This week’s Stuff I Think and Shouldn’t Say is brought to you by:
The NEW-ish Coconut Flavored Iced Coffee at Dunkin Donuts…a brilliant summer “pick-me-up!”
And…
Matthew Michael’s Friday Daily Pulse!
ex·as·per·ate
tr.v. ex·as·per·at·ed, ex·as·per·at·ing, ex·as·per·ates
1. To make very angry or impatient; annoy greatly.
2. To increase the gravity or intensity of: “a scene… that exasperates his rose fever and makes him sneeze” (Samuel Beckett).
Being exasperated is fairly common occurrence in a world full of such utter douchebags.
For instance, there appear to be some argumentative folks at my local Dunkin Donuts. It’s not as though I go into the place all the much, as coffee makes my stomach, and mind, a tad bitty jumpy.
It messes me up…caffeine is speed to guys like me with Attention Deficit Disorder.
Anyway, on my third trip in as many days to the local DD, I have seen 3 separate arguments, and they all involved fights over coffee.
Need any more proof that caffeine is bad. Look at what these guys do with their free time.
The sad part about it all is that the people in question are always hot women and old ladies who argue as though their abilities to be mothers are in question.
Just a quick note to the ladies: Calm down. I know you have to get coffee-based drinks for your child’s party, so that the parents will stick around and you won’t be lonely, but don’t take it out on someone else.
You should have used a condom.
Get over it.
Ssquared’s Album of Da Week!
Radiohead OK Computer
In case you haven’t had a chance to check up on the world of music in the past 3-4 days, let me just stick something in here for you:
Magazine Lists Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer‘ As Top Album
NEW YORK – Spin magazine named Radiohead’s “OK Computer” the top album of the past 20 years, praising a futuristic sound that manages to feel alive “even when its words are spoken by a robot.”
The British band’s album edged out Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” and Nirvana’s “Nevermind” on a list in Spin’s 20th anniversary issue, currently on newsstands.
“Between Thom Yorke’s orange-alert worldview and the band’s meld of epic guitar rock and electronic glitch, (`OK Computer‘) not only forecast a decade of music but uncannily predicted our global culture of communal distress,” reads the editorial note on what separated the 1997 disc from the other 99 ranked albums.
Sandwiched between Radiohead’s straight-ahead rock disc “The Bends” and the more experimental, electronic “Kid A,” “OK Computer” was the album that propelled Radiohead to worldwide, stadium-sized popularity. Though it never went higher than No. 21 on the Billboard charts, it won critical raves and a Grammy for best alternative music performance.
Spin’s Chuck Klosterman says the album “manages to sound how the future will feel. … It’s a mechanical album that always feels alive, even when its words are spoken by a robot.”
Years earlier, Spin ranked Nirvana’s “Nevermind” the greatest album of the nineties. In the time since, however, editor-in-chief Sia Michel and others simply found they were reaching for “OK Computer” more than the slightly less relevant “Nevermind.”
“Whereas when Nirvana came out, everybody was talking about negation and slackers and everything like that — seven years later, it was the dot-com boom and 22-year-olds were making $80,000 on Web sites,” Michel recently told The Associated Press.
Also in the top 10, in order, are Pavement’s “Slanted and Enchanted,” The Smiths’ “The Queen is Dead,” Pixies’ “Surfer Rosa,” De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising,” Prince’s “Sign `o’ the Times,” PJ Harvey’s “Rid of Me” and N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton.”
The entire list of 100 is just as eclectic; a photograph of an atypical trio of Dr. Dre, Bono and Beck dons the issue’s cover.
The amount of hip-hop on the list may surprise some (25 albums in all — 26 if you count Rage Against the Machine), given that Spin is predominantly a rock magazine. Michel, however, points out that Spin started several years before hip-hop mag Source was founded: “We put hip-hop on the cover before anyone else did.”
“Because we started this list in 1985, we pretty much hit hip-hop in its golden age,” she says. “There were so many important, groundbreaking albums coming out right about that time.”
After gathering suggestions from everyone at the magazine, a tribunal of Michel and editors Jon Dolan and Charles Aaron sorted out the ultimate records of “the Spin era.” Their criteria, Michel says, was the basic brilliance of the record, its innovation and its overall relevance.
“Relevance doesn’t have to mean it sold 10 million copies,” she says. “Someone like the Pixies never really sold records, but Nirvana has said it wouldn’t exist without the Pixies.”
Both the approach and content stands in stark contrast to fellow rock magazine Rolling Stone’s 2003 issue on the top 500 albums of all time. Topping that collection was the more hallowed (and less surprising) like of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.
