Famous For Fifteen

We're back.

2006-06-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

get up out your seats when the hip is in the building
i brought my microphone with me so I I didn't come for chilling
got a gorgeous mic, what yours is like? Comparison:
I'm Paul Mc, John Len and George Harrison
And you cats? Wanna-be stars like Ringo
Ain't a damned thing sweet when the chariot swing low
it's like passover, cats hand me bread
then I broadcast jehovah to the land of the dead
i wanna say something that nobody has said,
roll up all this loose change in my head
I'm cashing it in
to try and make a difference with a passionate pen
but they done made bullshitting high fashion again
the microphone is my church
the beat's the steeple, when you
open up the doors, see we ain't even equal
part one I played the priest, this is the heathen sequel
your whole style is deaf, meaning you don't speak to people
and you're bound to hate because the knowledge I flip
expose your sound as fake like some collagen lips

My other man-crush

2006-06-19T15:47:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I happen to think Dallas Mavericks/HD Net/arthouse cinema-owning billionaire Mark Cuban is the shizzle. I'm very comfortable with my open admiration of the man who can, depending on what day you catch him, seem like a glimpse of what it would be like if your cool stoner buddy from college became a millionaire ("I mean come on, does it really matter if we say Poo Poo or shit? Of course not.")...or a complete deranged madman, depending on what day you catch him. In his latest blog entry, he defends an expletive-laden outburst to ESPN. I love it that this dude is so committed to his team that he's cussing out reporters, parking his yacht near the headquarters of rival teams, ice-grilling NBA officials. I love it.

Here's the post. It's a funny read even if you aren't a Mavericks fan like myself.

http://www.blogmaverick.com/

Dear Gay Jesus,

2006-06-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

If you know me very well, you know that, though I love all types of music, hip-hop music is my obsession and my passion. And if you were to ask me who my favorite hip-hop artist of all time is, I would (after some hemming and hawing) pronounce that El-P's music changed my life more than any other hip-hop artist. That's saying a lot. That's counting "Nation of Millions." The reasons I usually give in defense of ranking a relative newcomer over the likes of Chuck D. are usually pretty vague. It all just comes down to a feeling. When I first heard El-P's "Fantastic Damage," I realized that there were new things out there waiting to be done - it isn't true that nothing's new under the sun. This dude is on some new shit. He's remixing a lot of rock records these days, and I am particularly fucking wowed by his remix of Hot Hot Heats "Goodnight, Goodnight" - a thunderstorm of 808 bass drums and minor chord synthesizers that makes me want to throw my chair out the window. You can buy it on i-Tunes, just search for "El-P." The drum sounds kind of sound like Spank Rock's "Bump Short" - it almost sounds like a sample of "Bump Short." Except, you know, it's better in every fuckin' imaginable way.

MY LIFE IS LIKE A MOVIE

2006-06-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

RECAP LIKE WHOA

In the "Costner" department, I'm too tired and hellbent on getting drunk to give a real thorough run-down, but here are the day's pertinent shits for me:

4:00 PM - I show up to teach my class at the Atkins Branch Library, where I'm teaching probably the greatest group of students I have ever met to make their own film - they're dealing with teen suicide. The script is on another level - they "want it to have different timelines, and intersecting storylines like 'Pulp Fiction.'" Okay. About 4:30 PM, my cell phone rings and it's Costner's assistant, but I don't answer it. One of my kids says "Who is that?" and I'm like "It's Costner."
The kid just looks at me like I said it was T.I. on the phone. The librarian guffaws incredulously. But you know, the funny thing is I was telling the truth. I let it go to voicemail.

5:00 PM - It is hotter than Hades in Shreveport, but all of the media are already camping out on the steps of the venue. I have to give them props. I got them all some bottled water.

6:45 PM - I have taken a gaggle of media folks up to the entrance to the VIP room, so they can get shots of Costner entering the party. It's hot here too, so we hang out and catch him as he goes in the party then we dip pre-Demi Moore. He shows up dressed like Chris Brown, white tee, overshirt hanging open, punk-rock fitting black Levi's, black shades like the Fonz. Hollywood must think "Fonzyish" is a pretty good look.
My favorite vampire of all time will show up in the same outfit later.

7:15 PM - Passing through the VIP area, I bump into this cute dude Chris from Centenary, who is a hip-hop fan and I know through Sara and Allison Cormier. I'm like "Wow man, you live large." He laughs it off and I keep moving. Tickets to this thing were $500. GANGSTA.

7:30 PM - I meet Frank Page, the announcer from the Louisiana Hayride. He's autographing books in the lobby. I take the media folks up to the room we're gonna do a little press junket in, and I'm designated the leader of the discussion. So I'm standing beside Costner, who is seated, picking media folks to ask him questions. I make a motion for John to get a picture of this - he says he has some that he'll send me. The little junket lasts about 20 minutes, and I have to say it was one of the coolest moments of my life. Every question folks asked, Costner really thought about it and answered from his heart. Someone asked if he was nervous, and he went into this incredibly personal diatribe about the danger of going out on a limb when you're famous.

I'm being completely serious: the guy is awesome. I think maybe he's the last of a dying breed of movie stars. There is an air of class tempered with humility and self-awareness.

8:00 PM - With the junket over, I take a break and cause a little mischief that shall remain my secret with one of the media guys. They love their jobs, I'll say that much. I walk out of the concert area and Costner is standing incognito with a couple of security guards in the lobby
, so I just lamp out on the wall beside him. There is this awesome moment when, during a retrospective of his career in film, he peeks through a little window and watches the crowd watch him on the big screen. People are just walking by and I'm like, fuck, three 16-hour work days this week and I have zero complaints. I don't give a damn what anyone says: I grew up on movies, I watched Dances with Wolves with my momdukes. There is no shame in my game. I'm a Costner fan.

8:01 PM - I flip whig when Hal Sutton thanks me from the stage. Super bananas.

8:02 PM - The theme from "The Untouchables" starts playing and Costner heads towards the stage through the audience, kissing babies and shit on the way. It takes 15 minutes to get there, he's interacting with the crowd so much. I figure, maybe the hardest part of my night (wrangling the media, keeping video cameras out of the show) is over, so I post my ass up on the back wall. I figure the excitement is mostly over, so I'll take in the music.

8:20 PM - Keiffer Sutherland and his wife or girlfriend walk past me and post up on the wall like two feet to my right. I geek out, but he's giving her a backrub and whispering in her ear and whatnot so I just let them be. I had a digital camera in my hand, but I just don't feel like disturbing this dude. He's very small, and is dressed like a punk rocker: blue jean jacket with collar up like the Fonz, tight-rolled black Levi's, black combat boots, hair all fucked up. The dude is really in full effect, and I'm standing there thinking "Lost Boys," "Stand by Me," "Flatliners..."

8:21 PM - My boss rolls up and goes "I just met Demi Moore" and I go "Have you met Keifer?" He flips whigs, proceeds to lose shit.

8:25 PM - My homegirl Werner walks up as Keifer sits down. I point him out and she joins us in the geek-fest. We agree that, while it would be wrong to take a photo of him, there is no harm in trying to pretend to take Werner's picture and actually take a picture of him. It didn't work out, but here's the attempt we made (up top). He's the dude at the end of the row that you can see. Not that you can tell - he may as well be a sasquatch from this crappy-ass photo. Oh well.

9:30 PM - After lamping for a while, I leave. I worked 16 hours yesterday. I gotta right to put my feet up. I pick up a Freschetta and a sixer and that pretty much catches us up to date.

best. documentary. ever.

2006-06-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

If you, like approximately 99.999999999% of Shreveport-Bossier City's population, ignored completely the fact that there was a film festival happening in Shreveport tonight, you missed what easily ranks among the greatest documentary films I have ever seen: "The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief." The film tells the story of a "Host Club" in Osaka, where young men charge approximately $12 an hour to hang out with young women whose hearts are obviously seeking any kind of attention, love, or just the company of good-looking young guys. The more money the women spend at their table, the more attention the "hosts" give them, which results in a kind of competition between the patrons, some of whom can spend $10,000-30,000 per night. The first half of the film plays out beautifully, showing how the boys walk the thin line between pretending to love their patrons and actually caring for them. There are some heartbreaking moments, like when a "host" subtly tries to tell one of his guests that she should stop spending her money before she loses it all on him, because he doesn't love her: This is how he pays his rent. I sat there crying in a room full of sixteen year-old girls sending text messages, who seemed to enjoy the film...on the level of "Japanese people look funny." Any-fucking-way.

The bombshell drops at the film's halfway point, when we learn that approximately 70% of the customers at these male "host clubs" (which are completely legal and very popular) are actually female "hosts," many of whom admit that they earn the money that they spend at host clubs by performing oral sex on their own patrons at the clubs where they work. For me, this turned the entire film upside down and added a level of gender politics that was completely, dizzlyingly new to me: Physical hookers releasing their pent-up hatred and loneliness by visiting emotional hookers. I couldn't help noticing that the physical hookers (female) made $500 a day giving head while the emotional hookers (male) made $5,000 a day giving heart-jobs. I thought of the glass ceiling, and the myriad other parallels between the lives of these people and their American, non-sex industry counterparts.

On another level, it all just seemed like something out of a Phillip K. Dick novel, with friends for hire, emotion menus (literally - you pick from a menu when you enter a host club, according to how you want to feel). It was chill bump-inducing, goddamn brilliant stuff. I'm sure the three of us who were actually watching it all felt the same way.

On another note, the LSUS bathrooms feature a publication called "The Toilet Paper," which is taped to the walls in all of the stalls. It appears to be an officially-sanctioned publication of the school. In this edition, they featured a list entitled:

"YOU MAY BE A FOREIGNER IF..."
-Your wife is harrier than your dog
-You drive as well as you speak English
-You refer to Circle K as "The Family Business"
-You consider McDonald's a nice change of pace from your usual dinner

First of all, I want to state it right here that I grafitti'd every single one of the stupid goddamn things. Secondly, why don't they just tape pages from "Mein kampf" to their stall doors? Thirdly, BOOOOOO to whatever faculty asshole approves/advises this racist tripe. If this link gets sent around and the comments section lights up, good. You ca host all of the international films you want, but if I have to read this redneck bullshit whenever I take a leak between movies, the community's image of LSUS is never going to change.

Overheard in my office

2006-06-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

Person 1: "I quit smoking for three months, but then I got attacked by this housecat and started smoking again."

Person 2: "Ha ha...uh..."

Person 1: "No, seriously. It was awful. I was mauled by a housecat."

Person 2: "Oh my God. I didn't know."

Person 1: "Yeah, so now I have this nervous disorder and I smoke."

FOR REAL.

catfish like whoa

2006-05-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

My dad caught a 50 pound catfish yesterday. Waaaaaahhhhhhhh. Look at that man's face. He is a happy man.

I'm a roller. It's what I do.

2006-05-26T09:19:00.001-07:00

A random post for Friday, because this blog has been about as much fun as the stretchmarks on my ass lately.

1) "Costner" is my new adjective. If you ask me how shit is going, I may say "Man, my shit is so Costner." Tell me that does not have a ring to it and I will slap you in your lying mouth.

2)My air conditioning went out two days ago and, after all kinds of rolling around on the ground, exposing sweaty ass-fros, etc., the repairmen (a team, I have dubbed them Mario and Luigi) pronounced that the problem was not the air conditioning unit itself but the "Motherboard." Hold up mayne, I said, taking my tie off, this air conditioner was installed in 1985, dude. Are you telling me it has a computer in it? Apparently it does. I was thinking, this computer must be like buried underneath the house, looking like the "Lost" hatch and shit, with some dude feeding punch cards into it when we adjust the thermostat. They had to order a replacement motherboard from some other country or something. My air conditioner is international like the house of pancakes.

3) The "Dazed & Confused" Special Edition DVD is OUT NOWWWWWWW! And oh my fucking god it looks incredible. CRITERION! We have to have a party to watch this DVD! And the party needs to have special features.

