greetings kids. tonight, peanut has decided to reflect. reflect long and hard (hah) on the struggles of dating. it’s not easy. finding that one person that makes time fly by for and when you’re away from, makes you just want to go back near them. yak.
real dating is more like this or this or maybe even this? mmmmm. point, it sucks. what do you do when it sucks? you take yourself out on a date! a few pluses: you will enjoy your own company. if not, wtf is your malfunction? also, no arguing over the check! no getting jealous when you check out someone else!
they just look cold! i was going to offer them my jacket!
and lastly, no trying to get out of the date early, because this person just plain sucks. so tonight, i ventured out on a lovely night. not too warm, and not too cold and walked down the street to have some sushi with my book and ipod.
of course there is a stigma attached with dining alone.
not so romanic....
i didn’t so much mind it. once you get past your hostess asking you how many in your party, you replying “one,” and her confused look….it’s off to sake land you go! you get some pitying looks for other people. maybe it’s the people that are out on a date they shouldn’t be on because one of them is married. the gay couple looking on at you, wondering if you’re registered to vote and what is your stance on prop 8, and then the mother (that has been and maybe still wishes she was in your shoes) with her two kids…
this is the cavity those monsters came from......
all in all, i was great. i ordered exactly what i wanted, drank as much sake as i wanted as i was fo sho not getting date raped later, and enjoyed my book.
let’s just say kids, the night’s not over. there may be toys here. i have a netflix to watch, some bedroom chocolates to consume, etc etc….some things are left behind closed doors. pervert.
BritPop week continues, whether you like it or not. Let’s continue our tour of London.
There are a lot of museums in London and for the most part, they are all free (their government actually values their citizens obtaining cultural literacy and being able to visit museums without worrying about a huge donation fee, fancy that!). If you are interested in remaining friends with the person you are traveling with (and lord knows, I wasn’t), you will only attempt to visit two because they are the only ones worth going to. The first, the National Gallery of Art. It’s old art, so there’s a lot of creepy giant paintings of women, like this one:
Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary', probably 1618
Sunflowers by Van Gogh is also here and you should see it here and NOT in Amsterdam. You probably think it’d be a totally awesome idea to check out Van Gogh while tripping on shrooms. How wrong you are, little traveler. See it here. The National Gallery is a big, cavernous, echo-ey space with so many intricate, larger than life pieces that were so painstakingly done, when you walk out, you feel a little spaced out, a little high, the way I feel when I hear this Cure song…
The Cure, How Beautiful You Are
You can have your very own independent movie with dreary, old architechture London in the background to that song. When you keep walking, and walking, and walking only to be caught in the motherfucking rain once again, here’s what to do: you find a pub, you get a cottage pie and a beer (if you order a cocktail, they will make you mix it. If I wanted to make my own drink, I would have stayed in my hotel room and watched Skins!) and you pretend to be totally into the soccer game everyone else is watching. It kind of sucks, to be stuck in this stupid pub, but hey, you’re on an international vacation. Suck it up, partner. You are very, very lucky:
The Verve, Lucky Man
If you’re going to hit up another museum in town, make it the Tate. The Tate is modern art, so by its very definition, full of bullshit, but the building itself is really fucking cool: it’s a renovated power station. My favorite piece? Jackson Pollock’s Summertime 1948. I even hate to put this pathetic picture in this post, but this up close is the reason you even bother to deal with a museum.
Most people are so used to seeing reproductions that to see something like this upclose, not that re-print you bought at the poster sale your freshman year, makes dealing with getting here worth it. And Tower Bridge is super close. Seeing a Pollock up close and Tower Bridge, such iconic London will get you out of your rain induced malaise and almost make you forget the dollar is worth 50 cents. Yay!
Britpop week continues with a hard, nasty vengeance!
Lollipop and I’ve talked a little bit about Britpop and British pop with you in our previous two installments, but tonight, let’s chat a little about the inspirations of Britpop…
And who better to start with than the original Oasis vs. Blur battle?