Some of the most recent entries to Spin’s list are 2004’s “College Dropout” by Kanye West, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 “Fever to Tell” and Wilco’s 2002 “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel.”
Of course, judgments of these kind are always subject to debate.
“The art department was just railing against us all the time and campaigning against things,” says Michel. The lack of inclusion of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, she says, pushed them to the brink: “That was a band that the art department was like, `You guys are crazy! Don’t even talk to us!”
(credit: Associated Press)
Okay, now that we are all on the same page, I will let you in on a few things:
1. I am a huge Radiohead fan.
2. OK Computer is not my favorite of their albums.
3. Thom Yorke is not God.
4. I am finally a fan of Spin again.
There is a reason that lists are meant to be seen as strictly subjective fare: they are. The folks at Spin get together, have a meeting, and make lists.
Yes, they are more of an excuse to release larger versions of their magazine, and with a great artist on the cover, they will, more often than not, sell more copies. It creates arguments and discussions the world over, and people write “letters to the editor” which are printed in the magazines front section, and make them either look popular or uneducated.
In this case, they have gone out on a limb, and did the “unexpected.” They basically have admitted that while Nirvana’s Nevermind was important in ridding the radio waves of New Kids on the Block and the “bubble-crap” that was paraded around as “music” at the time, but it really doesn’t stand the test of time.
Then how DOES an album stand the test of time, Shawnie Shawn?
Well, simple:
It’s got to do something so great that it appears as though we missed out on it then. That is was so far ahead of it’s time that most people weren’t ready to listen to it, let alone comprehend it.
OK Computer stands up to my rule by predicting and demonstrating how the “dot-com” boom of the 90’s would negatively affect the economy we are currently living in. Easy money was to be had. People who were in college at the time, myself included, were told of how great an opportunity it would be to get on the ‘net, to be prepared for the wave of the future.
There were bountiful jobs to be had. Lots of cash; so much that it appeared that anyone with a degree that graduated in the “new millennium” would be able to shit $100 bills.
Then, it all fell apart.
People made quick money, but had no long-term plans. No idea what to do with their investments. Everyone has heard or seen the stories. People who were making $85,000 a year right out of college suddenly were waiting tables in Chelsea.
There just wasn’t any work and when people were used to that lifestyle, with it’s free-spending and frivolity, they couldn’t snap back to reality. It’s okay, though.
Thom Yorke wrote the most haunting set of lyrics to coincide with a rock-computer soundtrack for the year 2000. It was too far ahead of its time to appreciate it.
Spin Magazine may be full of people that were there for the collapse and fear, but so is the rest of the world. I think that this list more accurately reflects the opinions of the past 10 years.
There is still enduring hope in the face of crushing defeat by a system generated by greed; if you wanted quick money, you got it. Once you got it, though, if you wasted it, it would be gone.
OK Computer came out in 1997, and yet, every time its played, I still feel the same way I did the first time I heard it.
There’s hope for us all. Even in the face of a growing national debt, with thousands dead in a conflict in the Middle East, the international repercussions of September 11th, and soaring gas prices as we continue to be a nation dependent on oil for transportation, OK Computer still seems poignant and eerily preminiscient.
Nevermind was hailed as the album of the 90’s without enough time having passed to properly reflect on the decade. Kurt Cobain wrote songs of angst to a generation of bitter young men and women who all grew up. We stopped being distrusting teenagers, and became adults who didn’t know where to turn.
Anger dissipates with time. Fear doesn’t. People will always be afraid of the government’s policies. We, as a nation, will always wonder where the future is taking us, and that is a sentiment that is echoed by Radiohead’s OK Computer.
A masterpiece finally got its due. Give it a spin and let me know if Spin (pun not intended, but I like it, so it STAYS!) got it right.
SITASS NEWS: Fitter, Happier, More Productive!
Remember kids: Ssquared doesn’t just write essays about Radiohead, he finds other cool stuff as well!.
British Rocker: The ‘Other’ White Meat
Thom Yorke, Chris Martin, Morrisey, and Damon Albarn are duking it out for top honors in PETA’s (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) list of sexiest vegetarians.
Who knew all the pasty British rock stars didn’t eat meat? Maybe those mad cows had some role here. Anyhow, lady rock stars vying for the title include Chrissy Hynde, India.Arie, Avril Lavigne, and Joan Jett. According to PETA’s website, “More and more celebs are embracing broccoli and giving beef the boot.”
It’s a good thing liquor is meat-free, or the rock world would lose all of its edge.
