new blog.  I'm taking this opportunity to move my blogging to a new venue, "the green lodge."   please update your links and rss feeds accordingly!  it's been a fun 3+ years, blog-city, but it's time for a fresh start.  will delete this site in the not too distant future, so enjoy it while it lasts.  I'll be blogging at the new site with my usual semi-regularity effective immediately - check out the hauntingly beautiful yet mysteriously sad Lynch/Badalamenti MP3 on the inaugural post! - with some subtle and maybe no so subtle changes.  who knows?  readers, please continue on this internet journey with me, I would be even more lost without you -

http://thegreenlodge.blogspot.com  

appearances, trying to navigate a forced site 'upgrade' by the blog-city folks.  Not doing as well at it as Nate!  I can't even get a link to work, I don't know if it's firefox compatibility issues or what but this seems totally unusable to me, might try again tomorrow but otherwise maybe it's time to move over to typepad etc, stay tuned -

College poli-sci profs love to say 'where you stand depends on where you sit' (i.e. where you stand on a particular political issue is determined by the position your political interests put you in) and man is taste is the exact.fucking.same - this is kind of Bordieu's big idea, I think?  It's a good one. 

Anyway, as a person in a band that put out what I think is easily the most insanely, inexplicably slept-on, ridonkulously innovative and unique album of the year (ahem), these artist end-of-year best-of lists are kind of an, ahhh, interesting emotional experience - I haven't heard 75% of these albums but I hate at least 66% of them just based on my impression of who talks about them on the internet along with my gut reaction to how these people talking about these albums on the internet relates to the success or failure of our band, which is a subject that's generally seemed weirdly harrowing over the purgatorial past 6 months or so.  I don't want to hear these albums, and if I did for some reason I'm sure I would undoubtedly, unfairly!, relentlessly hate on them -

Conversely, unsurprisingly?, it seems like bands that have benefited from (increasingly mindless, unsettlingly sheep-like) internet love, like the kids sitting at the cool table at lunch in high school, are apparently wayyy more inclined to be open to/positive about the music of the other bands in that space - I mean, is it just me, or are these lists kind of strikingly... similar?  'Incestuous' is maybe a strong word I guess - but how about 'circle jerk'? - and it is striking how many of these bands' lists are basically indistinguishable from the (increasingly mindless, unsettlingly sheep-like)  critics' lists, no?  Draw your own conclusions!  I'm definitely taking notes and names.

This is totally owning my mindspace right now - 'happy' holidays - 

PS: Script here - inc scenes not inc in the movie, definitely worthwhile for obsessives - 

Man if you are like me and have been way too busy listening to David Lynch movie/TV soundtracks for the past month to get into the Christmas music spirit, Chris and Ben have made a typically thorough, masterfully sequenced power hour mix of the best minutes of the 60 greatest Christmas songs ever!   Serious curatorial artistry, this is a timeless holiday classic that we will doubtlessly be breaking out with our kids for Christmases years from now, a new family tradition!  And don't miss the slick "MERRY CHRISTMAS - THE POWER HOUR" graphic on the homepage!  Happy holidays friends - if anyone's still around, come hang out at the Panache/Lovepump familia holiday party at K&M in Wburg tomorrow night, feat Dav on the deckssss!  You know I'm gonna try and get this shit played!!!

BTW, in case that last post made anybody nostalgic for when I used to post about energy news etc - back in the day when I was just giving that shit away - feel free to keep a bead on my del.icio.us page, which I started a couple weeks ago to help me keep track of stuff for work and has since made me at least... 2.5x smarter?  I didn't really know what del.icio.us was even for before, but it's really fucking great - I don't even have to really read stuff anymore, which as we all know wastes a lot of time since you forget 80% of what you read outside of a detail or two and maybe a vibe.  Now I just skim for those key detail/vibes, tag the shit of it, and forget about it until I need it - at which point I can follow the topical crumb trails I've been dropping on my way.  It's like an awesome cyberbrain/filing cabinet, I recommend the tag cloud view!  

Lots of people talkin at me about biofuels recently in a variety of personal and professional contexts, and lots of chatter about esp in the wake of the passing of the energy bill yesterday.  In lieu of posting any of my own thoughts etc allow me to just direct anybody interested in the subject to this three-part feature in the current MIT Technology Review, which does a fantastic job of telling the story til now and looking at prospects for the future with a realistic vibe - Part 1 on why corn isn't a long-term answer, Part 2 on cellulosic ethanol (mostly), Part 3
on other synthetic biofuels under development.

GHOSTFACE - SLOW DOWN

...Feeling the uncertain monologue at the end in particular - "I think about it you know what I mean?  Responsibilities... I gotta focus more...  You might be right though - maybe things will start comin to me naturally..."