Wooderson: Man, it's the same bullshit they tried to pull in my day. If it ain't that piece of paper, there's some other choice they're gonna try and make for you. You gotta do what Randall Pink Floyd wants to do man. Let me tell you this, the older you do get the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin' man, L-I-V-I-N.

WOODERSONNNNNNNNNNN! I'm out of control, I am gonna order this DVD right the fuck now. Go go gadget credit card!

4) Me and Sara Hebert are designing my book right now, and me and Bill are fine tuning the script for "The Scheme of Things." The book is called "My Cloven Feet," collects almost 100 pages of short stories by yours truly, and features a commissioned piece of cover art by the talented Shannon Palmer. So in theory, I am being very productive right now. In theory.

We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol.

2006-05-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

I just bought the above t-shirt from www.sneakmove.com.

The shirt costs $16, $20 with shipping, and all of the proceeds benefit Save Darfur. Plus it is a nice image of a moment worth remembering.

Progress report

2006-05-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

My brother's step-daughter, Jilly, using FruityLoops. She is actually very, very good at it. I plan on rhyming over one of her beats. She's an amazing child.

A new King Hippo song is currently being cooked up (albeit at very low volumes, given the fact that I am having some eardrum troubles). It's called "Hearts for Dots," and features me rhyming about getting beat up over a beat created by Brad Demarest, my fucking hero. The song is kind of limericky tongue-twister that tells a narrative story - I haven't done many story-songs and I wanted to try it for the experience. I'm pretty happy with the results, and working with Lumenz is a blast, as always.

Here's the first verse:

Now I'm fighting guys in this parking lot
because a girl's writing I's using hearts for dots
in love letters to the don juan de marksalot
on the regular, they drop through the slot
and I swear this is love
I don't mean to scare ya'll,
I took her to the donut shop, we shared a bearclaw
engaged in some grown-up talk
then she bared all
said she had a guy
i put my cup down slow
i tried to act cooler but I couldn't fool her, so
I took a coffee and a crueller to go
and I probably could've wooed her but her beaux was such a bruiser
so I played the loser just
let her go

You know about me dog

2006-05-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

Sara's graduation party. We are ready to conduct some serious damned work.

I would have done the same damned thing.

2006-05-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

Bill Dunn, Sara Hebert, and me at The Highland Parade

2006-04-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

Quite possibly, my last radio show ever

2006-04-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share my playlist from what is probably my last radio show on KSCL 91.3 ever. It was kinda sad, and I just played a bunch of indie rock that I've really enjoyed over the past 4 years. I didn't even get into much electronic or hip hop stuff, which was pretty sad:

Oxford Collapse "Melting the Ice Queen" S/T
Ben Gibbard "You Remind me of Home" Home Split
TIm Kasher "Stranger than Strangers" My Favorite Songwriters
MC Honky "A Good Day to be You feat. Kool G Murder" I am the Messiah
!!! "Take Ecstasy with Me" Take Ecstasy with Me EP
Yo La Tengo "Autumn Sweater" Sampler 1993-97
Spoon "The Way We Get By" Kill the Moonlight
Wilco "Heavy Metal Drummer" Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Calexico "Deep Down" Garden Ruin
Ted Leo + Pharmacists "Ghosts" Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead
The Gunshy "Reason to Retreat" No Man's Blues
Jason Anderson "Jet Ski Accidents" Something/Everything
John Vanderslice "Pale Horse" Cellar Door
Atom & His Package "Going to Georgia" Redefining Music
Postal Service "We will become silhouettes" Give Up
Clorox Girls "Don't You Take Your Life" S/T
Twilight Singers "Teenage Wrist Band" Twilight Singers Play Blackberry Belle
TV on the Radio "Ambulance" Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
Destroyer "Notorious Lightning" Your Blues
Mountain Goats "Palmcorder Yajna" We Shall All Be Healed
Grandaddy "Now It's On" Sumday
Flaming Lips "One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21" Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Les Savy Fav "Reprobate's Resume" Go Forth
S PRCSS "In It's Mouth A Murder. Oh MNML" MNML
White Stripes "Jolene" White Blood Cells Bonus Disc
PS "So Stupid Beauty" S/T
Neko Case "If You Knew" The Tigers Have Spoken
Portastatic "You Know Where to Find Me (Live)" Autumn was a Lark
Songs: Ohia "Farewell Transmission" Magnolia Electric Co.

AEIOU Sometimes Y

2006-04-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Correspondent, Chris #2, sends in what he calls "Devo meets Sesame Street meets an 80s rap video meets an 80s new wave video"

Basically, I wish I was in this video and that I owned every boombox in it.

Sara inside her Spam sculpture.

2006-04-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

What a nice evening.

Panda, Panda, Panda!

2006-04-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

So, one of the authors of this rapidly dying blog, Sara Hebert, is having her senior art show this Sunday night at Turner Art Center on the campus of Centenary College. It's actually a two-person exhibit including Sara's art (in the gallery) and the art of her classmate Ryan Watson (in an Airstream trailer parked out front). The show is called DOIN' IT WITH MACHINES. I am providing some of the snacks and crap...including TWO CRATES OF HELLO PANDAS. So, I mean, even if you hate art. You like these cookies and you know it.

The show begins at 7:00 PM at Turner Art Center, and there'll be lots of stylishly disaffected people and friggin' awesome artwork.

the new streets album is incredible

2006-04-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

"When You Wasn't Famous" = Song of the year. The whole album, which I got a promo copy of last night, is much less catchy as a whole, but just incredibly intense and personal. It's like a diary of someone who's worried they're losing their mind set to unique, glitchy hip-hop beats. I love it.

But I still like Pitman, who definitely does not like The Streets. No time to write more, but I promise a proper review soon.

deja vu

2006-04-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

i just had to make this post, it was too funny to pass up. Here I am, three nights later, in the same brookshire's parking lot. Car crapped out on me again, the exact same way and in the exact same spot. What are the odds of that? Lightning does strike twice, my friends. However, I'm in a considerably better mood today than I was the last time this happened, so I'm taking it all in good humor. Randall, however, who has now had to get dressed and get the kid up and ready to go for the second time in a week, is probably not as happy.

on another note, have any of you heard Tapes n' Tapes? How about Wolf Parade? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? Voxtrot? The Elected? I'm loving all of this stuff right now. I think I'm going to make a sorta 'virtual mixtape' and post it up here soon. I'm feeling really excited about music these days, which is always nice.

Now I'm going to sit in my car and eat M & Ms until my family gets here to rescue me. bye.

OOOOOHHHHH!

2006-04-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

Occassionally one of those commercial rap songs comes along that makes me think twice before taking my i-Pod along on car rides. T.I.'s "What You Know" is one of those songs. It's definitely the most marvelous beat to hit rap radio since Three Six Mafia's "Stay Fly," but the lyrics are beutifully delivered as well. This is one of those songs where you can hear exactly what Saul Williams was talking about at Barnes & Noble when he said "I see southern rap as the blues. It's not the originality of what they're saying, but how they're saying it that matters."

As a side note, if you want to get a peep at the vast, echoing absence of much popular, young black culture on the internet, just do a Google Image search for "T.I.". This is the number one song on Urban radio, in the country, and you have to go five pages of images in to find an image of this cat. Most of the images that come back as TI-85 calculators. Which is pretty awesome.

maybe a little weird, but here's a post for you

2006-04-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

this has nothing to do with music, so forgive me. it's just a post about how i've had the worst day ever, which has culminated with my car (brand new, by the way, only four months old!) breaking down about 20 minutes from home as I was going back from work. So I'm stuck here in a brookshire's parking lot at 11 pm, waiting for my husband to come get me, and stealing a wireless internet signal to write this post (thank God for small miracles like wireless internet and airport on my mac) Now why can't i ever remember to change the oil in my car??? Somebody slap me, please.

I miss my friends. I have all of these awesome friends, some of whom write on this blog, many of whom read it. I wanted to tell you all how much i wish i saw you more often. I'd like to start trying to figure out a way to spend more time with you. If you're reading this, just know that i love you all.

thank you and goodnight.
-shannon

Robinson Film Center groundbreaking this weekend, neat "virtual tour" on the web

2006-04-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

I work for an oprganization called The Robinson Film Center, which is an upcoming venue for independent, international, and classic film. While working there, I've also had the priviledge of getting to teach introductory video production to a lot of students who'd never even given a thought to making their own films. In the last few months, the job has nearly consumed my entire life outside of work. But we're breaking ground on construction/renovations of our building this weekend, so the work is paying off.

If you'd like to zip fast forward to early 2007 and have the architect who designed the building, as well as the Executive Director, give you a guided tour of the facility, you can to that...sort of. The Times has posted a very cool "Virtual tour" of the completed building, which includes a "Director's Commentary"-style audio track. You can check it out here (scroll down to the "Multimedia" section - it streams in Windows Media Player). I admit to getting a little excited every time I see the theaters.

The First Black Astronaut

2006-03-30T19:36:00.000-08:00

Just three quick thoughts:

1) I worked really, really hard to make sure this year's Louisiana Film Festival - Student Division would be great. So far, everything has gone swimmingly. However, I fear that no one will be attending to see the kids' movies. It begins tommorrow (Friday) at 4:30 in Kilpatrick Hall on the campus of Centenary College. These are all films created by K-12 kids. Saturday's film screenings, which will last from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM, are the high school films. Honestly, they're the best. If you can attend those, please do. If you need directions, or you just want to holler at a committed-ass fool, call me: two seven two one six nine six.

2) I am writing my album right now, at a rate of about 16 bars a night. I am very happy with it so far. I was afraid that the Pillage People album was my lyrical apex, and this would be all downhill. But I seem to still have some fight in me.

3) Busdriver's "Fear of A Black Tangent" is the best "progressive" rap album I have heard since El-P's Fantastic Damage. If you've been as bored with hip-hop as I have been lately, holler at this album. I mean, I know the cool thing to listen to is Spank Rock, but that's kind of the obvious shit to rock, you know?

New Orleans, before i forget

2006-03-28T16:34:00.000-08:00

Heading into New Orleans on I-49.

I just returned from New Orleans, where I attended my first "premiere" event, for the television show "Thief," which filmed in Shreveport. I got to meet some celebrities whose work I respect - most notably Andre Braugher ("Homicide Life on the Streets") and Clifton Collins, Jr. ("Capote"), and I got my first glimpse of what a premiere is like - photographers, people who are dressed much nicer than I, the constant voice going "Should I go talk to him/her? Should I? Should I?!" It was an unusual experience - I'm genuinely in awe of Clifton Collins' work as Percy in "Capote," a film that is as well-acted as any I have ever seen. My hands were I bit sweaty when I finally mustered up the courage to go and chat with him. But they were all incredibly nice.

The more dizzying experience, however, was seeing New Orleans. I can't really express what the Ninth Ward is like - it looks like an atomic weapon went off. It's incredibly, incredibly unnerving to be sitting at a red light, looking at the building to your right, and realize that the building isn't painted two slightly different colors. That's just how deep the water was. To look out and see one building reduced to rubble is always unnerving to me ("What happened to that building?," my brain says to itself, "Did it collapse?") But to look at a whole block, and every building is like that - your head swims. The writing on the buildings - the weird graffiti/heiroglyphs that the rescuers left as they searched each house - is absolutely, profoundly heartbreaking. Actually, I couldn't tell if it was left by the rescuers in all cases - some things read like:

"916-FWE-Dog in house/2 fish"

Every house had similar writing on it. Some had strange things, I remember one in particular which read "Two cats, pretty nice, won't scratch a stranger." My traveling companion pointed out things like "That overpass was used as a boat launch." Whole blocks were completely destroyed, then we'd drive a block up, uphill, and only the roofs would be damaged. So strange that ten feet meant the difference between complete destruction and a narrow escape. Abandoned/burned cars are everywhere. The rear windows either say "FLOOD" or "NO FLOOD" in white paint.

