor), so in general anything to do with late '90s Papa Roach scummy, ornery, mainstream/non-hip-hop skaterboy culture is completely lost on me. Sam is like 192 years younger than I am so he was probably rocking this song and pulling 360 kickflips while in diapers. I don't think I even know what Papa Roach sounds like. Here we go. For the sake of the First Amendment, this is the uncensored version. Also unembeddable thanks to the exasperatingly reliable folly of major record labels' youtube game.
Oh! Papa Roach is one of those rapping metal bands. Wow Sam. Wow.
Fisheye lens was apparently a requirement for late '90s videos whether they were featuring Bad Boy artists, Madonna (remember when she tried to be Bjork), or Papa Roach, apparently. Recently brought back into vogue by your boy Rik Cordero.
DISAFFECTED YOUTH IN FULL EFFECT. It is evident they are disaffected because of their sullen scowls, socially deviant hairdos, general aloneness and the fact that their dark, dank rooms are plastered top to bottom in unframed* rock posters. Sam just informed me the reason this video was censored was because there is a line about suicide. In the censored version, they bleep out "cut" and "bleeding."
Rap metal may be the worst genre of music ever (please take note, actual rappers with your hankering for shredder pedals), but I can see why pissed off kids were into it... all the moshable yelling and monster minor-key guitars seem pretty effective for channeling teen angst, as evidenced by the stadium of thrashers in "Last Resort," a song about offing oneself when the pressures of calculus and finding weed and dealing with one's parents become too great to handle. The video documents approximately the second wave of the mainstreaming of alternaculture, when a certain look no longer necessarily expressed values, only angst rooted in... what? Clinton was still in office, Lewinsky ordeal was already over. Suburban disaffection? Is Papa Roach the Richard Yates of late '90s suburban white teenagers? Wasn't the late '90s when they started prescribing Prozac like it was Sour Patch Kids. Does this video, made for folks a few years younger than the Gen Xers, represent the actual despondence and rage of a generation, or the popularization of a vague notion of despondence and rage as a visual and cultural meme? The chorus is fully singable: "NOTHING IS FINE! NOTHING'S ALL RIGHT! I WANT SOMEONE TO TELL ME I'M FINE!" According to wikipedia, which Sam recommended I check for background info, Papa Roach lead singer Jacoby Shaddix and drummer Dave Buckner "met on the Vacaville High School football field during an intense match, where the two ended up talking about music." Also according to wikipedia, one of Shaddix's favorite books is "The Power of Now." Can someone tell me if their music got less angry after he read it?
* [SIDEBAR: One time I was interviewing Josh Homme for Spin magazine and was stuck for like five hours in his suite at the W Union Square while Josh did a photo shoot with this writer for High Times and his girlfriend, who had already gotten their interview but stuck around, I think, because they were--yes--high. I will never forget the High Times writer telling me that the moment he decided to get all his rock posters framed? That's when he knew he was a man.]
clip art from Craphound
SAM TOPIC V. 1: "Oh man I want you to blog about when you worked in the comic store" [via BBM]
In mid-1999, I had just moved to Portland, Oregon from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and for a while during the transition from East to West I had a part-time employment at the excellent zine/comic store Reading Frenzy. You should definitely go there if you are ever in Portland, aka the only place on earth where the internet has not bodied fanzines as a whole (thanks largely to owner Chloe Eudaly and her ilk and tireless support of the independent publishing community), and when you go there, you should spend a fukload of money.
When I worked there, Reading Frenzy mostly sold: fanzines on commission, independent comix ("serialized graphic novels" as the NY Times would discover like 19 years later), art books, Japanese stationery, poster art by people like Art Chantry, and really cute but specific tchotchkes i.e. tiny rubber baby keychains. Every month there was an art show and I recall the idea of "teeth" being a recurring theme. The store was tiny and the days I worked were not busy but there was a small portable stereo there so I would always listen to Chloe's CD collection, which basically meant I listened to Wu-Tang and twee J-Pop. I can probably still sing every word to Takako Minekawa's Cloudly Cloud Calculator. Basically my employment involved listening to music, reading every issue of comics like Eightball and Meatcake, writing stories, sweeping, trying to draw my own comics that inevitably came out looking like Cathy, and waiting for dog-parking crusty punx or zine folk to come through and drop a dollar fifty on the new issue of Cometbus or, if they were cool, the amazing graphic design/ clip art magazine Craphound (six dollars).
