Music you should listen to...

...or else tomorrow, while leaving for work, you won’t pay attention to where you’re walking and step into an enormous pile of dog shit. While this is totally gross by itself, the situation will only be made worse when you realize that the dog whose poop you're standing in is none other than three-headed Cerberus, foul offspring of Echidna and Typhon and fearsome guardian to the Gates of Hades themselves. This means that in addition to ruining your shoes, you’ll also be transported to the fiery bowels of the Greek underworld. There, you’ll spend eternity being force-fed buckets of poisonous spiders while cackling demons laugh maniacally at your torment and poke you with pointy sticks. Seriously, it will suck. Those Greeks don't fuck around.

The music for today is "Oh Yeah", by The Subways. They're apparently pretty big in the UK, and I think they've played on Conan and Letterman a few times. Once again, the sound is just good wave-your-hands, shout-out-loud, rock/punk/whatever the kids are calling it these days. Oh, and the bass player is wicked rocker-chick hot, which is also a plus. I actually like their song "Mary" a little better, but the video they have for it is crappy. Enjoy.



I also think that they were on an episode of the "O.C." once, and it's sad that I'm actually embarrassed to type that. As I've said before, I really do hate the Catch-22 of seeing a band that I like play on a show that I despise; I mean, it's good exposure, why aren't I happy for them? For example, the other night Noel strapped me to the sofa and forced me to endure an episode of “The Hills” on MTV, no matter how loudly I screamed, and I was genuinely distressed when a Tokyo Police Club song started playing during one of the sweeping helicopter panoramas of downtown L.A. that seem to comprise 50% of the show’s running time. Does this make me a shitty fan, more concerned with their (and by association my) image rather than their success? Probably, but I'm comfortable with my elitism.

To go off on a brief tangent here (because I seem to be incapable of just writing anything short), I fucking hate “The Hills”. Like, with a passion that burns from within hotter than thousands of volcanoes filled with tiny suns and illegal Mexican fireworks. It’s awful. I can understand the original mentality that the producers must have had when pitching it; I mean, on paper, a show that’s basically about a bunch of true-life rich hot people and their glamorous lifestyles sounds fucking brilliant. But in reality, it turns out that their vapid lives really aren’t that interesting and so they’re forcibly thrown into improbably scripted situations, at which point all that’s left is the plot of a bad 90210 episode filled with people who can’t act and have less on-screen personality than a bag of especially boring and possibly retarded rocks. And that one kid, Spencer or Trevor or whatever the fuck his name is? He’s easily the most annoying person in the entire history of the world. I guess the producers realized that their glimpse into Hollywood’s fabulous teenage underground wasn’t enough to keep people invested in the show, so they decided to do their best to enrage viewers instead of enchanting them by inserting obnoxiously douchey guy characters to hate, but still. He beyond sucks. Every time he opens his mouth I just want to smash his enormous teeth through the back of his skull with whatever blunt object is nearby. So good for you, MTV. You’ve made me feel something, even if it’s homicidal bloodlust instead of delight, and isn’t that what good television is all about?

Moving on to other me-related news that doesn’t involve my hatred of crappy reality shows, I got accepted to portfolio school and will be starting classes next week. This is exciting, because I’m really looking forward to learning about advertising and think that it’s something I’ll really like; and terrifying, because I haven’t been to school in like five years and will be working full time until I graduate. I’m going to try and keep up the blog as much as I can, but we’ll see how feasible that will actually be. Oh, and if anyone has a decent Mac laptop or knows where I can get one for a price that’s not an equivalent value to a mid-sized luxury sedan, please let me know. I don’t actually need it for school, per se; but I’m told that if I don’t have one all of the other kids will laugh and call me names before beating me up and stealing my juicebox. It’ll be high school all over again.

Music you should listen to....

...or else you'll be brutally sodomized by a roving gang of baboon hooligans, who will videotape the encounter and then put it up on youtube.com. It will garner over 1,000 comments overnight, which will distress you, but most of them will either be advertisments for pornography websites or surly teenagers launching poorly-spelled attacks against America. So don't worry about it.

