Friday, March 30, 2012

The past is a different country: New York City in the 1980s


Bob Foster runs the Leisure BLAAHG in London. He's really into that one rapper Action Bronson. He knows what it looks like when I toss and turn in a hotel room.

I’ve only been to New York one time, it was fun, but I won’t make a kerazy effort to go there before I’ve been to a bunch of other places I’m more excited about going to, because really it just felt like London but with better breakfasts and wider pavements. I’m not being a contrary dick, I promise, I just want to see something really different when I go on holiday to another country.

The past is a different country, though, and a guy called Steven Siegel (not Steven Seagal) has been there. He’s been to the 80s, in fact, and he took some photos while he was there, now they’re all on Flickr.

Just because you've heard of it doesn't mean it's not a sea monster


"Did a 'Sea Monster' Wash Up on a South Carolina Coast?" asks this headline from KSEE 24 news (via Gawker). 
Residents in a South Carolina coastal town believe they are dealing with a whole different kind of sea monster after an alarmingly large and strange-looking body of some kind of aquatic creature washed up on the coastal state's Folly Beach. 
No, say experts. It's just a big sturgeon. Fuck you, says me. HOW IS THAT NOT A MONSTER? Just because we've heard of it doesn't mean it's not also a monster.


When is a hate crime not a hate crime?

Forest Hills during more peaceful times

I wasn't going to post this piece below from Chris Haddrick at first, because in the wake of all the "Zimmerman can't be racist because he's Latino bullshit" I've been swallowing online lately, I don't really have the stomach for another conservatives-don't-understand-how-racism-works argument, but then I asked this one brown guy I know what he thought of it and he said it was ok. I suppose this case brings up some interesting questions about the way we apply hate crime laws. Also, as part of my ongoing efforts to be a home for wayward former Street Carnage writers, I wanted to get something from another reject on here. 

Hoping to have a piece on here about the super crazy idea that different "minority" groups can actually be racist against one another and that they're not all one big hand-holding gang over the weekend, which apparently isn't obvious to a lot of conservatives. In the meantime, what do you think? Was this a "hate crime"?

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Sometimes wish Kreayshawn would try a little harder


This Juicy J and Kreayshawn video has been out for a while, but I didn't see it until just now (H/T SYWH) so that means it's brand new. 

I don’t know who JUICY J is, but I like this song and I love the video. KREAYSHAWN is looking retardedly hot in it, like God reached down from the clouds and created the perfect wigneck waifu for me… like the girl I always wanted to see waiting for the bus outside the Everett Mall, listening to SPICE 1 or DJ Quik on her Walkman. - Sarge D.
I don't know what all of those words mean but I kind of agree. Except with the part about the song being good. KK looks adorbz as usual, but sometimes feel like I just want her to try, maybe just a little bit, when it comes to writing her verses. 

New music Fridays or whatever day it is | The Hundred in the Hands + Dum Dum Girls

woh, this unchill cab driver is driving a bit fast

The Hundred in the Hands have a new album coming out and here's the first song from it called "Faded." You may now proceed to listen to it below. How does that feel? It's plenty spooky and cold and chill and wavey and all sorts of other words, but mostly doesn't even really seem like it exists, does it? Kind of taking that ghostly thing too literally here gang. Invisible songs! That should be a thing. My friend Zack told us recently he has a ghost in his house by the way. Admitted that he believes in actual ghosts. Kind of weird, but I was happy to hear it because now we can make fun of him about it until we all die. Probably at the hands of his vengeful ghost. 

When a band is great but the crowd isn't | Kasabian in Boston

surprisingly decent photos via my own machine and hands

My recap (that's like a review where you don't try as hard) of the Kasabian show ran yesterday in the Boston Phoenix. Now it's over here. 

For the Anglophile rock fan there's always something slightly depressing about seeing one of your favorite UK bands play in Boston at a venue that's slightly too big for them. It's like watching your little brother running around the yard in hand-me-downs. You can see how they're supposed to grow into them, but for now the sleeves are way too floppy. That's particularly true when the band comes equipped with the type of mega-anthems, and outsized Gallagherian egos built to fill soccer stadiums and cavernous dance clubs. 

