You're The Reason For The Width Of My Smile: This Is My The Juan Maclean Post

I would really feel shitty if I didn't tell you, the internet, about something that occurred to me last night at The Juan Maclean show at JB's. It was pretty obvious that the majority of the crowd knew the show was special. But I don't think anyone had seized on why the show was so amazing, or moreover I don't know if anyone who heard what I heard last night could. I little bit of background info about myself, I was weened on jazz, bebop jazz. As good as the refrains were, bebop was all about the solos. Bebop completely seizes your attention because you have no idea what direction the musician is going to take you, what note comes next. Now you have to know the Juan's songs inside and out to catch it, but the live versions are packed with the same spontaneous improvisation of bebop jazz.

First Juan's theremin riffs were spectacular-- so happy he kept it a part of the show. Though they were minor, the riffs on oldies "Tito's Way" and "Give Me Every Little Thing" should have been greatly appreciated by those who attended prior Juan shows. They took it to another level for "You Can't Have It Both Ways" and they took it even higher for "Happy House." For what I can make of it, "Happy House" is a redemption song of sorts, a track that is very personal. Maclean and co. poured their souls into it's live rendition. They played the first eight minutes of the song note for note to perfection, and then launched all of us into space with to my best guess a ten minute jam that builded and builded and builded and builded and builded, you get the idea, and then exploded, and then cooled off and then went back up one more time for the close. Crowd and band were wiped out. Everything was given to the song and the moment. It amazes me that The Juan Maclean attempts this kind of performance so much. I couldn't imagine performing a set like that more than once a week.

Like all DFA live shows, the sound was impeccable. The lights were shitty, but at a small venue like JB's, you knew it was going to be the one downer going in. It's too easy to criticize Nancy's vocals. Listen to what she is saying and you'll understand why she's so phlegmatic. When she belted, she's no Beyonce, but she did well. Hey another idea, and i'll leave you with this: the entire DFA collective gets together with Beyonce and makes a disco record.

Akachan Ga Kawaii Deshou!!

I took 3 kids (Henry and his two Wurasian wonderfriends) out to sushi dinner tonight while their mothers were at Curriculum Night and a "Surprise Fancy Restaurant Dinner, Daddy's got to guesssss" respectively. The kids were all interested in writing me "secret messages" in my diary. None of them can read cursive. Anyways, they young, so... I handed it over.






I got specific instructions on the children's tastes.

Hey Everyone

WE STILL HERE!

We'll have some updates again soon, you know, hopefully by the end of August. You can expect posts about "Crazy" Carl "The Machine" Boccuti's legendary playoff hockey goal scoring spree. I know you must be wondering how many nicknames the guy has. The honest answer is no one knows. We've got the goods on our boy Steven Bloodbath and his crew, Philadelphianz for Strawberry Water Ice! Tagline: "They don't already have that." "Nah man, Fla-Vor-Ice." "Oh." Finally, I am currently [in my head at least] constructing my masterpiece, what surely will be the acme of my blogging career, the annihilation of Chris Wheeler.

Things I've recently been fucking with:

Scuba - A Mutual Antipathy
Deerhunter - Microcastle
Babytalk - Chance 12"
Watussi - Purple Moon 12" [especially b-side "If all we had was love"]
Mark E - Slave 1
Runaway
Force of Nature - Transmute (Still Going Rmx)
Still Going Beats in Space mix
Trus'Me Beats in Space mix
This interview with Juan Maclean

how bout that picture one more time

This Guy Was Behind Me on The Escalator

Heard on SportsCenter

M-E-S-S, Mess Mess Mess. (delivered gravely)

Taking A Big Ol' Bunny Hop Off A Short Bridge

Bunny Hop
Fairmount
3/20/08

Disgruntled with "Hip Philadelphia", I've begun to seek alternatives. When a mixture of old and new friends invited me along for The Bunny Hop, not going to lie, I was gung-ho.

9:00 P.M. I waited around for a friend to come in from out of town, so we were to meet up with the larger group. Walking over to the London, I began to have serious doubts as to what I was getting myself into. Before I go any further, for those of you not in know, the idea is: cough up ten bucks for a good cause (Leukemia), having done a "good thing", you can now act like the asshole you truly are. Ten bucks, complete exoneration. The proof that you're a good person, a set of bunny ears (Easter, baby, get it?), that if you're an ultra-confident party animal (ha) you wear all night long. Oh and then you're entitled to unlimited $3 Stellas. One sweet deal. Ok, so we turned the corner onto 24th street where some dude wearing pink bunny ears was vomiting so hard that I'd swear he vomited his soul. Farther down the block we crossed paths with two 30-something sorority girls, who interrogated us as to our lack of ears, "Where in the fuck are your ears?" "Why the fuck don't you have any ears?" "You wouldn't like it very much if you had Leukemia." What you also need to understand, that I should've pieced together more quickly, is that because of the long weekend, the vast majority of bunnies left work and headed straight to the bars, and were pretty much in the center by this time, 9:00 P.M.