One day, though. I'm like chiling listening to whatever. The sugar voice of Takako chirping about her cat in alliterations, probably. When this old grey bearded dude comes in. He's lingering for a hot minute by the Japanese porn section, where we stocked a lot of hentai with titles like "Nurse Faeries" and "Imaginary Boob Schoolgirl Hobbits" or whatever. So the store is small, I'm like three feet from this dude, and there's lots of heroin dick-flashers in PDX so whenever a random person spends an inordinate amount of time at the porn bookcase I get kind of skeptical about their motives. But after awhile dude rolls up to the counter (rolls aka takes three steps) clutching like NINE STACKS of fanzines, Japanaporn (hentai), Craphound, comics, etc. He spends eighty bucks which is like BALLING in a zine store where most of the shit goes for $0.50. He hands me his credit card and I scan it and then I look at it and IT IS FUCKING MATT GROENING. I get kinda fan-nerdy and vaguely recall saying something stupid to hide it like "How do you like Portland?" and he's like TOTALLY GREW UP HERE, IT WAS GREAT, LOVE READING FRENZY, GOING TO POWELL's NOW. THANKS GUHL. I was younger then so I felt super embarrassed for not recognizing him in the first place and uttering something stupid when I did, but then again, who can point dude out of a lineup unless he's wearing a yellow mask with spiky triangle hair and a fatsuit and saying "Doh"? I immediately called Simpsons-superfan Sean Tejaratchi (who makes Craphound) to tell him Matt G. totally just bought his magazine, and I think I quit like two months later to go be the Arts Editor of the Portland Mercury, with Sean as the Art Director.
Is this story even awesome? SAM MORE MYSTIKAL-LIKE TOPIC REQUESTS.
Tonight I dined with Samuel L. Jackson P. Hockley-Smith, aka Sam. Together we decided that, now that I have a briefish amount of time to blog before immersing myself back in the day-to-day of running a magazine, I should write at least once daily until the end of winter break about a topic he recommends. But first I must offer some context on: SAM.
Sam has recently shaved and procured a free haircut from his sister who is moonlighting in haircut school but before that, his red beard and fluffy hair framed his face like a cotton candy cloud. Those, coupled with his perhaps unhealthy penchant for flannel button downs, gave him the appearance of a young, less giant, Seattle-born-and-bred Paul Bunyon. Sam is the deputy online editor of The FADER, where he often blogs about the beach, space and other dudes with beards, and so our interactions typically unfold as follows:
Sam walks into my office
Sam: That's a nice flannel.
Me: Thanks.
Sam: Can I have it?
OR
Sam walks into my office
Sam [distressed, exasperated, unceremonious]: Ughhhhhh, Gawwwwwwwwd.
Sam's demeanor and style of dress have led to the coining of the term "Samoflauge," which refers to any fellow bearded, flannel wearing white dude, which in turn refers to the entirety of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
2.
Last summer, Sam went through a regressive rap phase where all he wanted to listen to were songs by Goodie Mob that he loved in high school. This made sense, because his specialties are A. music made by psychedelic folky hippie types [c.f. Beards] and B. rap. Hence a goodly amount of his blog posts on the FADER have involved a fantasy about being somewhere else, usually somewhere of the lifted persuasion. He also used to be sort of backpacky. Who didn't really. But it gets extreme. At some point over the summer me, Sam, and Crackymanica ended up at that one milkshake joint in Chelsea after a show at like, Hiro Ballroom, and talked for an hour about Anticon, which Crackymanica and I both wrote about around the turn of the century, and which Sam, being younger than us, street-teamed... I think?? In the interest of maintaining your idea of us as being suuuuuper coooool, I will elaborate no further. Instead. I shall offer this video of Sam's favorite Goodie Mob song:
3.
