Neologism of the week

"Smartenify" - To inform in a terrifying manner.

Thanks go to Joseph Stern on this one.

Violet Haze

Congratulations are in order to the hard-working, dedicated students at my alma mater, New York University, for once again placing in the top ten - eighth to be precise - in the Princeton Review's annual rankings of pot-friendly schools. Since we also placed eighth on the list of "Dodgeball Targets" (an aggregation of questions concerning intercollegiate and intramural sports and the popularity of the Greek system) and thirteenth on "Intercollegiate Sports Unpopular or Nonexistent," this is one of the few opportunities NYU ever gives me to say: Go Violets! Fight [Smoke?] on!

Felix Jaxx: Maximalist

There is a new Basement Jaxx album coming out in a few weeks. As Pitchfork was kind enough to report [I have to say that I perversely miss the days when Pitchfork wrote defensive, nasty, irrational things about Remedy instead of fawning over Felix & Simon's every beat], the new record is now streaming at their album website.

The album kind of sounds like it is going to be a return to pop form in comparison to Kish Kash, for what it's worth.

Because I am a crazy Jaxxaholic and can't get enough of being marketed to, I subscribed to the Crazy Itch Radio podcast. The first episode features a good number of high-quality long clips from songs from the record, as well as excerpts from an interview with the band. The interview contains the following unsurprising, if Sherburne-baiting, snippet:

Interviewer: "It's definitely more blissed out, and more mellow as a whole, as an overall sound."

Felix: "Well I think it's probably generally... with music that's around at the moment, with electronic music, it's all very kind of minimal and trying to sound dark. So it's really a reaction against what what everyone else is doing, probably. Just to have something nice and warm that you can get into, and hopefully kind of maximalist rather than minimalist."

Snap!

2006 in iTunes, so far

This is quite a bit late, but since I haven't posted about music in quite a while, I figure I can get away with it.

Now that 2006 is more than half over, here is a playlist I made in iTunes of some of my favorite tracks of the year so far.
For the record, this list obvs includes none of my favorites from albums that have yet to drop or that I did not buy on iTunes. It is pretty representative of the year nevertheless.

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Phenomena
2. Wolfmother - Colossal
3. Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
4. Cut Copy - Going Nowhere (Digitalism Remix)
5. Coldplay - Talk (Thin White Duke Mix)
6. Ellen Allien & Apparat - Jet
7. The Knife - The Captain
8. Booka Shade - In White Rooms
9. Justice v. Simian - We Are Your Friends (Edison Remix)
10. Hot Chip - Over & Over
11. Joakim - I Wish You Were Gone (Vocal Edit)
12. Gnarls Barkley - Smiley Faces
13. Ghostface Killah & Ice Cube - Be Easy

Lots of big loud classic-ish rock and kind of icy but still immediate electronics, and barely any hip hop at all. Sounds like 2006.

Underfoot in New York

A conversation betwixt several expensive-looking sandaled New Yorkers in their fifties, in the interminable line at the Eckerds at 20th & 8th Avenue:

Posh Gentleman 1: Well, he has a foot fetish, right?
Posh Lady 1: Actually, no, I have a foot fetish.
Posh Gentleman 1: Oh, well that's different. Do you ever suck her feet?
Posh Gentleman 2: I do, right honey?
Posh Lady 1: [Looking somewhat bitter] Only a couple of times.

People are really stupid

I don't want to come across as too much of an elitist, but this sort of thing helps me to understand our current democracy problems a little better.

Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.

No wonder we're tumbling headlong towards fascism.

Bias Schmias.

Much as I might agree with the snarky aside I have emphasized:

What is clear is that the war on drugs, the original open-ended war against an elusive and ill-defined enemy, has moved inexorably onward, propelled by decades of mostly unflagging political support on both sides of the Congressional aisle.

I'm not entirely sure that it belongs in an ostensibly objective front page story in the Times. This is probably what conservatives so enjoy complaining about, no?

I feel like James Carville [only cuter]

It has come to my attention that the boy I have gone on several dates with over the last few weeks once interned for GROVER bleeping NORQUIST [pictured above] at Americans for Tax Reform.

Some of Grover's more delicious quotes include “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” and "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."

My head is spinning. I feel faint. Dirty. Cooties!

The Dixie Chicks are totally metal

This song appeared on my iPod without my knowledge, although I'm not discounting the possibility of Drunken Hijinx™!

I have now had it in my head for like three days.

I'm not ready to get involved in discussions about whether it is a good Dixie Chicks song, or whether Taking the Long Way is "a complete failure of an album and as hatefully sold a product as [some Slant guy has] ever encountered."

But:
1. Bitch has pipes.
2. Video is artful and pretty and also makes points.
3. How can this song possibly be necessary?

Purgeapalooza

Whoa! Look! Connecticut cashiered Joe Lieberman!

Sore Loserman

A few thoughts on the race of the summer.

If Joe Lieberman loses, he will do so because he has conducted his campaign in the same haughty tone that characterized his infamous assertion in 2005 that

it's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.

He will also lose because his self-serving decision to gather signatures to enable a run as an independent operates as handy shorthand for his distate for the icky process of standing together with other Democrats. He will lose because his constituents are no longer willing to swallow his condescension and inaction on the most pressing issue of our time: the war.

Current polling suggests that primary voters in Connecticut who are likely to vote for Lamont are doing so for a variety of reasons, with the war being only the primary example of the multiplicity of ways in which Lieberman fails to represent the views of his constituents. Lots of Democrats, including DemFromCT at Kos, seem to be interested in playing this forward as a way of emphasizing that this election is not only a referendum on the war, and on Lieberman's rabid-puppy-like devotion the Bush party line on Iraq. I am not really certain why this is the case. Democrats seem totally, constitutionally incapable of realizing that the public - 55% of whom want to leave Iraq entirely within a year - is calling out for leadership in this direction. I don't know if it's just because they're afraid of being torn to shreds in the echo chamber (which mightn't happen if everyone would decide to grow a pair together) or if they're all just angling for Donny Rumsfeld's job, but whatever is keeping incumbent congressional Dems from articulating a coherent agenda for ending the war is also going to keep them from winning. 55% is a fucking lot of people, and I would assume that the number of people in Connecticut who want out ASAP is even higher.

People who are calling Connecticut's little exercise in democracy a "purge" and bemoaning a leftward shift to Democratic politics are mistakenly conflating the widespread horror at the conduct and progress of W's Middle Eastern adventure with "leftism." There is no inherent political orientation to the process of taking steps to reverse an incompetent series of decisions, or that of removing from power the people who have enabled the people making the incompetent decisions.

Also, it is hilarious that the National Review can run a cover of Arlen Specter calling him "The Worst Republican Senator" and effectively campaign on the behalf of Pat Toomey as they did in 2003, and it's regarded as simply hardball politics, but a bunch of bloggers call Joementum some names and make a float and it's a "purge." Those crazyyyyy leftists, always with the purging!

If Lieberman loses, I will toast to his downfall and pray that he has the dignity to respect the decision of his constituents. And the staff of Rockstar Games will probably join me.

Why Al Gore invented the Internet

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