9:15. We spent 10 minutes outside of the London trying to herd some of our party that had wandered off. We found out they were in Rembrandt's and we headed over there. My friend Andy and I still didn't have bunny ears. Thankfully, the only clean shirt that I had was my disco shirt, which let me just tell you the color scheme: cream, sky blue, pink, and silver, metallic silver. Well, that's bullshit, I just wanted to blow everybody away with the shirt. I left the top two buttons undone so as to display my chest hair which I'm becoming increasingly proud of. Anyway, when we got to the table where you donate the 10 dollars, I informed the young lady tending it that I wasn't going to make a donation. She took one look at my disco shirt and decided it best not to hassle me. We made our way upstairs and I instantly was pained by the memory of $5 beers. Btw, do you know that when you buy a case of Lager in New Jersey, the price per bottle comes to 66.6 cents? Wrap your head around that the next time you think you're getting a deal paying three dollars a bottle at The Barbary. You should by now be able to predict the moral of the story: the best place to get drunk and enjoy the company of friends is in someone's house/apartment, not a Fairmount bar.

10:45. After only an hour and half of receiving disapproving looks for my shirt and lack of bunny ears, after observing a couple alternating between making out and fighting, after not being able to talk with all of my friends because the bar was too packed, no place to sit or stand, after having two girls expect me to let them in the bathroom ahead of me after I waited 10 minutes in line because two girls going to the bathroom together is apparently hot, or something, after hearing one dude tell another dude about how he was fucking some girl doggy style when his roommate walks in and he tells his roommate to whip his dick out, that this girl's a freak, and how she starts to suck his (the roommate's) dick and then bang both of them, I had had enough, and called it a night. The Bunny Hop Woo-Hoo! Yeah! I was the guy on the mat.

He Told Me I was his Best Friend Today, also

Henry had a playdate with his friend Jake today.  I sat the two boys down for a rice, roasted chicken and broccoli dinner.  Henry found a wishbone in his chicken and explained what is was to Jake.  Jake won the bigger piece, to his delight.  

"I wish-" 

"No!  Jake, you have to say the wish to yourself or else it won't come true," Henry warned him.

Jake bowed his head and closed his eyes.  He whispered, "I wish Batman was real."

Maybe I Am Gay

Even though I'm like the one to the left


"A month after I'm supposed to care, it's still kind of unbelievable to me how little NYC disco made it into Zach's poll or the other one...

... I really hope Antony Hegarty is enough of a hook here to backdoor increasingly uptight indie rock circles--who I couldn't care less whether they actually liked the record, just that they know it would be a good look if they did...

... but the point is this album is very lush, very (for lack of a better word) expensive-sounding, just so enormous, made to play the Big Room, made for a time when records like "Blind" did in fact play those Big Rooms...

... Right now those Big Rooms are, EMI assumes, only in the EU and UK, which (from what I understand) might be why EMI still hasn't figured out a US release for H&LA. It makes sense as a European dance-pop act, but US pop has hip-hop and dancerock on the mind..." -- Nick on the new Hercules And Love Affair record

By now I think you know what I would have to say about the H&LA record, if not, then it would basically go: "This will be my absolute favorite record of the year." And it will be. So, instead, I'm going to latch on to something posed by Nick and focus it on my own locality. Why does Philadelphia so abhor NYC disco?

For our time New York City is the Center of the World, both financially and culturally. Envy follows such status. Hating on NYC may be a universal sentiment, but believe me, it is particularly strong in a city, which for some unfathomable reason detests being labelled "The Sixth Borough". As if we deserve such lofty praise. By so fervently attempting to establish a unique identity my city has actually ruined any chance of doing just that.

How do you vituperate the axis of the world, Philadelphia? You condemn it as pretentious and smart and expensive and gay. I have already said enough about the gay thing here, and I can't believe more hasn't been made out of it, not that I expected anything, but really, having such a large gay population, we should be ashamed about it. The expensive thing, you can't hack it in New York, the pretentious and smart stuff, you're too stupid and insecure for it, city of mine.

All of the disco acts and tracks that Nick cites in his post are extremely prententious sounding, true, but they overcome it by being very very good. All the arguments I've heard against New York disco in Philadelphia, and this comes from the very top of our hipster food chain, basically condemn it as "dorky and gay", "pussy shit", "faggot music." Well, if that's what you want to call the new Hercules And Love Affair record, Philadelphia, can you please shove your dick up my virgin ass?

The one word that I really want to focus on is "dork". Most hipsters were probably at some time in their lives dorks, most likely in school years. After school, with complete freedom to choose friends and form cliques, hipsters isolate themselves. So insulated, they gain a false confidence, and all too quickly forget the hardships they endured, the fact that they were, almost in a sense innately, dorks. They become like all the jocks and cool kids before them, circumspect and insecure, overly concerned about their appearance. They don't dare to "dork" out on a dance floor. They live on the knife's edge. Philadelphia hipster dance clubs are SO stale at this point-- NYC disco almost entirely absent from everyone's rotation. Consequently, nothing spontaneous or FUNNY ever happens on the floor. The same people talk to each other over and over about how good they look and whether they were able to get tickets to the Cobra Starship show. Most hipsters, at least from what I've experienced personally, currently, in Philadelphia, are actually hypocrites.

Why bring all this up? The survival of NYC disco is at stake. "Blind" hatred is suffocating it. Hercules And Love Affair does not at present have a US release! What place other than Philadelphia, if we could finally smarten up and dissolve our prejudice, could better boost NYC disco? Which brings me to the close. Right now I can think of only three others in the city that truly love the record. Two of us four are Broadzilla DJs. Let's start to set things right, Philly, tonight.