Okay. I been knowing about Beyonce's enabling alter ego Sasha Fierce since she talked about her in a, I believe, 2004 Rolling Stone interview/cover story. I thought that was awesome: I'm utterly fascinated with artistic alter egos, the psychological transformation and bravery that getting into character supposedly gives people like Bey, Mary J Blige (Brook-lyn) and particularly Mariah (Mimi), my favorite armchair Jungian analysis patient. Also, having an alter ego is so excellently diva and by diva I mean drag queen. But here she is, flaunting her Sasha Fierceness on her new album which is, with the exception of 3 songs, slightly less exciting than a stone stewing in crone's broth. I wanna ask, What is so Fierce about ballads that tiptoe emotionally around acoustic guitar. My theory is that she is suffering from Usher-style post-marriage syndrome, where you get hitched and suddenly everything is about your boo but your boo is super old so you start recording adult contemporary music so s/he can understand. No dis to Jay (mostly), this is more about Tameka. Either way this album is a giant songwriting SNAFU.
Or maybe Beyonce is using "Fierce" in the contemporary banjee inverted sense, where calling someone fierce means the exact opposite? It's possible, I'm certain that tranny in the "Single Ladies" video is the great vogue diva / choreographer Danielle Ninja. (YouTube her if you are not on my level.) Who else would link her up with a Bob Fosse routine?
So she's looking really mean on the cover of Elle. They should fire whoever did her eyebrows. But what I wanna talk about is the fact that she said her MOM had to LEAVE THE SET a couple times during the filming of Cadillac Records BECAUSE SHE WAS CURSING. AND THAT BEYONCE CURSES "MAYBE TWICE A YEAR."
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!
The worst part is I don't think she's lying. The worst part is I am quite positive Ms. Knowles is telling the truth. This is consistent with her good girl image which I don't believe is actually an image. But I'm suffering from dissociative aftershocks. SASHA FIERCE... NEVER FUCKING CURSES. I know this is very inconsequential ultimately but it hits a nerve: I have been obsessed with how Twilight's giant abstinence metaphor and the totally crazy-making sexual tension in the movie (where they don't even kiss until 3/4 of the way in) has a ridiculous hold on this country, and how I feel like, even though Obama won, the puritans may be winning this round of the culture wars. ABSTINENCE? NO CURSING? WHAT ELSE IS LEFT? PROHIBITION? I just re-watched the movie Frida and was reminded of how excellently she lived: with joy, with expression, a full glutton who drank, smoked, took lovers, cursed, did whatever she wanted and became who exactly she wanted to be. An individual, now that's fucking fierce, and I don't mean in the banjee sense. I mean it in the Webster's dictionary sense.
Beyonce, I fux w/you when you're doing shit like "Single Ladies," but Sasha Fierce with her "chilling by the fire with a glass of chardonnay got my Isotoners on" music seriously needs to fall back.
RANT / BRAIN SPEW IS OVER, GOING TO THE GYM.
Today Sam sent me one of his funny demanding declarative BBMs. This one was non sequitur to any conversation we had going prior to said message. It read: "Update your blog." and then "Write about Mystikal." I wanted to write about the war, I replied. He told me if I needed a connection, i could talk about the one Mystikal video shot in the desert. It is unembeddable because record labels do not understand that if someone embeds a video they paid for, it's like free viral marketing, and why would a record label want to get anything for free? Especially on such a useless and media-devaluing tool such as the "web."
I digress. Someone else told me that writing about the war was not the look and then when I tried to discuss it with Will, there was really nothing either of us could say about it. This may be because my dear friend Will and I are on the exact same psychic wavelength at virtually all times barring when he is watching hockey (or when he was voting Edwards), and we already intuited how the other felt. Perhaps we couldn't discuss it because words are a way of exerting a kind of power over such a situation, when the more honest response is to stew in our own helplessness. So we let there be silence.
Let's discuss this Mystikal video, because it is something we can control. First of all, dude is wearing a TURTLENECK SWEATER, suede or leather suit, skully and Timbs in the MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DESERT. This is of course hot in men's fashion in 2000 but moreso, it is a signifyer that HEAT DON'T BOTHER THE GOD. CUZ THE GOD IS ALREADY MAD HOT. The sentiment is underscored when he barks "BAD" and grabs his nutsack with his left hand. Also, this being one of Mystikal's most blatantly James Brownian (and amazing!) tracks, it recalls the fact that the Godfather perpetually wore full suits and leather botas and danced for hours and sweat his balls off but, marvelously, kept the fly little jacket on.
