10/31/2007

Let's See How Many Times I Can Use H4, Clearly The Best Subheading Size, In One Post. Alternate Title: Freestyle Blogging 2




Waters of Fairmount


On the music concrete tip, which really if you're not on..., anyways I've been trying to attune myself because a lot of not necessarily funny, sometimes it's funny, sure, but at least interesting things are constantly sonically colliding. Here are a few instances I remember well enough to recount.

So the new place that we moved into is right next to a construction site, and in particular my room is nearest it. So every morning sometime between 7:00 and 7:30 I am woken up by heavy machinery moving on rusty treads. And every morning I say to myself "that fucking Justice song." ("Waters of Nazareth)

Now I don't want to come off prejudiced against construction equipment. About a month back walking up Penn. Ave, right outside the Philadelphian, I'm listening to !!!'s "Heart of Hearts" (which by the way I think is going to be my favorite song of the year), right at that part of the chorus when the female vocals fade out ("heart of heart of heart of") and the guitars start going crazy, a fucking power saw turns on right above me and complements the guitars and drums so perfectly that I go back to my room and bang my head against the wall for the rest of the day.

Or take the time when an insomniac me went to the gym at 5:45 in the morning. Everything was so peaceful on what is usually such a frenetic walk that I could actually listen to some Panda Bear. With "I'm Not" playing, I heard these birds start to chirp, my guess would be sparrows or hummingbirds, which I think are only pedestrian singers in the bird world (hey one thing T.P.O. never claimed to know about was ornithology), but they started doing this like harmony part with the "ooh"s that was so pretty that when I finally got to the gym, which was packed (I guess there's either an insomnia bug going around or some people are just way too fucking vain), I spent the entire work out banging my head against the titty bike and crying my eyes out.

But the without doubt coolest instance of this was when I was driving back one night from I have no idea where, when what must have been an accident forced me off the crosstown express and onto Vine St. local at Broad. All the sudden into audio range came this helicopter and it landed on the roof of adjacent Hahnemann Hospital (so there are all these crazy lights going off too (concert stage efx concrete?)) at the exact moment when the guitar switches chords in The Rapture's "Love Is All."

Eureka!


I spent a large part of my recent hiatus doing some serious research, some investigative blogging if you will, and will now reveal my findings at the risk of really pissing off some people in Philly.

You may recall in my recent accounts of nights spent at Silk City descriptions of a character who wears leather pants and cut-off t-shirts, who has a $500 dollar haircut, and who obviously considers himself really good looking. I've found out that this guy goes by the letters Jhn Rdn. If you google Jhn Rdn, the first two hits are a myspace and blog for our man, in which he masks his real name, going by the pseudonym John Redden. But if you just take a look at this guy



clearly you'll see a resemblance to 80s rock icon and Philadelphia native Joan Jett. Now poring over her Wikipedia entry, you'll see that Joan appeared on the hit TV series The Highlander. Everyone knows that show only casted French people. So our man Jhn Rdn, clearly Joan Jett's son, must also be French.

Now, we've all read The Da Vinci Code and we all know that letters (in this case vowels) can be arbitrarily attributed any way we want. Who said that the understood vowels between r and d and d and n had to be e. Now the first name I can't come up with anything else, I mean I could say suppose an a came between the j and h, making this cat's first name jahn, which if you throw a macron over the a could be pronounced jane, but that'd just be ridiculous. But there's definitely something up with the last name-- clearly this guy's name isn't Redden-- Rdn only has one d. Suppose an o came between r and d and an i between d and n. That would spell out Rodin, as in Auguste Rodin, Frenchman, who spent time in Philadelphia, who in that time must have sired Joan Jett, Auguste Rodin being the only French guy besides Lafayette to ever set foot in our city. Joan Jett in turn bears Jhn Rdn, who's last consonant cluster cleverly conceals the fact that he is Auguste Rodin's grandson.

On Solecisms


To sound like a stickler, does anybody over at CityPaper give a fuck about proofreading? Ha, maybe you guys thought there were no mistakes in last week's edition. My bad. I'd gladly lend my services. I'm currently getting sixty a bag.

How Many H4s?


