Sarah Jessica Parker or a Horse?

A Fun Quiz!:

1.

Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. a Horse

2.

Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. a Horse

3.

Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

4.

Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

5.

Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

6.

Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

See how you scored:

1. a 2. b 3. b 4. a 5. b 6. a

I hope that wasn’t too hard, lulz!!11

- Sean, I’m going to hell when I die . . .

MAY 08

The Danger Mouse Seal of Approval, Don’t Listen Without It!

This is Danger Mouse.

No, not the British cartoon hero, the enigmatic music producer.

It occurred to me recently that Danger Mouse’s name is practically a golden seal of approval. He’s been behind some of the best music of this first decade of the 21st Century and I’ve enjoyed just about every album he’s produced.

Danger Mouse, real name Brian Burton, comes from White Plains, New York and spent the late nineties making demo tapes of his instrumental, trip-hop inspired music. He did an album with rapper Jemini in 2003, but found sudden fame when The Grey Album dropped on the Internet like a bomb in 2004.

The Grey Album was a brilliant concept: Danger Mouse took the commercially released a capella version of Jay-Z’s seminal Black Album and mixed it with The Beatles’ seminal White Album. Every time I tell people about this for the first time, they’re utterly bewildered. They roll their eyes and assume that the album is just Jay-Z played over a bunch of Beatles songs. It’s much more than that. Danger Mouse set out to prove that oft-criticized practice of “sampling” was not stealing music, but cutting it apart and pasting it into wonderful new pieces of art, like the musical equivalent of a collage. The Grey Album chops and transforms Beatles songs into strange new configurations, while still preserving their original tone and matching them quite perceptively with Jay-Z’s vocals.

Copyright issues kept The Grey Album from every being officially released, but a group called Downhill Battle staged “Grey Tuesday” on February 24, 2004, hosting the full album on hundreds of sites across the internet. Sites were of course forced to take the album down by Beatles label EMI, but the damage had been done and it’s currently pretty easy to get your ears on a copy. The Grey Album launched the admirable “mashup” craze, as well as Danger Mouse’s career.

Former Blur frontman Damon Albarn contacted Danger Mouse and got him to produce the second Gorillaz album, Demon Days, and DM delivered another modern pop masterpiece. His efforts on the album got him a well-deserved Grammy. Up next he did The Mask and the Mouse with MF DOOM and teamed up with Cee-Lo to form Gnarls Barkley. Their first album, St. Elsewhere spawned the popular but ultimately overexposed hit “Crazy”, and a plethora of excellent tunes. The recent follow-up to St. Elsewhere, The Odd Couple, came after he produced The Good, The Bad, and The Queen for Damon Albarn’s unnamed British super-group, which I reviewed in detail a few months back.

This year Danger Mouse has produced albums for The Black Keys and Martina Topley-Bird and is working on Beck’s soon-to-be-released next album.

Rather than going into much greater detail about the golden touch of this be-afroed prodigy, I’ll let the music speak for itself. (Brought to you by YouTube, because I can’t figure out how to fucking upload mp3s here.)

“Encore”, from The Grey Album. A mash-up of the Jay-Z track of the same name and the Beatles songs “Glass Onion” and “Savoy Truffle”. This video, a fan creation dubbed “The Grey Video”, is pretty excellent.

“Kids with Guns”, by Gorillaz, from Demon Days.

“Smiley Faces”, by Gnarls Barkley, from St. Elsewhere.

“Nature Springs”, from The Good, The Bad, and the Queen.

- Sean, somehow DJ DangerFerret doesn’t sound as appealing.

MAY 2008

The Running Man (Or Woman): Ranking Barack Obama’s Vice Presidential Prospects

Now that Barack Obama is the presumed nominee, the obvious next question is who his running mate will be. I decided to run down the choices and rate them using the tested and highly reputable “Obama Girl Scale”.

Hillary Clinton

The media has been abuzz with the notion that Obama may extend an olive branch to virtually defeated rival Hillary Clinton and bring her on board his campaign.

THE PROS: The first one is obvious - uniting the Dems once again by taking on Hillary and her supporters. Besides, that she’s got many of the qualities Obama is perceived as lacking (experience, familiarity) and she knows how to run a tough campaign.