The John Lennon demo that was jumped upon by the three (then) surviving Beatles as part of the Beatles Anthology back in 1995. This is probably a horrible example of the essence of the videos, but at the same time, I think you could make an argument about it getting to the very core of what the Beatles were, a certain kind of gentleness, a simple sense of love, and a fun atmosphere, all of which were easily swept up into Britpop. That, and it’s just a really nice tune when you sit down and enjoy it.
Honestly, what can you say about this song that hasn’t been said before? It originally appeared on the Stones’ classic 1968 Beggars Banquet album, while it’s primarily a Mick Jagger composition (and not a wholly original one in places, drawing ideas from Baudelaire and The Master and Margarita) but you can’t dispute it’s place in history. Of course there’s Altamont, and of course, “American Pie.” And then there’s the covers of it (GNR!).
A brief interlude: Yesterday Lollipop posted my favorite Blur video, “Coffee and TV,” and since I just talked about the original Oasis and Blur’s, two bands that were inspired by old American Bluesmen, I thought I’d share this excellent clip about the Oasis vs. Blur war:
I swear to God that Noel Gallagher should be a spokesperson for political candidates. When asked about whether the Blur vs. Oasis conflict was really about middle class vs. working class, he said, “Not to say that the dirt under your fingernails is some sort of badge of honor, you know, it’s not. It’s just a fact. They never had a paper route, you know. I had a milk route and stuff like that. I worked on building sites. That fundamentally makes my soul a lot purer than theirs.” Brilliant.
I should say one more quick thing about Blur here, in particular one of their influences being a 60′s mod group called Small Faces, witnessed in the song “Lazy Sunday.” Continuing on…
It amazes me how much when we don’t talk about The Yardbirds when we talk about influential British groups from the 60′s. Especially when we talk about it’s place in history as the launching pad for three of England and rock in general’s most prominent guitar players: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. Also, when The Yardbirds broke up, there was still some touring commitments in other parts of Europe and since Jimmy Page was the only member left, his manager and he put together a new band, originally called The New Yardbirds, but who then evolved into a little known band called Led Zeppelin.
Moving onto my final song and band for today, I’ll go back again to Blur. In 1993, Damon Albarn was asked if Blur was an “anti-grunge” band and he replied, “If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I’m getting rid of grunge.” But from grunge, Britpop then started going after grunge’s cousin on methaqualone: shoegaze.
It wasn’t long before shoegaze bands like Ride and Slowdive and Spitfire were being attacked by Britpop artists in the press along with the American grunge groups, with the exception of Oasis. Not only did Noel Gallagher eventually bring Andy Bell from Ride into Oasis, Noel said in 1996 that Kurt Cobain was the only songwriter from the last ten years that he had any respect for and that their music was similar enough that Cobain probably could’ve written “Wonderwall.” Lush and The Stone Roses also got somewhat of a free pass as well, as did our last artist for the night…
I could probably go on forever about MBV, so I’ll have to restrain myself a bit, only to say that thankfully they’re back together now (in some form) and just as loud. This is easily their best known song and using the clip from Lost In Translation has to buy me intense hipster cred, yeah? Regardless, if you don’t have their classic album Loveless, then go get it now. It’s essential. Here’s a link to MBV doing one of my favorite songs, Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All The Time In The World.”
Lollipop will be back tomorrow with even more sweet tunes for you, so I’ll leave you with this quite frankly hideous photo of Dusty Springfield that she’s demanded I use:
For McCrazyballs tonight? No, probably not. But it’ll be fascinating to watch. Will he do his damndest to try to unnerve Obama tonight? Maybe. Will he try to bring up this Ayers bullshit and use that Obama without somehow opening a door for the Keating scandals of long ago? And how do you try to wage a weak argument on “domestic terrorism” when a majority of the hearts and minds you’re trying to win over just want to know how the fuck they’re going to pay their rent?
Good questions. I have no idea. Instead I offer you a preview of tonight’s debate:
Verizon and AT&T provided free cell towers to the McCain Ranch. Somehow the McCain ranch seems like an even more terrifying place to me than Neverland ranch.
