BIG TUNE

If Tracy Chapman's "Baby Can I Hold You" wasn't awesome enough...



Enter Luciano Pavarotti, stage right. Playing the other side of the phone to Chapman's dormant volcano of longing, regret, and pragmatism of the heart. BOOMING.

It's Warm Again

I could prattle on and on about the virtues of Phil Collins ability to put his ego aside, while investing so much of himself in his songs. But RRR in the (204) just took the bait and months of mobile phone service are riding on the second half of this American rules Football match. So, put the kids to bed...

Bateman, take over. (WARNING the youtube below eventually turns into soft pornography)

For The Wicked (Not For The Rest)

I'm in a sweatsuit watching sports and placing high-stakes-friendship-on-the-line-bets/threats from secure telephone uplinks. Here's a tune that got me through a commercial break.

CUTTY RANKS - Dutty Six Pack

"I love those little green monsters, but they're all over my room"
-The Wiz

Too Soon?



Hit refresh:

Best of 2000 &...Later

2008 top 10 coming soon. The holiday is over now. Who want's to read a top 10 list by someone who has it compiled in September? I can't even think about last year until this year. By definition. Until a week ago, last year WAS this year.

Enjoy The New Yorker's most popular photos of 2008.

They are laugh-out-loud-wryly-on-the-inside funny.



I know a bookmark is asking too much, sweet reader, but try to remember that you were here. Next time, we'll have some music.

Planning

Oh what? We did! I better blog again.

What's next?

Oh oh.

Almost Forgot

Gulp

What with Frost Nixon mania sweeping the globe, this is called for.

Mark Felt aka Deep Throat has died. Here's the article I wrote for Kimono.ca (also, RIP) upon his emergence from anonimity in June 2005 (in June 2005, when stacking double entendres until they tip over was my idea of "comic genius").



Deep Throat Swallows Pride, Spits Out Identity

By Cookie Blankman
Washington Correspondent

The glistening truth behind the identity of Nixon squealer "Deep Throat" splattered against the faces of a nation this week, as mouths hung agape; waiting for more. As a top-level member of the FBI brass, W. Mark Felt; couldn't resist his righteous snitching as Nixon peeked under the paper of freedom's Christmas presents. Felt's emergence proves that any other claims to Deep Throathood are spoofs.

As quickly as Deep Throat had once again come into the headlines, with a gulp, we closed our eyes, and he was gone. A spokesperson for JISM, The Journal of Incognito Snitches Monthly, reported that although Deep Throat has now been wiped away from the realm of mystery, he has left a crust on our culture and a bad taste in the mouths of corrupt, paranoid, mean-spirited heads of state everywhere. He stated: " you see men and see women everyday all with secrets, the amazing thing about Deep Throat is that it took little stroking before he sucked a presidential office into the tube of truth."

A salty, white, opaque old man, Felt liberally discharged this information, ending a decade old mystery. He needed to let the years fluff by so that he could stand erect and burst with joy that he was the seed that fertilized the egg of the Watergate investigation that hatched with an impeached Nixon.

Autobiographical documentary fans can gobble up Mr. Felt's eponymous film at a variety of Internet web sites.



Here's the saucy video for Claude VonStroke's song "Deep Throat"



While we're in danceland...here's the perfect stocking stuffer for the party animal on your holiday gift designation (no Xmas-o) list.

Like Your Car Or Cow, If You Have One (don't)

I'm home safe at the lodge after a victorious Eastern expedition (report to come).

Currently being snowed in.

Fireplaces to stoke, wings baking...

We'll talk.

Neiling

I saw Neil Young & Wilco tonight. The things I said most often were "Holy fuck," "HUGE!" (also) "Wow!"

Neil Young - A Day In A Life [Werchter 2008]
by rooroo

PS:

Wilco kicked it off with an "easy rockers" set, heavy on new material. Exactly what Neil used to do, way back in the 95-2007 era.

I wanted it to sound like this, but it didn't.

WE MADE IT

Big Smoke*

I'm on my way to Tahranna for a bit. I hear they have computers there, so this blog should still be cool.

Big Smoker friends of Grilling It, we will drink, make stuff, eat mexican, laugh, filmgo, wear coats, be pretty/handsome, merrymake, chill the "f" out and yes...gossip:



This represents my attitude, as I pack gifts and wrap bowls.

DONALD FAGEN - New Frontier



*Not to be confused with "Big Tobacco"

Out To Lunch

The Canadian government is EATING ITSELF.

PUBLIC ENEMY - Shut Em Down (Pete Rock Remix)

You didn't know it was for dinner, but we've ordered a pizza parliament.



Venice is literally sinking.

Bring on the weird.

Cat Specific Web Humour (Rap Related) (LULZ Guaranteed)

The curmudgeon of cool TwentyTwenty dumped this on the rug of the interestnet, so I thought I'd post it here, cause shits needs homes in the neu economy, not to mention winter.





Here is the marginally less funny original.





Images courtesy of Garfield minus Garfield, a website:

"a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb. "

I'd get to that faster than Garfield finds lasagna...nope...not funny...my wife thought that was gangbusters.

See you later. I need a break from the screen.

He Knows

Found In Ignored Prayers

After All It's On The Wall

"Spraypaint" A poem by Rob Giampietro.

Courtesy of longtime ponderer (and sometime podna)in rhyme THE WIZ



He omits the map of Canada, but does Prince ever smear the emotion of a lonely painter on his version of a Joni Mitchell masterpiece.