THE CONS: She’s Hillary. She carries with her a lot of negative opinion from inside the party and out. This could turn away moderates and give the Republicans a lot of extra ammo to throw at Obama.

VERDICT: People are overestimating the rift in the Democratic Party. If they held the general election tomorrow, yes, the Clinton fans might go McCain, but over the next 6 months, wounds will heal and they’ll realize that practically any Democrat is better than Bush II: The Senior Years. Besides, I doubt Hillary wants to be second fiddle in the White House again.

Al Gore

Speaking of former presidential second fiddles, Al Gore has seen a massive rise in popularity since he “lost” the 2000 election and “An Inconvenient Truth” has made him bigger than he ever was in politics. People tried to draft him into running early on in the race, but perhaps a few more years as VP would be more realistic.

THE PROS: He’s got great public appeal, celebrity backing and plenty of that experience stuff without as much baggage as Hillary.

THE CONS: He’s been out of the game for eight years and his hard political skills could be rusty. And though he’s not widely disliked, he has plenty of detractors in the “Global-Warming-Doesn’t-Exist-Stick-My-Fingers-In-My-Ears-La-La-La-La” crowd.

THE VERDICT: Gore would be a nice choice but he’s said he doesn’t want to be a part of the race and I believe him. He’s left Washington behind for Hollywood and he has no good reason to look back.

John Edwards

John Edwards was a handsome and likable candidate running on a unique platform of poverty relief. He would’ve been an admirable candidate had he not been up against the likes of Clinton and Obama. Edwards recently, finally endorsed Obama, but Edwards might benefit more from actually reentering the race.

THE PROS: He’s likable and a bit more experienced and he may snag the working class white vote that Obama has always had trouble with.

THE CONS: There were claims of hypocrisy during his campaign and some may doubt his ability to shake the stink of defeat from ‘04.

THE VERDICT: Edwards wouldn’t be a terrible choice, but the more one looks at it, the more obvious it becomes that Obama needs someone to make up for his weaknesses and that Edwards just doesn’t do that.

Wesley Clark

Wesley Clark - he might be the least known of this group, but he’s also probably the strongest. A highly decorated four-star general, Clark commands a lot of respect and is a favorite with Democrats.

THE PROS: A lot. He basically has everything Obama doesn’t - he’s undeniably experience with national security and foreign policy. Basically, his military background totally overshadows McCain’s. The red states will go for him even though he’s Democrat to the bone.

THE CONS: Not many. There really aren’t many reasonable attacks that the Republicans have ever been able to launch against him. The only problem is…

THE VERDICT: …He already endorsed Hillary. But he’s shown himself to be an essentially unconditional supporter of Democratic candidates and there’s no way he’s not going to be supporting Obama once Hillary drops out. There are other people who come close, but Clark is just about the best choice Obama has for Vice President.

Who will really be Obama’s running mate? That’s for him to decide, us to find out, and FOX News to criticize.

- Sean, creator of the surprisingly unsuccessful “Dennis Kucinich Girl” video.

MAY 08

“What if we wrap the pancake AROUND the sausage!?”: The Fine Art of Food Convergence

con·ver·gence When media devices with multiple functions are combined in order to form one device with all functions.

You know, like the iPhone.

But convergence is no longer confined to the realm of hip gadget geekery! No, it’s coming to a supermarket near you, as I learned today while on a trip for groceries.

I give you, sausage inside of a pancake:

And look, they put it on a stick for added convenience!

Kidding aside, this is one of the more disgusting items that the junk food business has managed to invent. I mean, who the hell would eat this?

“I want to enjoy a tasty breakfast before leaving home for my place of work and/or enrolled education, however, I have neither the time nor patience to sit down and consume the traditional morning time meal or pancakes and sausage links. I know! I’ll break out my Jimmy Dean Pancake & Sausage on a Stick™! Not only does its handy presentation fit my on-the-go lifestyle, but I’m able to push more food into my mouth at once! If only they could find some way to eliminate the problem of having to breath between bites!”

And this isn’t the only example of food convergence.

The KFC Famous Bowl, the target of much ridicule and scorn from my cousin and I since it was introduced:

The Famous Bowl is described by KFC in the following manner:

We start with a generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes, layered with sweet corn and loaded with bite-sized pieces of crispy chicken. Then we drizzle it all with our signature home-style gravy and top it off with a shredded three-cheese blend. It’s all your favorite flavors coming together.