I’m tired, the same kind of tired you feel when you get to London, jet-lagged and wanting to cry from the complete ineptitude of Heathrow, and you finally figure out which Tube to take, and you sit your tired, recycled-air ass down, as your body, previously running on adrenaline, starts to slowly run out of that particular chemical and one need takes over: you must get to sleep, and you must get to sleep now.
flickr.com/photos/simonbleasdale
But, you’re an hour from the city, so you sit. Quietly, not wanting to be a loud American. And so you try to stay awake and you listen to the accents of everyone around you. They’re real and they’re beautiful and they signify one thing: you’re not in the USA anymore. It sounds obvious but you don’t really get that you’ve left, that you’re far away, until you hear the accent and all of a sudden, you’re the one talking funny. But hey, you’ve made it across the ocean and you’re ready to drink some warm beer.
1. Blur, “Coffee & TV”
Coffee in London is not like it is here. The tea is better and you can go to little Middle Eastern kebab shops to get it where the owner will dress it for you, full of milk and sugar. When the going gets tough, the tough go to Starbucks.
2. Oasis, “Don’t Look Back In Anger”
The Parliament, or Big Ben is the most beautiful structure I have ever seen up close. You never realize how much of a kid the United States is, until you go elsewhere and see how fucking old everything else is. I’d like to tell you my boyfriend did not have me wait until 4:20 to snap a picture of Big Ben, but then I’d be lying.
3. James, “Say Something”
British people don’t talk on public transit. The most gauche thing I saw someone do was eat a candy bar.The loudest ones are the kids and the Americans, acting like complete dumbasses because you’re on a double decker bus (OMG IT’S LIKE THE BUS TIMES TWO!) and it is taking you two whole hours to get from one end of Oxford Street to another.
4. Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now”
I’m going to step out of my “narrative” here and say how surprised I am to see that Jesus Jones is listed as Britpop (thanks wikipedia!). But, this song is truly wonderful and pretty much cements the early 90s for me. Except let’s never go back to being 12 years old again.
5. Coldplay, “Trouble”
Is it Britpop? Is it British music that is also pop? Yes. I think I win this one.
London is really expensive and almost entirely like America. But, I love it, the same way I love to hate this horrible, melodramatic song.
At this point, you’re in your hotel room, it’s 11am and even though you vow that you’re going to push through, stay up until a normal time, get on the British schedule, what ends up happening is you lay down on the bed and you are gone, out until at least 9:30pm. And then you go out, utterly confused by what time it is, and you find yourself a nice old pub to sit in. Until they kick you an hour later. It’s okay, though: warm beer doesn’t really taste that good.
Originally I approached Lollipop about doing a joint Counterforce After Dark post on our love for 90′s British music, but it turned out we loved Britpop quite a bit. That combined with our (my) ability to talk way too much… Well, it’s a lethal and sexy combination, to be sure…
Britpop (“the scene that celebrates itself“), as it’s commonly known, is simple little genre, referencing the 60s and early 70s British guitar pop and reacting against the growing music trends of the late 80s and early 90s, in particular the American invasion of grunge. The emphasis, refreshingly, was on fun, with a tendency towards catchy hooks and lyrics relevant to the working-class British youth of the time period, much like it’s non-psychedelic 60s ancestors. Something way too easily parodied.
Spewed out of the same homegrown talent factories such as the Swinging London acts and the Madchester scene that manufactured Britpop also came a lot of sub-genres and criticisms, such as rockism (even though it had been around since the early 80s), but you also had a larger culture movement across the pond: Cool Britannia.
Cool Britannia (besides being a Ben & Jerry’s flavor), put simply, was cultural movement, much like an update of the swinging 60′s London, and combining the britpop at the time with a fashion sense and even a lifestyle sense. And of course crystallized by a fresh new feeling of change that was erupting with the rise of Blair’s New Labor party.
Well, that’s enough of a primer to Britpop for now, especially with the whole week ahead of us, don’t you think? Let’s look at some videos and talk about some actual music…
The Stone Roses, along with the Happy Mondays, were at the forefront of the Madchester scene that preceded and informed the Britpop era and it should also be noted that they were motherfucking awesome. Don’t believe me? I’ll administer them instant hipster cred by sending you to this video of Death Cab For Cutie covering this song back in 2000. Not enough hipster cred for you? Lead singer Ian Brown of the now very defunct band loves Jay-Z! Here’s the official video, which I’d love to show you if it weren’t for it’s embedding being disabled.