The downtown section of New Orleans, where we stayed (largely alone in the hotel) is largely in tact but also somewhat empty, to an eery extent. To look around you and see a metropolis - huge bank towers, four star hotels, exclusive restaurants - and perhaps a dozen people on the street - gives one a desperate, frightened feeling. The huge palm trees near Canal Place (outside of the Harrah's) had been plucked out of the ground like carrots. Several lanes of the street were closed and huge, new palm trees (about 60 feet long, all wrapped in plastic like they were bought from a store) were being planted by men operating cranes. I stepped into a corner store to buy gum, and wished I'd had enough cash to buy a shirt that read, in trademark New Orleans vulgarity: "A bitch named Katrina gave me an unforgettable blowjob." That's this city, I thought, in a nutshell: take a tragedy of this profound scale and historic impact, and make it a dirty joke. The daiquiri places were open, but empty. Bartenders stood, staring out at the street with thousand-yard gazes.

I've heard it said that no work id being done in the city, and that did not appear to be true at all. The horizon is dotted with cranes. In the Ninth Ward, we had to navigate carefully due to closed streets. Guys in orange vests and hard hats directed heavy equipment, police re-routed traffic so some flatbed trailers could get through, and a team of guys with weed-eaters (strange that they would prioritize cutting the grass) looked hard at work. I saw several teams of what appeared to be Christian missionaries. We couldn't get near where the levee broke along the edge of the Ninth Ward, there were police cards blocking that street. But I could see the rubble beyond them, as we passed over a bridge.

I took some photos, but not many. I realized pretty quickly that this is not something you can photograph. I also want to recommend that anyone who is interested in knowing more, don't just search for photos on-line, just GO TO NEW ORLEANS. We found a great hotel easily, there were places to eat open, and people seemed nice as ever. It's not as if everything is roped off. We drove around the city for quite some time, and bore firsthand witness to everything from the lots upon lots of empty FEMA trailers, to the plaintive, desperate grafitti, to everything. I feel like it was my duty to see all of that, and I wish that everyone could. I've seen some of the most profoundly sad photos of my life since Katrina hit, but just standing on a corner, looking at an overturned snowcone stand, and as far as the eye can see is rubble, that was the first time I really got an idea of the scale of this whole disaster, and the stakes.

Honest Question: When was the last time you cared about a blog?

2006-03-28T12:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not trying to hate or anything, but I am so tired of music blogs already. Stereogum is on the Arctic Monkey's dick as well, not to mention I could really care less about some show going on at the knitting factory in NEW YORK. I know all we've done is complain lately at FFF, but JESUS, who gives a shit about blogs lately?

I do actually, and I still make time to read a few. I wanted to share these with you, and get you to hit us back with the ones you dig (I'm talking to all 5 of our readers, mainly Bill)

Wonkette: Left leaning political news from folks who eat live sleep and breathe Washington, D.C. This shit is hilarious, case in point, see Dick Cheney's Rider

Boing Boing: Have you been living under a freaking rock?

The Google Blog: Because I care about techmology.

Infocult: Because Centenary Alums agree, Bryan Alexander rocks the socks.

Honest question: When was the last time you really cared about a band?

2006-03-13T20:50:00.000-08:00

Gathering dust on shelves and in i-Tunes music folders everywhere.

So, this is not meant to be one of those frustrated outbursts, it's meant to be an honest question about the state of music right now: Doesn't it seem like we (and I use that "we" precariously, to represent the more web-culture addicted among us) have gotten pretty fucking easy to manipulate? Enough bloggers post about a band and I suddenly find myself just itching to get their CD. I'm one of probably a few hundred hundred thousand blog-rolling hipsters who haven't played that copy of M.I.A.'s "Arular" purchased at a Best Buy last Summer since, like...September. My i-Tunes is a goddamned ghost shipyard. Diplo. A bunch of screwed and chopped shit. Grime. Cuizinier. I don't care about any of that bullshit. For about two days I thought it was the shit, and it was all over blogs like some leaked Elliott Smith or a Jay Dee eulogy. Now I'm sitting there with it highlighted, pondering the fatal right click. And how? Marketing, dudes. I can't name the last album I bought, took home, unwrapped, and sat listening to like it was a message from another planet, then picked up the phone and called everyone I knew to tell them. I remember sitting in a dark room full of weedsmoke (don't worry, it wasn't mine) playing that TV on the Radio album for someone, going "Do you hear this? Do you hear this?"

I just want that to happen a couple more times in my life, you know? Please tell me that it is not a being young thing. Something that good can't have an expiration date.

My head is full of dark matter tonight. I'm that fuckin' black smoke blowing up out of the ground on the LOST island. And I'm here to tell you, THE ARCTIC MONKEYS ARE THE WORST BAND ON EARTH. Don't believe the hype. It's the same people selling us this bullshit, they're just getting their interns to e-mail Bloggers instead of buying a $10,000 ad. Even Robert Trudeau's on the monkeydick. My assistant at work looked over the cubicle divider yesterday and asked me if I'd ever heard them. How does something become unavoidable? Culture is like a virus in more ways than one.

Coming to a cut out bin near you.

Coming to a cut-out bin: you. Me. All of us.

And speaking of me coming: I'll be back in this big fella. I need an outlet right now, like real bad. No, like real bad. So swing by for your dose of emotion, throw ropes in the ocean, hope the smoke is the potion and walk back across the tightrope, slowly.

Not even close to "Magnificent" City

2006-03-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

Aceyalone and RJD2 recently released an album-length collaboration called "Magnificent City," which caught my eye because I'm a big fan of a couple of Acey projects ("All Balls Don't Bounce" is one of the few real contributions to hip-hop that the Project Blowed have made) as well as RJ's "Deadringer" on Definitive Jux. I know that these two artists are capable of brilliant work, but you couldn't tell from hearing this album. The thing that really shocked me is how little originality Acey brought to this album, and how little work he really seems to have put into it. A lot of these songs are pretty unoriginal from content to execution, especially the "weed song," "High Lights." Acey delivers some verses that make me wince in pain - it sounds as though he either freestyles a large portion of the album, or he didn't get to go over the songs many times before going into the recording booth. Being an MC myself, I've gotten familiar with how I sound when I'm trying my best to stay on top of the beat because I'm just not that familiar with it. What comes out is a lack of synchronicity, and the vocals sound like one distinct thing, the beat another distinct thing. Like they're not completely aware of one another's existence. That's how this sounds to me. I'm not alone in this: Pitchfork (not that I want to be in their haterrific dugout) gave this album a pretty ballsy 2.3 out of 10.0.

I'm one of the few people I know who has been really disappointed by everything RJD2 has done since Deadringer. I thought The Horror was okay, but "Since We Last Spoke" was about 8 filler tracks served up alongside the indescribably awesome "Through The Walls" and "Making Days Longer". I'm not saying this album is unlistenable, and I wouldn't give it less than a 5.0 if asked to rate it, but it does sound hurried. Having worked with hip-hop for a long time now, this whole album reminds me of the songs that I've made with friends when we didn't have much time - when someone played some beats and I dug up some lyrics that kind of fit the beat and we recorded within a couple of days of deciding to make a song. Just inchoate, somehow. Half-baked and disappointing.

something about pimping, the level of difficulty involved, and the relationship of both to the geographic location of the pimp

2006-03-08T18:07:00.000-08:00

Live OscarBlog 2006

2006-03-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

Famus For Fifteen Live OscarBlog

6:25: Checking in for the first time because Sara and I are making penis-shaped cupcakes in a show of support for Heath Ledger, best actor. Actually I'm torn, it'd be pretty nice to see Terrence Howard win the Oscar, and hear how the symphony handled "Hard Out There For A Pimp". I gotta go check on my schlong-cakes...

6:29: Oh my God, George Clooney is an ice-cold pimp. He is seriously trying to get this woman's panty drawers.

While I was making the penis cupcakes, the following exchange:

Alysia: "Wow, you have enough batter to make a ton of peniscakes."
Chris: "Actually, I'm stopping after this pan. Right now, we have a ratio of like three penis cakes per person."
Alysia: "You can't just throw it all away."
Allison: "I mean, there are kids in Africa who don't get to eat penis."

6:56: It may just be that I drink a lot, but I have no idea who ANY of the people hosting the pre-show are. And all of the questions that they're asking are ridiculous! Why ask David Strathairn (sp?) if he still smokes? Who are these people?

6:56: Allison Cormier: "I wish I had a butt like the Oscar statue."

THE VERY FIRST IMAGE THAT CAME ON SCREEN WAS THE DELOREAN FROM BACK TO THE FUTURE. Fuck it, I'm drinkin' tonight!

7:04 I don't know how it happened

7:08 Chris made the mistake of letting Sara sit in front of the computer. PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS CAKES!!!!

7:09 "Not all gays are virile cowboys"

7:10 Bjork couldn't be here tonight because she was trying on her dress and DICK CHENEY shot her.

7:12 Jon Stewart gets the ICE GRILLE from Jamie Foxx. Walk the Line was apparently not the white man's Ray.

7:16 What the fuck is Nicole Kidman talking about? Chris: She is so blunted!

7:18 "I thought that was Dave Matthews" Chris, in response to seeing a picture of Paul Giamatti.

7:23 George Clooney gives his first stump speech, and it's actually really nice. I mean, I'm a liberal, but every time Susan Sarandon opens her mouth I just want to shoot a potato gun at her face.

7:26 Shout out to my dog Hooch!

Ben Stiller, please go die. You are a douche and your stupid skit sucks.

7:32 Awesome, it's Nick Park.

7:35 Naomi Watts looks like a goddamned cavewoman. Whoa, WTF, where the hell did Dolly Parton come from, and why? It's not fair that she gets to do this, but they don't get to do "Hard Out There For a Pimp". Alysia just compared Dolly Parton to an ant, with their sectioned bodies, which is one parts funny, three parts cruel.

The envelopes that the award-winners' names are in look like Netflix envelopes.

7:48 Jennifer Anniston comes out and you can just see the depression seeping out of her every pore. As she walks out, Sara: "Somebody please marry this woman."

7:51 That costume-designing woman just thanked "the people of Japan." That means she thanked 127,417,244 people.

7:59 Alysia just pointed out that the dude who played the Sith Lord looks like Pope Benedict.

8:06 - Rachel Weisz robbed Michelle Williams. Every man in America is thinking the same thing about her chest...oh, who am I kidding? I'm one of like six men in America watching The Oscars.

8:12 - Scott Hearne and Alysia are laughing at Lauren Bacall for all of the trouble she's having getting her lines out, the mean fuckers. The tribute to film noir was really nice.

8:22 - George Clooney is king of the tasty face tonight! And Charlize Theron is queen of the big-ass bows.

8:25 - These penguin dudes can kiss my ass. Murderball was way better.

8:28 - Wow, they put the new Goldfrapp single in a Diet Coke commercial.

8:37 - As Samuel Jackson walks out, Alysia shouts "Snakes on planes! Snakes on planes!"

FUCK YEAH! Howard Beale is in the place.

8:42 - Sara and I are gonna get a pet chicken and name it Gregory Peck. There's an amazing joke going on in the room about having sex in a tent with Itzak Perlman, but there's no way I could really convey it. You had to be there.

8:48 - The guy who wrote the Brokeback Mountain song just thanked "all the Latinos," which is approximately 296.5 million people. That's more than twice the number of people that the costume designer from "Pride & Prejudice" thanked.

8:57 - Dude, why do they keep slamming DVDs? Theater-going = Tupac Shakur, DVD's = Biggie Smalls?

9:00 PM - Someone please feed Jessica Alba. She used to have some junk in her trunk, and it was beautiful. Sara comes through with the vulgarity: "His penis would break her!"