The inherent horribleness of the actual concept is only underscored by The Famous Bowl’s quite infamous reality. Here’s what they actually look like (WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PHOTOGRAPHS MAY BE CONSIDERED DISTURBING BY ANY READERS WHO INTEND TO EAT ANYTHING EVER AGAIN.):

Yeah.

If I’d not been told that these were “KFC Famous Bowls”, I would’ve merely assumed that a morbidly obese man had eaten a full KFC meal, vomited it back into a bowl, and posted it on the internet for others’ entertainment.

Which is about how I imagine it to taste. I refuse to allow The Famous Bowl to come within twenty yards of my mouth and have considered filing a restraining order against it just to be sure, but others are braver than I. Like Patton Oswalt.

The hilarious comedian has been doing a bit about it for a while:

There is no more apt description of a Famous Bowl than “a failure pile in a sadness bowl”, but it turns out that he’d never actually tried one. The A.V. Club convinced poor Patton to try one and the results were what one would expect:

The Famous Bowl hit my mouth like warm soda, slouched down my throat, and splayed itself across my stomach like a sun-stroked wino. It was that precise combination of things, and so many other sensations that did not go together. At all.

The gravy, which I remembered as being tangy and delicious in my youth, tasted like the idea of blandness, but burned and then salted to cover the horrid taste. The mashed potatoes defiantly stood their ground against the gravy, as if they’d read The Artist’s Way and said, “I’m going to be boring and forgetful in my own potato-y way!” The corn tasted like it had been dunked in fake-corn-flavored ointment, and the popcorn chicken, breaded to the point of parody, was like chewing a cotton sleeve that someone had used to wipe chicken grease off their chin.

The cheese had congealed. Even in the heat and steam of the covered Famous Bowl, it had congealed. I stabbed it with the tines of my spork and it all came up in one piece. I nibbled an edge, had a vision of a crying Dutch farmer, and put it down.

What has America come to? There is no greater sign of the decline of Western Civilization than the indefensibly stupid notion that piling multiple food items into a bowl and shoveling them into your mouth is a good idea.

It’s great to know that we can count on the food industry to create new and inventive ways to make Americans look like disgusting idiots.

God bless America!

- Sean, almost as Famous as The Famous Bowl, but covered in far less gravy.

May 08

“CAPITALISM DOESN’T WORK”: Scenes from a Miniscule High School Newspaper Controversy

With my senior year coming to a close, I decided to do something special with my last few articles. One was the Bush retrospective I put up here. The last one was just published and will be put up here shortly. The first article was something I’d been considering for awhile but refrained from in fear of the furor it would raise. Realizing that controversy was what every journalist should aspire to, I finally did it. Here’s the article in question, in it’s original unedited form:

CAPITALISM DOESN’T WORK
And here’s why

By Sean Doyle

In America, we consider certain notions to be inherent and inalienable. Say something contrary and the nimble hands of society quickly label you and quarantine you from the good, sane citizens. War is a big one. Only useless hippie scum would suggest that war is often pointless and unnecessary. But I’d hazard a guess that nothing will earn you your status as a looney, America-hating, left-wing, Commie nutjob quite effectively as making the simple point that capitalism doesn’t work.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing. Because capitalism doesn’t work. Say what you will, but the system is just plain flawed.