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Downton Arby's is kind of funny + the sexy ladies of Downton


Never thought I'd find myself in a position to be saying this, but this comedy sketch produced by Yahoo! (or something), that I saw linked to on HuffPost Comedy via Jezebel is actually kind of funny. Those are like the three least funny websites I can think of, and I was just on the KONY 2012 page. Maybe it's just because I'm jonesing for another Downton fix and I'll take it anyway I can?

Speaking of jonesing and fixes, this will be of particular interest to the perverts with refined taste among us like me who can't masturbate without putting on a dinner jacket first, this gives me an excuse to post sexxi pics of the ladies of Downton Abbey, which you can find below (some NSFW).

Watch the video + Ethel just owning the shit out of a bikini + Lady Sybil's n00dz + more after the jump:


Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Hey fat dude, don't sit next to me on the bus + strap ons + San Diego

dramatic reenactment
Jess Burday went to San Diego. This is what she learned. Check out her last couple pieces for us here.

San Diego is sun, beach and more boys than I know what to do with. Once upon a time I lived there; it’s a little hazy, but I made one friend. I still go to visit her, and not just because it’s a free place to stay. There's all the free food too. What San Diego lacks for in intelligence and culture, it makes up for with weather and amazing fake tits. If there's anyone in Boston you haven't seen in awhile, they probably moved to San Diego.

But who cares about any of that, because here's one important cultural lesson I think we need to address: 

Monday, March 26, 2012

Ten of my favorite songs from my 20s I have to retire now that I'm old





I've been hearing that Fun. song "We Are Young" a lot lately, as has everyone else -- it's pretty hard to avoid. It's a great song, but there's only one problem I have with it, I'm not actually young. I'm not going to set the world on fire. In fact remembering a time when I thought that I might do that is kind of embarrassing via young people being stupid. (Also that Don Maclean-style intro. What's that all about?)

It got me thinking about some of my favorite songs from my twenties that I might have to consider retiring now. Not because I don't still think they're all great songs, it's just that the idea of the song doesn't speak to me anymore now that I'm approaching my death.  

Not all of this shit below actually applied to my own specific personal brand (poetic license is something I used to know about as well), but it's close enough. Maybe call it a musical autobiography of twenty something melodramatic indie dorks in the 2kz? Forever.

What are you some of your nominations? 

CRUSHGAZE MONDAYS: new music from La Sera, Best Coast and Speedy Ortiz

Besties 4 lyfe


Crushgaze, as you'll no doubt have forgotten unless you're some kind of weirdo, is the super relevant term I invented to describe the type of music played by Cults et al in this interview I did with them in the Phoenix a while back. No idea why it hasn't taken the world by storm yet. Maybe it wasn't stupid enough? 

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Advertising and the loneliness of the content generator



This piece by Linds Redding at the San Francisco Egotist, A Short Lesson in Perspective, is a thought-provoking and insightful look back at what he has to show for his decades as an ad-man. Not much, it turns out. I thought it was timely, considering the return of Mad Men tomorrow night, a show which invites us all to celebrate the mythological genius of the "creative" types that have dictated how our consumption habits and cultural identity have evolved. 

It's all worth a read, but I've pulled out a few excerpts below that may or may not also apply directly to an online content generator like this one guy I know. You wouldn't know him, he's from Canada. Real handsome though. 

Redding, sadly, has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer, so you might say facing mortality has colored his outlook a dimmer shade gray. Haven't we all been though? Most of us just aren't aware of it yet.  More from Redding here

Racist and too proud, or stupid, to care who knows

Joe Raedle / Getty Images via

PTSOTL That's Racist correspondent Erik Sofge isn't surprised that people are viciously racist, just that they're willing to announce it to the world under their own names. The Trayvon Martin tragedy is giving the country's worst people so many more opportunities to do so. His last piece for us . It was just like a movie!  

This past Thursday, a bunch of teenagers in Miami protested the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, whose case has become international news, largely because it's so damn scary. You know this already, but Martin was tailed by a local man, who in his 911 call, seemed hell-bent on preemptively striking down this no-good 17-year-old. What happened is still unclear, but Martin wound up dead, and Zimmerman, claiming that he fired in self-defense, is famously un-arrested. When NBC's Miami affiliate ran this piece on yesterday's protest, the comment section included some choice remarks:

Friday, March 23, 2012

I talked to Kimbra and she talked back + more SXSW


I interviewed Kimbra, aka the girl out of that Gotye song, about what it's like to be the girl out of that Gotye song. Also some other things. Pretty safe to say that if you don't have a giant musical crush/boner for her then you're doing something weird over there I don't need to know about. Also a regular crush/boner. 

Excerpt from interview below. She also performed at something called the Spotify house at SXSW last week. Video + screen caps below (h/t Tom K.)

Thursday, March 22, 2012

What's it like to fight Muay Thai in Korea?

Patrick at work

Patrick Kay lives in Korea, where apparently he fights people and also teaches children. I did not know either of these things. Here he explains what it feels like leading up to a Muay Thai fight. Check out his previous posts on PTSOTL here. 
 
48 hours to go. I realize with something approaching despair that I haven’t eaten anything for two days – and I still have another day to go. Worse, I won’t be drinking anything before the weigh-in either. Anything.

Cutting weight is the worst part of fighting. At first, you’re just really hungry and thirsty (duh). After a while the physical cravings recede and you sink into a deep pit of despair. Your head is thick and cloudy. The fight seems pointless. The thirst is the most difficult thing to deal with; we’ve all been hungry, but not being able to drink water sucks.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

I went to SXSW and all I got was this hatred of music


I went to Texas for SXSW and all I got was this intensified disinterest in /disdain for music. Someone make that a t-shirt. Then roll that t-shirt up into a ball around your fist and punch me in the face with it a thousand times. Then blog about it.

While my colleagues at the catching as many buzz bands as they could and taking quality pictures and making quality words about the week long festival, I basically spent the whole time complaining and hating myself and everyone else. Doesn't sound like me, does it?  Something about seeing so many bands trying really, really hard to get noticed by so many taste-makers and bloggers and industry types just completely bummed me out.  Nothing matters, no one cares about any of this, but we're stuck going through the motions of the game. To paraphrase that Confucius saying, "pick a job you love, and you'll never feel like you're working." He left out the part about "until you do, and then you get to be the asshole who complains about his fun job all the time."

nothing

Sorry for not posting much this past week. It's not that I don't care per se, it's just that it doesn't matter, you feel me?

Monday, March 19, 2012

Everything you need to know about Colombia



What's Colombia like? I have no idea because I'm an American, which gives me a license to be a fucking moron. Astrid Harders, on the other hand, lives in Bogotá where she is a journalist, a position she definitely, 100% has because she worked for me at the Dig many years ago, and I taught her everything she ever needed to know about being a reporter by asking her and the rest of the kids to leave me alone all day and just go find something to do on the computer over there. That's called mentoring. I asked her to explain her entire country in a few images and words, but mostly images. I figured it was all cocaína y culos, but that's because I'm racist I guess. 


It is of the highest importance that you get rid of all the things you think you know, or you actually know, about Colombia. And even before that, the seemingly obvious shall forever be engraved in your brains: the country I live in is Colombia, with an “o”, not a “u”; not as in Columbia Pictures, also not as in British Columbia or Columbia University. Colombia, the nation in the North of South America, shall always be written with an “o."

Justice + a self-loathing electronic diva + more



TRIGGER WARNING: THIS POST IS ABOUT MUSIC. SORRY IN ADVANCE.

That last Justice record, am I right? Bit of a head scratcher. Turns out if you listen to it like 20 times because you have to interview them it starts to grow on you. I chatted with Gaspard Augé about the group's latest direction, and surprisingly, he didn't think that the descriptions everyone are making about the record were accurate. Musicians never think that. 
“We never tried to do a prog record,’’ Augé explained from France over Skype recently. “To us, it’s just pop music from today. The only prog thing in this record is maybe the freedom in terms of tempo changes and key changes, but it’s still simple music in its form, and it’s never demonstrative like prog is. We try to avoid knowing too much about musical theory to keep the magic.’’
Read the rest in the Globe

Amy Douglas has a voice like one of the old classic disco divas. She's so good at it that everyone is blowing up her spot trying to get her to guest on a track these days. Too bad she doesn't even like electronic music all that much. I wrote about her in the Globe last week. 

How to front like you know what you're talking about at a bar

Photo: CONOR DOHERTY

Cocktails are hard, man. They printing up these cocktail menus in ancient hieroglyphics these days or what? I picked out ten common spirits terms you need to know to not sound like a fucking idiot when you're out drinking this year. Check it below, plus more on the science and magic of drinking, which you should probably skip until later if you're actually drunk right now, and knowing you I'd say that's a distinct possibility. 

Sunday, March 18, 2012

On the internet, all of the things are the same thing

=

On the internet, all of the things are the same level of thing, importance-wise. Also, I just stood behind a middle-aged guy in line at Shaw's counting out $3.98 in change for a nine pack of Elio's frozen pizzas. One day that'll be you. Not me though. I'll be the frozen pizza. 

UPDATE: YO SOME CREEPY ASS KILLER IS WHISTLING A MERRY TUNE IN THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE MY HOUSE. ABOUT TO GET MURDERED BY A 1920S HOBO.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

brb

brb going to sxsw for a couple days. Don't cry if I don't post here for a minute. Follow me and the rest of the phoenix gang on the in the meantime. Holler at me if you're down there and want to spend an awkward couple of minutes looking at me while I fidget. Miss you guys already.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Dear PTSOTL: U STILL MAD?



It's been a couple weeks since the last edition of Dear PTSOTL, and ppl R still MAD about that ear plugs post. Conclusion: people who are bad at ear decorating are also bad at internet commenting. Here's the latest batch, with our imaginary hostess, Emma Mae. 

RIP TC's Lounge. A beloved dive bar burns down :(

via
One of our most beloved dive bars in Boston, TC's Lounge, suffered a pretty bad fire yesterday. Right around the same time a three alarm blaze at the nearby Hilton Hotel caused huge blackours all over the Back Bay, bringing the busy commercial and residential neighborhood to a halt, disrupting T service, and causing lots of confused people to have to walk around the blackened streets using their iPhones as flashlights. [Boston Globe]  MISS YOU ALREADY PORN MACHINE :(

But wait! Did I predict this fire in my chapter about TC's in my book? "If you just stared at the ceiling you might think there had been a fire in this place at some point and they just built it back up around the damage because they couldn't bring themselves to throw out their beloved old decorations," I wrote. SHIT, AM I IN THE X-MEN NOW? I'm going to need to go in for a spandex fitting I suppose. 

A reality sitcom about Allston hipsters



Hipsters, right? With their different types of pants and/or music. Comedian Rob Potylo knows whatumsayin. His series Quiet Desperation is in its second season now, and the latest episode features all sorts of familiar faces from the seedy, shitty underbelly of Allston's music scene. This is pretty much what it's like to fuck around in Allston. Few more black dudes than I remember from back in my day though. Also kind of makes me miss old timey Tony from the practice space. That dude was the Mr Furley of the Allston rock world. Check out the rest of the series here

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

I went to Florida and Vermont and it was weird and fun and I made jokes about it the end

 

That's a beautiful still life right there isn't it? Still death I suppose you'd call it. Turns out you can still smoke in bars in Orlando, something I learned when I traveled there last week for a quickie business trip, stories and pictures from which I will now regale you with. Those of you who follow me on and may have seen some of these already in your news feed, because nothing in my life actually ever happened if I didn't post about it on social media.  By the way, 'news feed' sounds like something you spread on the ground for jowly white dudes in shitty blazers to peck at in their news cages doesn't it?

Moebius is dead

via
French comic artist Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, aka Moebius, died over the weekend. Patrick K liked his work. The end.

Moebius is dead.

Words like genius and visionary are often over-used when someone dies. French comic artist Jean Giraud was both.

His art and storytelling created entire worlds effortlessly. Moebius’ work ranged from the western grit of the Lieutenant Blueberry tales to the inner- space fever dream of Airtight Garage, taking in everything from wordless fantasy (Arzach) to existentialist future-gumshoe grit (L’Incal) along the way. In a career spanning six decades he moved effortlessly between high- concept, reverential epics and whimsical visual poems which broke the fourth wall between creator and audience.

Monday, March 12, 2012

What does Heather Morris of Glee naked have to do with Gawker's commenter problem?

via

Gawker's bloggy Bond villain Nick Denton thinks you're stupid. That's nothing new of course. You fucking idiots, with your low tastes, and boorish manner have long been the bane of Denton's existence. But the new media mogul explained, yet again, on a panel at SXSW Interactive this week, that he remains disappointed with the level of discourse across his sites' comment sections. "The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership -- that's a joke." 

Basically NSFW after the jump.  See the uncropped images here.

"Killing it" is killing it right now



Everyone is 'killing it.' Always with the 'killing' of things. At this rate everything we've ever known will have soon been 'killed.' (Faster than in the normal sense in which that is already literally true I mean). 

This post is probably just ridiculous enough to turn into a single serving Tumblr that blogs who write about other blogs would write about bloggly, but that seems like a whole thing. Plus, not sure I could really muster up the necessary 'killing' skills it would require to make sure it was dead. Here is literally the minimal amount of effort a person could put into seeing who and what is killing things in the last five minutes around the world. It's a fucking bloodbath out there. 

IRAQI EMOS BEING STONED TO DEATH IS NOT HILARIOUS

See? Really funny. via


THEY SMASHED THOSE KIDS' HEADS IN REAL GOOD. BECAUSE OF HAIR AND PANTS. SUPER FUNNY RIGHT?  LOL to everyone in my feed who think you get a free pass on joking about the stoning of gay people because it comes with the obvious fashion/musical taste safety bubble, like Barstool Sports who wrote: "Like fundamentally I think agree with the general principle of stoning emo’s to death."

Story here. Quick lesson in comedy, world:

Sunday, March 11, 2012

I'm kind of feeling this Rick Santorum campaign song actually



I'm kind of 'feeling' legitimately vibing to this Rick Santorum campaign song from Oklahoma family band First Love. If you completely disregard the lyrics I mean. Also helps if you block out every single other member of the family besides the two star daughters, which, by the way, they seem to have had the good sense to do here themselves for the most part. Could just be me though, always had a bit of a thing for whackadoozle racist chicks.

Now why would they do that I wonder? Seems contrary to God's plan to foist your daughters onto the internet where who knows what some random blogger pervert could do with their image in his mind. The point I'm trying to make here, Harris family, is that I am probably going to gay-masturbate with this song on in the background while I try on a Ronald Reagan mask.  Don't worry, I'll be wearing a condom. Game on!


Video below. It's so good, no joke. Watch the rest of their covers as well. Wowzers, they put Zooeyzerz to shame in the adorkability quotient, only, and I probably can't point this out enough times, minus the whole, you know, literally insane Christian thing.

Information wants to be free. Unless it's mine



is upset about intellectual property being inappropriately used.  A widely read quote attributed to the famed street artist Banksy in his 2004 book Cut It Out, appears to have been lifted from a piece of Tejaratchi's published in his zine Crap Hound back in 1999. 

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Nicki Minaj Superbass Asian teenager ukelele cover link bait


And there you have the most click-able link bait title of the year so far, combining the three pillars of the internet: cute cover songs, Asian teenagers, shitty r&b stars, and ukeleles. Four things I guess. We truly do live in a diverse melting pot. 

I found this video on the Huffington Post, so then I took it and put it on my own site without adding any value. That's how the internet works. This girl seems like she is really happy about singing this song and everything else in the world. That must be nice. Good day.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

A dance party is the exact same thing as the zombie apocalypse

GOING SIQQ


ZOMBIES EAT YOUR FACE TONIGHT AT MIDDLE EAST. Sort of. It's actually just a set from and they have that one track "Zombie" so UCWIDTR?  I'm sure there will be a lot of based zombies chewing on the insides of their own faces at this party anyway though, so close enough. (For rill doe, those guys are pretty good, so check it out if you're in the area.)

Actually, if you think about it, or alternatively, if you really don't think that much about it and are reaching for something to blog about, neo-rave ragers like this are basically the exact same thing as the zombie apocalypse, right?  

Let's compare the two below and see whether or not this airtight thesis holds up.

Giving the bouncer a blow job to get back in the club and not even getting back in

PROBABLY EXACTLY HOW IT LOOKED

Universal Hub has the scoop today on a Boston nightclub where, you're not going to believe this, a bouncer acted like an entitled barbarian, and a wasted chick acted like a wasted chick. Weird, right? Just when I thought I'd seen it all.

Monday, March 5, 2012

New music from Brian Jonestown Massacre, Grimes, Nite Jewel, Simian Mobile Disco, Bassnectar + moar

GRIMES getting grimy

AB;DR but here's some new music you will want to know about for a week or two and then never ever again. That's how it works now. New shit from Grimes, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Simian Mobile Disco, Nite Jewel and more after the thing.


Sunday, March 4, 2012

The most important news story of our generation

via

No, it's not the fact that Rush Limbaugh apologized for being a douchebag, although that's making me a little nervous vis a vis the most likely impending apocalypse to be honest, the single most important news story of our generation, one that encapsulates everything you need to know about this current American moment we're stumbling through comes from the LA Times this weekend: A convicted murderer in Los Angeles has been collecting $30,000 worth of unemployment checks while he sat in jail. The man, by the way, a gang member, was caught because he had been found with the crime scene details of his murder tattooed all over his chest in graphic detail. THANKS A LOT OBAMA.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

A picture is worth a thousand words. A thousand stupid words.



Have a hard time appreciating any meaningful quotation that isn't superimposed onto a picture of the person whose face it came out of. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a picture with like fifty words on it is worth a thousand and fifty words. That's extra words.

Thanks to everyone in my Facebook feed for posting these five quotation images in the last 30 seconds.

The happiest The Smiths cover ever: Super Morrissey Bros.


This is the best cover of "This Charming Man" I've ever heard, including the Lana Del Ray mashup from the other day, and every time I've seen our Stephen creak his way through it in recent years. It's by . Go check out more of his stuff there which may or may not be good.


Friday, March 2, 2012

Boston Organized Crime



My colleague at the Boston Globe Emily Sweeney has a new book out called Boston Organized Crime. It's a trip through the city's moldy underbelly that pulls together mug shots, crime scene photos and all of the sordid details of some of the city's most notorious bad guys. I asked Emily to share a couple photos she dug up, like the one above of Whitey Bulger in 1956 at Alcatraz, and explain why it is we're so fascinated by infamous scumbags. 

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Why do phone books still exist? (12 sad photos of nothing)


Once or twice a year the phone company prints up tens of thousands of pointless books that no one wants, and no one reads, loads them into trucks to be driven throughout the city, then pays someone to throw them on our front stoops to molder and rot until whoever the apartment do-gooder is finally takes pity on the disintegrating wretches and hauls them into the recycling bin. 

It's a scheme so inefficient in its time and money-draining stubbornness, it could only be perpetuated by the hand of municipal government. (Is it? Someone check on that.) It's like a massive over-funded jobs-building program designed by Samuel Beckett, meant as an excuse to illustrate that someone is doing something with this pile of money they happen to have on hand. Maybe setting that cash on fire would be more efficient, because at least then the end result wouldn't be giving me an unwanted job in a depressing waste factory hauling crates of nothingness back into the landfill. 

Andrew Breitbart is dead. Meh.



Is he on some Tupac shit here? I almost find this hard to believe. Get ready for like 13 posthumous mixtapes from old boy here either way. 

Yes, all human life is sacred, and I hate to speak ill of the recently dead (because of magic), but I am not particularly saddened by this pig's death, if it is in fact true. I feel like it's an epic troll job in the works to see how people will react. SEE! LIBERALS ARE HATEFUL, HORRIBLE PEOPLE etc. I am happy to provide evidence of that. Sorry for his wife and kids or whatever, but maybe they should have chosen a better person to be in love with.
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