LILY TOMLIN AND MERYL STREEP please shut the hell up. If this were a true Robert Altman-style tribute to Robert Altman, it would go on for four and a half hours and be overrated by everyone. I gave up on Nashville after an hour and a half with no idea what was happening. The Long Goodbye was nice.

9:13 - Robert Altman eats brains.

9:19 - Three Six Mafia is on the Academy Awards. I must be on drugs. I mean, other than the cold and flu medication. I'm so thowed. Why did the stencil quit blogging before this happened?

9:23 - Allison eats the balls first, in case anyone was wondering.

9:28 - Memoirs of A Geisha has been nominated in, like, every technical category. Alysia: "King Kong is sweeping the awards that no one gives a damn about."

9:41 - Jon Stewart: "Martin Scorsese: zero Oscars. Three Six Mafia: One."

9:43 - Allison: "Seriously, if someone is going to thank me from one part of their heart, I'd like it to be the bottom, because that's where the ventricles are and they do all of the work."

10:12 - "Fuck the New Yorker." Allison the Hater.

10:20 Ugh. Hideous graphic design! I mean do we really need the title of the movie 3 times vs. a teeny tiny screen of the movie? Who let the intern design the title cards for Best Director??

10:22 Mother fucking Jack Nicholson in the HOUSE! He is obviously on Valium.

10:23 BULLSHIT? CRASH? Fuck what? I'm horribly confused.

Good Night and Good Luck next year.

From the Same People that Brought you "Lazy Sunday"

2006-03-05T13:27:00.000-08:00

For those of you that did not happen to catch Saturday Night Live last night, I bring you the Natalie Portman Gangsta Rap. Yes, that name and those words are in the same sentence, and it's really quite hilarious, at least to me. It features Natalie Portman saying things like "To fuck all night" and "I wanna fuck you too!" I for one am glad that The Lonely Island kids have sort of taken over SNL, as it brings you things like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ7bJQGlfJY&search=natalie%20portman%20SNL

Enjoy.

I remember these.

2006-03-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

I used to love these books. One thing I am presently loving in a major way is a website called The Stencil: www.thestencil.org.

So, the organization I work for is showing "Back To The Future" on a huge inflatable screen, outdoors in downtown Shreveport's Riverview Park (on Clyde Fant Parkway), Friday night. Admission is only $1, with all proceeds benefiting Shreveport area not-for-profit organizations. The film should be beginning around 7:00 PM. Please try and spread the word - holler at me in the comments if you need more information.

SRSLY

2006-02-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

Do not date this guy.

By the way, Alysia's shitty break up stories won her a bunch of cd's and 7 inches from the Suicide Squeeze / Spectre Entertainment / Metal Hearts Valentine's Day Contest. At least they were good for something.

When they guy that got on aim during sex found out about it, he said "you're welcome."

Bill Joyce's "Bumped" Cover for The New Yorker

2006-02-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

Bill Joyce created a beautiful Mardi Gras-themed New Yorker cover, which I think does a moving job of showing the laughter and the tears that are both going to be a part of this year's celebration. The cover was "bumped" so they could run a cover about Shotgun Dick Cheney popping caps in his friends. Boo. I wanted to share it, anyway. The more of his work I see, the more I realize how much I like this guy as an artist. His illustrations for Michael Chabon's "Summerland," in particular. I don't know what it is - surrealism, fantasy, an ever-present dash of something grotesque. All of that is present in this image, that was created out of a need to keep Louisiana alive in the mids of New Yorker readers. I guess a clever jab at Dick Cheney was more important. I read somewhere that America forgets about major events - including tragedies - in 10 days.

Black Nasty: "How about nowish?"

2006-02-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

It is an oft-discussed fact among my friends that independent culture can sometimes be as oppressive as popular culture. My friend Sammy likes Pearl Jam alot. I like Sammy. You know who else I like? Nine Inch Nails. That's right. When I was a teenager, I jammed "Pretty Hate Machine" strictly all of the time. "Something I Can Never Have"? "Down In It"? Come on now. You know those songs rocked your socks off, angsty-ass teenage poetry lyrics and all. My fondness for Mr. Reznor's cliche-ridden whiny musings has persisted, and on top of that I've developed an honest-to-God, non-ironic love for the craftsmanship that he brings to the recording process. As a producer, he's just plain the shit - the remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 surround-sound release of "The Downward Spiral" is unfuckwithable - if you want to hear exactly what can be done with modern recording technology, just find a friend with a nice 5.1 Dolby set-up (assuming you're not balling out of control) and check out that CD. The same is true of "The Fragile" - an album that has one beautiful instrumental for approximately every two annoying screamy songs with "Fucker" in the chorus.

I picked up "With Teeth" last night, to get hyped about the show he's doing here with Saul Williams (note to Jesus: Thank you for making this dude the opener.), and it is an overall so-so album with a few absolute rockers. So far "All of the Love in the World," "Sunspots," and "The Line Begins To Blur" stand out. Songs that I wish were not included are "Love Is Not Enough" and "You Know What You Are?". But I love those first three.

Go ahead. Make fun of me.

WELCOME TO PLYMOUTH ROCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!

2006-02-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

On Friday night, I bought a large plastic hippo from Michael's Arts and Crafts supply. Sara and I were originally there looking for a small version of "Starry Night" that I could hang around my neck as a commentary on the comodification of art. Because I mean, Dipset has big chains, you have a Piet Modrian - what's the difference? Anyway, I did find the little starry night but then Sara pointed out this plastic hippo and I lost my mind. It looked PERFECT for a pendant. So I bought it, along with some little eyelets, and we picked up a gold chain from Clare's. I hooked the hippo onto the chain by screwing the eyelet into his back, breaking open some of the chain links and clamping them shut again. Then I took the whole think out behind the girl's dorm (you know my style, where else would I be on a Friday night?) and spraypainted with a paint called 24K. Let me just tell you something: This shit makes anything look like solid-ass gold. I want to spraypaint everything with it: the neighbor's cats, my rake, my hat, my hand...everything. My car! Anywho, that is the story of the pendant, also known as the coolest thing you have ever seen. I will be rocking it this Saturday night, February 25, at Java Junction, for the Great American Crossover 5. I have received commitment from P-Lew of the Pillage People, I think he'll be coming through to spit his bars from "Pirate Code," which is kind of nice on some old time's sakes shit. Be advised that this weekend might just melt your face: Great American Crossover, Big Positive and the Vidrines, Mardi Gras in Highland. Too much rock for one hand.

I would make sweet love to this plate of food, if only I could.

Alysia Gets Broken Up With Final Part

2006-02-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

It doesn't seem as though you guys are digging this much, but I figure I have to finish the series, so read, enjoy my humiliation!

My favorite band at the time, Death Cab, was doing a show in New Orleans. Two of my friends, Curt and Sara, wanted to go, and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to see Matthew (then boyfriend that lived in Laplace) again as well as see my favorite band. I was amazingly excited, and we left school to drive down there.

We drove to Baton Rouge, about an hour out of New Orleans, as that's where Curt and Sara were staying. Matthew picked me up there, and we drove to his house. That night we were, uhm, how shall I say, being intimate? When all of a sudden I noticed that he wasn't really even paying attention anymore. I asked him what was going on, and he actually just GOT UP and LEFT THE ROOM. He didn't say anything to me, he just got up and left. I waited in the room for a while thinking he'd come back, but no, he was upstairs on AIM. Yes, people, I hope this doesn't speak badly of me and my abilities, but while having sex with me, the guy got up, left, and got on AIM. The next night, about 20 minutes before leaving for the show, he broke up with me

Later on, we drove down to the show without saying a word to each other. We get there finally, get in line, and the guy says he needs our IDs even though it's an all-ages show. I didn't have mine with me, so Matthew and I had to walk back the 10 minutes to his car to get it. We come back and get back in line, just to hear that the price is higher than what had been advertised. Now, this normally wouldn't be a problem, but he had told me I didn't need to bring too much money with me. I brought enough to cover most of my expenses just in case, but it turned out that he had been planning on breaking up with me the whole time, and so he didn't pay for anything, and I only had enough money to get in at the advertised price. He volunteered to give me his entrance fee, give me my bags, and leave me at the show, but I didn't want to get into the show and not be able to find my friends that had to bring me home, so I declined. We ended up going to a terrible improv comedy theater where he had a blast and I sat there.

So, the improv ends and we go back to the venue to wait for my friends to show up. Now, I still didn't have the money to get in, so this meant that I had to sit outside the venue listening to my favorite band play music about bring broken up with (this was Transatlanticism-era Death Cab). The show finally ended, I managed to find my friends, and I left with them to spend the night in a chair at a high school friend's house.

Happy V-day people. I hope the one you love doesn't ever end it like this.

Alysia Gets Broken Up With Part Two

2006-02-13T17:45:00.000-08:00

Fast forward a few years from the previous post and I'm dating a guy that lives in Virginia. Bad idea to start with, I know, but he was a writer and who doesn't love a writer? I'm not gonna get into the story of the relationship, but about a year later, we start having some problems. I am a junior in high school at the time, and so I'm terribly emo and of course have a LiveJournal. One night, I write a post about how confused I am about him and our relationship just before I go to bed. Now, he worked nights, so I did not get to talk to him until about 2 AM that night. I called him and we had something of a strange conversation. He was kinda standoff-ish but nothing weird, and when we got off the phone he said he loved me and everything. Now, this was all fine and dandy until I woke up the next morning, checked my e-mail, and found that he had left a comment to my LiveJournal post at about midnight, before we had talked on the phone. Here is a link to the post and the comment that I found last night:

http://alysia0812.livejournal.com/27288.html

As you can see, he broke up with me in a LiveJournal comment, and when I called him that night (this was after he had "broken up" with me) he clearly knew that I hadn't read the comment and he acted like everything was fine. Now, that's pretty bad, but this guy is a complete ass, and of course that means that I had to get together with him later in life, right? Long story short, the second time around he cheated on me with the ONLY GIRL I KNEW IN VIRGINIA. He could've done it with anyone else in the entire state, but no, he picks the one that I actually talk to.

So to sum up, LiveJournal post, and poorly cheating, but still, not really the worst.

Back like a vertabrae

2006-02-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

My performance at this "Great American Crossover" event will not only be my last performance for a while, but will also feature a workout session set to "Hoppin' High On Hip-Hop," a hip-hop themed exercise CD featuring all kinds of activities for a firmer, healthier badunkadunk. Don't try to resist. Just put it on the calendar.

fuck your indie cred.

2006-02-12T22:29:00.000-08:00

I just got finished defending the silly little mall store I work at in a post over at Stereogum. Would someone please explain to me why indie rock kids are so snobby? I mean sure, I think it's funny that the Hot Topic head honchos think "indie" involves lots of eyeliner, body jewlery, and black clothing. But the level of hating on the company that signs my checks is silly. How ridiculous is it for these so called indie purists to sit around making fun of people for being mall goths? I mean, who cares what other people are wearing or listening to? If you want to listen to your "super-underground-lo-fi-no-one-has-ever-heard-this-band" indie rock and read pitchfork all day, go ahead, but what point is there in making fun of anyone else who isn't doing the same? The people who do so are just as shallow as the people they're laughing at. I say, like what you like because it moves you, and forget about trying so hard to be "cool". Word.

(and hey sara, you should change my link in the sidebar, because I deleted my typepad account. I'm at www.shannon-palmer.com now)

like them g-string drawers that keep their buttcheeks bare

2006-02-12T17:26:00.000-08:00

The weekend unrolls, and I have more conversations about Dilla's death, my own music, and the state of hip-hop. Lumenz and I reminisce over the time when MC's smiled in photographs. Why, I wonder aloud, is it that no one in hip-hop seems to be having a good time at it anymore? I get to thinking about what I used to love about underground hip-hop, when underground meant limited pressings, sold out of trunks and backpacks, and a philosophy of equal parts agression and good humor. Fuck you, hip hop said, and smiled.