Everyday in America, someone is being layed off or screwed over or kept down by a privileged few who hold all the cards and have all the power. 40% of the world’s wealth is held by 1% of the population. And that 1% routinely gets away with whatever they want in America with little more than a slap on the wrist. They ruin lives and treat people like cattle. They buy their way into every level of our government and send our soldiers to die in order to keep themselves in business.
In this way, capitalism is in opposition to America’s basic values. When instituted, the first thing capitalism does is divide society into three parts: the low, the middle, and the high. And so there is always an inherently unequal society. But some will argue that the people at the bottom deserve to be there, that capitalism’s greatest strength is that it rewards those with initiative, those who know how to compete. The problem is that in capitalism, there’s always three classes, even if - hypothetically speaking - everyone was filled with all kinds of good old fashioned ambition. There’d still be a lower class and they’d still be dirt poor. Ask yourself: Have you and your family just been a bunch of slothful idiots for your entire lives? If you’re middle class or lower, capitalism says yes, you must have. Being successful in this system isn’t about being more ambitious or a better person or a harder worker. Initiative wasn’t what got that 1% where they are. Capitalism rewards dishonesty and viciousness.
I don’t know, this all just seems so obvious to me. But I’m in the minority. That’s because capitalism does an excellent job of hiding just how bad of a system it is. The message is hammered in over and over again that, thanks to capitalism, anyone can be successful in America. I hate to be the pessimist here, but the life of any average America would tell you that this isn’t true. But capitalism is good for America in general though, right? This where “Reaganomics” or trickle-down economics comes in. It’s a theory that if you let the rich prosper, their wealth will be reinvested into society and everyone will benefit. It was designed to take full advantage of one of the biggest hidden mechanisms of capitalism: the visibility and influence of the rich. The poor are always invisible to general society. You will always be far more concerned with Paris Hilton than that homeless man you pass on the street. You may think that that’s wrong, but you can’t deny that it’s true. The general atmosphere of the nation will always be most highly influenced by the well being of the upper class. In short, if the rich are doing well, then all of America must be doing great. America becomes confident in how rich and powerful it is and the middle class can forget that they’re living under a system that leaves so very many out in the cold to die.
The rich control the country through media and information. Essentially, the media is entirely owned by about six massive corporations. They tow the line, and make sure that any alternative to capitalism is equatable to Satanism. They’re telling us what to think. And we can’t even represent ourselves because you can’t run for public office unless you have the money. They’ve had us beat from the start.

If this sounds like “class warfare” then yeah, it is. I don’t like the rich and I don’t trust them. I can’t stand to see so much concentrated into the hands of so few, while so many live with nothing. It’s not right.
I see no benefit in capitalism other than to that upper class. I’m not saying other economic systems aren’t flawed, but there’s got to be something better than this. But I doubt that the American people will ever make a stand against it. That’s capitalism’s greatest weapon: the dangling dream of success, no matter how far out of reach it is.

People reacted, as I’d hoped and I got quite a few questions/criticisms about it. Then, while we were setting up for the District Art Show, I met this Junior who disagreed quite vehemently with the article. He shall remain nameless, as I don’t want it to look like I’m using my blog to smear kids from my school. Anyway, we debated for about ten minutes until we both got tired of it and I gave him the proper info on sending in a response to the paper and he did. Here it is, from last month’s issue:

And so, naturally, I responded:

I’ll leave it up to you to decide who won this little debate.

(HINT: It was me.)

- Sean, Professional Amateur High School Journalist.

May 08

BITS AND PIECES: Hillary Downhill, Google Maps Mayhem, and Brolin as Bush!

Hillary Clinton got smashed by Barack Obama in North Carolina on Tuesday and won Indiana my a measly 2%. As usual, the pundits were going on and on about “game changers” and whatnot, but I expected this to be another close race that would result in Hillary keeping hopelessly in the race and everyone else going along with it. Boy, was I surprised. Not by the results, which were to be expected, but by the media response. The next thing I know, Dan Abrams is discussing exit strategies for the Hillster and Good Morning America is saying how inevitable it is that she’s going to drop out.

Whoa, whoa, hold up. If I remember correctly, the media has spent the past few weeks acting like the suggestion that the race is over for Hillary is unendingly offensive, that the simple point that she cannot win the nomination democratically isn’t an inevitability. Oops. I guess the story has finally changed, as I suppose it was going to eventually. I predicted that if Hillary didn’t bow out, the media would force her out and it’s already happening. She can only take so much pressure from the media, the public, and her own people before she can’t hold on any longer.

. . . . .
Google Maps Street View: Catching those magic moments that you might otherwise miss!

Bike Accident:

Drug Deal

. . . . .

If you hadn’t already heard, Oliver Stone is doing a George Bush movie. Josh Brolin as Bush and Elizabeth Banks as the missus, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly:

At least it’s not “That’s My Bush”.

- Sean, I can’t think of anything funny to put. (Entropy! This blog is already falling apart again!)

May 08

Wright Was Right. (Kind of.)

It was weeks into the Reverend Wright shitstorm that I finally figured out what it was that the guy had said that got people so riled up . . . And I agreed with about 99% of what he had to say. Now Wright has returned to the public eye and Barack Obama is once again being interrogated about his pastor’s words.

