advisory opinions

David Guetta f/Akon - Sexy Bitch She’s nothing like the...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:05:08 -0400

David Guetta f/Akon - Sexy Bitch

She’s nothing like the girls you’ve ever seen before
Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood ho
I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful
The way that booty moving I can’t take no more
Have to stop what I’m doing so I can pull her close
I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful
Damn, girl! You’s a sexy bitch!

So exactly what would disrespectful sound like, then?

“Strictly Game” - Harlem Shakes This song is so...

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:32:07 -0400

“Strictly Game” - Harlem Shakes

This song is so wonderfully confident without being syrupy sweet. It’s realistic - we’ll take some shit, we’ll make a little money - but it keeps moving forward. Like all those little moments, while not transcendent at the time, are building to something bigger, something grand.

“Cacti Are Delicious Fruit” - Les...

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:57:15 -0400

“Cacti Are Delicious Fruit” - Les Handclaps

I’ve got a hunch this delightful but nonsensical French synthpop is not really about cacti at all.

“Boom” - Anjulie If they ever cast Audrey Tautou as...

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:22:36 -0400

“Boom” - Anjulie

If they ever cast Audrey Tautou as a Bond villaness, this will be the song that plays while she seduces Bond. It’s one of those slinky sultry songs that would let her slither all over the floor in a tango but it’s not very serious. You still get the feeling that she’s having quite a lot of fun and might start skipping, or sit down in the middle of the floor and clap her hands with delight. Bond will lose her in the end because she can’t help but follow her whimsy and he’s too focused on world domination or whatever.

“Bonkers” - Dizzee Rascal I am generally fond of...

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:06:48 -0400

“Bonkers” - Dizzee Rascal

I am generally fond of Dizzee, but I don’t much care for this new song overall. But every time the beat drops out and the guy with the flat voice says “bonkers” it delights me to NO END. So perhaps the main message of this song is that bonkers is a magnificent word and we should all be using it more often.

“Right About Now” - Mousse T. f/ Emma Lanford We...

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:26:43 -0400

“Right About Now” - Mousse T. f/ Emma Lanford

We were at the diner when I said it. We’d been hanging out all day - went on a drive through the hills, we were really getting along and totally clicking, you know? And so we were sitting there having milkshakes and fries, how cute, right? And I’m trying to tell him that I’m having a really good time and how much I like him and how cool he is and then comes out of my mouth “I wanna write your name on my t-shirt.” Like what does that even mean, right? I sound like an idiot. An idiot who is in high school.

But he totally got it. He thought it was just my enthusiasm flying out of me. Which is kind of right, I guess, I’m always bursting out with something or other. So I started singing this song about writing his name on my t-shirt and he started throwing fries at me and we totally got kicked out of the diner but it was so fun it was worth it. I really like him.

“Twelve Heads in a Bag” - The Krayolas and The West...

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:50:13 -0400

“Twelve Heads in a Bag” - The Krayolas and The West Side Horns

August 30, 2008. Twelve decapitated men are found, handcuffed together, in Merida in the Yucatan. Their heads are not found. The murders are thought to be a reaction to government roadblocks to prevent narcotrafficking.

October 21, 2008. Four severed heads in an ice cooler are delivered to police station in Juarez. “The heads were from men aged between 25 and 35 and could belong to any of 10 local people who were kidnapped last week by gunmen.”

December 22, 2008. The decapitated bodies of eight soldiers are found in Chilpancingo, near Acapulco. “Mexican newspapers cited a note found beside the heads warning: “For every one of ours you kill, we will kill 10 of yours.”“

January 21, 2009. Three severed heads found in an ice chest in a plaza near Juarez, two days after the head of a police commander was found in an ice chest in a nearby village.

An estimated 7,337 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since the start of 2007.

For more information, interactive maps, and tons of photos, the LA Times has a very detailed and useful site.

“Jaguar” - Boss Hog This song is coming to get you....

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:00:39 -0400

“Jaguar” - Boss Hog

This song is coming to get you. You might not know it yet, you may not have noticed, but she has been prowling around for quite a while. Keeping perfectly still with eyes locked on you, a silky ball of coiled energy and finely honed claws. When she strikes, it will be perfectly planned and precisely executed. And with a ghost of a smile.

He can’t do anything but stay out of the way and admire. Sometimes he even tries to warn them. “Watch out. Watch out.” But it never makes a difference.