Here's an underground group that I used to listen to every goddamn day, riding home from school with whichever one of my brother's friends was buying my beer that day:

The Sacred Hoop. A Beautiful name for a hip-hop group. This website has two of their best (scroll down one post) - I specifically love "Panhandle," which flirts with Divine Styler/El-P style abstraction, but stays on the broke gangster side of the playground.

I fucking love MP3 blogs.

Alysia Gets Broken Up With (a 3-part series)

2006-02-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Long time member, first time poster here. I was brought on pretty close to the beginning but thought that it was only going to be music reviews. I'm only a music director of a college radio station, what the hell do I know about music? A few days ago, however, I was told I could post anything I wanted, and so, just in time for valentine's day, you get the "Alysia Gets Broken Up With" series.

Recently, one of the promotional companies I work with for KSCL had a contest where you were asked to submit your worst break-up stories, be it you breaking up with someone else or them breaking up with you. Now, with my history, I've totally got this won, and I will update you all when the results come in, but I thought I'd share my pain with you. It's four stories, but about three different people, so it will be a daily installment starting today and leading up until V-day itself. Today is the first part, but it's short since I had to write the introduction.

This first one happened in 8th grade. I was dating a boy named Andrew that I had been madly in love with for a while. It was a decent relationship, nothing special or terrible, but at the end of the three months, to the day, he handed me a letter at school. I thought it was an anniversary letter or something because I was terribly naive, but he told me not to read it until I got home. When I got home I opened the letter, and it was a breakup in written form. Now, misleading me about the letter wasn't the big problem. The big problem was the fact that he had spelled my name wrong throughout the entire letter. So just to make sure you understand, he dated me for three months, and couldn't spell my name. Not so bad, you say? Well, I'd tend to agree with you because of the other stories that are to come. In 8th grade, of course, it crushed me, especially when I found out that he had apparently dated me on a bet he had made with my best friend, and had been making out with another friend of mine for the entire time.

I hope you enjoyed the first installment of "Alysia Gets Broken Up With", and come back tomorrow for the second part.

while you were having fun

2006-02-11T21:49:00.000-08:00

While we were playing drunk Scrabble (see left), and it seemed everyone in my life that I cared about was having a good time (for once), one of my favorite musicians died in his sleep. Chris was out with soemone he loves at Big D's, Christy was watching zombie movies with old friends, my best friend Bill was on my couch reading my copy of "Black Hole," in short, there was peace in the fucking valley.

R.I.P. James Yancey, aka Jay Dee of Slum Village/The Ummah/J Dilla, easily the greatest hip-hop producer of all goddamn time.

His new album, "Donuts," just dropped on Stone's Throw records. I will be reviewing it on this site as soon as I can. I have been listening to it almost constantly - if there is any justice in the universe, this album (which is absolutely mind-bending, a frenetic cut-and-paste assault of jazz, sould, and old school hip-hop) will get its due.

Fuck, I'm so pissed. To quote the most talented person I know:

"Why Jay Dee? Why not Slim Thug? Fucking Chingy will live to be a hundred and ten on some vampire shit." - Gamma Pro

For those interested, Yancey died in his sleep of kidney failure. He was 32. He had recently been performing live, against doctor's orders, in a wheelchair. The reason he cited for endangering his life for the sake of his music was just simple love of his art. Family and friends say he frequently would spend 48-hour periods in his basement, making music, without even coming up to eat.

Here's the Pitchfork review of "Donuts."

Listen to streaming audio from "Donuts" at Rolling Stone.

VD - the good kind

2006-02-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

What's your favorite Valentine's Day song? However cheesy it may be, share it with us. My favorite is "When U Love Somebody" by the Fruit Bats from their album Mouthfuls. Check it out here.

Tell us your favorite anti-Love song too! My fav? Song for the Dumped by Ben Folds Five!

Please help King Hippo shoot the "ART SHOWS" video

2006-02-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

Dear Pillage People/King Hippo friend,

I know this sounds crazy dumb, but I am making a video for my new song "Art Shows," and I need a bunch of indie rock girls to hang out during two different scenes, and I was wondering if you would consider it.

What the song attempts to do, and what I hope the video will do, is satirize the often stuffy world of art, commenting on the strange joylessness that seems to have permeated (at least the social aspect of) such a joyful thing. Also, I am trying to draw parallels between the world of art and the world of rap music. I feel that both have somehow been transormed into something commercial and...just not what they were meant to be.

On Monday, the 13th, we're shooting in the drawing classroom of Turner Art Center (corner of Rutherford and Centenary), at 6:30 P.M. Apparently, I will be wearing a sarong and (collaborator on "Art Shows") Lumenz will be wearing a fedora and eating grapes - I have no idea. My friend Sara Smith is directing, so she may have more of an idea about this madness.

Then Saturday, the 18th, from 10:00 AM-11:00 AM in the lobby of Marjorie Lyons Playhouse, we will be enacting the "art gallery scene," whereupon I will wear a painting reproduction around my neck like a pendant and rhyme nasty things with Basquiat.

If you could make it to either one of these events, that would be just swell. Please?

Chris Jay

Please visit www.guerrillagirls.com
"Less than 5% of the artists in the Metropolitan Museum are female. More than 85% of the nudes in the Met are female."

I'm Ok with my decay.

2006-02-07T13:00:00.000-08:00

I woke up in the morning
And they were gone

Many of you know my favorite band in the world is U2. Well, it might be harder for some of you to guess my second favorite. It's a few boys who love nature, and technology probably just as much as me. This past week, I got news that they broke up. Yes that's right, Grandaddy's giving up. It sounds like the most positive thing for the group, as their calling the ending "a gradual erosion" in typical nature minded style.

I have a long history with Grandaddy that I won't go into, except to say that I've loved them since high school, and they were one of the first songs I played on my radio show at KNWD 93.7 in Natchitoches, LA. Since then they've done more than just introduce me to the awesomeness of indie rock, but also super influenced my academic studies in looking at the intersections between ecology and technology

Pitchfork has an article. I wanted to share an MP3 of one of my favorite songs "The Crystal Lake", and it just so happens to be a very legal download at Epitonic.com, where I got most of my favorite tunes from.

RIP.

Brokeback To The Future

2006-02-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

The title of this post pretty much says it all.

Linky linky.

I had never, ever considered the relationship shared by Marty McFly and Dr. Brown as anything other than the perfectly normal plutonic love between any boy and his neighborhood mad scientist/time machine inventor. But now I see.

I Ate A Cupcake With...Nat Baldwin

2006-01-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

Ed. Note: Allison Cormier is a student at Centenary College where she practices veganism except when eating chocolate treats with prolific indie rockers. FFF has decided to begin covering the eating of these treats, while paying minimal attention to the actual indie rocker present while the treat is eaten. Nat baldwin's most recent album, "Lights Out," has received critical acclaim. Read the Dusted Magazine review here.

ChrisJay: So, do you want to be interviewed?
allison c.: yeah
ChrisJay: So, recently, I hear that you ate a cupcake with Nat Baldwin. Tell me about the cupcake - what was it like?
allison c.: it was a hostess cupcake. chocolate. with the white swirl on the top. on the inside was cream. it came in a package of two which was split between nat and me. we each ate a half of each cupcake.
ChrisJay: how did you approach the eating of the cupcake? Frosty top first, or spongy bottom?
allison c.: the spongy bottom has to be eaten first. you hold the cupcake upside down and pull the cupcake apart starting from the bottom but leaving the top fully intact. it's best to get all of the cream out of the way before one attempts to eat the frost top, which is the best part, undeniably.
ChrisJay: the funny part is that we don't talk about Nat
allison c.: haha
allison c.: am i doing this right?
ChrisJay: Absolutely
allison c.: ok, cool
ChrisJay: How long did eating the cupcakes take - and is it true that you shared the cupcakes while walking?
allison c.: no, that's a false and viscious rumor that's been spreading. aparently nat couldn't hold out until after we ate gumbo, so the first cupcake was split as a sort of pre-dinner desert, followed by gumbo, and then a post-gumbo cupcake was then split.
ChrisJay: How was that for you?
ChrisJay: That eating order?
ChrisJay: Frustrating?
allison c.: it was absolutely frustrating. i think it's better to have consecutive cupcake halves instead of ruining the moment with a bowl of gumbo sandwiched between what was eventually a whole cupcake between the both of us.
ChrisJay: Was it a sensual thing, this splitting of the hostess cake?
allison c.: i guess it could be sensual. chocolate is a very sensual food. especially with cream filling.
ChrisJay: Mmmm. Cream filling.
ChrisJay: Did you feel guilty?
allison c.: i did. seeing as i am vegan, it isn't something i usually do. i think, perhaps, that instead of the cupcake we could have chosen an alternative snack, such as celery. however, the cupcake was purchased at a gas station and such places are not known for carrying alternative snacks.
ChrisJay: Looking back on it, if you could change anything about it, what would you change about the cupcake?
allison c.: i don't think there is much you could change about a hostess cupcake. they're moist, they're very delicious, and they've got that wonderful frosty top. i don't think it could be any better
ChrisJay: and nat? do you think he could be any better?
allison c.: i think he'd be great if he'd eat his cupcake starting from the spongy bottom and finishing with the frosty top.
ChrisJay: Thanks for a great premier installment of "I Ate A Cupcake With..." We look forward to next month!

come for the shirt

2006-01-24T17:45:00.000-08:00

So, uh, if you don't come to my show at Java Junction on Saturday the 28th (early - 8:00 PM) for the music, please come for THE GODDAMN MINT GREEN KING HIPPO SHIRT I JUST DROPPED THIRTY BONES FOR at www.durkl.com. I knew this shirt had to be out there. My precious...

Reviewing a record in 30 seconds...GO

2006-01-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

Hella - Homeboy
If you like noise, this is for you. Random, spastic, crazy shit. This is not for sissies. LIYL: Need New Body, Kid 606, Black Dice, Wolf Eyes.

Arab Strap - The Last Romance
Droning slightly like Mogwai and with guitar focused songs along the lines of Delgados or Sons and Daughters, this is post-folk with more of a bittersweet, rocking theme. This release is far more pop-focused and will please fans of Belle and Sebastian who are looking for slightly less bright and shiny tunes. This promo copy suggests you'll like it if you like Bright Eyes or Franz Ferdinand, but I don't see the relevance and I think that maybe they're just name dropping... LIYL: Smog, Nick Drake, Slint.

The Plastic Constellations - The Crusades
Almost a concept album about the Crusades (you know, the religious one) TPC pulls off some rocking shit that is anti-war themed. Raucous and fun tunes presented in the same raw sound that earmarks Fugazi and Lifter Puller. Spastic rock along the lines of Les Savy Fav, their labelmates who have the same layered and nearly screamed vocals. This will fill the void Les Savy Fav has left while they sit around and rub each other to get inspired to write a flippin' record. LIYL: Les Savy Fav, Lifter Puller, Fugazi, Milemarker.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Pig Lib
Pavement member creates great guitar driven melodies with a new crew of players. Pounding, driving and heavy, the guitars take the fore front in these almost psychedelic and very articulate songs. Swaggering and at other times airy and jazzy, the album recalls the 70's. 1% of One is a great epic song. LIYL: Sonic Youth, Television, Pavement

Nickel Creek - Why Should the Fire Die?
Often labeled as bluegrass, Nickel Creek's sound often gets the short end of the stick. Their work is genre-bending, appealing to fans of folk, pop, indie rock, and blues. This album is percussion driven, and wide open layered vocals and delicate guitar picking. LIYL: Iron & Wine, Rilo Kiley, Magnolia Electric Co., Son Volt

V/A - Shreveport's Gonna Be the Death of You: Our City's Songs (1927-72)
Compiled by Shreveport's own awesome dude, Chris Brown, this compilation chronicles Shreveport's musical history from the late 1920's depression to the decade of indulgence (70's, dur). Sampling artists like Leadbelly, Jimmie Davis, Elvis, and Toussaint McCall. The CD really points out the eclectism that is Shreveport with great blues, jazz, rock n' roll, rhythm and blues, and soul tunes. The CD was given to me as an x-mas present but you can request a copy at shreveportsongs [at] gmail.com and you might just get one.