I want to know what went down in the video treatment pitch session. "So, Mystikal, after you land in the desert, this Pam Grier chick picks you up on a giant hog and drives you to an old house in Kansas. We know it is an abandoned house because a tumbleweed rolls by precisely when you and Pam pull up the crib. There, you perform a concert with Nivea, get into a 22-girl orgy with a nine-foot python, and just as the fly Pam chick is about to let you get it, You Wake Up! It was all a DREAM! You are simply a sucka who passed out in the desert because you are wearing copious amounts of clothing." and Mystikal's like "YEAH GREAT IDEA DUDE!"
I just found this on my desktop, it's from the mostest Taiwanese TV show "Rolling Love (Go Fried Rice)" starring my giant crush, super cute pop star/actor Jiro Wang (pictured, sitting). It resonates a bit after the week of holiday parties I've experienced.
I'm not ranking cause the Re(De)pression is the great equalizer. And it's subjective anyway. Snitches. OFF EL DOME HAT!:
"You've Changed" Lauren Flax f. Sia
"Who Dat" Young Jeezy
"My President is Black" Young Jeezy
"Bubble Like Soup '08" Timberlee
"Ex Lover" Friendly Fires
"Cold Summer" Get Em Mamis
"A Dey Hey" Detropix
the whole Abe Vigoda (band) experience
"American Boy" Estelle f. Kanye
"Money" Assassin
"Brooklyn Girls" Charles Hamilton
"Day n Night (Crookers rmx)" Kid Cudi
That CROOKERS transition sound + everything Crookers ever + that one ACDC sample thing
"Desert Storm" Gang Gang Dance
"Test" Little Dragon
"Run Run" Those Dancing Days
"Tic Toc" Busy Signal
"Family Tree" TV on the Radio
"Lollipop" Lil Wayne f. Static Major
"Freaky Freaky" Electrik Red
That one song by R Leslie that was not "Addicted" oh yeah "Diamond Girl" that was OK yo did anyone freestyle over the beat?
The whole Michna album
"Black Hollywood" Chubbie Baby
OK IM OVER IT THERE'S A GAZILLION MORE GO DL THE FADER'S "AWESOME SONGS '08" MP3
Sometimes, in my capacity as a journalist, I receive copies of albums in advance of their official release to the general public, though now that the "internet" "happened" this privilege is a lot less like sitting in the VIP booth at the club (though you should know that, as I type this, I am drinking champagne [oh oohhhh], and that the last time I drank champers it was poured for me in a glass by Damon Dash, before the bankruptcy rumors [it is entirely possible Damon Dash lost his fortune on champagne for private Jim Jones listening sessions]). Yes, I know what you're thinking: Julianne you are soooo cool. However, there are a very few certain times when I receive an album in the mail in advance and am terribly anguished because I love it so much and want to share it with everyone I know and talk about it and live with it and make up dances to it and film said dances with the VHS camcorder (I regress). And yet I cannot because A. no one else has it B. I am not a leaker on GP C. if I were a leaker it would definitely end with me in front of a Def Jam firing squad because also my name is watermarked on the album they sent me. So I'm just gonna talk about it because everyone around me is fucking sick of hearing me play these songs already anyway. It's by Electrik Red, an ensemble of four-lady badassery, and it's only an EP, and though I've heard the entire album (in Gabe's office), it's entirely more satisfying and, corporeal i guess, when you actually have something to listen to constantly and annoy the shit out of your coworkers with.