Just to wander off topic for a second, I noticed the other day that these little sentences describing what will happen to you if you don't listen to the music I recommend would make awesome fortune cookie inserts. Lately it seems to me that every single fortune cookie I've eaten has just contained some kind of retarded statement as opposed to an actual prediction of future events. I might be expecting a lot from the tiny Asian children who are chained to typewriters in cookie sweatshops for 23 hours out of their day making them, but come on. At least put some effort into it; trust me, your overseers will beat you less if you just tell the future and aren't as lazy. We were at a Chinese/Korean place a few weeks ago, and after finishing off an amazing meal consisting of at least 23 pounds of dumplings and noodles, I cracked open my fortune cookie in gleeful anticipation of gaining at least some small weapon against my inexorable march towards an unknown future. Instead, I read something like "The shirt you're wearing is nice", or "Your shoes are happy fun for all." What the fuck is that? That's not a fortune; that's a cookie trying to hit on me written by someone who doesn't speak my language. It's an embarassment to the Chinese people and their precognitive abilities everywhere. Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be more rewarding to open your desert and read something like this:

"You will be raped by monkeys sometime in the next week. Your lucky numbers are 16, 32, 12, and Ape Penis."

This way, I'd know not to go to the zoo or hang around with any of my friends who own monkeys. See? Everybody wins.

Moving on.

The music for today is "Superstar Tradesman", by The View. It's awesome British garage-punk, and this is seriously one of those songs that I sing at the top of my lungs whenever I'm driving even though I can't really understand the words. Even at stoplights, which totally sucks for my passengers. Lily Allen apparently told Pitchfork that she doesn't like the group, but she'll be dead from an alcohol/cocaine overdose long before her fathers connections make it possible for her to make another album, so no one really cares.
Enjoy.



In other news, I finally submitted my application to portfolio school on Friday. It took me about a week and a half to get together, but that's because I'm an idiot and spent far, far longer than I should have making sure all of the ads had accompanying illustrations drawn in Microsoft paint. I tried to just sketch them out by hand, I really did; but most of them ended up looking like I had smeared my lips with ink, closed my eyes, and then smashed my face repeatedly into the paper. Which is artsy, sure, but doesn't really help you when you're trying to sell things. Or maybe it does; what the fuck do I know about advertising? Anyway, here's an example of my stunning artistic talent:




You'll notice that it contains a basset hound; this is because I own one, and I'm seriously incapable of looking at him without laughing. This ad is actually part of an entire campaign that I made up, so it needs some explanation, but trust me, it's brilliant. Am I even legally allowed to post stuff like this? Not that I consider my blog to be particularly influential, but I could seriously see the stock at Milkbone going down if too many people this.

More later.

Music you should listen to.

Or otherwise, a street hobo named "Crazy McStabbington" will pee on your shoes. I know! With a name like that, I was totally thinking that he would stab you! But no, no. Just...gonna pee on your shoes.

Anyway, as evidenced in an earlier post, I believe that my taste in music is far superior to pretty much everyone else's. Well, except maybe for Ryans, but that's because his taste is enhanced stylistically whenever he wears a trendy hat. I can't compete with that.

So I'm taking a page from my friend Jet Leigh's book (blog? whatever.) and will start posting youtube.com videos of whichever band I happen to like during a particular week, and then tell you why you should like them too. This will occur on the regular schedule of whenever the hell I feel like it.

First up:
Margot and the Nuclear So & So's, playing Skeleton Key.




Please, give it a listen. They don't have an actual video for this song (what with being "indie" and all), but this live version is pretty good. If I could, I'd like to direct you to their myspace page so that you can lilsten to the studio version. It's a little faster, and at one point the cellist yells "WHOOO!" after the chorus. Looking back I realize that what I've typed doesn't look nearly as cool as how it actually sounds, but trust me. You'll get goose bumps.