A lot of folks are sharing this post from Vice magazine’s “Noisey” which, from all appearances, was written by a high-schooler who just discovered them. The author claims to understand why people claim that The Beatles are overrated, and then goes ape shit with reasons and excuses about how great they are. I’m guessing people are sharing it for the same reason that the whole, “Who is OutKast?” thing circulated: a sizable number of people take their music seriously. (I’m one of them.)

This article is dumb, though. Let me first say, I like The Beatles. A lot. I have a friend who is beyond super obsessed with them so from time to time I’ll rile him up by claiming they are overrated but there are two reasons for this:

1. He knows that I like them and understand their significance.
2. It allows him to get in some shots about Nirvana being overrated. (Nirvana being another band I like a lot.)

This is the problem with writing an article bashing Beatles-bashers. They fall into two types. One of those types, like myself, is the “pot-stirrer” who just loves getting you all annoyed with their words. You can’t get mad and launch a tirade at them because then you’re just going to look like a putz when they give you a shit-eating grin and ask, “You mad, bro?” The other type is the straight-up musical pedestrian. They may be a young person who absolutely loves utter shit like One Direction or the Biebs but they also may just be a normal adult who doesn’t give enough of a shit, is tired of hearing you prate about musical geniuses, and wants to be left in their morass of Pitbull/Ke$ha/Miley Cyrus.

With the former of that group, they’ll either grow up eventually and realize One Direction is audible feces, abandoning them for The Beatles/Joni Mitchell/Neil Young/etc. or they’ll switch over to Hot 100 FM and turn into the latter. In the event they continue down the path of pop music consumers, there’s nothing you can say or do or exhibit to them that will cause them to change their minds. They are content with filler noise like Katy Perry’s, “Roar.”

So, essentially, in either instance you’re wasting your time. Or, since this is the age of social media, you’ve successfully drawn tons of hits to your site. Hmm.

You all know I’m the first to call someone racist, oftentimes based on the loosest of reasoning. I am a militant liberal when it comes to social issues.

You also all know that I’m incredibly critical of modern rap, that I draw a distinction between hip-hop and rap, and will argue with you for hours about what makes Lil’ Wayne utter crap. I am the white kid in this Onion article/video. I automatically dismiss your song if it contains even one n-word, denigration of women, or any bragging. New Jay-Z album? Crap. New Kanye album? Crap. You all know this.

So it may come as a surprise that I do not agree with this Feministing blog post about some new, typically overproduced pop song by some young girl from Australia (Lorde). Atypically, the song contains some criticism of the subject matter present in most overproduced pop songs.

My friends and I – we’ve cracked the code.
We count our dollars on the train to the party.
And everyone who knows us knows that we’re fine with this,
We didn’t come from money.

But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom.
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room,
We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair

The author of the blog post retorts:

Because we all know who she’s thinking when we’re talking gold teeth, Cristal and Maybachs. So why shit on black folks? Why shit on rappers? Why aren’t we critiquing wealth by taking hits at golf or polo or Central Park East? Why not take to task the bankers and old-money folks who actually have a hand in perpetuating and increasing wealth inequality?

I’m not here to say something mean in response to the blog author because the last two questions are completely valid and there most likely are songs about them – they probably just aren’t mainstream. I mean, off the top of my head, I know The Procussions deal with income inequality in a lot of their songs.

But there also needs to be criticism, specifically, of things like what the author is taking issue with. Gold teeth, Cristal, and Maybachs are indicative of dumb behavior, not “black folks” behavior. It’s entirely okay, and not racist, to call those things out – regardless of how many rappers/black folks seem to be enamored of them (which makes them stereotypes). It’s okay to make fun of those stereotypes, however, because those things are stupid choices – and are just as worthless as golf or polo in Central Park East.