Something else for Shreveporters to do this weekend.

2006-01-22T14:28:00.000-08:00

KSCL Presents Nat Baldwin, Deer Tick and Sam Rosen

On January 27th, KSCL will host touring artists Nat Baldwin, Deer Tick, and Sam Rosen in the Shell Amphitheatre on Centenary College's Campus. The show starts at 7pm and is free and open to the public; however, donations on behalf of the bands will be graciously accepted.

I can tell you that this will pretty much be awesome. Nat Baldwin is a great guy, and he's really excited about making music. I'd really like to see you there, since I've been putting in a lot of work to make this happen.

Critical acclaim for Nat Baldwin:
"It may be the norm to pour out your feelings over an acoustic guitar, but that's not enough for Nat Baldwin: He sings over a double-bass, which he plays with raw, lonely intensity. At its worst, that bass evokes the beast that every scrawny, neatly kempt one of us feels in our guts when our soon-to-be-ex refuses to answer the phone. Lights Out, Baldwin's debut mini-album, feels like one desparate night alone, and if it were a minute longer it would be unbearable." - Pitchforkmedia.com

ps. You can pimp your shit by emailing me at shebert [at] centenary.edu. I know that Robert Trudeau's blog is pretty much defunct and we'd like to fill in the gaps where we can.

IT'S ON AGAIN AND POPPIN

2006-01-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

We put a lot of work into this one, people. More MC's, a live DJ cutting things up, and some all-new material from the King Hipster and company. Please come to my goddamn show.

Cat Power is The Greatest

2006-01-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

Not only does Chan Marshall love animals, but she's a phenomenal songstress who is spayed and neutered.

This is a bit of old hat, but Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall), one of my favorite musicians period, has posted all her songs from her album that is released next week on myspace. I've been listening quite a bit and I am stoked. Chan is the modern Southern Belle, accompanied on this album by Memphis musicians such as Al Green’s guitarist and songwriting partner Mabon "Teenie" Hodges on guitar and his brother Leroy "Flick" Hodges joins in as well. Steve Potts, a drummer for Booker T. and the MG’s joins in as well as a multitude of other great folks. Secretly sexy like PJ Harvey and a great lyricist like Nina Nastasia, Chan Marshall is the queen of the soul-influenced ballad. Highly recommended for fans of Fiona Apple's unreleased version of Extraordinary machines and the down-home charm of M. Ward and Iron and Wine. My favorite track so far is Living Proof which is a sassy, empowering song with jazzy sounds and features the great way Chan Marshall draws her tones out in a sultry, challenging way.

Edit: So now only "The Greatest" is up, but its a great song as well.

The Vidrines are sweating, so you'd better start humming.

2006-01-16T18:38:00.000-08:00

This was before Bill spotted the guy with the hamburger and started molesting him.

This past Saturday night, Sara and I caught The Vidrines (Monroe, LA) at Sully's Tavern. We've seen the Vidrines literally about 5 times. The thing about this live show is that The Vidrines are extremely self-aware as far as the importance of spectacle in rock 'n' roll, and they also happen to do it very well. There are bands that, when they're in the throes of some rock n' roll rapture, just look like a put-on. It's as if they are aware that the music isn't enough to give you your five dollars worth, so they realize they have to act crazy.

I think The Vidrines really are crazy. In an ice cold, suit-wearing, tent revival, delirium tremens, distinctly Southern kind of way. These men are products of long, hot Summers, newspapers full of stories about serial killers in Florida, and whiskey. Lots and lots of whiskey. And it isn't an act. You just happen to be there when the shit goes down, and god help you if you're trying to eat a hamburger just a few feet from Bill, one of the lead singers (full disclosure: Bill is also one of my oldest and best friends). At The Sully's show, he violated this one guy's personal space over and over, all but sitting on the man's table. The response? A camera phone was produced, Bill was photographed, and the guy kept eating.

Their music is actually kind of straightforward rock and roll on the surface, albeit really too well-crafted to fit into to any contemporary scene. The bass player Justin, for example, is a musician's musician. I can literally spot the bass players in the crowd at a Vidrines show, because a few songs into the set, they're standing in front of Justin shaking their heads. The same can be said of the guitarist, Jamie, who still plays solos. This may seem like a small detail, but it's really more of a declaration of a philosophy: "We liked rock and roll better before." Before This Vidrines show, Jamie warmed up with some old David Bowie songs. No one in the audience seemed to notice, but I made a note of it because it was so damned appropriate. The Vidrines all seem to live in a world where I'd like to live, where rock and roll doesn't suck. They scream out dedications to Bon Scott between songs, they curse at audience members, they pretend to fuck the floor and leave body-shaped sweat stains on the nasty-ass concrete floor. It's just good rock and roll. Other bands try it, and you get the feeling they're vacationing in it ("I'm wearing a tie, and I'm acting crazy! It's ironic!").

On the way to the show that night, Bill made an off hand comment that before shows, he likes to watch the AC/DC episode of VH1's "Behind The Music". It is that kind of party. I think Bon Scott would enjoy The Vidrines live. I think he's be relieved that someone was carrying the torch.

Word has it that The Vidrines have finally recruited a replacement keyboardist, who they'll be breaking in with some shows in Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge. I'm excited about this. At the moment, the lack of a piano to lighten things up can lend a torchsong-y quality to every song in their catalog (which they take two hours to play live...people that is getting your five dollars' worth). It's still good stuff, mostly because everyone in the band is a fucking great musician and aware of what an entertainer's job is. But the piano took it someplace else entirely, just challenging bands to be as much fun to watch as they are, making it hard to decide which way to point your face, and reminding me more than a little of The Dismemberment Plan ("Girl O'Clock" style, not "What Do You Want Me To Say?" style).

At the end of the show, Reeve, the Vidrines manager, came up to me and made a comment to the effect of "It's only a matter of time before Bill takes his cock out on stage." It's true. If you like your rock and roll delivered with a lot of craft and precision, a storyteller's respect for a bored-senseless audience that comes to live music looking for something to shatter the monotony, and the threat that a singer may be arrested for showing his cock, this is the band for you. Get out and see these guys next time.

Here's an on-line article about The Vidrines.

First Impressions of "First Impressions of Earth" - Chris Version

2006-01-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

"Don't be a coconut/God is trying to talk to you."

"You Only Live Once" - Nice. This reminds me of U2 for some reason, although that could just be because I am in Sara's room, the center of the the U2 universe. I may just be picking up some of Bono's brain waves...this is a damned solid opening track. I think if I were a music critic, I would call it "loping." Yes homo.

"Juicebox" - This is bad. This actually sounds like Limp Bizkit or something...where are the turntables? Oh, okay, now - about 2:00 in, it suddenly becomes indie rock. But for the first two minutes, it sounds like Weezer's "Hash Pipe". Man, I hope the next song is better...come on and kick me.

"Heart In A Cage" - I can get down with this. The guitar solos are a little kitschy, but what the hell - the guy's name is Fabrizzio Moretti. If he didn't play '80's-ass guitar solos, the name department would have to come change his name. I like this a lot. The drumming is really tinny and loud, the guitar reminds me of Nick Zinner's awesome riff for the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Y-Control". Too bad this track has THE FUCK WORD.

"Razorblade" - This takes me back to the days of sitting in my garage, listening to my brother practice guitar. His guitar playing sounded like he was nodding off on heroin, but that was just because he sucked. On "Razorblade," it sounds like Fab Moretti may actually be nodding off on actual heroin. I think I could learn to play this song on guitar in five minutes. I will bet you ten dollars that I could learn to play this by the end of the night. And I am awful at shit. Sample lyric: "Oh/my feelings/are more important than yours."

"On The Other Side" - A reggae track. If you're thinking "That could either be neat or really bad," you're correct. It is in fact one of those two, and I won't say which one it is, but I'll just say it makes me want to spray diarrhea in their faces like a high-pressure water hose. I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether I am the kind of dude that shoots diarrhea when he is pleased or disappointed.

"Vision of Division" - Is this track gonna be about math? I think Julian Casablancas drank a lot during these sessions. He starts yelling about half way through this song and it really does not fit. About 1:50 into this song, Fab Moretti wakes up from the trance he's been in for the last four songs and shreds it up. As quickly as that started, it's over, it's like they cut and pasted some face-melting shredding into the song randomly. Julian Casablancas shouts "How long must I wait?" over and over about 30 times while they ride this track out, and that shit GETS MAD OLD. GETS MAD OLD. GETS MAD OLD. GETS MAD OLD. GETS MAD OLD.

"Ask Me Anything" - Whoa, hot shit! This synthesizer riff is wicked hot. It's like that fuckin' song "Hot Butter" - you know the one? It's just a whacky arpeggiator...uh oh, there's Julian Casablancas again. It is like he ate a bowl of Alpha Bits (Alpha Bits in the house!) and shat these lyrics. Sample lyric: "Don't be a coconut/God is trying to talk to you"...I AM NOT KIDDING. Someone in this band is hooked on Oxycontin, and I think his name starts with "J" and ends in "ulian"...

"Electricityscape" - Buy this song when it hits i-tunes. This shit is bananas. B-a-n-a-n-a-s! Wow, the drummer didn't phone this one in, he is ripping shit up. Larry Mullen, Jr. look out baby. Whoever the Strokes drummer is, he is on your ass. Let's make up a name for him right now: Thor Johnson. Thor Johnson, big respect dude. WOW. THIS SONG ALMOST MAKES UP FOR THE LAST SIX.

"Killing Lies" - Okay. Again, I have a mentally retarded cousin (whattup Stevie! See you at Thanksgiving big dog) that could play this shit on guitar. I thought Fab was supposed to be nice with it? This is awful. This sounds like the song my brother's garage band (they were called HIV Positive, so that whenever announcers said their name, they would have to say "These guys are HIV Positive." Which, looking back on it, is really, really disgustingly distasteful) would play to warm up. This shit is miserable.

"Fear of Sleep" - Check into rehab. Never make another album this bad again or I will drive to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, break into your tiny, $9,000/month apartment, shave your afro off and feed it to you. I would pay good money to punch the singer in the balls. If their manager is reading this, holla at me in the comments - I will pay good money to punch anyone in this band in the balls. Even Thor. Seriously, someone needs to get fed to Mister Wu's pigs over this bologna. Why do I give a fuck, actually, it's gonna go faster than leftover crack when it hits record stores. People love turds.

All I need in this world is malt liquor, love, and catchy choruses. And this album has not had one fuckin' hummable chorus at all.

"Ize of the World" - I'm going to give this one three stars just because it doesn't make me want to kill myself. I think the Julian Casablancas just sang "your sandwhichy smile"...please tell me he actually said that. Nope. I checked the lyrics and he said "You're sad but you smile". Fuck.

"Evening Sun" - This sounds like the old Strokes albums. If you like those, you'll love this. Man, Julian Casablancas' voice gets so old after a while. At this point on the album, I would like strangle him. The guitar is mixed twice as loud as everything on this album. Which probably sounded awesome when they were getting high and mixing it, but sounds pretty rough to this listener.

"Red Light" - A pop song. Thank you, Jeebus. Pick this one up on the i-Tunes as well, but don't buy this album unless you, too, are nodding off on heroin. Or else you just feel the need to own it before entering your local Aeropostale store and picking up some hot new logo tees! When the guitarists in this band (I have learned that there are two, and neither of them are Fab. Thor is actually Fab) decide to write some licks, the shit sounds nice. There are about four good songs on this album. I was disappointed. But at leat they ended it on a high note, which brought a smile to my sandwichy face.

Tungsten 74, Live at Minicine?

