YouTube and the Endless Wonders of teh Internet

Sorry for the long overdue posting. I’ve only recently fully moved into my new apartment and setup the World Wide Web, and I’ve been caught up in some complicated things here. I’ll start bl00ging more regularly with real articles and music reviews. In the meantime, here is some worthless shit to occupy your worthless time.

I know that I am a late-comer to YouTube, but it is worth noting how much it has consumed my life in the last week. I never really got into Napster or downloading, I still don’t know what a PodCast is, and generally do not spend more than half an hour a day on the computer. That is until I discovered YouTube…

One of my roommates and I were talking about Michael Jackson (I live with three girls) and she wanted to show me a clip of Michael Jackson doing the Moonwalk. Ok, mildly amusing and a quaint cultural artifact from, like, a hundred years ago, I’ll give her that. But I was intrigued by the possibility of endless clips of worthless video shit!!!! Here’s what I’ve learned today from thirty minutes on YouTube:

immigrants can do anything.

you should always use condoms.

redneck zombies are scary and probably very real.

perhaps we should re-think our tattos that are in foreign languages.

although this is completely unconfirmed (and I do stress “unconfirmed” as we don’t even know how much is in each of these cups) I would still want this guy on my boat race team.

Fucking genius shit.

Stuck Between Stations (live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT1fxhnaN-8

The quality is pretty shitty but it’s the Hold Steady and it’s new (unless you’ve seen them live recently).

My Apologies to Europe

Sorry, but I just don’t give a shit about soccer. I never played it as a kid, I never watched it except for women’s varsity soccer when I was dating a girl on the team. I can find no aspect of the sport that strikes me as compelling or interesting.

And this is from someone who happily and regularly watches entire baseball games.

“But its the Worrrrrld Cup!”, people tell me. Oddly the emphasis always falls on the “rrr’s”. So? I don’t watch soccer the rest of the time, and I’m supposed to develop an interest just for international competition? “It’s like the Olympics and you watch those!” Well, with the Olympics I watch the sports I would and do watch otherwise and the sports that you can only watch during the Olympics. Sorry, I’m not staying up until 4am to watch table tennis on ESPN 4. And I’m not paying $39.99/month for the Curling Total Access Pass on DirectTV.

Yesterday afternoon I even saw college students outside of my apartment playing soccer! For three hours! In the rain! Somehow I doubt that they will be doing this when the Cup is over. Maybe if they pull that shit tomorrow I’ll go out there chanting “Osama! Osama!” and throw bags of urine at them. Might as well make the emulation of their American soccer heroes as realistic as possible.
I even tried to get into the World Cup this year: Me: “So you been paying attention to the World Cup? Did you see the one where the team scored the thing and there were some red cards?”

Rando: “Yeah, that one was great. How about that England v. Portugal game?”

Me: “Sorry, I actually don’t give a shit, lets talk about bands.”

I think what it comes down to is an American genetic disposition against soccer. The same genes that make us smarter, freer and more just than the rest of the planet make us hate soccer. And as my roommate astutely pointed out, “It’s liberal guilt that makes them pretend to like soccer.  The rest of the world likes it, so we should too.  Let’s all be equal and hold hands and meditate.”

I’m not going to lie to myself like that though. I can’t stand soccer and it doesn’t bother me. However, the next mother fucker who asks me what I thought about the *Insert Eastern European Team* Vs. *Insert South American Team* game is going to get a bag of urine to the face.

Concert Review: The Streets @ Avalon, Boston, MA – 6/21/06

I'm not entirely sure the Avalon crowd and Mike Skinner were on the same page at this show. Skinner (who is exactly 5 years older than me) was having fun singing "Oh-oh-ee-oh-oh" a la The New Kids On the Block between and during songs, and I think the joke was lost on most everyone. In fact, at 22 years old, we were on the fringe of understanding the reference to everyone's favorite Boston-based '80s boy-band. Or maybe they got it, but didn't find it as funny as Skinner. Given that he was probably on any number of drugs, this is completely plausible.

I also wonder if Skinner was aware of the connection between his much celebrated cocaine habit, and the parody of You Got It(The Right Stuff), Weird Al's, "The White Stuff." In this case the connection would have little to do with Oreos. Anyways.

The performance was surprisingly good. Lady Sovereign was the opener, and her live set sounded decidedly less like a car alarm than does her first video, for the single Random. If she can reach out to the hip-hop side of all the Avril Lavigne fans in the US, she might just find some commercial success here.

Compared to other hip-hop shows I've been to, this one stood in that The Streets play with a backing band, not a hard-drive of backing tracks and a DJ. This provides an incredibly lively atmosphere in which improvisation and dare I say "Jam"-like things can happen. Also, it is unarguably more entertaining to watch a flamboyant drummer, funky bassist and strangely goofy synth/keys player than it is to watch one guy with a laptop and turntables. Or maybe that's just because I'm white.

The song selection leaned heavily on Original Pirate Material considering its age, but the highlights from the last two albums were also included. This was a relief since it is all too common for bands to simply play 8/12 tracks from the new album they are touring for and then fill out the setlist with a handful of old singles. It almost seemed to me that The Streets were playing the fun songs — the songs made for live shows.

Energy was up the entire show, even the crowds refusal (or perhaps confusion) to jump when the drummer sat down didn't take anything away from the enthusiasm and banter. Since MA insurance law prohibited the band from providing alcohol to the crowd, they had a waitress come on stage with a very large tray of brandy shots which she quickly dispensed to concert-goers in the first row. One particularly entertaining moment was when Skinner found an attractive girl with an attached boyfriend in the front row, and chatted her up for half the set. This lead to co-rapper/singer Leo the Lion dancing in front of the couple singing in the style of the Pussycat Dolls, "Don't you wish your boyfriend was hot like me. Don't you wish your boyfriend licked your pussy like me." And by the look on her face, it appeared that she did indeed wish these things. (Well, the look on her face in my head at least — her back was turned to us.)

If this wasn't absurd enough the encore started with a stirring rendition of some random Red Hot Chili Peppers song with all the band members taking off their shirts, jumping around, and throwing out passes to the after-party.

The only bad part of the entire night was paying $25 for parking due to the BoSox game that night. Fucking extortion I tells yah.

I have a fever, and the only prescription is more D-wade.

This is directly screenshotted from Fark, but I thought it was hilarious. Also, I'm all about the Heat. Except Antoine Walker. Fuck him.

Oh look, I made Antoine cry… maybe he should go jack up a 3 to make himself feel better.