It seems like our buddy, Caniprokis, is a bit down and I'm worried. In an attempt to cheer him up, I used some of the new features in GarageBand to remaster the two "Pushback" songs I was able to hold onto. It was difficult to do from just a single stereo track, but I think the difference is noticeable. For those of you who don't remember, Caniprokis had a cool band that played some modern rock/punky type of stuff and they were actually pretty good without the singer. He mucked things up. But Caniprokis is a really great drummer and so I tried to bring his playing a little more forward in the remasters. Again, it was difficult. The first one doesn't sound too different, I removed the hissing, amped the guitars more, and was able to raise the drums just a bit. I think the second one turned out much better-sounding, though. So let me know what you think, Caniprokis. I didn't like the name "Lucy," so I will refer to it as "Pushback," dammit.

Leach (Original) - 4.3MB
Leach (My Remaster) - 10.7MB

Pushback (Original) - 3.5MB
Pushback (My Remaster) - 6.0MB

Calliander, keepin' it fresh since '21, you suckas.

Hey folks, just wanted your opinions on some songs I created with GarageBand. Keep in mind that these are my first two songs ever. The first one I could see as a hip hop song, dunno about the second.

Metropolis
Ethos

Lemme know.

Calliander, keepin' it fresh since '94.

Well, I posted in May.. and now it is late August, practically September. My speeding ticket issue is basically dealt with (still have one more court date though). The summer has flown by.

Most recently I went on a trip to the Phish festival in northern Vermont (I'll maybe add pics later). I took a red eye out from LAX on Tuesday night, that took me through several stops, the first of which was Las Vegas. I barely made my flight, I deplaned from my first leg to find a person waiting for me to rush me to my next flight. I boarded to a round of applause from my section of the aircraft. I was sitting in the middle of a traveling group on their way home to Ohio (my next stop was Cleveland). This was my flight to sleep on. It was the longest leg through the night. But the crowd I was in was fresh off the casino floors. The raucous group of Roseanne Barr lookalike lesbians bought more drinks from the airline and did a pretty good job of preventing sleep. One of them was continuously farting, and the surrounding fattys would make a huge commosion, half trying to get up and run. It was aweful.

I made it to Cleveland and boarded my quiet flight to Hartford. Upon arrival, I went to baggage claim and called Caniprokis and Wilson; they were less than 15 minutes away. We were going to head straight up to Vermont. The baggage carousel made a short turn, and three bags came out. None of them mine. After talking to the airline, and filing a claim, they promised to send my bags to me, even to Vermont. So when Caniprokis and Wilson arrived, we went up to Vermont.

Later that day they called and told me that the bags would be on a flight that evening, and they would send the bags right out. I called at 10pm that night (fighting sleep still, and quite cold being in wet/cold Vermont with only the clothes I travelled in (shorts)) to find that there was a plane on its way through the taxi-way to the gates. Call back in 30 when they have time to unload, they say. When I call back, they tell me to call back in 30 when they have time to finish unloading. I call back, and they say they don't have them but to call back at 1:30am as there is another flight arriving. I went through the same crap, and the time changed to 10:30am Thursday. I tell them that I wasn't going to be around very long during the day (had to get to the venue) and they should send the bags to my parents probably. But the bags did arrive on that plane, and they promise to send out a driver immediately who will call me with an ETA.

So, after a heated discussion in Miss L's diner, we decide to wait for my bags. We went to the local Lyndonville college to use their gym showers, and I bought a change of clothes at the local JC Penny's (just about the only store that sold clothes).

My bags eventually arrive that afternoon. We immediately drive up (less than 30 miles) to the concert exit. We're a few miles away when we hit traffic. We see the left of the two lanes is closed, and the shoulder appears in use. The radio confirms the use of the shoulder. We take the shoulder. A few cars we run across seem to feel that the shoulder users are evil and try to block us. But eventually they all moved, and we were about 2 miles from the exit before we slowed to an even slower crawl of about 20 feet per hour and it was raining quite hard. The beers were cracked open. Thursday night the band was playing a concert in New Jersey that was to be broadcast on the radio. We had made friends with the neighboring cars by this point, and we fired up the boombox and listened to the concert broadcast in our ponchos in the rain. Drug availability was quite high, especially for the interstate. Use was open despite the constant trooper traffic on the passing lane. We were expecting this to take all night. The fields the festival was to be held on were flooded from the rains.

We eventually stopped moving for the night, and I was in for another night in the car.

