close encounters of the moz kind

I am not without a conscience, however. When the rain got harder, the whole car erupted into “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” in honor of the probably-sopping singer. Also, new letterhead (click to enlarge if you can’t read it)!

thanksgiving

Of all the things I can be thankful for at this exact moment, I am most appreciative for Choke in Silverlake for fixing my moped (or, rather, fixing a miniscule mistake in my mechanic attempt) so I can ride it to work tonight and, mostly, this article about what it’s like to hang out with Prince for an hour and a half. It almost makes me miss my subscription to The New Yorker, except for all the crap that you have to be a New Yorker to “get.”

Here’s a few things you may not have known about Prince’s pad, but could probably have assumed based on his record of not knowing (or not caring) what decade it is:

• His house sticks out from all the others in his Beverly Hills gated community because of the bright purple fucking carpet spilling down the front steps.
• “…a Lucite grand piano with a gold-colored “Artist Formerly Known as Prince” symbol suspended over it…”
• “New Age music played in the living room, where a TV screen showed images of bearded men playing flutes.”
• Purple thrones stand perched on either side of the fireplace like it’s the temple of Amman.
• And down the hallway, he had “hung photographs of himself, in a Moroccan villa, in various states of undress.”
• Prince is a Jehovah’s Witness and attends a local Kingdom Hall and even knocks on doors to pass out those obnoxious newspapers. Could you imagine opening your door at 8am and Prince is there with “The Word.” I might even listen to his schpeel about God and crap!

attn: high school

If this flyer means anything to you, please meet me in 2001 on the corner of Topanga Canyon and Sherman Way!!!!

In hindsight, maybe someone should have copy edited this so that “formerly” didn’t twice become “formally.” I also forget what the “free stuff” was, but I bet it was worth the $6.

plagerize this

First read this review from the LA Record from last May.

Then, read this review of the same band from the UK Guardian in September.

Then read my angry letter to Paul Lester, probable child molester:

Dear Paul,
As a music writer myself, I know how annoying it can be to make an effort. Our job is easy—we listen to music and write about it. And aside from deciding which band names to drop in our witty comparisons, the hardest part of what we do is to somehow motivate ourselves to leave the house or get off our computers and obtain legitimate information to back up our obviously-correct, but basically-useless opinions.

But plagerism?

I can understand that being across the pond from the few examples of decent American music is a little isolating—and maybe I have an advantage because my cousin is the drummer—but in September 22nd’s “New Band of the Day” featuring Portland, Oregon’s Hockey, you not only admitted to getting information from their Myspace, but also used that Myspace to read reviews written by other people, which you then stole descriptions and exact adjectival phrases from and passed them off as your own.

I should know: my words are in your subdeck.

Sure, maybe you could tell from the photos that the Hockey guys are scruffy motherfuckers, but I find it hard to believe—given their personal privacy with details and the fact that I only found out my cousin had given up on eggs and cheese last Thanksgiving—that without making contact with them whatsoever, you deduced that they are “bike-riding vegans.” Or is it just coincidence that I refer to them as such in the first sentence of a show review I wrote earlier this year?

Don’t get me wrong, Paul, I think you’re a master wordsmith. “Hi-hat harangues”? “Funky verbosity”? That shit is gold! But if you find information that you obviously did not obtain yourself, it’s best to edit it out before proud parents mass email your article to a bunch of family members and it ends up staring back at the original writer with its little beady, emotionless word-eyes.

I have attached a copy of both articles for your reference and records. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Sarah Bennett
Managing Editor | L.A. Record

There, that feels a lot better.

vanilla ice saved my marriage

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

But seriously, I’m obsessed.

heavyweights

A recent study has determined that fat children make fat adults and their fat insides are too fat for their little outsides. Actually, the findings only merely “suggest” that obese children have an increased risk of heart disease, but it apparently freaked the crap out of Colorado’s “Skinniest State in the Country” title.

Diabetes, heart failure, endless mocking from your peers. We know the risks, but what about the hilarious?

Last night, I needed to cheer up so I watched Heavyweights and aside from discovering that JUDD FUCKING APATOW wrote the thing, I realized that nothing will ever be funnier than fat kids and their zany antics. I was lucky enough to live in the golden age of children’s cinema, when politically correct wasn’t a thought to Disney and counselors at summer camps could say “best damn summer” and Daniel Stern can pose as a scout leader and say that “[climbing Everest] was a bitch” (that’s a Bushwacked reference).