Vibing ever more deeply and intensely (update: obsessively) on "Sycamore Trees," watched the entire Black Lodge sequence a few more times (start with this link to youtube it, almost unwatchably dark for the first bit but then kind of beautifully grainy for the music sequence) and have literally listened to the song approx. 50x today (update: 135 times according to iTunes, mostly over the past 2.5 days) -

- and realizing that the song is sung by the protagonist TO HIMSELF, either from the perspective of the 'good', Cooper-like, rational and civilized self fearfully (yet also maybe longingly?) watching his own evil, hedonic, Bob-infected shadow self pacing in the woods, or, even more terrifyingly and thus likely, a Bob's-eye view as the demon hunts his prey.  So do our yin and yang - superego and id? - cautiously circle each other, alternately walking together and then stalking one another, we warily glimpse different aspects of ourself in stolen moments of moral self-awareness, peeking through the branches blowing in the breeze, waiting for the inevitable confrontation between these twin spirits within us, wondering who will win but fearing the worst - "How's Annie?  How's Annie?  How's Annie?  Howww's Annie?"  Terrifying, but also some real heaviness, awesome profundity expressed with ridiculous artistry -

WHY is Twin Peaks so fucking mind-blowingly awesome?  And why is it over??  Finally finished it at 5 am this morning, I have been obsessively listening to/thinking about/Youtubing/vibing out on this intense, incredible musical number from the Black Lodge, starring real life jazz legend Jimmy Scott all day -

Written by Lynch and Badalamenti, the vibe on this one is like 80% Nina Simone's "Wild is the Wind," one of my #1 favorite songs/performances EVAR, plus like 20% Lynchian menace and Twin Peaks at its most baroquely nightmarish...  Soooooo INTENSE!!  The use of strobe lights here is incredible and inspiring, particularly the way it brings out the lyric that titles this blog-post - we're peeking through the strobe at (creepy!) Scott just like the song's narrator glimpses the object of his ominous attention through the branches of the trees.  I don't know if I'm ever going to get over this shit for real, wowowowowow -

OK, moving on at least temporarily from mourning Pimp C - to getting a little salty over another Great Man, who fortunately is still among us - maybe I was hung over or something yesterday (I mean I was definitely a little hung over yesterday, I'm getting old!) but I swear to g I cried like 4x reading this extensive, awesome SI feature on their sportsman of the year, Brett Favre.  It's a long piece, but damn!  I didn't really know about dude's drinking and drug problems ("all sorts of drugs"...!) or even that much about why he is so fucking awesome and why Green Bay has got to be an amazing place to grow up and fucking love football in etc, and I definitely didn't need to appreciate any of those things to find it all super inspiring.  Via serious cheesehead Tom Barnett - 

UPDATE: Mandatory, intense, extremely real Bun B interview on HoustonSoReal , plus 3-hour radio tribute on Damage Control - so much fucking love and honor and artistry on display, an education in so many ways -

 

"His genius was unparalleled. His passion was undeniable and his love was unmatched. To say that I lost a friend or brother would never do justice to the relationship we shared. I will never be the same again."

FUCK, talk about going out at the top of your game, I forgot how awe-inspiring 'Swishas and Dosha' is starting off Underground Kingz, the DJ Screw sample, the restless guitars wailing over Pimp's classic Houston slow.loud.and.bangin production, insta-classic hook - then spitting hard-as-fuck and seething, seriously goosebump-inducing even without the tragic context...  Bun B making you feel like an asshole for using social networking sites!  The whole song begs the question of why you are such a fucking pussy that listens to such lame non-UGK music so much -

UGK - SWISHAS AND DOSHA

- and is there any doubt that Pimp's entrance on "International Players Anthem" was pretty much the greatest single moment in recorded music in 2008??  As well as probably the realest and hardest-sounding endorsement of safe sex in the history of public health advocacy!  Goddamn -

UGK ft OUTKAST - INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS ANTHEM

- SIPPIN ON SOME FUCKING SYRUP!!!!  Big Pimpin!  Two of the unfuckwithably best rap singles of the past 10 years!  The number of amazing tracks this guy was on is off the charts -

- Whoaaa nevermind this amateur highlight reel, NOZ is seriously paying tribute over at XXL, posts and posts of absolute bangers and some great old pictures of Pimp and Bun -

- wait on top of everything else can we agree that the DJ Screw/Pimp C/Bun B troika created the only truly new and awesome form of experimental music of the past 30 years?  Not to mention the first truly 21st century music, like 15 years early?  This is STILL so fucking next level, and it's so harsh to think that Bun is the only one left:

UGK - 3 N DA MORNING (CHOPPED AND SCREWED BY DJ SCREW) 

Has any local scene in music history witnessed so many triumphs and tragedies as Houston over the past few years?  So much heaviness on so many levels -

Don't even know what to say about this other than it's a huge fuckin bummer, from guest raps to Underground Kingz dude was spittin pure fire ever since he got out of jail and now it's over?  You can only imagine what news like this is like for friends/family, but just on the level of a selfish fan that wanted more music this is kind of devastating - R.I.P. Pimp C -  

 

Such a nice Monday surprise to see a sad, sweaty look on Hugo's freakishly cartoonish face, such a pleasant reminder that history is unpredictably made, not dictated (well sometimes) -