(credit: Spin.com)
Hmmm, vegetarians are sexy, eh? That’s a way to make an interesting political statement:
Hey kids, which person would you rather eat a tofu burger and sprouts with?
The only problem that I have ever had with PETA isn’t something you can really blame on them, per se. It’s those activist asses that throw red paint on anyone wearing fur or leather.
I understand that pigs and cows and other barnyard creatures have eyes, like us, so they must have a soul like us, right?
Anthropomorphizing rules!
Anyhow, with those fur-vigilantes running around mucking up expensive clothes, they are missing the point: Vegetarianism is a choice.
You choose to not eat or wear any animal products, and those who don’t agree with you have the right to do otherwise. It’s a civil liberty. All the “paint slinging” does is convince the world that you are crazy liberals, when, in fact, PETA just wants to ruin our ability to get great food from animals that are being reared with the sole purpose of being devoured at Sonic or White Castle.
Yes, I do own pets, but if someone wanted to eat my fish, have at it. I am sure a betta fish tastes like ass, as the males DO shit a lot, but go right ahead.
As long as you pay me back the $6 my mom shelled out for it, I think we’ll be cool.
(By the way, my vote goes with Thom Yorke on this one. The guy may be far from sexy, but he has to be humored once in a while. I think it really is the man’s year, so here’s to hoping the new album will be awesome.)
B.I.G. Cop Testifies
Former LAPD officer says Suge Knight confessed to cellmate
A retired LAPD officer, who spent nearly thirty years on the force and two investigating the shooting death of rapper Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls), took the stand in the rapper’s family trial against the LAPD yesterday. The former officer, Frank Miller, said that a cellmate of B.I.G. rival and Death Row label head Marion “Suge” Knight informed him that Knight had confessed to the murder.
“He told me he had spoken with an individual named Suge Knight and that Knight told him that he had had Biggie Smalls murdered,” Miller stated, according to reports. Miller maintained that he had confirmed part of Knight cellmate Mario H’ammond’s information, and that it had proved to be “very good.”
Spurred on by H’ammond, a search warrant affidavit was filed, released this week by B.I.G.’s family. “That fat bitch took it like a bitch,” the affidavit claims Knight told H’ammond. “Rolled up on his ass and smoked his fat ass. I got the fat ass. My people took care of it.”
Along with producer Sean “Puffy” Combs (now “P. Diddy”) and his Bad Boy label, Brooklyn native B.I.G. recorded his debut, 1994’s Ready to Die, and 1997’s Life After Death (released weeks after his death), both hit-packed hip-hop milestones. He was killed when shots were fired into his car on a Los Angeles road shortly after midnight on March 9, 1997.
On Wednesday, the opening day of the trial, a former bodyguard for rapper Tupac Shakur, Kevin Hackie, stated that he had seen LAPD officer David Mack at several Death Row events, occasionally in conversation with Knight. The family of B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, claims that a number of LAPD officers had relationships with gang members and sometimes provided security for Death Row.
Hackie, who was an FBI informant during the three years in which he worked for Tupac, also stated that the head of Death Row security, Reginald Wright, had wanted to avenge the 1996 Las Vegas slaying of Tupac, which he believed B.I.G. had masterminded. “We were going to get those [people] who downed ‘Pac: Biggie and his crew,” Hackie testified, according to reports.
Miller’s former partner, David Poole, is scheduled to testify.
(credit: RollingStone.com)
If there was any doubt that Suge Knight was a scary, scary man, it has been erased.
Sure, he was the mastermind behind Death Row Records, but this is a prime example of a person with “butt-loads” of money losing his damn mind due to all his self-perceived power.
Oh, and…
That motherf*cker wouldn’t kill me, he would EAT me!
Hopefully, justice will prevail so that Biggie’s legacy can live on through his music, and not this nonsense. No doubt about it now, the cops probably knew about Knight’s involvement. Anyone who is implicated in his murder, and is still alive, should pay for taking the man’s life, regardless of B.I.G.’s role in Tupac Shakur’s death.
Let the system work for you and it will. If you try and circumvent it, karma will come back and take care of you.
And justice takes its course…albeit, rather slowly.
Corgan Wants His Pumpkins Back
Billy Corgan today released a new solo album and accompanied it with a surprising statement.
He wants to “renew and revive” The Smashing Pumpkins.
Corgan made his wishes known by placing full-page newspaper ads in the Tribune and Sun-Times in his hometown of Chicago.
His statement first addresses his new release, The Future Embrace, and his upcoming tour plans.
