Lazer Bass, Happycore, and the Battle for the American Soul

One of my favorite useless trinkets is a piece of candy a raver girl once made for me. We met in class, and it was clear from her attire that she was really into the dance music scene (and also dance music itself, which does not always happen). When she found out that I was also into electronica, she asked what specific kind of stuff I liked. I knew it would be embarrassing to say happycore, so I figured a safer response was just to say I liked trance.

"Fucking Trance!" she said, in a rehearsed tone of spite. She was into jungle, which is alright too. The next day, she brought me this:


I think it was a nice gesture. My knowledge of what makes music belong to a certain sub-genre (and the merits of those sub-genres) is limited, but the trick to presenting knowledge (especially in social situations and especially about music) is to sound authoritative without being condescending. And you have to know your audience. I managed to spend an hour on a road trip once describing the differences between house and trance, because what the other people in the car knew about electronica allowed me heavy wiggling room for descriptive bull plop.

So I always keep the potential level of bull plop in mind when reading ABOUT music (and as they say, writing about music is like dancing about architecture). Further, the level of hyperbole exhibited when discussing anything you like can get kind of nertz real quick, as is the case with Sasha Frere-Jones and his new favorite sound, Lazer Bass.

When I first read about lazer bass, it was in print, so I didn't get around to listening to it until yesterday, and actually spent the entire weekend going around inaccurately describing everything I heard as lazer bass. It turns out lazer bass is really just Squarepusher, only more "dubby," with the sampling technique of good lord can you imagine listening to me yak about that for another hour?

So, while I love the descriptive title of lazer bass, the music itself is not really for me, falling into that ubiquitous category of "things to play to trick people into dancing so we can put on the real dance music," or, "electronica that sneaks in through the side hatch." It's probably just a failing of mine, but I tend to see dance music that's not happycore as a pose, sub-genres that are not being too terribly honest about what's on the agenda. But that's just me, and what do I know anyway? I like fucking trance.

College Graduate at Play

I went to the dentist Thursday, and got rick rolled while there was a drill in my mouth, which is the kind of thing R.L. Stine could get 300 pages out of, but in real life the situation is not so bad, eh? Later, I was assembling an executive chair when this came on the radio:

Rick Astley - "Never Gonna Give You Up" (Solly Remix). Works for me!

The Saturday Sketch: "Celebrity Jeopardy "

This week's sketch is a "Celebrity Jeopardy" parody from Saturday Night Live, featuring Ben Stiller as Tom Cruise and Jimmy Fallon as Adam Sandler, with Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek and Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery. This sketch is funny even without the video: my first exposure to it was as an Mp3 in high school, and I listened to it hundreds of times (on minidisc!) before I ever saw the actual sketch on TV. But judge for yourself, by clicking play and closing your eyes:

SNL's "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketches are always good times, but I think this one is my favorite. Another really good one, though, is the one with Norm Macdonald as Burt Reynolds, Darrell Hammond as John Travolta, and Matthew Perry as Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton is probably the funniest person to imitate on the planet. Watch him on screen, he does not care what anyone else is doing, he is just going to be INTENSE and FURROW HIS BROW. And in the sketch, Macdonald put on a giant cowboy hat and made everyone refer to him as "Turd Ferguson." I probably like that sketch so much because we performed it in high school as a one-act play. I was Turd Ferguson.

A Shift-Your-Gears Mach 6 Friday

The Wachowski Bros. really seem to have it in for the number 5, as the erstwhile digit is often cast in an antagonistic light in their movies. To be generous, it is possible to say that 5 as portrayed in their movies is, at best, representative of a life that must be escaped from, and that it is indicative of, if not outright Evil, at least a hive-mind mentality. Put bluntly, the number 5 is anathema to Wachoski-written protagonists, individuals who must separate themselves from the pack (although really, this makes the protagonist anathema to the hive-mind).

This is all pretty clear in the Matrix trilogy, with Neo designated as the sixth integral anomaly, and the world of the matrix downright plastered with 101 designations (addresses, highways), what in binary is 5 decimal. And in V for Vendetta, V's instigation of an anarchic uprising leads to thousands of individuals donning Guy Fawkes masks, as they all symbolically become V (5) in an act of public disobedience that glorifies the hive mind while doing nothing to effect real change (the promise of 6). Of course, in V for Vendetta, they had to radically change the original work to get there (upsetting author Alan Moore), but you could say that 5 didn't come out looking like such a pillar of "right number behavior" in the comic, either.

Anyway, it was with those examples in mind that I wondered how the Wachowski Bros. would deal with the presence of the Mach 5 in their new film, Speed Racer, opening today. I mean, that's Speed's car. And what about the delightful pun of "go" meaning 5 in Japanese? Surely the protagonist's car isn't a symbol of the hive mind?