2006-01-14T13:44:00.000-08:00

Hailing from Brooklyn, Tungsten 74 once again graced the little ole town of Shreveport with its presence last Wednesday. I'm a bit of a closet experimental/instrumental music fan, and it's always a delight to experience it live, because let's face it, there's something about just hearing some guitars and swaying around that makes you feel like you're on drugs, even though you have never smoked a doobie in your life.

Tungsten 74 was able to use the performance space to their advantage, placing themselves in a triangle around the audience, which created a strange live experience. The drummer was hidden away so well that I thought for awhile that it must have been a badass recording of a drummer. It also invited the user to experience the space interactively, turning and shifting depending on the sound that interested them at the moment. Very little passive swaying or nodding typical of indie rock shows was involved.

Not only did you get involved with observing the band members, but there was experimental film to accompany T74's performance. Images of racecars, moire filtered crowds and people, highways and long spaces of plains interrupted by trains and windmills merged together to create a mishmash of nature/culture/technological juxtopositions that I creamed myself over (I don't work here for nothin'). I couldn't help but notice the implications of trains running through open plains, with their little boxes full of products for humans to consume. It reminded me of the idea of packaging nature, of how we often set aside where nature is and isn't. See the Nature Conservancy for a prime example. It was almost as if T74 had arranged for the train to pass, signalling the little boxes of nature to pass by.

More apparent was the dynamic of the audience. At times people moved across the projecter, juxtaposing the simulated video, and the real-life movements and interactions in the room with the band's work. It created a live, one-time only effect of exploring the intersection of nature and culture by blocking out sections of the video (sometimes of natural settings) with the sillouette of a human figure. Talk about an image there: a human taking up the space where nature should be.

T74's music is almost like a rock power ballad in its pulse and the way it creates a theme, drives it home, drones it on and builds on it. The melody may just be a series of surging notes up and down the scale, but they manage to add on to it with layered instrumentation that creates a wall of sound. Similar to how Mogwai can take a meloncholy sound and by the end of the sound turn it into a joyous and triumphant sound, T74 take the listener on a ride of emotion and sound building on the established rhythms and sounds. The percussion is as tight and interesting as Pelican's, but takes out the darkness to their sound and replaces it with ethereal, intense motion-filled sound.

KSCL Does it Big.

2006-01-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

In conjunction with Centenary College's Homecoming Events, KSCL 91.3 FM will be holding its 3rd annual Battle of the Bands. The event will take place on February 3 in the Shell Amphitheatre starting at 4 pm. There will be two categories: solo artist and group/band performance. KSCL is seeking six performers from any genre in each category.

Prizes are available for the winners in each competition:
1st: $100
2nd: $50
3rd: $25

Bands and artists wishing to participate should send demos to ksclbotb@gmail.com (mp3 or other digital format) or KSCL 91.3 FM, 2911 Centenary Blvd., Shreveport, LA 71104 (tapes and CD's).

For more information, please email ksclbotb@gmail.com or give call Sara Hebert at 869-5296.

KSCL 91.3FM is a non-commercial educational station managed and operated by the students of Centenary College of Louisiana. The station provides the Centenary campus and surrounding community with unique music from a variety of genres.

Thanks!
Sara Hebert
Station Manager
KSCL 91.3 FM
2911 Centenary Blvd.
Shreveport, LA 71104
318.869.5296
shebert@centenary.edu

We're not dead, thankfully

2006-01-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

So, we're not dead here, but for awhile we thought we were dying. Just an update on nonmedia things, Chris and I both have recently overcome insane illnesses that rendered us useless for the holidays. Chris had a wisdom tooth removed and was dealing with a stomach virus from hell at the same time, and I had said stomach virus before, and then had a seriously horrible sinus infection. We're both feeling up to par now, and you can expect our return to be triumphant. As for the rest of our team members, we're not so sure about them.

We made it out to see Tungsten 74 last night, which was a blast. I have all sorts of notes and review like things to share with you, as soon as I get out of class. (Yeah, its that time of year again...)

Peace. Thanks for the concern!

a tree falling in the woods, with no one around to hear it

2005-12-29T11:47:00.000-08:00

That's what writing on this blog can feel like.

If you're reading this, and you'd like to receive a mix CD from me celebrating my having survived the year 2005, just drop your name and contact info in the comments section. So far, it's got Jose Gonzales (seriously, this fellow is the best singer-songwriter I have heard in a long time), Giant Drag, the Rolling Stones, Cat Power, Hadda Brooks, Tubeway Army, just a bunch of stuff that makes me want to keep drawing breath despite the searing, white hot pains constantly running through my jaw.

Oral surgery next Tuesday, the fourth oral surgery I've had since I was 15. Anywho, free CD's?

eric rohmer makes some sexy-ass movies

2005-12-25T16:15:00.000-08:00

Over the last three nights, it has been my distinct pleasure to finally get around to watching Eric Rohmer's "Pauline at the Beach", "Chloe in the Afternoon", and "My Evening at Maude's". All three were erotically-charged, private little pictures about infidelity, trust, and human nature. It should go without saying that I loved them, and I look forward to seeing any and all of his work that I can get my hands on. One scene in particular, in "Chloe in the Afternoon", had me near tears with the excitement I feel as an aspiring writer when someone is saying something in exactly the words that I have tried to put together before, but failed. The protagonist has become involved in a friendship that is beginning to look as though it could become an affair. He loves his wife, but he is incredibly attracted to a female friend, who is openly trying to seduce him. He gives this wonderfully real speech about how he will always have a wandering eye and the need to flirt, but how those very things serve as constant reminders of why he can never and will never be unfaithful to his wife: because every woman he sees is a reminder of what he has found in her. Every long leg is her leg, every collar bone is her collar bone, all lips are her lips. I fucking loved it.

RIYL: John Updike's "Rabbit" books, the music of The Afghan Whigs

It's the chronic! What?! -les of Narnia!

2005-12-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

Oh man, oh man. Two great, fake rap videos in two days. Thank you, Jeebus.
An awesome Saturday Night Live digital short about Nanrnia and cupcakes.

NSFW

2005-12-19T18:23:00.000-08:00

This is why I love rap music. Irreverence. Abuse of technology. An innate need to ridicule everything your eyes fall on.

Year-End Liszt

2005-12-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

Franz Liszt, one of the greatest piano virtusuos who ever lived, did not survive long enough to hear Spoon's "Gimme Fiction", or The Decemberists' "Picaresque"

Last night, I spent about three hours on-line reading various MP3 blogs' Top 10 year-end wrap-ups. I have to say that it was an incredibly frustrating experience that confirmed what I have been thinking to myself lately: 2005 was a bad year for rock and roll. For electronic, rap, and R&B artists, it seems to have been a high-watermark year, although I'm questioning that, as well. Albums like M.I.A.'s "Arular", Lady Sovereign's "Vertically Challenged", and R. Kelly's "TP3: Reloaded" generated that weird, pants-wetting blogger frenzy thing when they first started circulating on-line, and I bought it. I genuinely love all three of those albums. But they're already gathering dust on the CD shelves. I have only played the Lady Sov album once, which is admittedly due to the fact that most of the tracks on her EP, though awesome, had been out for the better part of a year before Chocolate Industries released the album.

Anyway, I was just thinking how it seems to have been the worst kind of year for people like me, who like their rock and roll with some teeth, some punch, some urine stains. The consensus seems to be that the following bands, who are very in touch with their emotions, are the best that 2005 had to offer:

The Arcade Fire*
Sufjan Stevens*
The Decemberists*
Death Cab For Cutie
Antony & The Johnsons*

*denotes that I have never sat through this band's new album in completion, not because they are bad albums, but because I have a short attention span that requires the presence of 808 bass drums in order to maintain my interest

So, here's a brief lunch-break list of some albums that actually rocked me in the rocking way in 2005.

Cantankerous - "Self-Titled EP"
Their song "Flesh Roast" is a high-speed, guitar, drums machine, and distortion-fueled rampage through the old South. The lead singer lures Klan members into the woods with promises of sex, whereupon she and her friends murder them and burn their bodies. And it's very danceable, with easily the catchiest hook in a long, long time.

Senor Coconut - Coconut FM: Legendary Latin Club Jams
The BPM never drops below 185 or so, all while Spanish versions of L'Trimm shout chants in a language that I don't understand. Horns are cut up in weird ways, crazy voices come out of nowhere and shout "Baile!", the drums have the tempo of a stampede, it's awesome. This is the music that makes me wish I was not too neurotic to dance.

Milemarker - Ominosity
I do miss the old Milemarker, but I can still enjoy this one. Two drummers, synthesizers, Al and Dave shouting lyrics that sound like notes made by a grad student in the margins of Kafka's "The Trial". You know the drill by now. It really is not the same without Roby, but I still find myself rocking out to it. Oh, and you can get it for free on their website, or you can buy it - whichever you choose. God bless 'em and their idealism.

Lucero - Nobody's Darlings
Highly recommended for fans of The Replacements. Also guaranteed to please fans of Magnolia Electric Company's more up-tempo, guitar-driven moments, and anyone who likes rootsy American rock and roll without any pretension, but with plenty of Southern twang. I love this album.

Say Hi To Your Mom - Discosadness
When you get tired of waiting on Pedro The Lion to make another album like "Control", buy some SHTYM. Awful name aside, this band rolls everything I like about Self and Pedro The Lion up into one big, distorted, moogy ball. And I know it's emotional as hell, but it still has some smarm. Eric's website has lots of free MP3s.

Self - The B-Sides That Were Never Released
Self was supposed to put out an album called "Ornament & Crime" earlier this year, but the label shelved it, and the MP3's ended up on www.selfies.com labeled as "Porno, Mint & Grime", along with literally every other b-side they have ever recorded, or any song that has never been released. Believe that this ate up a chunk of my hard drive.

Pandora

2005-12-15T13:57:00.000-08:00

Today I've been checking out Pandora, which is a music exploration which searches its databases for music with similar qualities of a band that you suggest. It then plays tracks one by one and lets you skip songs you don't like and rate those songs.

I highly recommend it if you're into an unfamiliar music group that you'd like to hear more of the same music stylings from. I typed in "TV on the Radio" and I got bands like Snow Patrol, Fischerspooner, Stereolab and Joseph Arthur so far. "Diplo" brought up the Outernationalists, Treva Whateva, and Prefuse 73. What a fun tool!

Top Ten Time!

2005-12-13T10:32:00.000-08:00

What are your favorite albums of the year? Leave a comment and let us know!

3 cheers for social networking tools!

Here's mine:
nat baldwin - lights out
herspacehoilday - the past presents the future
portastatic - bright ideas
giant drag - hearts and unicorns
lady sovereign - vertically challenged
say hi to your mom - ferocious mopes
m.i.a. - arular
troubled hubble - making beds in a burning house
electrelane - axes
jason anderson - the wreath

plus two extras!:
the raveonettes - pretty in black
beck - guero

Nat Baldwin - Lights Out

2005-12-13T09:41:00.000-08:00

So, we didn't have this blog when this album came out, but its on my top ten of the year! And it deserves lots of credit, since Nat is not only a friend but an amazing musician.

Nat plays stand up bass, and sings rollicking melodies about broken hearts, and the future of love life. His album has beautifully layered and textured vocals that are often slow and somber. With a sense of yearning, Nat calls out to his lost lover (who lots of girls wish would get in a hole and die so we can have him). His compassion comes out with his nonchalant in his delivery. You can almost see him shrug as he delivers "And now I found my true love/and I'm doing it right now/and oh no one can stop me." His voice says that he's moving on to bigger and better things, but his delivery really says "Shit, woman, do you think I don't miss you?" Adding to this, there are highlights of a chorus of singers in parts of songs, which visually, I could almost imagine them popping out from behind Nat playing his bass to chime in at all the right parts.