It's On!

Choose sides. Right now. Either you're with us or you're against us. And if you're against us, we're not fucking around anymore. We're out for blood. You've been warned.

I fully endorse the Todd Burns Pazz and Jop essay. I think the point Todd's trying really hard to make is that with the emergence of acts like Justice (and let's face facts, they're going to be around for a while) there's a NEED to differentiate between "true, balls-to-bone dance" music and pop (which I'm defining as on the one side of the spectrum Hilary Duff [has anyone else listened to "With Love"? That song was almost something] to Metallica/Linkin Park on the other) you can dance to. I also think you're an idiot if you think that Todd doesn't think it's possible for good dance pop to exist. The guy listed Miss Diamond To You as his favorite record of the year.

"Dance" music, however, is all about prolonged builds, builds that elicit a bacchic and physical response other than fist pumping. I think what Todd's trying to say is that the survival of "dance" music, e.g. Dinosaur L's "Kiss Me Again" to Reese & Santonio "How To Play Our Music" to Villalobos is being threatened by the need-for-immediate-consumption society we live in. Which brings me to drugs-- drugs seem to me the mechanism driving Justice's success-- "yo dude, when you do twenty lines of cocaine, you have to listen to this." Has anyone gone to a Justice show sober? That would be the true test. What's really in control, the music or the drugs? That's my thing about drugs: are they really setting you free? Maybe up to a certain point, but then they just become another type of control. Hey, I just finished Brave New World. Reading a lot into it, I think Todd also might be worried that it's the drugs. What Justice really try to do is will themselves on the listener-- all of the songs start out so aggressively. How can you not feel the violence, the intrusion, if you're not already numb? I don't think it's a sentiment at all, Mr. Wilkes, but an entire lack thereof.

It makes me again turn to LCD Soundsystem's "Yeah" (Pretentious). When I listen to that track, I hear James Murphy putting in time to get his audience to freak out. Moreover, I think he's requiring us to put in our time. Your string must be stretched to its limit. I wholly believe the first ten minutes of the song are the ten most schizo minutes in all of music, you're ready to burst, and when the acid line comes in at the end, it's there for only twenty seconds, not 5 minutes. If it's done right, that's all the acid it takes. I'm never going to do cocaine because I don't have to-- how can it possibly be any different from listening to this song?

But I digress. It all comes down to the music. Chris and I have been talking a lot recently about how so much of the music produced these days will be going along just fine and then will fall completely flat on its face. Lots of Justice songs do just that. Thinking about it, it's indicative of the fact that it's too easy to make a record these days, that people who really don't know what they're doing make music, and way too much of it. It's all too forced. These people don't care about making good records, mostly because, like DJCB says in the post linked in the sidebar, no bloggers/critics blast music anymore, I'm talking about the Forkcast section in particular, which endorses everybody who coughs up the goods that keep the section going, but also Fluxblog. Just keep belting out the catchiness, we'll come up the words to back it somehow. Just crank out the music. Liking something because of its marketability is a bad idea, and it scares the shit out of me because it seems like we have become such consumers, especially of music, since most of us are getting it for free, that everything has a market. Well, we at TPO still love to hate fuck Capitalism, it's just absurd that with the way things now are, it appears that the best way to do it would be to stop listening to everything, to stop reading Pitchfork and Fluxblog and support financially only those bands you've chosen to truly love. Oh yes, the battle lines have been drawn!

Gone, But Not Forgotten

Into playlists again.

Eh? (Disc 1)
Eh? (Disc 2)

Made this one for the New Year's Eve trip to the shore with Crazy Carl. (A few changes have been made, dude. You know why.) The mix strives for universality, as you'll hear-- I can think of only one major personal conceit on it. Song titles have been changed to maintain the surprise factor. I'm sure you all can figure most of them out, well I hope so, because I'm not doing a tracklist. Would love some feedback.





I'm almost caught up on music. A few things I belatedly enjoyed from 2007:

Ame - Fiori
Baby Oliver - Shot Caller
Discemi - Data Sapiens (Radio Slave Rmx) [I know I've already talked about how much I like the track, but I like it a lot more than his Deetron remix everybody jizzes over. But that new Partial Arts one...]
Black Dice - Load Blown (Can't believe I didn't make time to hear this last year.)
Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
M&E - R&B Drunkie
Optimo - Walkabout
Melchior Productions Ltd. -No Disco Future

De A-Sides: Man Man is this really good band from Philly. But let me get serious. The record has moments, just too few of them, and you can hear the urge to just make a record / art, which probably is really just an urge to be in a band, be considered cool, get laid. So many of the songs turn into Fountains of Wayne rips, and, believe me, that's an accurate description. The guy who was my ride to high school loved that fucking band. Fountains of Wayne will always be a 5.7. But the review did kind of suck. Misuse of "fey", or a correct use of the 4th most common usage? No good. And how in the sweet everlasting love of fuck can you call The A-Sides "orch-pop"?

I'm liking the new Excepter record Debt Dept., and even with releases from The Juan Maclean and Hercules & Love Affair looming, the Atlas Sound record will enamor me for the rest of the year. In terms of tracks, obviously, "Blind" and "Happy House."