So what is it that he said. Let’s take a look.

First of all, from a sermon shortly after 9/11:

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and The Pentagon, and we never batted an eye… and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost . . . Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people that we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

The media interpreted this as him saying that the people who died on 9/11 deserved it. I’m not sure exactly how they did that. What he was obviously saying was that the American government has been forcing its will on the rest of the world for decades and the 9/11 attacks were what probably should have been expected after such countless years of international douchebaggery. Which is a pretty logical opinion.

In another sermon - entitled “Confusing God and Government” - Wright listed a long series of injustices committed by the American government, and stated that a government who lies and mistreats human beings can’t claim to represent some holy force as Bush and the rest of the neo-cons would like to believe.
Again, I don’t find any of what he said unreasonable, except perhaps for his suggestion that the US government created the HIV virus. I haven’t yet seen any convincing evidence to prove this, but I find it understandable that a civil rights leader from the black community would feel that way, it’s an issue that runs deep. And while I don’t think the government created HIV, Reagan and Co. certainly ignored the AIDs crisis with much enthusiasm for as long as possible, since it was a problem mostly affecting African Americans and Gays, and therefore didn’t actually matter to them.

I get the feeling that Wright is what you can call a “Howard Zinn patriot”. Basically, you can hate the government, Capitalism, the whole structure of America, but love its people. I feel the same way quite often. The US government has done awful, disgusting things, but the American people are an incredible bunch with some of the most inspiring stories of any nation or culture.

The Wright controversy is media-engineered. Sure, Wright’s comments are quite a bit too left of center for the average American, but there’s nothing there that should be so horridly offensive to any person unless they’re a high-ranking government official. I’m sure most people don’t even know what the man said. I’m an avid news watcher and I’ve still never seen more than out of context soundbites from his sermons, and pundits sputtering with rage about how evil and radical and unpatriotic he is.

So to sum up:

1. Wright isn’t a crazy radical. His comments are pretty Left-y, but a lot of what you hear about him just seems to be media bullshit.

2. Stop worrying about Obama being some secret liberal infiltrator. He’s not a radical either and I believe in his sincerity more than any other politician.

3. While we’ve all been freaking out about Wright, John McCain has been completely getting away with having this guy back him up:

God help us all.

- Sean, Master Pastor.

May 08

The Sad and Inevitable Death of the Album

I just ordered me a sweet Radiohead t-shirt featuring the lovely, disturbing artwork of Stanley Donwood. Mr. Donwood has been producing art for Radiohead’s albums since The Bends in ‘95 and he’s built the band a great visual aesthetic to match their music. Album art is one of the oft-forgotten benefits of the physical album, something that is sadly on its way out. Now, I’m no enemy of the mp3. In fact, most music I enjoy comes to me by some means through the internet. What I’m far more worried about than the death of the cd is just the death of the actual concept of an album itself.

See, thanks to the mp3 format, my generation is growing up with nothing but singles. I’m sure a lot of people my age never even bother buying cds. Singles are sometimes the best song on the album, but that’s besides the point. Artists (Well, some artists.) put a lot of thought into what goes into an album, how it’s all ordered, and what the general effect of it is. The entire album is an experience to be enjoyed, not just one catchy tune. And it’s very easy to discover that some of the least known and least popular songs by a band are actually your favorite, hidden away in the album waiting for you to give them a listen.

I’m not going to pretend that you have to do elaborate concept albums in order to be considered a great artist, and a singles only format could certainly work for some people. Like Arctic Monkeys. The band talked last year about releasing songs as they finish them rather than putting out albums, giving them a more frequent creative output. See, I endorse that. I’ve listened to Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, and I’m not impressed with it as an album, but I like parts of it, and most of those parts just happen to be its singles. Besides Sgt. Pepper’s, I’d argue that The Beatles were a lot bigger on songs than they were on albums. (Though the fact that most of their songs are instant classics might render that a moot point.)

So basically, it’s up to the artist, and perhaps the album won’t die, as long as there are artists and fans who still believe in it, like Radiohead and like myself. Now excuse me while I go listen to In Rainbows.

- Sean, just an animal trapped in your hot car.

May 08