Friday we awoke pretty early with the sun, and cars started moving again. The day basically progressed same same as the previous evening. We made it past the 1 mile to exit sign, around the time we discovered there was a Subway less than half a mile from the exit (Wilson and I made the trek up for food, which we did not bring with us on the trip). And we were prepared for yet another night in the car. We did move a little throughout the night though. We heard many rumours, including that they were towing cars in through the mud. The whole time we were also trying to fight off line cutters. Folks who were in the passing lane (that basically takes you to Canada if you don't take our exit) were trying to get into the 20' gaps left by drunk/drugged/missing drivers who would eventually be found and move their vehicles. We would surge into the gaps and this little guy with a megaphone would scream at them to move on. It worked every time, but during one of the heavier sets of rain a truck with a trailer snuck in. They were in front of our car too.

Saturday morning we were at the 1/2 mile point. It was about 10am and we were near the turn-around point through the highway median that the troopers were occupying. The concert was due to begin in just hours now and we had half a mile of freeway, and over 5 more miles of back roads to the camp grounds.

More troopers were arriving, and they were putting on their flak jackets and arming themselves with shotguns and semis. Soon, we got an announcement on the radio. We were to turn around. Refunds will be given. We were not happy.

But not being violent folk, despite the fact that our car was the first to be cut off (the trooper pulled in front of our car). We had no choice, so we turned around. We raced down the the first exit back, and got on Rt5 north. We took the road (parallel to I91) as far as we could. We found other people already there, setting up camp in a random field along the road. I was scouting for information, and saw a few locals offering their land for camping/parking. I found one that would put us within a mile of the gates, Caniprokis and Wilson had already found someone else. We ended up going with the lady offering the mile.

The lady's property was less than 5 miles from Canada, north of the Venue. We setup camp, and changed quickly. I badly wanted to be out of my underwear, which I bought in Vermont and was too small. We loaded up a tarp and some warm clothes and set off for the venue. The best thing was this lady was driving us pretty darn close to the gates, and was goign to pick us up after. She had over 20 other campers there, and a boyfriend to help out.

The concert was good, but very muddy. It was still quite a walk (over 2 miles) from the end of the road where we were dropped off. I crashed hard that night, lack of sleep for days made it easy to sleep on my shitty air mattress.

I woke up and dosed most of the day. Caniprokis was suffering from the previous day's exersion. Mad blisters on his feet from his now muddied boots. He decided he wasnt going to make it up to the concert that night, so Wilson and I went without him with cut up bits of tarp to tie around our feet to keep them dry. Quite a final performance, they went out with a bang.

It was a good final Phish experience. Nothing like 44 hours of traffic for a great concert. I don't think I'll ever to get to party on the freeway again. Good times.

I'm leaving Los Angeles in mid-August, and moving to Philadelphia. I'm staying with the company that I work for right now - leaving one position in Los Angeles for a similar position in the northeastern branch.

I knew, moving out here, that I wasn't going to stay for a long time. I don't like the landscape or the weather out here, I miss being able to visit my home, and I like winter. Simple stuff, and I might have adapted to living out here had I wanted to. I didn't, I don't. So, I'm leaving. I can't tell if it's the right time to do it.

I never really even began living here. I've got a pretty large apartment, and there's nothing in it - a couch, a cabinet, a TV sitting on some sort of bedstand. I can hardly believe I've been here for what is almost a year, in my apartment for 7 months. It's a terrible waste, eh, I've hardly even lived here. I may be leaving because I feel like any further time I spend here will be tainted by the time I've thrown away over the last year. A lot of reasons to leave - mainly, to give myself another 'fresh' start.

I think if I had stayed on, I would've been promoted again at my job, which would've been useful. I'm taking a step backwards in some sense - it'll be difficult to immediately match my progress at the new workplace to the same rate I'm at out here. Eh. Philadelphia's a good location when I move on to more school or a different job. It's a train ride from NYC, Connecticut, DC, Red Sox games in NYC.

I'm driving across the country, and I'm excited to drive through the Rockies.

I don't know much about Philly. I visited it during high school and thought the city was great, but I didn't get much further than a mile or two away from the UPenn campus. I may be mixing up memories of Boston with Philadelphia. I'm going to be working in the middle of New Jersey, about 50 miles away from the center of Philadelphia - I don't know anything about Philadelphia traffic. I think I'm going to live close to I95, which should make things easier.