As extensively documented here ca. 2004, I grew up listening to pop R&B, freestyle, electro, and lady hip-hop, mostly because of my dance teachers who would choreograph to Salt n Pepa ("Tramp"), Nia Peeples ("Trouble"), Pebbles ("Mercedes Boy"), Nu Shooz ("Can't Wait"), Expose ("Come Go with Me") et cetera. Electrik Red's shit is generally rooted in this shit, as they clearly have a healthy Vanity 6 salivation-trigger, but occasionally their songs are also like a trancedance electro party in the stars. Stars as in This Galaxy. It was also written by The-Dream. Who is my favorite. As far as I'm concerned, Beyonce was shortchanged as hell on "Single Ladies" (which Dream wrote). She shoulda requested "Freaky Freaky," the best song ever which Dream gave to Electrik Red, the one that sounds like classic Prince if he was kicking it a lot at Magic City (boom boom), and the one I cannot stop bumping as though tomorrow is armageddon and today's my first kiss. It goes:
Now let's get freaky freaky
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
Love when that DJ play my shit, my shit
Like this, like this
I rock, I rock
My hips, My hips
(You know that I love you ba-beh)
Now let it go, now now
(You hold me down like shackles bay-beh)
I know! On the page it doesn't look like literary brilliance or um, even metaphor (never that), but like, how visceral can you get? It's also all about the cadence and the falsetto and the crunk anthemitude and the choppy synths, sex/love/sex/love jam five thousand.
I just think they're such terrific songs. You can also watch the video for their first single which is not the best song on the album by far, but every skraight dude I know gets a gigantor Madoff-debt-sized boner every time they watch this thing. It's interesting cause like, they clearly wanna kick yalls teeth in... or not?! Whatever, to bring it semi-full-circle, the choreography is banging.
Shane gets HBO Latino which is offensively titled "HBO OLÈ " and has been going on about this Mexican show "Capadocia" as long as I've known him. He describes it as the Mexican version of "Oz," another culty HBO show that set the stage for The Wire (and cast a lot of the same actors, plus that guy who plays Michael from "Lost"). So one night last week, he plied me with Mexican food from the best teeny tacqueria in Fort Greene (not bougie, but actual), got made fun of by his macho bodega dude for buying me Corona Lite, and forced me to come over and watch the first episode of this show, warning me that it is subtitled but I could probably understand most of the Spanish anyway. But that I NEEDED TO SEE IT.
Essentially it's about the institutionalized women's prison system in Mexico, which is hella gangster and run by this gigante butch lesbian with a big hairdo. There's a sideplot about these corrupt officials who want to turn the prison into a camp for free labor, and turn prisoners into workforce, thereby helping private capitalism, but increasing the prison population out of necessity (SOUND FAMILIAR?!). In the first episode there's a riot, a couple of murders, a crack addict, underground drug trade, lots of sex both hetero and homo, and a boob shot like every four minutes: total telenovela style, despite the serious theme and drama-focus. But judging by the first episode it's one of the most feminist TV shows I have ever seen (on a very short list of feminist TV shows that includes.. "Murphy Brown"? "Veronica Mars"? Umm... "Alibi"? What else?). I'll let you know more after Shane lets me come over and watch the following nineteen episodes in one day over winter break. Hint.
RIP MC Breed.
My last entry was election day... that is absurd. I didn't even report about how the streets of Brooklyn burst like a pinata that night, so much joy spilling onto the streets like cellophane candy and rattling bigger, better, prettier than the New Year. Suffice to say... I been busy running a magazine. And now, now that I have a spare ten minutes to throw down on el personal bloggo, I have yet ANOTHER dislocated limb! My index finger. On my typing hand. T, R, G, B,F and V are affected. I hurt it while trying to stop a fistfight. I know this is how River Phoenix's character was eventually stabbed to death in Stand By Me but I, like him, am a humanitarian. And, in the process of trying to stop the fight, I, wearing four-inch banana yellow Marc Jacobs pumps, was knocked to the ground and caught my finger on the end of the curb on Canal, just before the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. I kept thinking, Home: it was just across it. Being fairly gangster and also having had an NYC ER experience that I do not rightly wish to relive, I simply popped my finger back into place. It now resembles a half-eaten sausage. Conveniently, I have a lot of typing to do this weekend. Looking forward to it!
After I hurt myself, the almost-fight ceased. No dudes like to see a girl in pain. Even dudes who want to pulverize each others' faces.
Ladies and gentlemen, my bratwurst:
