Springsteen Fans Are The St. Louis Cardinal Fans of Music

This may be my favorite music video on YouTube ever.

-Keesup

George Packer on Ahmadinejad

Once again, George Packer has worked his quiet outrage to fine effect. This time, Packer attacks the business-as-usual idiocy of Republicans who have vilified Columbia University’s President, Lee Bollinger, for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak there yesterday.

Bollinger introduced the infamous President of Iran (mentioned previously in this Scribblerist post), with a scathing review. He didn’t kowtow or try to gloss Ahmadinejad’s vile regime. Packer writes:

“The university knew that Ahmadinejad would dominate the event, ramble, evade questions, and engage in the kind of spurious point-making—equal parts cleverness and idiocy—that has become his trademark. All of this the Iranian President did. But not before Bollinger managed, in the course of a preëmptive introduction, to say everything that needed to be said about him, and to his face: that Ahmadinejad has the qualities of a “petty and cruel dictator,” that Iran persecutes women, gays, Bahais, scholars, and others, that Iran supports both terrorist groups and Iraqi militias that are killing American soldiers, that its nuclear ambitions have brought sanctions and isolation to a people who elected Ahmadinejad on a promise to improve their lives. And then, as a parting thought, Bollinger expressed his doubt that the Iranian President would have the “intellectual courage” to answer these charges. He was right.” (italics added)

THAT is a dressing-down. Three cheers for Bollinger. Ahmadinejad is a real assface. No one disputes that. The issue here is freedom of speech. Read Packer’s blog post to get the whole story.

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Note: “Ahmadinejad” is pronounced “Ah-mah-dina-daba-jabba-daba-doo.”

New York: Playground for Beautiful Women

The girls. They are everywhere on this island. I can see one, right now, from where I sit on a shop bench at the corner of Mulberry and Bleeker. It is evening, and across the street the sun is setting a red brick and wrought iron apartment building on fire. She has black hair, bob cut like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, one black boot on the Bleeker subway station railing, the other in the street, her slim body zig-zagged into an impossibly tantalizing shape. Like a crazy straw for drinking sex.

They run all varieties and I’m an equal-opportunity gazer; Punk, preppy, Betty Boop, cyclist, hipster, Wall St. pin stripe suit, yoga instructor, ballet dancer, disillusioned Midwesterner, and, of course, waif-like model. There are lots of would be Cover Girls floating around, with one cubic centimeter of stiletto touching the sidewalk. They used to drive me first to euphoria, then grinding frustration.

These days, I’m training myself to have an aesthetic-sexual experience instead of the other way around. Still, when I get hit with 4 or 5 in quick succession, even my Buddha’s Third Eye dilates and I want to scamper after them and drool on their high heels like a god damn dog. I flatter myself that I’m not creepy about it. My strategy is: be direct with your gaze, don’t shun eye contact, and let your eyes say, by way of an apology, “I’m looking at you because you’re gorgeous.” Chances are, they already know.

David Cross said it best: In New York, “You are constantly faced with this very urgent, quick decision you have to make about every 20 minutes. You have to decide immediately… ‘Oh my god. do I look at the most beautiful woman in the world or the craziest guy in the world? Look at her, she’s fucking beautiful, but look at him! He’s wearing orange footy pajamas and he’s got tin foil on his head and he’s playing a Casio, but look at her she’s amazing - ‘”

I opt for the girl every time.

A Warm Welcome to Keesup

Many thanks to The Scribblerist’s newest contributor, Keesup for his review of Kayne West’s new album. We at Scribblerist, Inc., hope to see more of Keesup’s writing and encourage regular readers to contribute their scratchings too.

Some Remarks on Kanye West’s “Graduation”

- You probably know that thuggish impresario 50 Cent released his album Curtis the same day Kanye dropped Graduation. Despite the presence of Timbaland and Timberlake on “Ayo Technology,” it is my understanding that Curtis kind of sucks. In first-week sales, Kanye kicked 50’s ass. This pleases me.

- There’s only one really bad song on Graduation. It’s called “Drunk and Hot Girls,” and even though it’s a condemnation of the sexism in rap and youth culture in general, it’s slow and boring and obvious and not very pleasant to listen to. It’s kind of a train wreck.

- Thankfully, the rest of the album is the exact opposite. Of the thirteen tracks, six are fairly remarkable, and six more are really damn good. Kanye’s rapping has never bothered me that much, his lyrics are still riddled with sly jokes and tough self-examination, and his production takes a real leap overall, combining the trademark soul-samples and lush orchestration with the thick synth sounds that define hip-hop in the late Oughts.