PRINCE - A Case Of You



While we're on paint. Viddy yourself a copy of this movie:





PEACE!

BLOCKED!!!

BREAKING NEWS:

Lego has lost the patent to make the product that we know to be Lego.

Here are my favourite things ever made with Lego.





Abyssinians - Leggo Beast

King of the Trees (the treemeister)

I had to take a break from video/radio/scribblatory sword sharpening to post this video of a Dan Deacon "song." If you're not into a gruff lizard who tells it like it is, living in a universe of illustrated dictation, well, the new Bond is out, you could watch the trailer AGAIN.

If you are in need of some LOL-ing 2 day while u werk or what F-R...



Also, here's the sweetest little toon that I've heard in a cute minute. It happened to have the same name as the Dan Deacon video (thanks for helping with future romance mixtapes Youtube search!)



The band is HELLO SUNSHINE, and the singer Joy Bishop is like Natalie Portman crossed with all the beautiful girls in class that you never asked out for drinks, despite resolving to do so on your way to the car, every single class.

Mama Africa RIP (Really Important Person)

Miriam Makeba passed away last night, after a show, on the road, singing, a moving monument to the strength and beauty of the dark continent. In this age of ballyhooed hope and real optimism, it's worth focusing on a figure who was all the prospects of a greater future through excellence in the present.

“Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism through the art of song.”
-Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

Certainty of victory over the dark forces...

Due to my currently hurt ability to rip from vinyl, in lieu of jams, here are some pristine youtubes.





Big shout out to the African friends of Grilling It (Bombzilla I see you!). Down there doing your thing, unwilling to say "this place is fucked" and just leave.

Keep On

Everyone, everywhere is pumped. I talked to a serial GOP brainbuster last night who was glowing with joy and gracious in defeat. Weird.

Again, head to El Stencemilla for the proper juice, but here's my today.

The US election fallout is currently riddled with three issues.

1) Transition: cabinet favourites, puppies and lowered expectations.
2) The heretofore off-the-record truth about Palin.
3) Proposition 8 (no same sex marriage-o).

My vote for the puppy remains, a black lab named "Maverick"



For "I didn't know Ahhhfrica is a Cah-ntinent" Sarah Palin, watch this informative bit of Maritime rhyme.



In terms of Prop 8, it's a major setback, on an issue that I've never understood. Ever. No antagonist to same sex unions has ever been able to explain themselves. This deadbeat prophet makes an interesting argument (NB, the one minute mark):



I think we need to espouse the hope, equality, possibility and optimism that got Obama elected and trust that the Prop Eight madness will be worked out by a prevailing sense of justice. To use some cliche's - the name of the game is just keep your eye on the ball. There is no excuse for voices to go unheard and issues to be ignored. Baby steps. Just because the screwheads won a single battle doesn't mean the wounded can't be healed.

Obamanation

So many songs soon...

For now, get thee to The Stencil for victory coverage.

True Story

Anachronistic Futuristic Techo Robotic Human Love Song

aka: escapism.





Is it raining where you are?

Call me a shopping mall hippie or a dorkafarian, but this is still awesome:

CHI: Crucial Homemaking Information

Mr Chi City is my Martha Stewart.





Jeff Tweedy is our Dylan.

Jeff Tweedy - Via Chicago

The urban center once dubbed "Chicago of the North" is now the "Scranton of the North"

The American Office is so good, but...YO:

Got There

In the creeping dusk, I got offered a ticket to go see my man Bob Dylan tonight!



Way out west!



Dylan destroys his hits. His band are supremely skilled, and you're left hanging on every word as Bob re-interprets the songs that were forged into timelessness by just him a guitar and a mouth harp. It's not a religious experience. It's not an old troubador going taxidermist on his back catalogue. It's not an old man pretending he can still do what you remember him doing. It is an awesome rock concert. That's what you get. The rock versions. Even anthems like "All Along The Watchtower" "Highway 61" and "Just Like A Woman" sound like he made them in modern times.

Billed as Bob Dylan and His Band (not The Band), the old man smirks and grimaces at his organ. He gets his sway and swag back as he channels harmonica solos - even through long black coat you can see his septugenarian hips swinging - and leads his band.

Protest folk like "Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall" and "Chimes of Freedom" are augmented by fighter jet burning up in the startospher electric guitar jams. All of Dylan's words are played back to him, in guitar, by his band. There is a dialogue that breathes new life into songs that have timeless lyrics, but whose pluck and twang would seem antiquated in the current climate of critical ideas and crucial change.

When he strides into "Like A Rolling Stone" it dawns that Dylan is nothing like The Rolling Stones. The tight pants, never let go, scarves and whiskey image that the Stones plod through, around the world, regularly...it's fake...and Dylan is real. He's adapted. The art of adaptation links us to the animals, but man-oh-man when an artist can just be old, but more importantly DO OLD, the age takes the timeless material and weaves it into the fabric of right now. He doesn't need to, but Bob Dylan is sewing the field of fans, plugging in and proving what he still means to rock.

This was the best song of the night, I'll let Chan take us out with it...

Up To The Minute Updates

Preview of the Ronson/Wiley/Merriweather merger.



New drunk history, so political (also about winter and being an old, old fashioned dude)



"Don't elect and old dude for President"
-JD Ryznar