Fridizzle

TGIF, folks. This has been one looooong week. I'm not sure what it was, but Wednesday seemed to drag on longer than Monday and Tuesday put together. Here's an excerpt between Krax and I:

Me: i think i just looked at all of facebook
all of it
Matt:
hahah
oh really?
anything noteworthy?
me: ummmmm
i hate everyone?
Matt: ahhh
yeah, I'm in a shitty mood too
the world sucks
blah blah blah
me: blergh
it's wednesday
wednesdays are for tools
i'm skipping wednesdays from now on
it's officially Thursday eve
Matt: good plan

Yeah. So there you have it.

Here's a cute video that a guy made about all of his poor fashion choices. It's one of those videos that is really, really simple, but probably took forever to make and edit.







I've talked about Michel Gondry before, and how much I like his work (something that directly mirrors Stuff White People Like, and makes me sad), and this video is no exception. It's a drive from LA to NYC, in 4 minutes. Watch it on fullscreen, it's really cool.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Oh! Big news. I went ahead, bit the bullet, and bought Austin City Limits tickets. I’m so, so, so excited. There are a TON of amazing bands, ones that I didn’t see over the course of this year because I live in awesome Foco. I figured I could just sell the tickets if I wasn’t able to go, which hopefully isn’t the case.

Oh man… I know that most of you don’t like the stupid cat videos that I post on here, but I, for one, find them to be endlessly hilarious. This one is pretty unique… it’s a cat playing the theramin. Don’t know what that is? Watch the video!



I love the way he stands on his hind legs. Lulz!

So I know that MGMT is like, the biggest band in indie this week, and I’m kind of kicking myself in the ass for not posting anything on them earlier, so that my blog readers could reap the benefits of knowing about them before the inevitable blogging frenzy occurred. Unfortunately, I started listening to them a few weeks before I went to Europe for a month, and failed to write anything on it. Anyways, they’re really, really good, and if you’ve heard anything by the band, it’s probably “Time to Pretend”, which was the single of sorts. But, I wanted to include my two favorite songs, the first being “Electric Feel”, and the second being a recent favorite, called “Kids”.







Oh, I am supposed to get Lars and the Real Girl today in the mail, I’m super stoked.

This is a crazy video – a guy got stuck in an elevator for 41 hours before he was rescued. Could you imagine? I think it would be terrible. From Gawker:

In 1999, BusinessWeek production manager Nicholas White went outside to smoke a cigarette and, upon returning, got stuck in an elevator. For 41 hours. The story of his ordeal is woven through Nick Paumgarten's new New Yorker feature about elevators, and is, predictably, the most interesting part. It's amazing how much 41 hours in a small metal box altered White's life forever, for the worse. And—oh yes—there is (sped-up) security camera footage of him the entire time. It's mesmerizing, because you can imagine him slowly going insane, which is exactly what's happening.

Well, it looks like that’s all I’ve got for today. Have a good weekend and behave yourselves!

Never Gonna Give You...arrrghgh

Two days in a row? Wow. I guess I really am getting in the swing of things again. Well that, and my job bores me to tears, so I have ample time to troll the internet in search of little nibbles of awesome. Whatever those taste like, I’m in.

I’ve actually got a lot of stuff today, and less of my normal “hey you, listen to this, they’re really good, no seriously, here’s a video, and an mp3, and a link to their MySpace, and… oh. You don’t like them? Well fuck you then.”

I don’t know how many of you do it, but sitting and staring at the visualizer in iTunes or Media Player is just so awesome. Like when you really want to listen to something but you feel like you should be doing something else (like “working from home”, or homework, for those of you still in school). Well this guy has taken it a step further, by incorporating the actual lyrics of a Goldfrapp song into an extremely interesting solar visual.


Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

This is a video montage found on Gawker that compiles all of the perils of being a TV newscaster. I can’t embed the video, but the clickthrough is definitely worth it. Included: 90’s reporter gets her hair set on fire by a dirtbike rocketing out of a truck, news reporter gets bombed and knocked out by some sort of flying objects from a small engine plane. It's the small things that are the most awesome sometimes.

I’m not sure that I’ve praised “Stuff White People Like” on this blog – it was something that was all over the internet a while back, and is a really funny site. It’s all about, well, stuff. That white people like. And it’s all so, so true, from their explanation of outdoor gear to people’s love of Mos Def. But! That’s actually not even my main point – there’s another site, called "Not Hating, Just Saying" that is kind of the same thing, where they, well, hate on stuff. Like “Office One-Liners”:

And no I don’t think it is Friday yet, but let me check the calendar again.
And I agree it IS another day, but I think I’m making more than a dollar I hope.