Supergrass hailed from Oxford and this song was released in 1995, two years after their formation, and was used in several TV shows and movies, including Clueless. While I don’t hate this song, I do have a kind of so so relationship with the Supergrass catalogue as a whole, though you could easily call this song the anthem of young ridiculous Britpop at it’s height. So much so that the band retired it from their live perfromances in 1999, because it just no longer applied to their lives at that point, joking that if they did perform it again, they should change it to a minor king and change all the lyrics to the past tense.
I really should talk about Oasis vs. Blur here, shouldn’t I? Well, I would (it was musical Ragnarock!), but I’d also much rather pass that off to Lollipop to enjoy (but for good measure, I will link you to a clip of Liam Gallagher calling George Harrison a nipple, a nip-ple). Instead I’ll say that this single, by a band that started as a indie dance answer to the Madchester scene and slowly morphed into retro-modtastic Britpop at it’s finest, is one I enjoy very much even though I enjoy a good number of Blur’s singles (having shared a few before), comes off their 1994 Parklife album. I mention this because I really should’ve used something off their previous album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, but I’m less enamored with it than I with with Parklife and everything after, so… there you go, yeah? A shame though since I feel like Modern Life Is Rubbish is so iconically britpop, but then again, so is there fued with Oasis. Lollipop?
For the next band I want to talk about, I think I’ll first just share with you a line from their first major single: “I laughed when Lennon got shot.”
The band is the Manic Street Preachers and it’s become something of a cliche to talk about them. But Marco Sparks eats cliches from breakfast and he’s a fan so suck on it. As with a lot of britpop of this time, and especially the Manics (who, in a response to Cool Britannia were supposed to, along with the Stereophonics, sound the call of Cool Cymru), as they had also been known, it became a question of authenticity. What was real and what was bullshit. The question of rockism again. The Manics thought they were real. They wanted to be loud, nasty punk and still be anthemic and reach everybody. They wanted to put out one album and have it sell 16 million records and then disappear in a fiery explosion. And they got their wish, minus the 16 million records and the explosive send off.
You can’t talk about the Manics without talking about their co-lyricist and rhythm guitarist, Richey James Edwards, who preferred to be called Richey James, or even Richey Manic. Richey had talent as a lyricist and poet, but seemingly none on the guitar, frequently miming the art of playing guitar in concert. In 1991 Richey Manic got into an argument with NME (a publication that must truly love the taste of Damon Albarn’s penis) journalist Steve Lamacq about The Manics’ lack of authenticity and anything passing for real values. So Richey decided that if realness was what he was lacking, then realness is what he could give the world and he proceeded to carve the phrase “4 REAL” into his arm with a razorblade that he just happened to have on him at a gig.
Richey Manic disappeared on February 1, 1995, the day that he and James Dean Bradfield, the band’s lead singer, were supposed to fly to the U.S. for a tour. Richey’s car was found 13 days later, the battery dead and evidence that the car had been lived in, parked in close proximity to the Severn Bridge, just north of Bristol. The Severn was apparently widley known as a nice place to kill yourself in the past so given Richey’s very depressive state at the time (a bit of status quo for him), it was widely believed that he had jumped off the bridge there, though his body was never found. As with all makings of history, the police investigation into his disappearance was shoddy as hell. In the weeks leading up to Richey’s disappearance, he had taken out quite a bit of money from his bank accounts, as if stockpiling it, and had made visits to the local passport office. Since his disappearance there’s been numerous “sightings” – a hippie market in India, on the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote – but nothing conclusive, nothing definite, nothing proved “real.”
Formed in 1992 by the two Justines (Frischmann, ex-Suede guitarist and ex-girlfriend of Damon Albarn and Justin Welch, ha ha, ex-Spitfire and Suede drummer), this song is from their first album, which will always be there best. Of course, you know them for their song “Connection” which got played to death in America (imagine how bad it was in England) because of it’s use in that movie Hackers, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller. Other than his marriage to Jolie, Johnny Lee Miller only went on to play Sick Boy in Trainspotting and be in Eli Stone, which is somehow still on the air and seems to be obsessed with the ouevre of George Michael.
