Because it’s the first nice day in what feels like months.
If somebody had to ask me what my favorite American band is, I’m pretty sure I’d have to go with X. Because even though John Doe ended up on Roswell and Exene left him to marry Viggo Mortensen, they put out six amazing, amazing albums. Not all of them are perfect; 1987’s See How We Are, which 4th of July is on, suffers from the fact that it sounds like it came out in 1987. But it’s kind of a brilliantly flawed album, made even more interesting because it lacks the all-around perfection of Los Angeles and Wild Gift and Under The Big Black Sun.
[nb: This video just got uploaded to Youtube yesterday. I'm assuming the record company folks will take it down any minute now, but I thought it would be better than listening to somebody's cameraphone version of them doing it at South By Southwest this year.]
It’s been five months since the Franz Ferdinand album came out and I could still sing its praises joyously. In a year when everyone from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to the Noisettes to Shakira to Bat For Lashes have been partying like it’s 1977, Franz Ferdinand have added an intriguingly (and, in my opinion, necessary) masculine counterpoint.
Can’t Stop Feeling, though a great song, isn’t one of the standouts of the album, but it’s being released in the UK anyway as a single on Monday. Unfortunately, the video takes all the sultry, sexy, suit-wearing aura of the album’s artwork and previous singles and replaces it with, uh, something that can best be described as “most reminiscent of recent Weezer.” There’s awful face-making, pointlessly low-budget effects, and Alex Kapranos is wearing a sweater that kind of looks like it has water stains. Why, I ask you. Why? When the song is about, oh, thirty times as much fun as it looks like they’re pretending to be having…
Filed under: movies
I know I said I’d be taking today off, but as it stands I’m in front of the computer anyway, editing photos. And watching amazing amazing videos of Jersey Girls ca. 1992. I need to track down a copy of this, it’s sort of like the Maysles Brothers made a movie about my cousins.
This is from Carol Weaks-Cassidy and Ruth Leitman’s documentary Wildwood, NJ.
I’m organizing a pretty major event that’s happening for 11 hours tomorrow. And Thursday I’m probably just going to be sleeping all day. And then I might go through some computer detox over the weekend, maybe. So I might be laying low for the next coupla days. Sorry! In the meantime, here’s the video for the new Girls Can’t Catch song, Keep Your Head Up. I love how the director went for “battle of the sexes” and took the group’s sporty name as inspiration, but then went with a) a game that doesn’t involve catching and b) the least exciting sport in the history of people moving around. Bonus points for setting the whole thing in a junkyard for no reason.
Or, how people found the blog this week:
Today:
really porn dancing
rich franklin gay
alizee has a pop track that is reminiscent
feel like the devil’s riding
nina hartley famous
“under gay”
michael phelps group sex
Monday:
cock alert
what are the lyrics to brooke hogan’s remix
michael dean naked
whos having an affair with claudia galanti
peter shilling major tom alvin and the chipmunks (more…)
Filed under: gay, porn, starfucking | Tags: fictional character starfucking, opportunities, poorly crafted filth
Several years ago, too broke to buy Christmas gifts, I wrote my best friend a novel. It’s true! But not just any novel, mind you. A pornographic Hardy Boys novel! When we stopped living together, he made a point of leaving behind any gifts I had given him in the past, and the other day I found the only physical copy of the book. It’s in manuscript form, and I had it done at Kinko’s, which means (of course) that it’s a little fucked up and one chapter starts twice and there’s some blank pages in the middle for no reason. But hey, whatever!
Anyway, the book is no good to me and actually pretty embarrassing and frankly I wouldn’t mind getting it out of my life. But if you’ve ever wanted to read about violent bathroom stall sex, brother-on-brother whoopie, or a mystery woman based loosely around Goldie Hawn’s character in Housesitter, send me something dirty. A story, some photos, something you drew on a napkin, whatever. It can be your creation or someone else’s, although if it’s someone else’s I’m going to want documentation of where you got it from (who wrote it, photographed it, whatever.) Whoever sends me the most interesting thing by next Monday at 5pm wins. E-mail your entries to yurigellerbentme@gmail.com
Filed under: personal, the dan fogelberg and hair metal decade | Tags: celebrity, judy garland, michael jackson
I wasn’t going to, but the death of Michael Jackson has occupied enough of my mind this weekend that I figured I’d try to articulate it. Most of these thoughts have probably been written dozens, if not hundreds, of times by other people with better blogs than this one. But here goes:
I’m sort of intrigued by the way news of his death spread. I personally found out via Twitter, originally via (I think) Pete Wentz, and then within seconds from everybody else, celebs and non-celebs alike, nearly all of whom felt the need to write heartfelt eulogies in 140 characters or less. By the time any paper could have possibly gone to print with anything, the whole world pretty much knew every detail, and had hours and hours to make their own observations, form opinions, and talk to their friends, rendering the whole print news vehicle sort of useless. Twenty-four hours later, people were over the shock, and pretty much everyone had already moved on to writing thesis-y thought pieces about the (self-proclaimed, lest we forget) King Of Pop. I’m actually pretty excited about this kind of information transition, if it’s done right: newspapers, no longer necessarily the bearers of hard facts, could actually get smarter. (Of course, that’s assuming things stayed relatively fact-based on the internet; and I guess that’s a lot to expect, as we all know.) (more…)
I’m taking part in a fundraiser for the Providence chapter of Books Through Bars this summer. It’s a Read-A-Thon, and for every book I read between now and Labor Day people will donate money towards sending books to people in prison. There’s over two million people in jail right now, and a lot of privately run prisons don’t have libraries (because, you know, why would anybody want to educate prisoners?) Anyway, they get book requests daily, and the postage involved in sending the books adds up.
If you’ve got some extra money to spare, or think you will after Labor Day, and you want to sponsor me let me know. (Even if you’re not in the Providence area.) Yurigellerbentme@gmail.com is the e-mail.
Filed under: shameless self-promotion
The Pop Chart starts at 5.
Listen here, follow along here.
The week’s forty hottest pop hits, plus some other stuff to mark the year’s halfway point. I’ll be playing some of my favorite songs of the year that weren’t pop singles. I feel kinda funny not doing some sort of Michael Jackson tribute but, uh, I don’t think I’m going to…
Filed under: people from rhode island | Tags: dalmatian print, five fucking dollars for a bud light with lime, pride
Rhode Island Pride was over a week ago now. I only stopped by briefly, and took some remarkably uninteresting photos. Namely these. (more…)