Every now and then my dad discovers some bizarre and seemingly irrelevant record that is absolutely amazing. Recently, he asked me home to do him the favor of putting a few records onto my old iPod, one of which was the original score to an obscure film, The Mission. Turns out to be Ennio Morricone, and absolutely one of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful pieces of music I've ever listened to.

One more thing on the music topic. I don't know what's going on with Peedi Crakk, but the fact that he doesn't have hundreds of mixtapes available exclusively to the Philadelphia market pisses me off.

Vonnegut's Slapstick struck me as a kind of masterpiece, supremely fluid and funny.

I love Dashiell Hammett. His prose is truly elegant and his dialogue slick. Everything is precise, efficient, plausible, purposeful, real, and altogether human, which makes it very hard to put his stuff down. He tells the best stories.

This is definitely the last post I'm ever going to force.





I ask you, readers, why doesn't anything happen in Philadelphia? I leave you the charge, city. As for us, it's like a very wise man from SJP once said, "Expect Less." He's now a serious Muay Thai kickboxer.

Our Alycia Lane Coverage

Now that she won't be getting any money shawty's like an 8 tops

I know what you might be thinking: "T.P.O. why are you always so behind on your coverage? This Alycia Lane thing went stale a week ago." Well, excuse me for being too busy fucking. Do you even know how hard it is fucking these glamorous bitches? I'm getting paid for it, too. And what about that Wikipedia? Those Kurt Vonnegut, Ghostface Killah, Spaghetti Western, La Boheme and soup articles-- off the magnet! Do you people know that on Saturday night I was at the same party as a guy who knows Bobby Dabolt? Have you heard the new Herc & Love - "Hercules Theme?" Ten steps behind, Baltimore. Suck my dick!

Pulling a Philly what? Alycia who? I got Tim Tebow's girlfriend emailing me, son! I'll see you motherfuckers in 2008, "The Year of the Don." ©

Dance, Punk, Dance!

Um...


Over the last two years many genres have competed for the hipster dance crown. Disco has made a real comeback, and I have to say that of all the contenders, it's the one that I like best. You can make jokes with disco dance moves and I like that. It also doesn't eschew the word and concept "hipster", which is becoming the new hip, btw, the eschewing. Nothing sleazes things up more than Baltimore house music. It only incites gratuitous grinding with girls, and, as I used to be a fat kid, I still don't feel confident enough to grab some smoking hot girl from behind and rub my dick (and not yet forgotten fupa) all up in her butt crack. There' s also this stuff popularly known as blog house, which sounds more like "power saw fart" house to me. The stuff has become really popular this year, and never wanting to be considered insular (most of the stuff comes from Europe, which btw apparently means infallible in hipster), I gave p.s.f. house a shot.

A Sunday night, at the Trocadero, in my hometown of Philadelphia. This act, Justice, which is p.s.f. house's flagship, was playing live. Man, did some weird shit go down at that show. These guys walked onto the stage wearing robot masks, no robot suits. Instead, they sported altar boy cassocks. The room was almost pitch black. All the sudden, this gigantic cross lit up at the back of the stage and the entire crowd fell to its knees and these really metallic synthesizers began to crescendo and the crowd started to recite the "Our Father" over and over, increasing in volume with the synths.

The robotic acolytes then jumped off the stage and began to administer Communion, which I immediately noticed tasted nothing like the body of Christ. I said, "Hey!, robotic acolytes, this tastes nothing like the body of Christ!". To which the taller one replied (in a robot voice), "Yea, but it is, my son. The Catholic church has been telling you lies your whole life. When Jesus Christ our Lord died he wasn't buried, but rather cremated. His ashes were spread over the entire earth by a mighty hurricane. In the year 909 in what is today Columbia, South America, a farmer named Jesus found some of Jesus' ashes, but he didn't know Them and so being a poor, hungry farmer, he [Jesus] consumed Them and received great feelings of euphoria. Today, you may know the ashes of Jesus by the slang name of cocaine. That's the Communion you've just eaten. That feeling in your heart, that uncontrollable throbbing, that's the everlasting life kicking in." As soon as he finished, this 4/4 bass beat kicked in, and the crowd started to chant, and I saw ten guys having missionary sex with ten girls upon this huge neon altar that appeared out of nowhere on the middle of the stage.

After that, I wanted nothing more to do with hipsters and their p.s.f. house. Funny thing, when I regained my sanity and could resume downloading music, I stumbled across this record, Myth Takes, by the !!!. In spots the record was chintzy, but it does contain two really great songs, "Must Be The Moon" and "Heart of Hearts." After doing some research, I found out that people termed this type of music "dance punk" and that it was the epitome of hipster culture from 2000-2004, and that any attempt at it outside of that time has been universally panned. I found a wealth of really great tunes from the era from bands like The Rapture and !!! (I've listened to "Me and Giuliani..." upwards of 50 times this year.) and Out Hud and the DFA and LCD Soundsystem before they went Funk, and Liars before they got Serious. All awesome dance tunes that made you dance in the most Bacchanalian of ways, made you forget the pretensions of prior hipster generations. Now, for some reason unbeknownst to me, it's sacrilege for a hipster DJ to play one of these songs in the clubs.