Well, that’s it for tonight’s journey through the time machine back to the britpop era. Come back tomorrow night when Lollipop lays some more sweet tunes upon thee.
516 years ago yesterday the Italian eurotrash explorer Christopher Columbus, on an expedition commissioned by the Spanish monarchy, landed here on the shores of America. Turns out we weren’t India but some new, mostly unheard of continent altogether. And over five centuries later, I’m not going to lie to you, I’ll take any excuse for a three day weekend that I can get my filthy hands on. It’s not Leif Erikson day, but whatever.
“At first, I was nervous,” he said. “Then I was like, ‘Whatever.’”Levi Johnston talks about Bristol Palin, baby, Obama, and securing that crucial douchebag vote for McCain/Palin ticket.
I really don’t have anything else to say here, I just want to give some more love to the ludicrous Yahoo! Front Page. The subhead about Nick Nolte there might be even more sublime than the main article. I think that web headline writing is becoming so compacted and oblique that practically anything, if read a certain way, starts to sound like an Onion article.
Meanwhile, the Dow lost another 7.33 percent. Hmm, that’s about 40 percent from a year ago. Thanks GOP. What’s weird is that smart people like Paul Krugman (and me, cause I read him) have been warning about the coming Unraveling for years, and yet suddenly the Mainstream is all “Holy shit! Who knew this massive shell game that funneled money to the ultra-rich could ever blow up in our faces?” This makes me feel slightly better about not taking advantage of my former employer’s 401k for the 5 years I worked for them.
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Edited to add: Don’t feel like writing a new post, so I’ll just say it here: this SNL Weekend Update Thursday is kind of a dud. The humor was only barely there in the debate sketch and missing nearly entirely from the Weekend Update bits. I mean, shit, that was Leno bad. Haven’t these writers ever seen an episode of the Daily Show? Are they afraid network viewers can’t handle topical humor more than an inch deep? I think it’s pretty clear that Tina Fey was the one bringing the teeth to the Palin sketches. I listened to a little of Bill Simmons’ recent podcast when he had Seth Meyers on and that guy sounds like he has no guts at all. Just a total hack. He basically said that SNL toned down their Bush impressions from 9/11 on because they were afraid of how the audience would react. Pussy. And seriously, why the fuck haven’t they found a good Obama guy by now? They’re going to need one for a while. They still don’t even know how to properly make fun of O. …lame jokes about space ships and aliens…
While pausing from my daily shenangians to check my email (Welcome back to the pages of Counterforce, Yahoo! front page), I noticed this story: Nepal appoints 3-year-old as new living goddess. And I thought to myself, Wow, that’s fucking ridiculous.
More details here from the article itself:
The selection process for picking a living goddess, or kumari (which literally means “virgin” in Nepali), is bizarre and fascinating to say the least. The girls must be at least 2 to 4 years old and have perfect hair, eyes, teeth, and skin without scars, as well as having “thighs like a deer” and a “chest like a lion.” Their horoscopes are scanned for imperfections. They must not be afraid of the dark and their final test in a battery of tests and ancient ceremonies is to spend a night alone in a room with the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffaloes without showing fear.
From there the young woman will go to live in near isolation in a ancient palatial temple in Katmandu and worshiped by Hindus and Buddhists alike as the most recent incarnation of Hindu deity Taleju. (I’m trying to paraphrase the admittedly short article for you and not copy it outright, but it refers to Taleju there as “the powerful Hindu deity,” and I somehow have to wonder how “powerful” some of these myths and legends are, especially the kind that snatch up little girls and turn them into a Nepalese JonBenet.)
The girl will only be allowed to return to her family when she begins menstruation. Apparently once she enters puberty, her divine status will be lost, and a new goddess will be selected. It’s believed, from what I can gather, that the goddess resides in her blood so when she menstruates the goddess leaves her, so likewise, any sickness or injury that results in major blood loss is also considered the end of her divinity. ”I feel a bit sad, but since my child has becoming a living goddess I feel proud,” said her father Pratap Man Shakya.