This is not the appropriate time or place to go into my unhealthy obsession for this genre of movies, but it is to say that fat kids are allowed to be fat kids. You can remove all the snacks from Chimpmunk Bunk, but you can’t erase amazing cannonballs off the blob or take away nicknames like “Salami Sam.” Those kids even had a drug ring operation set up for junk food. The message now is clear: being fat is bad but the message then–and one that I relived last night–is that fat kids are smarter, nicer, funnier, and better at driving go karts than all the skinny fucks over at camp MVP combined. And there’s nothing that Tony Perkins can do to change that.

no on H8

When I left for work last night, I couldn’t even get past the light at the end of my block because all I saw was this:

Over 2,000 pissed off Long Beach liberals marched down Broadway from Redondo to Alamitos where they stood in front of the now-lavender painted Hamburger Mary’s bar (great kareoke on Sundays) to chant about equality, start fights with the cops in riot gear and make me late for work and I wasn’t even invited.

I understand the need to protest such an aggregious oversight to basic human rights as the passage of proposition 8, but aggression and malice will not help the cause. Although a proposition is a pretty wiley way for the Mormon Church to have their moral agenda put on the ballot, it forced people to genuinely think about their opinion on homosexuality for legal purposes. And the state’s “yes” vote proves that most people’s opinions are still rooted in America’s conservative beginnings.

At work, I ended up talking to a customer who was irate at the passage of prop 8. He didn’t understand how a country could overwhelmingly vote for a black president but one of the most liberal states couldn’t allow gay marriage to stay legal.

And so I explained how a regular at my work perfectly exemplified the ideological shift in the country that helped elect Obama but will be of no use to the gay community. He is a proud conservative who had never voted for a democratic candidate. But with Bush officially the worst president in the history of the country, the long-time businessman realized we need to switch things up a bit. Without thinking about Obama’s skin color, the regular told me that he voted for his first democrat ever. Growing up in a liberal state (California) with a well-integrated school system, he didn’t have to think about Obama being black because all that racist stuff is behind us, right?

Well, it’s not that far behind us. But as the passage of prop 8 shows, full societal acceptance takes time, even generations. The African-American civil rights movement has, technically, been going on for 150 years. Maybe our parents didn’t grow up with separate drinking fountains, but some of our grandparents did. And their parents definitely did. The concept of segregation is so far in the past that I literally can not fathom laws that explicitly alienate people and detract from their quality of life because of their skin color.

But what about their sexual orientation? How many gay people did our parents know growing up? How about our grandparents? I have tone of gay and lesbian friends. It’s normal to me, but it wouldn’t be for that regular, who is still a man of religious convictions. To him, being gay is like being a part of a subculture; as if they skateboard or listen to The Smiths. Get over it, he says. Can’t you just be happy with domestic partnerships? In a word, no. Of course they deserve to get married. They deserve to breathe air and use the internet to look at porn and get arrested if they murder someone. Being gay is not a legal issue, it’s a religiously moral issue. And, hopefully, the ignorance will continue to die off so an open-minded generation will finally be able to separate church and state and make sure that California’s 18000 already-married same-sex couples are not infintely stuck in pergatory.

DMV fiasco

Today must be Shitty Personalized License Plate Pride Day because while out and about in (where else) Long Beach, I ended up tailgating behind three of the worst speciemins known to to state of California: WAN2CHL, 2DUHMAX and COKECAN.

Here’s a pictoral reenactment of my day:

Innocent driver

On a dirty white truck (make whatever inferences you will).

Sad driver, concerned American.

On a Honda CRV. And no, I don’t.

An even more disgusted, disturbed and publicly-embarrassed-for-you bystander.

Falling out of the ass of a gold Nissan 350z

Oh, the horror of men with insecurities about their small penis!

Seriously, people. You realize people judge you based on these? I now know everything about you that I ever need to know because your gold Nissan sports car tells me you are to “duh” max. How could you hand your application to a government worker with a straight face knowing that it says “WAN2CHL” (unless you were attempting to hit on the DMV chick which might be the only excuse)? The personalized license plate system is made for people who want to share a snippet of information about themselves to strangers on the road through their car’s registration number and today’s examples are giant blue and white flags that say, “hey, let’s never be friends.”

what magazine gives press to another magazine?

From the article about this weekend’s 24-hour Paper Magazine Department Store:

L.A. RECORD

Since 2005, the folks at the L.A. RECORD have been putting L.A.-based bands like No Age, Lavender Diamond, Cold War Kids, etc. on their covers way before anyone outside of L.A. ever heard of them. Each free issue, which comes with a poster that doubles as the magazine’s cover (featuring rock bands re-staging classic album covers), is filled with reviews, previews, band interviews and helpful nuggets for any L.A. indie rock nerd. In addition to putting out said publication, the L.A. RECORD kids run a local music store, curate monthly live events and do a radio show and hold day jobs. Not bad.

Nope, not at all!

 

Who knew Chris Rock was such a prophet and Bernie Mac would find some way to still inhabit our minds months after his supposed death (I’m convinced he’s hanging out with Tupac and Elvis somewhere)?