“I have done my very best to create something fresh and exciting to listen to, and I hope you get the chance to check it out. Having just returned from a tour of Europe, I am now set to play 18 additional dates in North America, beginning tomorrow in Atlanta. After that we head to Japan, and then Australia and New Zealand for the first time since 1998.”
Then comes the shocker. And here it is, in Corgan’s own words:
“Many have assumed that the decisions that I have made over the last few years have been to try to get away from something. But what I have been really trying to do is find that same kid again, the one who believed he could change the world with a song. There is an old saying that goes ‘you can’t go home again,’ but I believe that your home is wherever your heart lies.
“When I played the final Smashing Pumpkins show on the night of December 2, 2000, I walked off the Metro stage believing that I was forever leaving a piece of my life behind. I naively tried to start a new band, but found that my heart wasn¹t in it. I moved away to pursue a love that I once had but got lost. So I moved back home to heal what was broken in me, and to my surprise I found what I was looking for. I found that my heart is in Chicago, and that my heart is in The Smashing Pumpkins.
“For a year now I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep. But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams. In this desire I feel I have come home again.”
So, now what happens? It’s not clear if Corgan wants to get back together with guitarist James Iha, drummer Jimmy Chamberlain and bassist D’arcy (or possibly, Melissa Auf Der Maur).
(credit: Pollstar.com)
Billy Corgan is a true artist. He puts out the music he wants to with the people that he wants to work with. Case in point: when Jimmy Chamberlin was ousted from Smashing Pumpkins due to his debilitating heroin addiction, Billy fought tooth-and-nail to keep him around, and not just in the band. D’arcy and Jimmy Iha were no longer comfortable, and while Iha could deal with Corgan’s insistence on Chamberlin rejoining the group, D’arcy left.
Well, Chamberlin showed while with Zwan that he has turned his life around and knows how to be a rock-star without a needle in his arm, so let’s all pray that Billy gets his wish:
His hair might never look the same again, but it would be nice to see them all together again…smiling like “today’s the greatest day they’ve ever known.”
In “The Most AWESOME Thing I Have Heard This Week” News
A little change was in order this week, so I present you with this tale:
Kenyan, 73, kills leopard with bare hands
Grandfather turns tables on attacking cat by grabbing tongue
NAIROBI – A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather reached into the mouth of an attacking leopard and tore out its tongue to kill it, authorities said Wednesday.
Peasant farmer Daniel M’Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.
M’Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard’s mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal’s tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.
“It let out a blood-curdling snarl that made the birds stop chirping,” he told the daily Standard newspaper of how the leopard came at him and knocked him over.
The leopard sank its teeth into the farmer’s wrist and mauled him with its claws. “A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide-open mouth. I obeyed,” M’Mburugu said.
As the leopard was dying, a neighbor heard the screams and arrived to finish it off with a machete.
M’Mburugu was toasted as a hero in his village Kihato after the incident earlier this month. He was also given free hospital treatment by astonished local authorities.
“This guy is very lucky to be alive,” Kenya Wildlife Service official Connie Maina told Reuters, confirming details of the incident.
(credit: MSNBC.com)
Holy shit. That’s hardcore.
This wrinkled old man just made mother nature his bitch. And here my ass was thinking was that all Kenyan’s ever did was win marathons?
Glad to see I was wrong.
So, Daniel M’Mburugu is now my hero, and I am saving up money to meet this dude. It would be money well spent, and I know I would be safe with my life in this man’s hands.
Just remind me not to give him a “Bronx cheer,” even in jest.
My girl would be pissed.
A Pig in a Cage on Antibiotics
In honor of Ssquared declaring this “Radiohead Week,” InsidePulse gets to crash the party:
Kyle David Paul will not cry in public. He also frequently checks his credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall.)
Aaron Cameron is Mr. Bootleg and gets regular exercise at the gym three days a week. He is also getting on better with his associate employee contemporaries.
Gloomchen is eating well. No more microwave dinners and saturated fats. She’s also a patient, better driver who still cries at a good film.
Tom D’Errico is sleeping well with no bad dreams. No paranoia. Care for all animals is a must for Tom (never washes spiders down the plughole!) and he keeps in contact with old friends.
As for Dan Hevia, he’s concerned (but powerless) and has become an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism.)
What of Michaelangelo McCullar? Well, he’s got less chance of illness than ever before, plus he bought tyres (sic) that grip in the wet!
And, lastly, for the man that inspires the wacky linking on IP, Jeff Fernandez well, thank God, he still kisses with saliva, yet feels like a cat tied to a stick that’s driven into frozen winter shit. Hopefully, he still has the ability to laugh at weakness.
I know I do.
Keep it real!
Ssquared