- Who but Kanye would write a song about his ambition, success, and ego, and call it “Barry Bonds?” Is there another black man who has accomplished as much in his field yet been so thoroughly rejected? I was half expecitng an ode to the slugger or something even worse, but West uses fairly oblique references to Barry as a metaphor for his own genius. You want to laugh at Kanye comparing himself to Bonds, and the point is that he’s semi-serious, I guess.

- “Stronger” has the most immediate impact here. The Daft Punk sample is all you’re legally required to know about this song. It’s really fucking catchy. I love that Kanye just lets the hook play for a minute or so at the end of the song, where other rappers might fill the need to rap, or shout out, or just gratuitously swear.

- “Good Life” is going to be on everyone’s iPod in a month. Small pleasure: the sample here comes from Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing),” a gem from Thriller that I always felt went unappreciated (even though it was one of that album’s seven Top Ten singles). Also, Akon<T-Pain<Nate Dogg.

- In an era of shuffle, great album sequencing is slowly becoming a lost art. Kanye brilliantly follows “Good Life” with the wrenching confessional “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” in which West grapples with his culture’s materialism and the subsequent guilt with himself and God. It’s like a thought-out extension of his epochal Katrina rant. Clever touch: the shouts and “HA HA” in the background come courtesy of Young Jeezy, the coke-dealing Atlanta native whose image is entirely dependent on his obsession with status. And I know it’s supposed to be ironic nerd humor, but I honestly think the Galifianakis video serves the song better than the more self-righteous official version.

- “Flashing Lights” is a perfect hip-hop/soul song. Just go listen to it.

- “Big Brother” is one of the songs on the album produced by DJ Toomp, the man who helped engineer the best rap song of the decade. Kanye pours out his heart to Shawn Carter, a.k.a the Bill Gates of hip-hop, a.k.a Jay-Z. Kanye got his big break producing for Jay-Z, but Jigga’s initial reluctance to support an MC career for West led to tension between the two, and here West puts everything on the table. The emotional honesty is a little jarring; it’s not something usually associated with hip-hop, and West makes it moving and enthralling. So, in case you’re keeping score at home, here is how you are supposed to think: blog-like tendencies in rap = groundbreaking, innovative, awesome; blog-like tendencies in rock = BAD STUPID EMO.

- The two opening tracks “Good Morning” and “Champion” are fairly routine Kanye songs, with the expectedly unconventional samples (Elton John and Steely Dan, respectively). Their main job is to snare in listener and set the tone for the album, which they do, but I guess what I’m trying to say is this is nothing new for Kanye. Equally impressive but routine are “I Wonder” and “Everything I Am,” nice change-of-pace tracks with ballad-y piano; and “The Glory” with the requisite sped-up vocal sample.

- “Homecoming” features a piano groove and vocal hook by Chris Martin of Coldplay. It just doesn’t work, unlike the last album’s cameo by Adam Levine of Maroon 5. Yes, that Maroon 5. This saddens me.

- You might be saying, “But Keesup, Kanye is a dick who complains when we doesn’t win meaningless awards like MTV Video Music Awards or People’s Choice Awards or Grammys.” Shut up. This is noise that has little to do with how good his music is.

- So, this album is pretty great, and you should listen to it even if you don’t like hip-hop that much. Hopefully this album will be the prescription for all the reasons you think you don’t like hip-hop. (Looking at you, Scribblerist. I promise I’ll listen to Animal Years on the way to work now.)

Pop never dies,
Keesup

Your Friday Hyuck

To you, dear readers, I offer this fine illustration, courtesy of Married to the Sea.

The Scribblerist will be in the countryside this weekend, mooning about scenic glens and pleasant copses, dreaming up new delicacies for you, his adoring public.

Bush and Britney

Hendrick Hertzberg found this interesting comparison of the coverage of Britney’s MTV flop and Bush’s latest Lie-A-Thon on Iraq: read it here.

New York City Public Transportation: A Daily Hell

I take the L train from Williamsburg/Bushwick to Manhattan every day, and today the commute was a small hell. It started off Ok – I got my third favorite position, leaning against one of the two poles in the center-most vestibules of the car, the smooth, matte steel cold against the space between my shoulder blades. I adopted my heavy-lidded, unconcerned Subway Demeanor and listened to “Equus” by Blonde Redhead and “Recently” (live) by the Dave Matthews Band. “Recently” opens with Matthews singing, “Sunlight on my shoulders makes me happy/ Sunlight almost always makes me high.” I tried, as Mitch Hedberg says, “to force the trip” and transport myself to a bright, grassy place where the sun warms my shoulders. It did not work.