In today's hipster scenescape you can't be an out of the closet dance punk. In the time of p.s.f. house, what are we, hipsters, but innate dancers too, who don't want to partake in bizarre religious cocaine orgies, to do? Standing around as if petrified or jumping up and down or wrestling isn't dancing, people. It's like the singer from The Rapture says on that one song, "People don't dance no more, they just stand and pump their fists..." We have NYC Disco, sure, but without dance punk to what do we now lose our shit? Can we even lose our shit anymore, or has our shit already lost us?

My first two records from 2008:

Yeah.

The name Atlas Sound has stuck in my head ever since I first heard it. I found out recently that it is derived from the brand of tape player that Bradford Cox used as a child to make his first recordings. But before that, in my efforts to parse it, I had gotten to thinking that Cox is a man who has upheld a ponderous burden but looks upon the world without malice or jaundice. He is someone on whose shoulders the earth as a whole might weigh heavily, as an outgrowth of what one could call an unfortunate lot, if one were to put stock in that sort of thing. Yet he keeps his mind occupied with wonder and genius, and makes these unbelievable records, so even if this sound is the Atlas sound, Cox is Atlas sound. Unbowed.

Maybe I'm a dildo and he didn't mean for the name to evoke any of that. The point is, I invite you to try to name a person as rad as Bradford Cox right now, and to get in an argument with me about it, and lose. I can't review the record quite yet, but I am going to.

I really like Black Mountain, too.

Interview Week: DJ Khaled

T.P.O.: I want to start by saying what an honor this is for me. DJ Khaled, I think you're the best.

DJK: Listennn! This isn't about me. It's about we: me, you, Fat Joe,



T.I.,



Ross,



Kells,



Jeezy,



50,



Pavarotti,



Donald Driver, Eva Gabor, George Bush, Mariah Carey, Trina, Trick, ZZ Top, Queen Latifah, Plies, Cheesy, Leonard Nimoy-- I don't give a fuck. Man, "We the best!"



T.P.O.: I don't know. I think you're better than all those guys, DJ Khaled.

DJK: I don't want any more of this shit, so let me make myself clear. "Listennn!" "We the best!" And that's all there is to it.



T.P.O.: JHN RDN?

DJK:



T.P.O.: Even Diplo?

DJK:




T.P.O.: Okay. Okay. Sorry, DJ Khaled. We at T.P.O. love you so much. We got you this little token of our appreciation. Here, it's in this "brooowwwnnn paaaaaaaaaper baaaaaaaaag! brooowwwnnn paaaaaaaaaper baaaaaaaaag!"

DJK: "Listennn!" Thanks.

T.P.O.: You're so welcome. Hey, DJ Khaled, I'm kind of confused again. Who's the best?

DJK: We!

T.P.O.: Who?

DJK: "We the best!"

T.P.O.: "Haha!"

DJK: You're starting to get it, JS.

T.P.O.: "A! A! Shawty is da shit! Shawty is a 10! A! A!"

DJK: Now, who's the best, JS?

T.P.O.: We.

DJK: Who?

T.P.O.: We. "We the best!" Man, I never thought I could learn so much from an interview. Thanks, DJ Khaled.

DJK: My pleasure, man. I'm out.

Interview Week: Capitalist Rock Stars!

Today's interview features two stars of the indie and crossover charts. They're part of a growing contingent of music personalities who are biting the bullet and facing the facts of the American music industry, breaking through on the radio, charts and even licensing music to chain stores for use in advertisements, causing much consternation among their indie fans. We have agreed to identify them only by their initials, so that they might speak freely.

T.P.O.: Guys, pleasure to have you. So there's this debate about whether or not each of your bands have sold out for success, obviously. Something about your new records, or career path, or tone, or something, really seems to have shifted, and some people are unhappy. What is so different now? What is it in your old...

IB: I know I'm still not going to fucking talk to any dickhead reporters about any fucking old records. Talk to me about the shit I do now, the shit that made me a multimillionaire.

KB: My older records are a panoply of ecclesiastical carnivals. They were made by a young man who was intent on walling up his Oresteian frenulum in a rocky Alcatraz, you know? I don't want to dwell on times when I worried every day if I was insane. Forgive me, Buenos Aires, but I don't have your Agamemnon.

T.P.O.: It's fine. I'll move on, no problem. So, K----, you seem to be newly converted to, shall I say, a frontier mentality with regard to not only the music business but life itself, society itself. Is that right?

KB: Yeah, I think there are two types of people in this world, those who decide to kill, and those who decide to be killed, by deciding to alienate themselves from the system. There are those who handle all the cocks and get them stuck up their asses are the ones who fail to figure out the workings of it. The fascists who spend their time hating capitalism are the ones who get killed out in the wild. I just got sick of being fucked by the giant dicks and kept isolated in the wilderness in hiding from menacing cocks.

IB: I mean, I grew up on the West Coast but I just want to make sure I say I don't really agree that it's necessary to handle dudes' dicks, necessarily, in the first place. So I can't, like, say I agree with K---- on all of that, but yeah. You are either the predator or the prey. You figure it out and do it or you lose.

KB: Well, it's just the image, but I think that it's, if you want to try to constrain your male sensuality, well, I don't know if you've ever read The Fountainhead...

T.P.O.: Well let me ask, I----, your point all along has been that you can't argue with success. What has been different for you since you became a breakout success?