I would like it if people posted more on this.

Fuck hoes exquisite, Cali, great place to visit.

Stun

So last night i get a call the the infamous Paul to come down to the garage after work and jam with him TJ and JT. AWESOME i love playing drums. like really, its better than anything else in the world, better than sex, better than getting high better than money.....welll....yeah its better than money. i just wish i could play more often because it really makes me happy. ive been jamming with TJ on guitar which has been cool, but as much as i like to think i can play guitar and i can sing, really im a drummer and thats where i truely and honestly shine. i havent even solidly played since i came back from LA but i sat down last night and i was playing like ive been praticing 3 timed a week. granted my arms were a little tired from being out of shape, and my wrists hurt like a mother fucker this moring but for the most part i was kicking some serious asss and laying down some great grooves. i hope i can find a place to pratice soon because im never truely as happy as when i get to play. like i had to come to work this moring at 8 and i dont even care because i got to play last night, nothing matters when i know ive played.

i am the little drummer boy perr rumm pumm pumm pumm

948 

A singer, a songwriter... a legend.

With the passing of this wonderful man, we can only question why such beautiful people are taken from us. Robert Palmer provided us with music for the ages; songs which will be passed down for generations. I shed a lone tear when I heard the news this morning of the tragic, untimely death of Mr. Palmer.

Why must the young be taken from us? Why do we lose the purest of heart, the most virtuous of our people? I weep for the entertainment industry today. We have all lost a man who was...

Simply Irresistable...

Ahem.

FUCK JOHNNY CASH! HIS MUSIC SUCKED!

Thank you.

Knaa'mean?

I figured I'd take this opportunity to launch a pre-emptive birthday well-wish onto Devlin. Happy Birthday mang, you old bastard.

The Red Sox are atop the Eastern standings right now, so I figure that's worth celebrating. We have to take what we can get - good to see that $180 bajillion dollars can't buy consistency.

Graduating tomorrow, which is good.James Carville is speaking at Convocation at noontoday, which is at noon. For some reason,the graduation speaker doesn't speak at...Graduation/Commencement, he speaks at Convocation. I get to hear our class president speak, too- I didn't even know we had a class president. I haven't done any of the "Senior Week" activities: stuff like playing paintball, organized get togethers, stuff like that - which means that I think I managed to go five years without ever attending a school-propelled social activity, and that includes the first couple of weeks of my first semester.

Carville, Carville - Democratic political strategist seems like an oxymoron right now ("Let's sort of agree with the Republicans!"), but he ought to be at least mildly entertaining. I dunno how the school/selection committee even keeps up a facade of impartiality when every single speaker, every year, is left- to far left-, though. Danny Glover, Janet Reno, Carville. It's like we're holding a DemocraticElectoral Convention, not a graduation ceremony, but whatever.

My mother is coming up today. I've been interested, watching the progress with the peace plan in Israel. Wouldn't it be great if Bush and Sharon were able to sell a lasting peace plan to the Israeli people, and the Palestinians? I don't think peace would've ever worked with Arafat, but I'm open minded about this new guy, Abbas or whatever his name is, so perhaps there's a shot. And, it'd be sweet if the two men who were able to bring peace to the area were the child-murdering Sharon and the fascist imperialist colonialist Nazi Bush. It's not like it really matters who does the job - the irony appeals.

I had a good cheapGerman Riesling the other day. St.-Urbans-Hof QbA 2001 I think it was, only about $8 or $9 for the bottle. I don't really like white wine, but this one was good, worth buying - you guys ought to try it. I found it in the local wine shop in Collegetown, so the winery probably made a lot of cases, should be fairly accessible. I think I had it with some scrambled eggs.

One other thing - they really do let some stupid fucking people into college. Ithaca College is a good school, but the quality of the students varies so much. I know one girl who goes there who's brilliant, great person, and then I know a number of kids who seem to be able to super-naturally suck the intelligence out of anything they come into contact with. It's like a super-power. People put way too much stock in good high school grades.

Damn!

Steen