I wonder if this is some elitist way of speaking. Office speak. I wonder if other workplaces have their own phrases?

Slaves: You oppressed or you oppressing?
Prison Labor: Is it Friday yet? Cause I’m supposed to get raped then.
Illegal immigrants: Another day another…cheaper labor.

Oh, wow. I can’t believe I put this so far down. This video pretty much takes every question you ever had about Lost and sums it up. I seriously don’t even feel like I need to watch it anymore, I have so many answers now.



Just kidding. Fuckin’ Lost. Oh, and if you’re looking to get your Lost fix in a completely auditory way (weird, I know), there’s a band that does a musical recap-interpretation of each episode. For the one on “Meet Kevin Johnson”, the beginning is just the band members singing, “Waaaaallllt! Waaaalt!”, which is all stupid Michael does in the series anyways. http://www.myspace.com/previouslyonlostmusic

If you tried to click on any of the videos on the YouTube front page on April 1, you would have found yourself in front of the music video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Well, apparently, the Mets decided to let their fans choose which song they would like played during the 7th inning stretch, complete with a “vote for your own” blank. Some blogger got ahold of it, put it on Digg, and thousands of inter-nerds voted to RickRoll the Mets. So, this entire season, while everyone is usually screaming along to “Sweet Caroline”, they’re gonna have to bop along to the deep-voiced crooning of the red-headed singer. Lulz.

Finally, I wanted to link a really, really good article, one that actually won a Pulitzer. Read the whole thing, you might learn something about yourself. Here’s an excerpt.

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play. It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43
minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment? On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

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Two Step

Happy Tuesday, everyone. I've been allowed to start "working from home" on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is every bit as awesome as it sounds like. I'm sitting here, listening to some electro on full blast, not working, but thinking about it. See, that's the key.

Anyways, I've actually got a shitload of stuff to write about, so take your hand off that mouse, buddy. You're gonna be here for a while.

In some happy, yet dismaying news, Calvin Harris is working on a new album. Why is this dismaying? He seems to have checked his laptop in his luggage, which was subsequently lost in British Airlines' new clusterfuck, Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. It was the only copy he had, so if, say, it falls off of a conveyor belt and breaks while the operators are having tea, it's gone. Bad news.

I've been obsessively watching the show Dexter lately. I cannot seem to get away from it -- it's like a book I can't put down, except, you know, the lazy kind that projects itself on my computer screen. It's a show about a serial killer that kills people that have escaped the law. I guess CBS has started broadcasting it from the beginning, so start watching it, or torrent it, because you won't regret it.

I just went to see In Bruges with a friend at the Lyric the other week. It was pretty good. I hesitate to say "really good", because it had a really open-ended, erm, ending, which is totally fine sometimes, but not necessarily in this instance. I don't want to discourage anyone from seeing it though, because it was totally entertaining and unpredictable. Plus, I really think Colin Farell was at his best, playing a jumpy, angry Irishman that hated the town of Bruges. Speaking of random indie movies, I'm not really sure if I ever mentioned the movie Wristcutters, which I also saw at the Lyric. It was about a guy who killed himself after his girlfriend dumped him, only to find that she offed herself soon after he did. How did he know this? Well, he seems to be inhabiting a sort of half world, where everything sucks as much as it did during his time on earth, but is worse, because he can't seem to make himself feel anything. Pretty good movie, had Will Arnett in it, which pretty much makes anything awesome. But! There was a character featured in the movie, that was in this crazy-ass band, and I just found out that the band not only exists, but has played for and impressed quite a few audiences. They're called Gogol Bordello, and are this crazy, eastern European gypsy band that apparently put on the most insane live show ever. I'm going to post a video, and you're probably going to giggle to yourself while you're watching it, but as you're doing that, think of how amazing they would be live.




Human Giant are awesome. This video is fucking awesome. Why? The last line. Seriously. Watch it.



Do you wanna know what I did yesterday? Yeah, I YouTubed "cats on treadmills". Seriously, this is what my life has become. I am not ashamed.



I'm sure I've already raved enough about her, but I am so fucking crazy about Laura Marling. Her CD was pretty much all I listened to in Europe. I couldn't get enough of it. It's so earnest and beautiful. Seriously, listen to this and then try to tell me she's not amazing.