Well, okay then. If you want to break away from the pack, I guess you're gonna need a Mach 6. Roku, Speed, Roku!

Why "Annuale" is a Funnier SNL Sketch than "Monex"

Checking in on the global economy, it looks like the word is "gold," which must mean the global economy has been watching the same soap opera reruns I have, and has thus been bombarded with advertisements demanding that they send for their FREE GOLD KIT NOW.* If you are not familiar with them, the companies running these ads helpfully want to buy your old gold jewelry, and they are willing to give you cash for that gold and you keep the gold!**

I didn't pay attention to the national spots on the subject of FREEGOLDKITS, because really, sending gold through the mail is cumbersome, who's got the time? Which is why I was thrilled when I started seeing ads for local operations that were in business strictly to buy my old gold. Imagine, I could bring my gold right to the store and walk out with paper currency, something that can be exchanged for goods and services. Try doing THAT with gold! What kind of crackpot business even buys gold? A crackpot business, that's what kind.

Unless, of course, the Fed has been trying to keep economic markets calm through suppressing the price of gold by selling more than half of the nation's supply. Which really makes gold a buyer's market now, but also guarantees that it becomes a seller's market as soon as (A) the Fed stops selling all the gold or (B) the Fed sells all the gold. Who's the crackpot business now?

My favorite part of that article, though, is when the author begins what can only be called the Pizza Metaphor Imperative (or PMI):

...all I want is just to make a lot of money so that I can move into a nice house in a gated community that has armed guards, a nice golf course and completely surrounded by sleazy strip clubs and pizza parlors where you can get any kind of pizza you ever heard of at discount prices.

Obviously, the man is talking about sex pizza, but why he felt the need to be so coy about it is beyond me. He leaves no time to dwell on it though, because immediately after that the PMI continues:

...as to the notion that the Fed has sold half of our nation's gold... I see no reason why the Fed would stop at only half, sort of like when I am starving and I sit down with a whole delicious pizza in front of me, and my wife thinks I am just going to eat half and leave the other half for her, and then she acts all surprised when I see no reason to stop at half, either!

Yeah, what's that broad thinking? Really, though, I don't believe it's fair when what is initially a well-reasoned article on the global economy so quickly turns to madness with no warning. So, here is my warning to you, I am about to do the same thing with a new metaphor ready go:

Trying to regulate market prices of finite materials is like regulating a woman's menstrual cycle with hormones for an indefinite period of time. There is no profit*** in it, and when you run out of hormones, there's going to be hell to pay.

So, why is "Annuale" a funnier Saturday Night Live sketch than "Monex"? Because the writers at SNL (as well as everyone else) know what would happen if you fucked with a girl's period for a year, so everyone can relate to the catastrophic/hilarious results. But nobody at SNL (or really anyone else) knows what's up with gold, so they see the commercials and write a parody where Kristen Wiig moans "Gooooold" for three minutes.

But, just like the rest of us, the writers at SNL do better when dealing with paper currency.

*FREE GOLD KIT includes 4 lbs. lead, whiskey boot and VHS tape with instructions on constructing your own philosopher's stone out of common household items.

**You don't keep the gold.

***Let's say profit = babies.

The Real World Makes You Stupid

This clip from The Real World: Hollywood is an uncut version of a fight between Kimberly and Brianna that was aired a couple of weeks ago, and is superior to the edited version in every way except that it excises Kimberly's best racist line: "I don't care if you're from the most inner-city...BLACKVILLE, you do not act like that." Still, there are some choice A #1 racist comments up in this mug:

The best part about alcohol-fueled blow ups peppered with racists barbs is the opportunity for make up racism later that week. Make up racism is a lot like make up sex, only way more racist.

The Many Faces of Stan Lee, Cameo King

Wired has an interview with Stan Lee about his cameos in Marvel movies, the most recent of which is his appearance in Iron Man. In the movie, Tony Stark only sees Lee's character, surrounded by beautiful women, from behind while on the red carpet, and says hi to "Hef," quickly moving on before Lee turns around. It creates an interesting ambiguity, leaving the audience to decide if Lee is playing Hugh Hefner or an alternate-universe Stan Lee who has a lifestyle very similar to Hugh Hefner. Or, most unlikely, an alternate-universe Stan Lee who spends much of his free time emulating the lifestyle of Hugh Hefner, renting smoking jackets and hiring expensive call girls to accompany him to premieres and parties.

While we may never get closure on that point, Marvel's announcement of an Iron Man sequel to be released in 2010, as well as three other Avengers movies to take place in the same shared movie universe as Iron Man, points towards plenty of future cameo opportunities for Lee.