The bass is pretty much the only instrument that accompanies Nat's voice, which makes his songs simple and memorable.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif You can probably hum about every song melody after listening to the album once. The tones are either long and swelling or short staccato and pulsing. The times when the two are juxtaposed creates lots of movement in the song, and makes the songs come alive.

What is fantastic about Nat's record is that it takes genres and bends together. Obviously, Nat has had some classical training but he's more interested in the accessibility of the indie rock song. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Nat is able to pull together his musical resources to create a work that is his own.

And just a quick note, Nat could be such a player, but he's not. He's a fun guy to see perform, but even if the ladies are drooling over how attractive he is cool as a cucumber. But as the song "Only in Dreams" displays, Nat can be the hot musician stud muffin if he desires: "So we're all alone, what we gonna do, c'mon girl"

Buy the album.
Nat's myspace, with new materal

Just Kinda Evil

2005-12-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

Just to follow-up on the IMDB discussion board, as it lights up with weird debates about "Narnia", I wanted to share a few choice moments. I have highlighted my favorite moments. I love people.

NOLEY: Mr. Tumnus made my skin crawl! Roofie in tea, pipe playing, door-locking...and for Heaven's sake, put a tunic on.
MARG14: Good Lord he was a FAUN, not a man, he didn't need clothes. And this is officially the 189th thread about Mr. Tumnus being creepy. He is SUPPOSED to be a little off, since he is planning to kidnap Lucy and give her to the witch. Notice that there is nothing pervy about that, just kinda evil.

(Ed. Note - I just wanted to point out that Noley lists, among Mr. Tumnus' other creepy acts, PIPE PLAYING. )

CHRONICLESOFNARNIA: The little girl carried the film, British teeth and all.
RIMSY: BRITISH TEETH?! Those were little girl teeth, that's all. I guess in America, kids can go to the dentist and get perfect Hollywood teeth from as soon as they have teeth.
GUADALUPETHEGNOME1984: Agree or not, that's funny.
SHEELEYB: British people have teeth?

HIGHKINGXZ: This just ocurred to me: why does Mr. Tumnus, a faun, have the torso of a man but the legs and horns of a faun whilst all the other animals (beavers, wolves, fox, etc...) actually look like animals?
JOHNATTRIDGE: Because a faun is a mythical creature.
POEBOY7: Fauns are pretend.

PONINGAVY24061:I think that Mr. Tumnus and Lucy had a very good relationship. They're friendship was strong, that's the reason why he didn't turn her in to the Witch. No, he didn't lure her back to his home to molest her. He was doing the bidding of the White Witch and kidnapping her, but their friendship was strong and he helped her escape. I just... I dunno. I don't find Mr. Tumnus + Little Lucy cute... well, I kind of do, but I would never want them to get together when she's THAT young. I remember thinking to myself, "In 10 years they should get married." I really don't care that he's a faun and she's a human. what difference does that make? does it matter if a white woman loves a black man? does it matter if an asian person loves an iraqi man? no it doesn't, so why should it matter about this?

(Ed. Note - It is worth noting that Asian people and Iraqis are not pretend.)

So yeah, i'm not one of those stupid people who were like "see the way Mr. Tumnus is looking at Lucy? He's such a pervert!" HELL NO! I think, by the end of the movie, they've gained something deeper than friendship, but not that close to that kind of relationship... yet.

santa clause tells me to kill people

2005-12-11T17:09:00.000-08:00

We have got to get this motherfucking air conditioner fixed.

Tonight I saw the film "The Chronicles of Narnia". Having never read the books, I was completely taken aback by this hallucinatory mish-mash of secular myth and Christian symbolism. I admit having done some acid in high school. So there is always the chance that I actually didn't see the movie with friends this evening, and I was having a flashback. But, assuming that I did attend the movie, here is my review.

"The Chronicles of Narnia" is the story of a little girl named Chubby McGiggles, who giggles even when she is crying. She and her three siblings, who all have DSL, find a magical place inside a closet where it is snowing one day and hot the next. At first, I thought it was Louisiana, but then I realized that it was a magical place completely free of ethnicity, a place called Narnia. In this land of wonders, Santa Claus comes by every hundred years and gives weapons to all of the good children who are traveling with talking beavers. Oh, and no one ever wears a t-shirt. No matter how badly you, the viewer, wish that they would. This is a land of healthy, peanut-sized nipples that never appear swollen and pepperoni-sized, but are always perky. It makes you think that there was probably someone hired specifically for the purpose of holding ice on the Centaur nipples before the director yelled "Action!".

"Sound?" "Speed!" "Camera?" "Rolling!" "Centaur Nipples?" "Perked!" "Action!"

This land is populated by talking horses, flying cat-style beaver horses, ogre-style, tree-swinging buffalo man-things, and various other horribly-conceived CGI creatures that serve at the right hand of a wicked rastafarian whose name we only hear one time in the movie. She is angry about something. I can only assume it is worth all of the trouble that it must have been to spend centuries breeding mutants and training apes to swing hatchets. Did I not mention the hatchet-swinging apes? There are hatchet-swinging apes. At the merest flick of her ice-laser saber-stick-weapon, all of these CGI cliches will ride out and wage bloodless, hygienic war on the Christians. I mean, the protagonists.

On top of all of this, you get to see an 8 year-old British kid named Skandar dress up like Bishop Don Magic Juan. What kind of asshole names a child Skandar? Seriously, this kid's name is a bad Scrabble hand.

But back to the bloodless war. If you get hurt by a monkey or a cheetah or whatever, you can just call Chubby McGiggles over to pour Crown Royal on it and it is all better. People and animals alike have a really hard time staying dead in this movie. There is this great big cat named Ansel Adams that dies too, and that's a really important moment for some reason because the cat is some kind of spiritual leader to the caucasian-style horse-men and the bearded, spray-painted midgets. If you guys are starting to see tracers at this point, I understand. I thought I was, too.

I thought this movie was, at the core, a b-movie. But I didn't dislike it in that sense, I quite enjoyed it. It was like this strange orgy of anglophile, heterosexist imagery, but with a bunch of muppets. Two last things:

1.) The oldest sister never does a single goddamned thing in this movie. Fact.

2.) The names of these actors do not smack fame. In fact, they are so ridiculous that they sound like the names of Harry Potter's classmates. Some of them arouse in me the urge to say "No homo." Let's look at the roll-call of losers associated with this magnificent turd:

SKANDAR KEYNES as Edmund Pevensie

ANNA POPPLEWELL as Susan Pevensie ("No homo!")

GEORGIE HENLEY as Chubby McGiggles

Oh, and if you're a registered IMDB user, peep what is going on about this movie on the IMDB discussion boards! The administrators have had to delete over 60 posts about "the child molester vibe"! Bwah ha ha!

Last Songs

2005-12-07T20:36:00.000-08:00

Let me let you in on a little secret: I have always loved old honky tonk country. I love the driving guitars, and the gruffness of the singers voices. So it should be no surprise that I'm a fan of the Gunshy (or perhaps you might know him as Matt Arbogast), since his raspy gruff voice is perhaps the most noticable element of his music. His past releases have been so melancholy and downtrodden that Last Songs is a welcome change. But I'm also glad that What Will They Speak of You When You're Gone? is another intimate journey into what seems to be autobiographical song writing. It explores what I've always thought has gone through Matt's head while he's on stage. He sings such intimate songs that he must feel very vulnerable and alone on a stage in a crappy bar. I know from experience when you get him to play in much more initimate settings it can be a heartwrenching experience that will even drive grown men to cry.

Last Songs is a psuedo-break from that and appears to be sort of a statement of musical purpose. "All i'd like is to write a few simple songs, for young men who look like his life right where he belongs, for making a few strangers laugh, dance and make jokes, for it was not the sad raspy tone of his unaffected voice that turned them all away, put a look on his face that made them all celebrate." It's a little more upbeat, and it has some great trumpet solo and an Edge-esque electric guitar beaming repeated riffs. This is the good stuff. Thanks, Matt.

Last Songs
What Will They Speak of You When You're Gone?

ride the lightning

2005-12-07T20:05:00.000-08:00

Lightning Bolt - "Hypermagic Mountain"
Load, 2005

I love the photos you see of Lightning Bolt shows where indie rockers have encircled the duo like they're keeping the cops from getting to a couple of street fighters, and they've all got their arms crossed with blank stares on their faces. How can you not be emoting, you bitches? You're at a fucking Lightning Bolt show! Throw down! There's a Lightning Bolt DVD out, and several songs from it were filmed in David Nelson's basement, and Chris Alexander was in the crowd that night. A song ends, and you can here Chris Alexander go "Dude, will you sign my dick?!"

That's why I love Shreveport, in a nutshell. We're not "with it" enough to know that we're not supposed to show passion about great music. We still yell stupid stuff at the bands we love, we still gush.

The new Lightning Bolt album is INTENSE. And I know that calling and LB album (which on average consists of about 70 minutes of thrashing, convulsive bass guitar and lightning-speed death metal drumming on crack) intense is like calling something that Jesus sais Christian, but who nelly, this album is out of control. It gets transcendentally violent on some songs. It loses all structure and becomes this flailing, prehistoric, strangely meditative thing. No homo.

Ladies and gentlemen, our first "no homo". It is now required by law to say "no homo" a lot of music blogs. At least, according to a bunch of upper-class white dilletantes from Williamsburg it is.

I'm not the biggest Lightning Bolt fan in the world. I wouldn't play it on just any occassion, since it tends to make we want to throw a chair out a plate glass door. But they have done something really incredible on "Hypermagic Mountain" - they seem to have found a way to get so unpredictable, so cathartic, and so balls-to-the-wall batshit insane that the whole thing has taken on a weird kind of symphonic calm. It's not the feeling of getting punched in the face anymore. It's that weird, numb feeling that follows, and the blood pounding in your skull while you stand there trembling, trying to figure out if you can take this guy. I know it sounds crazy. But that's because it is.

I want to take a breath that's true

2005-12-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

Pig In The Snow has Pedro the Lion covering Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You".
Le sigh. Old times.

slam dancing about architecture

2005-12-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Rogue Wave - "Descended Like Vultures"
Sub Pop, 2005

The last thing I want my music to be is benign. To me, there's nothing worse than a harmless band. Maybe that's why I have trouble dancing at the Jason Anderson shows, or repressing my chuckles at U2 concerts when Bono dances funny. I don't want my leading men to dance funny, I always want there to be at least an unspoken threat that someone in the front row may get slapped in the face, peed on, or otherwise humiliated for being a fan. All music can do this, not just rock and roll. Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" did it, Johnny Cash did it constantly, and all of the rock acts I enjoy come with an implied "Eat shit and die."

That's why I have a hard time loving bands like The Shins, even though they're good, admittedly. At no point whatsoever, when listening to The Shins, do I think "This shit will put hair on your chest."

Hold on a sec and let me just say that I am quite done trying to sound more intelligent than I am when I write in blogs, and I have no intention to do wordsmithed over-analyses of records. I believe in the Beavis and Butt-Head school of music reviewing. It either rules or it sucks. That being said.

So, Rogue Wave is a Shins-like band who are equal parts benign, acoustic-guitar strumming, to tapping hum-alongs and distortion pedal-stomping, barn-burning face slappers. They will harmonize and make you think "Oh, Brit-pop infused low-fi indiepop! I am in my comfort zone!" and the next thing you know, BAM, there's a hole in the wall and your parents are going to be home soon, everybody get the fuck out the house.

I recommend it for fans of Andrew Bryant, The Shins, and the Pixies (I hear a little late-career, "Trompe Le Monde"-era Pixies in there). Gimme my indie cred!

Famous For Fifteen

2005-12-02T14:50:00.000-08:00

Famous For Fifteen is a coalition of pals located in Louisiana who love to pump up the jam. Whether its hip hop, indie rock, metal or the lastest Ciara single (because we do care...), we certainly have something to say about it. Our favorite radio station is the one most of us work at, KSCL 91.3 FM. We rule.