There's also a really amazing Mystery Jets remix by Shoes, which actually features Laura Marling. It's really upbeat and fun, and worth a listen and maybe a download.
{ZShare Link: Mystery Jets -- Young Love ft. Laura Marling}

Another artist that I'm really starting to like is a girl from England called Emmy the Great. She's got a really pared-down, folk thing about her, and I fell in love with this performance of her because they did it in the back of a taxicab in London. I love London.

And, actually, now that I look at him, I think the guy playing violin is in the band Noah and the Whale. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he is.




God damnit, getting super off topic here, but this Noah and the Whale video is super hilarious.




Anyways.

I guess before I left for Europe, I forgot to put up some of the bands I had been listening to. When I was in Los Angeles, my friend Hanna turned me on to two really amazing bands -- Chromeo and Kenna. Actually, Chromeo is just two guys, and Kenna is just one. But they're both amazing. I think Kenna will blow up pretty huge soon here, and Chromeo will do really well. I had Chromeo in an electro playlist I was preparing for this blog that never really came to fruition about 3 or 4 months ago. Oh well.

Here's Kenna first -- my favorite track of his is "Daylight", but it's not a single, so all that's available is a some fanvid. Eh. Good enough.




And this is Chromeo. Tight.





Anyways, I've got more bands to write about, but I'll save them for next time, because this has turned into an incredibly rambling post. So, like I said, Happy Tuesday!

Damn.

So my April Fool’s day joke didn’t quite pan out the way I thought it would. At first, I felt a surge of guilt upon posting it, thinking that people would read it and never come back. What I realized, however, was that people actually hadn’t been coming back for a while. I guess my long hiatus has taken its toll.

But hey! I’m back! Sorry about the pink blog! I know it’s totally ugly!

Anyways, let’s get down to the most important news item, more important than the apparent plotting of 3rd graders to kill their teacher (complete with duct tape, a steak knife, and a cleanup strategy!) -- New Kids on the Block are back. Seriously. Apparently as a way to gain interest in their “It’s Been 20 Years Since We Were Popular” anniversary CD, the group is reforming to do a myriad of performances (including the erm, prestigious stage on the Today Show). Is anyone else kind of excited to watch the now middle-aged members of their favorite childhood bands hop around like they've still got it? 'Cause I know I am!

Sure, I watch The Hills. In the dark. With my door closed, and the volume turned way down. I’m not proud of it, nor do I actually like any of the characters or storylines, but I still watch the damn thing anyways. The show is like a car wreck – you make a point to slow down and see what’s going on and then are totally disgusted by what you just saw. MTV is apparently trying to parlay the show’s success into another hit show over the pond, in London. However, the requirements are a bit different – the participants in the show are required to actually think.

“The show is looking for telegenic youngsters interested in topics like art, fashion, writing and literature.”

Literature -- does that mean Teen Vogue, or like, Dostoyevsky? And why is this a requirement for the English and not for us? Doesn’t that say something about American society as a whole?

The mainstream music scene is a picky bunch. I say “picky” even though it’s not necessarily the listeners, it’s the record companies who make the major decisions. So what happens when a “mainstream” band wants to go in a completely different direction? They make up a band and release an album without telling anyone it’s really them. Such is the case with Green Day, or should I say, the Foxboro Hot Tubs. They have released several tracks online since December, and will release a full album under Warner Brothers. Here’s one of the tracks. Take a listen and decide if you like their different sound. I personally think they sound really similar to the Arctic Monkeys.



Atmosphere have released a new video, their first single since 2005’s “You Can’t Believe How Much Fun We’re Having”. It’s being described as “rap rock”, which I think is hardly fair, since that phrase conjures up an image in my head of Fred Durst, or Kid Rock. Eugh. Here’s the video:



In my time in London, I got to really like this single from an artist called Duffy – it’s catchy and sixties enough to be a Winehouse track, without all of those distracting face sores.



So I guess that’s it for today. Thanks for, er, checking in. I promise you, Good Bloggie isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Goodbye, Bloggie

Good Bloggie has been in existence for about 2 years now, bringing its readers celebrity gossip, new music, movie trailers, and general commentary on its writer's life.

It is with a heavy heart that I write this: as of today, I have decided to stop updating Good Bloggie. It is far too time-consuming to write a blog that interests such a small faction of people. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but I have decided it is time for me to focus on more adult things, like finding a job.

I hope that Good Bloggie made you as happy as it made me. Thank you for all of your support.

Love,
Whitney