“Teenage Wristband” - Twilight Singers I spent a lot...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:00:45 -0400

“Teenage Wristband” - Twilight Singers

I spent a lot of my high school years driving around in cars. Never really going anywhere in particular, just a place to hang out that wasn’t a bar, where we could play our music and get up to our mischief and just generally be teenagers. We always felt invisible, like we could go anywhere and do anything. We would pick one flower from each garden on the block to make a bouquet, then build a pyramid out of the bottles in the recycling bin on someone’s doorstep. We would go to the park to try to swing high enough to touch the stars and at the very top of our arc, kick off our shoes and watch them fly through space. It felt like we were immortal. Like the world was boundless, all laid out before us. Like we were gonna stay up all night.

This is a fan made video, meant just to play you the song, but the kids in the video seem to be having the same kind of meaningless adventure.

“My Dime” - Ce’Cile Ce’Cile is one of my...

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:47:12 -0400

“My Dime” - Ce’Cile

Ce’Cile is one of my favorite dancehall/ragga artists. A lot of her songs are about being hot or dancing with rude boys or being hot with her ladies while dancing with rude boys, which is why I find this song so interesting. This being hot and dancing (and more) with rude boys isn’t effortless. Those moments that seemed so spontaneous - tearing her negligee, sipping champagne - that’s not free. She’s not at all upset about it - keep ripping up those negligees - and she feels no shame in demanding compensation. It’s just reality. She’s got stuff to buy.

Ghostwalk - Rebecca Stott I finished this book about a week ago...

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:39:27 -0500

Ghostwalk - Rebecca Stott

I finished this book about a week ago and since then have been letting it roll around in my head to see what it bumps into. On one level, it’s a fascinating historical novel with lots of interesting facts about optics and glassmaking and prisms and alchemy and university life in England. And that part was interesting enough to recommend this book by itself. But what stuck with me was the books illustration of a world as a tightly woven web, where plucking one string would lead to echos and reverberations in unexpected places.

Recently I was driving back from Pasadena on the 134 and came around a turn of scrubby hills to find Highland Park and Downtown all spread before me, with the ocean glinting in the distance. And I felt like an early explorer who had traveled all the way across the hot desert since Palm Springs and finally saw this paradise of unimaginable beauty. The end of the country. The destination. And I felt connected, through the web, to the people who had discovered and settled here, even to the hawks twirling in the sky, indifferent to the sprawl of development beneath them.

Tales of Ordinary Sadness - Electrocute The Breakup: Her...

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:03:00 -0500

Tales of Ordinary Sadness - Electrocute

The Breakup: Her Side.

She packed up and got out. Put all her stuff in her car and drove non-stop in the direction of the nearest city. Couldn’t take it anymore - it was making her less than she should be. She’s fun. She’s perky. She’s got one of those pixie haircuts and wears vintage clothes or things she makes herself. She’s smart and creative and she’s going to do something. Be someone.

And he - he just wasn’t the right thing. They’d known each other forever. Knew his every gesture. Knew what he was going to say before it came out of his mouth and had already found three errors of logic, of fact, of general intellect, before he even said it. They weren’t supposed to hate each other. But after months of snapping at each other, of hating the inside of that house, of hating herself and how impatient and irritated she sounded - she left.

And she could feel it slipping off her as the miles rolled by, as she made up this song to keep herself awake. He was just ordinary. And she is not.

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson I am a perhaps obsessively...

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:32:53 -0500

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

I am a perhaps obsessively passionate fan of Gibson’s earlier stuff, but things got odd around Idoru and everything after that is kind of meh. Except for this book, which I adore - this may be the fourth or fifth time I’ve read it. At this point, I’m not reading so much for the plot, which is perhaps a bit overcomplicated with Russian spy nonsense, but to hang out with Cayce. She’s a thirtyish well educated creative professional working in a fluid and ill-defined creative profession which involves intuiting the “coolness” of corporate logos and branding. She has a peculiar reaction, a kind of semiotic allergy, which causes her to experience amplified emotional responses to these logos. And it’s probably no accident that her name is so similar to Case, the protagonist of Gibson’s Neuromancer.

Cayce wears “C.P.U.s” - Cayce Pollard Units, black logofree clothing that makes up her daily uniform - and has technological obsessions and dislikes tourists even when she’s a tourist and violently negative aesthetic reactions and is startlingly self-sufficient and in many other ways, feels to me like watching myself run around inside a book. So even if I never make it to Moscow, I probably know how I’d feel about it.