IB: Now, if I wanted to, I could fuck any girl on any college campus in the U.S.? I'm kidding, of course. I love where I'm at right now. You know what they say. Go ahead and switch the style up. I used to think "fuck the world, fuck these people." Now it's more "fuck everybody who doubted me." I am in a great place, and my music takes people to a good place.

KB: I made a Asklepius Ascending the Venusian Bluff of myself and came out with these records that some people loved so much. But I was always upset that I didn't have any savings. I realized how much I envied those who had a lot of money in the bank and didn't have to worry about that. The truth is, the only truly happy people are the ones with all kinds of extraneous money to spend on whatever they want. I decided no longer to try to pull the ultimate balancing act. I was tired of trying to suck the dicks and then cut them off, so to speak. I decided to allow myself to become commercialized, and not to remain confused and isolated on the paranoid perimeter... Pericles...

T.P.O.: It's like there is a new you, a totally different shift in attitude. Both of you seem to be really getting away from the reputations you'd acquired in your early careers.

KB: And that's because it is an inevitable thing. Everybody gets jealous of a life of wealth and economic success. People thought I was insane, like, I was diagnosed with psychological problems. I thought my life was over. I wasn't getting a lot of what I wanted. The desire for wealth, like, to pass along to your children, to buy nice things for yourself and others, it's a universal human trait, and you can't feel bad about it. Money is and always will be the most important thing. End of story. And rich guys don't have, like, women thinking or saying that they are psychotic and weird. Or any of that.

IB: Yeah, people used to tell me I sounded lonely. I had bad posture and shit. Now, it's like, if you just saw all these beautiful girls trying to grab on me at every show. And of course I am with someone, so it's all just so absurd. Sometimes it is hard to even fucking get away from people who want to hang out with me. I play rugby with one of the local leagues, incognito, like, I just run around try to truck people, like I'm the man, not some kind of scrub. I carry myself straight and wear a watch. I walk into a bar like I own the place and then I only have one drink.

T.P.O.: And both you guys have really been helped by cutting down on the partying and taking antidepressants, am I right?

KB: Yeah, all the time, it's the only way for me to keep from being bitter about having to tone myself down and think about simple things, such as success. Surprisingly... see, I find myself doing things like alliterations, in my head, it's like my mind is wandering away. Probably to start thinking of what someone else wants from me, what someone would prefer that I do. But I can't let it. I need my mind to be focused on me, getting me what I want, doing what I have to do. That is what you call maturity.

IB: Stop asking me about drinking. I'm past that. Yeah, I used to agonize over metaphors. Until they were just so. Like I really worried about making sense to all the people who listened to my music, getting across to them. You know what? Now that I take some medications to calm me down, I don't have to think so hard, I can relax and let it come to me. If I happen to thinking of a ship I'm going to write about something nautical, or water. Fuck what people want to hear me say. Let's say I want to talk about the ocean, or crabs and scallops. People will respond to it, because we make great rock music that sounds good to them, and they like hearing it on the radio. Everything should be this easy.

T.P.O.: So I assume you guys had your idols in the rock world. Now you guys are, to some degree, rock stars yourselves. Do you still have idols?

KB: Back in the day I would have said something about, like, David Bowie. But David Bowie lives in a tax shelter. The social order is capitalism, and it is beautiful, and it's important that we show respect for it. Artists and fans alike. You as an artist have to be an adult, and so do your fans. So I identify myself now with all artists who are fiscally responsible, really, not just Bowie. And the great artists who believe in American capitalism more than in pleasing some unappreciative hypercritical losers. Gene Simmons is a great guy.

IB: My answer was always The Pixies, or The Smiths. And it just so happens that now I have J---- M--- in my band, and K-- D--- texted me one time and said if I ever wanted to get together she was down, I don't know if she meant to fuck or to make a record or what. So I don't have idols anymore so much as people I admire as distinguished peers. My ship sails fast. There are no holes. In the hull! And that's ALL! RIGHT! BY! ME! You see what I mean. And think about that with two drummers.

TPO: So, this question is for both you guys, if there was one thing you could say to the fans who have been complaining that your old records were better, you used to have more to say, and so on.

KB: History is fleeting buffet of Pompeiian parquetry. Some people try to tell me that my lyrics suck now that I have decided to be as honest as I want. They can tell me that I've become blunt and tiresome since I decided I had to grow up and face the facts. They'll never know how awful it is when people think you are bizarre. I used to be so hard to get along with, when I was sucking the twin freakish cocks of alienation and confusion and trying to stab the ones that would have made me happy, the time-honored kind of dicks our parents used to suck. And to anyone who says I have blown my load, just wait until you see what I'm cooking up for my next release.

IB: I'm different now. I don't try to have grudges and problems with people anymore. My music isn't about condemning shit. Life is much better when you don't think about things bothering you. If you're always checking for leaks, you will have nightmares about taking on water, and wake up with an inch of water in the lifeboats.

T.P.O: Thanks again, guys, for your time. It's been great.

T.P.O. Presents Interview Week! Today: Donovan McNabb (A.K.A. 5)

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This week T.P.O. will run some interviews that we were able to get with some of our favorite people. Today, it's Eagles QB Donovan McNabb. Stay tuned later in the week for interviews with DJ Khaled, Diplo, and maybe even a few others.
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Following the Eagles stunning upset of the point spread last night, T.P.O. caught up with Donovan McNabb for his thoughts.