The article ends with telling us that not only has this been critically called a violation of both international and Nepalese child rights, but that most of the girls have an extremely hard time adjusting to normal life when they return home and stop being goddesses but that Nepalese folklore holds that many men who marry former kumari die young, increasing the hardship the young woman will face in her life.
There was a bit of controvery as the previous kumari, Sajani Shakya, was almost fired from her position for visiting the United States in 2007 and attending the release of the documentary Living Goddessat Silverdocs: The AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. According to elders, her purity had been tainted by the visit, but they later recanted their statements when Sajani consented to undergoing a “cleansing” ceremony to remove any sins that she may have committed while traveling abroad. Then, earlier this year, 6 year old Shreeya Badrucharia was selected as the new kumari, but the collapse of a monarchy and the shifting of power lead to the stripping of authority of the royal priest who picked her. That’s what lead to today’s crowning of a new Goddess. One girl, in all the world, the chosen one…
Forget what I said up above. Taleju is considered the “sexually mature MotherGoddess,” so I have to assume that would make her pretty powerful.
so here we are with the days getting shorter and the nights getting longer. daylight savings time just around the corner, where you go to work with the sun barely coming up, and leave work with it going back down. where does the day go? off to watch the stock market falling deeper and deeper into the small intestines of hell, of course!
just another monday.....?
so if you haven’t been laid off from your shitty paying job just yet (or even better if you have!) maybe you’re looking for a little something to fall into to take your mind off of how much things suck…here is peanut st. cosmo to provide you, dear reader, with some escape!!!
i myself like a nice dark movie here and there. a few of my personal favorites are donnie darko and closer, so due to these kind of selections, my netflix(dotcom!) was kind enough to recommend a little movie like this:
wristcutters: a love story, despite being about suicide, is surprising uplifting. i hate being one of those people that spoil movies, so i’m going to keep this description brief. as it’s lead is patrick fugit, who you may remember from the movie, almost famous. (benjamin, please do not launch into how much you hate cameron crowe.) and also featuring the lovely shannyn sossamon, as well as will arnett, who could even make an infomercial entertaining. i haven’t enjoyed something with such a serious kind of subject matter in a long time…..
another wise choice was something that slipped totally under the radar. it’s called married life.
as most adults are familiar with the dealings of long term relationships and how wonderful they start and slow decline to shit, we understand the wandering eye, the desire to end this oatmeal bland relationship and take up with the next PYT that comes your way. this is a great movie with twists and turns where i was never really sure who to root for. and, as i hear a lot of guys like her….
to make up to break up, to make up....?
if movies isn’t quite your thing, i find books to be the another good road for distraction. a writer i’ve enjoyed for a long time, but just recently got a better understanding of is jonathan franzen. most recently, i’ve finished reading his group of essays, “how to be alone.” usually, i have a hard time staying engaged with short stories or essays. this book was a long read, compared with the speed that i can finish a novel, but it was different in the sense of how i could identify with franzen and his character formulation. the very first of his books i read was, “the corrections.” if you’re not familiar with it, the novel tells the story of two midwestern parents who raise two sons and a daughter. to me it shows that dysfunction is the new functional and no family is perfect, but has it’s bright shiny parts that makes it stand out from others. i’ve enjoyed it so much, i’ve shoved it off onto other readers, often times at knife point, to make them love it as much as i have. in reading “the corrections” before reading “how to be alone,” i came to understand how much of franzen’s own upbringing he pulls into his writing. in the corrections, the older son gary hasn’t realized how much he has become like his own withdrawn father. in a few essays in “how to be alone,” a reader can pick up on franzen’s own conservativeness over the rest of society and their need to over share and let their own thoughts be common knowledge to anyone within listening distance of them and their bluetooth. if this sounds like something you might enjoy, pick it up and give it a try. i have lots of kitchen knives that could help change your mind.
well, if this post hasn’t thoroughly depressed you….not to worry! today was only monday…you still have four more days until your weekend. if this asteroid isn’t the end of us all….muah ha ha ha ha!!!!!