4

10/24/2007

T.P.O. Proudly Premiers: Pulling A Philly: That's Gay


From the T.P.O. Lexicon (1st Edition):


Philly [fil-ee]

-adjective, li-er, li-est, noun, plural -lies

-adjective

1. characteristic of that 100% raw shit; belligerently upfront and honest
2. conveying the sense of community as a derivative of the city that is known as "the city of brotherly love."
3. overly unpretentious; lacking tact and restraint; crude, crass, plebeian

-noun

1. colloquialism for a city in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. located between Washington D.C. and New York City
2. a member of an awesome baseball team
3. a blunt
4. an act so in your face it can become stifling

also -verb

1. to freak the fuck out

From the T.P.O. Thesaurus (1st Edition)


Philly

adjective

synonyms: crass, vulgar, plebian, raw, trill, rad

antonyms: patrician, New York (esp. Brooklyn), gay


I've lived in Philly my whole life, probably will too. I love my city. I love it so much that I want to try to make it better, not different, better. I love Philly (adj.). But what first won me over with the raw beauty of its honesty has recently become nauseating. Socially speaking, I remember when hipster Philly kind of got down with indie rock and brit pop and an occasional bit of disco and house and disco-house, all genres that can more than foment an atmosphere of Philly. Now it apparently needs to be relentless blog house or fucking Snoop Dogg or Spank Rock and Diplo, in other words stupid, simple, dirty, slutty Shit. I wonder when exactly our city felt a need to do a 180 from New York. Well, FUCK BALTIMORE! And even though New York will never be as honest and communal as Philly, everybody still trying to one-up everybody, there's something to be said for actual conversation, dancing, dressing up, recreational drug use, and dance floors not covered in puddles of alcohol, sweat, puke, blood, jizz and pussy jizz. Phillying is a fine line: in fitting doses it can be transcendent, but sometimes there's only so much Philly a rational human being can handle.

"That's Gay"


"What do you want to do tonight (Tuesday), Jim?" "I don't know, Ted, I kind of want to relax and watch a movie." "Jim, you're gay. I, on the other hand, am Philly. I am going to my room, breaking out the two mini strobe lights that I got at Home Depot last week, doing a couple of eight balls, putting on some Justice and thrashing against the walls for a couple of hours. I am going to haunt the dreams of the neighbors' six year old daughter. You sure you don't want in, I mean I have four or five eight balls. I could definitely spare one, you faggot." "Fuck you, Teddy, calling me gay. Let's go."

In Philly, once someone calls you gay, you're fucked-- there's been no come back that can surmount it. It has even become emblematic, a sort of badge of honor for the city, as in, "hey, we call 'em as we see 'em, and right now you're being gay." But recently, the phrase has been so overused that any utterance of it is bored and bordering on wistful. It has lost the joie de vive that constitutes a true Philly. And so, let me trump that Philly with one of my own: calling someone/thing gay has become totally gay.

The proscription is thus issued: any use of "that's gay" from this point on will be gay. "But how am I supposed to put people down now?" We should have never been about so facile a putdown, something which in itself (the putdown) is too facile for the primary definition of philly (adj.) (characteristic of the 100% raw). Because really, if someone's throwing some serious New York in your grill, and you want to be true Philly, don't call them gay, punch them in the face.

10/23/2007

T.P.O. Coming Back With Dour Dour


This Is My M.I.A. Post


Just when you may be thinking that we're done, I come correct with the following oh so strong a post and you know we still here. I thought I'd give ample time to see if someone else would pick up the torch. Allow me. Because really people this isn't dissension for its own sake, this is just truth. Strapped in? Kala isn't good, it's mediocre, and M.I.A. isn't cool, she's just Sri Lankan.

Upfront, let me deal with the record. I admit liking "Bamboo Banga", "20 Dollar", and "The Turn" especially the latter two. They are about something more than the Third World and self-proclaimed terrorism (the only thing Maya's probably ever blown up was Diplo's ego (Ohhhhhhh!)). I like hearing Maya recount her childhood and her favorite artists in "XR2". I even appreciate "Jimmy" for also not being about makeshift bombs. Musically, "Paper Planes" is the only other worthwhile cut in addition to the ones above (minus "Jimmy" of course-- a top ten worst production of the year). Is it just me, or isn't the rest of the record nothing more than a cacophony of whistles and gunshots and booty bass and at best third world repping ad nauseam and for the most part prattle?

Why all the love for Kala then? Shit I could drop no fewer than thirty records from this year that I know are better than Maya's. Why am I so worried that her record is going to be bestowed the crown of Record of The Year by the venerable Pfork, Sty, VV, etc? Could it be because things are so fucked up that the trend has become more important to an unquestioning society than the aesthetically beautiful?

M.I.A. is the epitome of the trend: Indian, hot, rapper, absurdly dressed to ex/impress, I hate America, I am woman hear me roar. You see her look and attitude beginning to run rampant among the youth in the "cultured" northeast part of our country. She's a fucking gold mine. Critical outlets such as Pitchfork, for example, who have also financially reaped the benefits of the trend, could never go against their flagship act and covergirl.

Maya and her new record produce a glib notion of cool. To me it's cool when people think that being white, dorky, into indie rock, partially prudish, not so far as conservative, but moderate, i.e. themselves, can be cool in its own way. I think it's cool when people show interest in their own canon and culture first, try to find the good in it, rather than spring for that which is other. What I am trying to say here, people, is that, if you stop and consider for a sec, I am obviously cooler than M.I.A.