T.P.O.: Donovan, thanks for taking the time for the interview.

McNabb: Call me 5, man.

T.P.O.: 5?

5: 5, because I'm a quintuple threat. I pass. I run. I make plays. I design clothes (Super 5). I speak for corporations (Campbell's Chunky Soups, AirTran).

T.P.O.: I see. You don't rap?

5: Funny you should ask. Me and my boys Kanye, Chi town connect, you know, and ?uestlove have got something planned for next year.

T.P.O.: That'd make you a sextuple threat. You'd have to change your number and your clothing line. Should I start calling you 6?

5: Nah man. For now, I'm still 5. But when the right time comes, I'm willing to make the change. I also hope to get into movies.

T.P.O.: Horror?

5: Exactly.

T.P.O.: That'd be a good look for you, I think. Plus that'd make you a septuple threat and I could call you "7, that lucky number."

5: I like the way you think around here.

T.P.O.: Well, I like your style too, 5. "We the best!"

5: Man, I feel you!

T.P.O.: What would you rap about?

5: Well, actually some heavy stuff, like haters. Everybody's always hatin' on 5. White people and black people. Everything I do, it's hate. And yet I've had nothing but love for everyone. That's why Kanye's producing it, man. The beats have got to be strong, like me.

T.P.O.: Well, I like Kanye beats, but it sounds like you'd be hatin' on the haters and I think that, according to guys like Lil' Wayne and even Kanye West, you're just supposed to let your money pile up, let the haters hate.

5: But if we let the haters hate then how are we ever going to make a positive difference? That's where I think I have a unique perspective. After all the hate I've endured, my faith has kept me strong. That's the message the record's going to send.

T.P.O: We understand that you sat out tonight's game with thumb and ankle injuries. How are you feeling?

5: Better. There's still some swelling in both areas. But I think I'll be ready for next week's game.

T.P.O.: Hmmm. Your thumb doesn't look swollen to me, but I'm not a doctor. What do you think of AJ's performance tonight?

5: Well, AJ threw three interceptions. They really brought his rating down. I mean 83.9 and what am I at 84.7? That pretty much sums things up. Now maybe all the Philly fans will understand why I fumble so much.

T.P.O.: But what about the 350 passing yards? What about coming back from an early interception? What about 3 touchdown passes?

5: What about AJ not being the play maker that I am, especially at the end of the game, when things matter most? What about the two interceptions he threw at the end?

T.P.O.: Whoa, big guy, relax. You're right. Feeley admits the interceptions were all clearly his fault, whereas, in your case, the guys around you just haven't been making plays. And we all know how clutch 5 is.

5: That's what I've been trying to say all year, man.

T.P.O.: Well, we've been listening. 5, sometimes we get some secret info here at T.P.O., and we heard that the writers for the hit HBO series The Wire have been kicking around an idea for extending the show into a sixth season, an idea that actually centers on you.

5: I love that show, man! I'm boys with Idrus Elba, the actor who played Stringer. He hasn't mentioned anything yet, though. You sure? TV... that'd make me an octuple threat. 8, how does that grab you? It's not as good as "7, that lucky number." I could flash my big smile after saying that. I guess I could do without the horror movies. They'd only just kill me anyway.

T.P.O.: Or you could shut down Super 5.

5: ...

T.P.O.: So, the idea goes like this: Det. Jimmy McNulty (for some unfathomable reason) thinks that you obviously suck, that you obviously are the most inaccurate passer in the history of pro football, that you make horrible decisions, and that you lack the competitive fire to lead anything. It is utterly irrational to McNulty that Eagles' coach Andy Reid continues to start you at quarterback. McNulty feels there's something else going on, so he starts digging up some dirt. He finds out that a judge has called Andy Reid's house a "drug emporium" and maneuvers to get a wire tap up on Reid's home phone. Reid, in a moment of pure hubris, too rapt in celebration of your seventh straight season with an "injury", gives up over the wire that he has to keep playing you, keep you in Philly, because he and you are actually involved in drug trafficking. During that call Reid informs The Head of the Organization (Jeff Lurie) that your (5's) plan to elude police by reupping the stash by means of Andy's son's, Garret Reid's, asshole has been a success. That's all they have so far.

5: This interview is over, motherfucker! (Turns and walks briskly away. No indication of ankle discomfort.)

T.P.O. (chasing after): What did I say? Hey, 5, one last question. We hear that you've been doing some work with the American Diabetes Association. Do you have Diabetes?

(no response)

For All My Real Rappers

like M. Descartes


What do you think rapper 50 Cent and boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. built their friendship on? According to Mayweather it's the fact that "real recognize real." If you're real, then you definitely don't front. Look at 50 and Floyd, they back they shit up over and over: Mayweather continues to prove himself the best hit-and-run pussy fighter and 50 keeps on writing the most uncreative and insubstantial verses. Both men, however, maintain their "real"-ity because no matter what public perception of their products might be, 50 and Floyd get they stacks, and no I'm not talking about the new OS X feature.

We don't quite got our cake, guap, weight, and shine on 50's level yet, but we try very hard to keep things moving, and we feel that at this point we're pretty damn real. Read our most recent posts. We're calling motherfuckers out. We know that as far as Philly goes "we the best"-- we raise the bar every time we write a post-- and we're not going to front about it. Check out the revised "T.P.O. Endorses" list in the sidebar. But let me give you another example of how we don't front.