Three stops after mine, the train was filling up. Four stops, and riders were packed like sardines in a large and fast-moving aluminum can. Five stops, and the human crush reached critical mass and the entire state of New York was consumed by a vengeful black hole. Hipsters at the Bedford stop pushed, squeezed, pried, hammered, wriggled, and climbed in to spaces that didn’t exist. A small Latino gentleman was eaten to make more room. I found myself facing the smooth metal pole, nose nearly touching it, left hand grasping the pole at neck level, unable to move my right arm to change the song on my Ipod Shuffle. I had to endure “Human Touch” by Bruce Springsteen (Good song, I just wasn’t in the mood), and various plunkings by Townes Van Zandt. I was beginning to feel a little panicked.

On a packed subway car, bodies cease to be discrete and begin to move as one organism. When there is a jolt or sudden deceleration, everyone heaves like a rolling wave. If you cut out one side of the car, replaced it with a glass wall, and viewed it from the side, it would look like one of those desktop wave-making water tables that you can buy at a museum gift shop.

All manner of unintentional sensory exchange happens on a densely crowded train. Smelly people (and in the summer, pretty much everyone) coat you with stink. A teenager with cheap headphones shares a maddeningly repetitious Caribbean hip-hop beat with the whole car – dunk dada dunk dada dunk. The worst, however, is the touching. This morning, I was pressed up against four things, representing the four cardinal directions: to the north, a balding hipster reading something in French. To the south and east, girls with their backs to me, wearing backpacks and messenger bags. To the west was a sprite of a woman reading Johnathan Safran Foer. She was smallish – perhaps 5′ 5″ with brown hair the texture of half-wet pasta. I couldn’t see her face. She was pushed up against my side by the press of people near the door, the inner face of her left leg against my outer thigh.

The minutes passed. The train stalled. The automated voice warned us to “please alert the police or MTA official in the event of an emergency.” This is about to be a goddamn emergency, I thought. If someone sneezes, this car is gonna explode. I began to feel something warm against my leg. At first, I thought it was just cumulative human energy, but I could feel it – my left leg wasn’t just warm, it was hot. I looked down – pasta hair woman, bent over her book, was placing some of her weight on me. I was suddenly alert, my sleepy, cool attitude gone. What is this, I thought. Is this a Senator Larry Craig situation and I’m not aware of it? Admittedly, it’s sad that the first scenario that came to mind was, “Am I being solicited for sexual acts?” But I’m single. These things happen.

My next thought was, how can she not notice this? The heat our legs was generating could have melted cheese. She was, essentially, straddling my leg. Casually, of course, but the contact was tight, down to the level on which atoms are exchanged. The heat, the touching, the beautifulness of my leg: I’m pretty sure I was vaguely molested this morning.

At Union Square, the crowd disembarked. Pasta Hair went her way, and I mine. I had wanted to see her face, to try and gauge her potential as a molester, but I couldn’t. I was, as Anthony Lane put it in a recent review, “feeling spooked and sullied,” and still a little bewildered. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just missed some social subtlety.

Whatever the case, Attention perverts: if you’re not getting enough public feelies in your repressive Midwestern town, the L train at 9:15 is the place for you.

New York is a city of grand cultural institutions and unlimited human energy, but as mornings like this one remind me: it is a bitch of a place to live.

Puppies and 15 Min. of Blogosphere Fame

The Internet is not subject to the laws of good taste. Content about breasts always wins the day. I was talking about this last night with my friend, Keesup. Our dialogue:

Scribblerist: “You know, one night we’re going to be joking around and post some comparison pictures of puppies and Ahmandinejad and that’s going to blow up and become the one thing The Scribblerist is known for.”

Keesup: “You’ll tell people, ‘Why don’t you check out our hyper-literate book review?’ and they’ll say, ‘Fuck that! Puppies!’”

I can already see the irate comments: “Hey jackass stop being so smart and GIVE US MORE PUPPIES!”

Rent was much cheaper in 1660

Gothamist, the eminent NYC blog, has this map of lower Manhattan circa 1660. I kinda wish the city was still so green. Alas.