Reach Out - Hilary Duff This song made me SO ANGRY. It’s...

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:00:00 -0500

Reach Out - Hilary Duff

This song made me SO ANGRY. It’s based on a sample from Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” except by ‘based’ I really mean the backing track is directly from the Depeche Mode song and the hook/chorus of the song is Hilary singing “reach out and touch me” and the only difference from the original is the use of the word “me.” I even don’t mind Hilary so much, but when she says “like a prayer your touch can take me there” it takes away any pretense that she’s trying to make an actual song. I want more fourth wall, please.

In contrast, I like Rihanna’s ‘SOS’, based on Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’, and Jamelia’s ‘Beware of the Dog’ which is a much more enjoyable use of this same Depeche Mode song. But this just drives me up the wall.

Fuck You - Electrik Red I thought the Pussycat Dolls had really...

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:50:45 -0500

Fuck You - Electrik Red

I thought the Pussycat Dolls had really established the limits on male-gaze-seeking behavior by a manufactured girl group. Their Girls Gone Wild style feminist empowerment, their efforts to be so sensational and scandalous with their songs and dances, their outfits. I thought they had pushed it pretty much as far as it could go.

Wrong.

The Monsters of Templeton - Lauren Groff This was on the way to...

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:28:00 -0500

The Monsters of Templeton - Lauren Groff

This was on the way to being a pleasant enough ‘girl in quarterlife crisis returns to small town of origin to find her place in her family and know herself’ book, centered around a fictionalized version of Cooperstown NY. Crisis girl and her mother have a relationship much like Rory and Lorelei from Gilmore Girls, and quasi-Rory has to embark on a search through her ancestors to figure out who her real father is. But then there’s this big streak of magic realism - there’s a mysterious dead monster in the lake in the middle of town that’s an unknown species, someone sets fires with her mind - that doesn’t really connect with the historical novel part. As a result, none of it really came together for me and I finished it just so I could find out who the father was. When I did, I didn’t much care.

Yes, I did get it mainly because of the totally awesome cover.

“See U Again” - The Mae Shi This song is more than a...

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:04:00 -0500

“See U Again” - The Mae Shi

This song is more than a little creepy when sung by a grown up man. When Miley Cyrus sings it, it sounds adorable, that first flush of a full-blown teenage crush. This sounds like one of the creepy guys who go to Miley concerts by themselves to eye the underage girls. She asks him what he’s thinking about because he’s been starting at her for like five minutes, not because she cares. He stutters because he’s a creep, not because he’s charmingly tonguetied. The Miley song ends crisply, abruptly, like the crush culminating in a first kiss. This one goes on and on with a heartbeat beat and the guy muttering about his heart not being able to rest, like a scary obsessive stalker. He makes “just bein’ Miley” sound like a bad thing.

‘Smile’ - Elastica. Here’s a great rule for...

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:38:03 -0500

‘Smile’ - Elastica.

Here’s a great rule for life - when you’re working on a big project or studying for something or doing something awful, put this song in your playlist. Maybe even a couple times. And then whenever it comes on, you must - and this is a mandatory, unwaivable rule, not open to any discretion at all - you must put down whatever you’re doing and stand up and dance your heart out. There will likely be jumping up and down. It’s only 1:41, so it’s a quick little break, and then back to business, refreshed, revived, and invigorated!

“Electromagnetic” - Freeform Five This song seems...

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:38:51 -0500

“Electromagnetic” - Freeform Five

This song seems like something you’d hear if you were a cabdriver, not necessarily one of the Taxicab Confessions ones, just a regular one in a big city on a weekend night. Driving by clubs and cars with bass booming, and then a couple gets in the back, all dressed up and sparkling. And they forget you’re up there and start flirting in a totally charming way and saying somewhat outrageous things and the whole city is alive. You pull up to some party or club and they dance out of the cab, holding hands and giggling, and disappear into their adventure.

Also, I would have sworn this was a secret Beck track, a Midnight Vultures b-side or somesuch.

The Eight, Katherine Neville

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:39:50 -0500

This book advertises itself as a cerebral mystery. It is neither - there are no puzzles, no intellect, nothing to decode or solve. The only mystery is why I kept reading all the way to the end. Even the stuff in the Algerian desert was deadly dull. Use your intellect to find a different book.