Sure we've been able to dance a whole song without spilling it, but we also openly admit to spilling it, especially during songs by The Rapture, LCD SS and The Hives. Right now we're spilling it one out of every three songs. Sometimes it's just a drop here or there, other times, well, it's like Riffs taught us, you just have to make your own slip spot. We're doing what it takes to improve though. I'm doing four extra biceps curls a week so that I can keep my arms upraised longer, keep my drink above traffic. CJR did some assisted pull ups this week. We hope to spill it only once every four songs by the Making Time this weekend, and we're not stopping there. We won't stop until we dance the whole night without spilling it. And we won't stop there either, because 1. we can't and 2. this song isn't just about dancing without spilling it, it's a metaphor. Dancing a song without spilling it isn't easy, just like life, but if you make up you're mind, put some time in and learn to fall in line with life's rhythms, then there's no limit for you, soldier.

Letters To The Editors: Philadelphians React To Being Named "Least Attractive"

Over the past few weeks, TPO has received many strongly worded letters from readers objecting to the recent condemnations in the international media of its citizens' taste and culture. Today we are excerpting some of the best of the mailbag, with the aim of covering the whole spectrum of these objections.


"We are talking about a city where in my neighborhood, designated as a resurgent mecca for artists and daring young couples, every single one of the people who live on my block is a tubby balding dumbass who walks around in sweatpants all day with about four huge dogs that get fed ground beef, and all the sidewalks are so covered in shit I'm afraid to wear nice shoes. Every guy who starts a conversation with me is wearing some kind of clothes he got on sale three years ago. The best attended nightlife event is Bloodbath spinning Madonna and Hall and Oates at Silk City, and half the people there look like they listen to metal. But still, do you really believe we're lamer than, say, Omaha?"

Caitlin Bergstrom, Fishtown


"The problem is ladies who had to eat a lot to get their ass that big who do not cover up their chest and stomachs when they go out. Also, it does not help one bit that they wear tight jeans with their tank tops and other little shirts. It does not matter where you are from, Philly to Dubai to France to Senegal, when you are in the Gallery you do not want to see ladies with their big bodies hanging out their shirts, or stuffed into a halter top looking like the girl is stealing ice from the A-Plus. I am not surprised that all over the world people are talking about Philly ladies not knowing how to look good."

Michael Gamble, South Philadelphia


It is no secret that Philadelphia's geographical conjunction with the Tastykake factory, in addition to Entenmann's, Stroehmann, Herr's and Utz production and distro hubs, made it virtually inevitable that we fall prey eventually to an obesity epidemic. And we wonder why so few Philadelphians are "attractive." Whole generations of Philadelphia-born men and women have come to regard Tastykake as an "ultimate" dessert, just as they regard Herr's as "our hometown" chip. Eating these foods, for us, is a way of investing in the community.

Some will go so far as to eat two or three fruit pies back to back, a whole box of Pop'em© donuts, or even an entire pound of thick-cut kettle chips during just one night of television watching, in the course of their laudable but misguided efforts to support Phillies advertisers, help keep factory jobs local, and so forth. The bargain prices and virtual ubiquity of these companies' superior products only worsen matters. In our search for answers in the wake of this epidemic, we cannot overlook the impact of the greater Philadelphia snack empires on our diets, minds and morals.

Bob Iacovetti, Lehigh Valley Professional Park


"I am sure they spent all their time downtown where all the bank ladies are walking around, and all those art school girls with metal in their face and big trees tattooed on their arms and shit. The problem is that all the girls who go to the gym and dress fashionably and all that are from the suburbs and South Jersey, or go to Villanova or Penn State, and I guarantee they did not go out to West Chester and see some of the model hot girls that go there on weekends. No doubt they went to some place in Olde City where everybody is dressed like a vampire and drinking wheat beer. Somebody bring those dudes to Brownie's next time and then they won't have shit to say about where the good looking people are at."

Evan Graveley, Havertown


"I feel that this criticism does not apply equally to every neighborhood and the study is flawed. There is nothing wrong with the health or attractiveness of my children or those of my friends and family here in East Falls. It is not our fault, for instance, that we are able to maintain strong recreational sports programs but other neighborhoods cannot. In communities like here and Roxborough, our volunteer coaches keep our children busy after school. Every hour that my sons spend at baseball practice is an hour that I don't have to worry about him wandering into less desirable areas and their thug lifestyle of Oxycontin drugs and "low-low" prison pants, no steady job, bad eating habits, and no respect at all for our laws and law enforcement. Some of us are doing our part and we deserve respect."

Grace X. Schultz, East Falls


"It's not pretty out here, but it's real. If you act up you are bound to get knocked and everybody knows it. When we are here, we lay low, because you are not going to get hit for something nobody knows you got. I guarantee nobody came and saw us tear up the Borgata like we do. That is when the jewelry comes out, and that's when we bust our stacks, all that snow, everything. There ain't no way they'd talk that way if they saw how we do. Real Philadelphia pimps know that jealous cats in this city will stick you up daily because this is a city where the jealousy and hatred never stops. We save our shine for where peoples can let us shine a little bit, Jersey, NYC, Miami, wherever."

Ryan Wierkiewicz, Andorra

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

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.