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Cee-Lo Green, "F**k You" 2010-09-01
Here's the official video for Cee-Lo's beloved late summer smash. It's very good-looking—pastel and neon vintage diner decor. (Though maybe not as good-looking as the original typeset treatment?) My favorite part is when Cee-Lo throws the ol' from-the-chin Italiano-style kiss-off. Vaffancul! 14
Good Riddance, August 2010-08-31
Here's how August 2010 ends in New York. At the corner of Grand Street and Clinton, on the Lower East Side, with the temperature approaching 100 degrees, an old man in a light-blue polo shirt is being pushed in a wheelchair by his caretaker. "Not this way!" he shouts, as she noses him into the crosswalk on Grand. He points west, across Clinton. "I want to go there!" She continues, and calmly explains to him that they need to go in the direction they're going. Maybe they're going to the Rite-Aid on the corner, maybe the kosher butcher down the block. "No," he says, "the other way! Bring me the other way!" He twists his head around, straining to see her face. It looks like he'd bite her if he could. "The other way!"
This was a particularly shitty month in a summer full of them. And I'm happy to see it go. Here's to September. 10
Kanye West With Justin Bieber and Raekwon, "Runaway Love (Remix);" Kanye West With Rick Ross, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj and Bon Iver, "Monster" 2010-08-31
The busy, busy Kanye West took a pretty simple approach to his much-hyped bringing together of teeny-bopper Justin Bieber and the Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon: he basically recorded Rae and himself rapping over the grimy finger-snap beat from the 1993's "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing Ta F' Wit" (funny that, when Rae was so careful to write lyrics appropriate for his 16-year-old co-star), and laid clips of Bieber's vocal track overtop for the chorus. But in the way that shows how simple is so often best, it sounds pretty great. It definitely has the feel of the mid-'90s heyday of hip-hop/R&B mashups. You could almost imagine hearing it between Method Man and Mary J. Blige's "All I Need" and Mariah's "Fantasy" remix with O.D.B. at the Tunnel. And at least from the first few listens, I prefer it to this other Kanye track that came out over the weekend, "Monster," featuring Rick Ross, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj and Bon Iver. (READ MORE) 10
Guns and Boys: Waka Flocka Flame and Yelawolf 2010-08-30
I am very much anti-gun in real life. So it's always disturbed me just how much I enjoy shoot-em-up gangster movies or war movies or rap songs. I'm not like a fetishist, for the weaponry itself. I don't have posters over my desk of women in bikinis firing Uzis or whatever. But I do like some tough-guy talk at the end of a barrel—on screen or through some speakers. (READ MORE) 8
What Song Should NASA Astronauts Wake Up To In Space? 2010-08-27
Oh my God, psyched! As if they read the Awl and know what a crappy August we've all been having, the folks at NASA are holding a contest where the public can choose "wake-up music" for the astronauts who man the penultimate space shuttle voyage, mission STS-133, scheduled to launch November 1st. Go to the NASA website, where you can listen to 40 songs that have been piped in to start astronauts' days on past missions (and you get to hear the radio communication back and forth with ground control, too) and vote for your favorites. I voted for Elton John's "Rocket Man," because… What do you mean because? I would have maybe chosen Bowie's "Space Oddity," but that one isn't available (understandable, when you think about how it ends). You can follow the tally, too. Here are the current vote leaders. (READ MORE) 37
Chilean Government To Bail Out Mining Company–Or At Least Its Miners 2010-08-27
Here is the first video of the 33 miners trapped in a collapsed gold and copper mine in Chile—where they will be for the next three or so months. Apparently the company that owns the gold mine is nearly bankrupt: "San Esteban is in such bad shape that it has neither the equipment nor the money to rescue the men; Chile's state-owned mining company is going to drill the escape tunnel, which will cost about $1.7 million…. On Thursday, the first of many expected lawsuits against San Esteban and the government were filed, and a judge ordered the retention of $1.8 million of company money in anticipation of the suits." The Chilean government has decided to foot the bill for the rescue mission (either because it was the right thing to do or for a boost in their lagging popularity), rather than just leaving the trapped miners there forever. 2
Mr. Critic Strikes Back Against Those Snobby French Foodies 2010-08-27
"We’ll get to your needs in a minute. Here’s what would be great from my point of view, and which would make up entirely for the time I was in the Marais with my pregnant wife and this jumped-up little terrier in a Basque restaurant sneered at us for arriving without a reservation at his entirely empty restaurant at 6 p.m. He was plenty sophisticated-European. He responded to our request for a table for two with a curt, 'Non,' adding that all the tables—he even swept his arm back to indicate them—were reserved. So do me a favor and take your husband to Peter Luger in Brooklyn and see how he fares with those waiters, speaking English with a French accent. Just in the interest of explaining to him how New York used to be. Hey, now: the food’s plenty authentic."
—Sam Sifton sort of attacks a reader who wrote in asking where she should take her "sophisticated-European" French husband to eat on their visit to New York City. All in good fun, though. After grinding that small personal axe a bit, he recommends Scarpetta, Le Bernadin, Annisa and 11 Madison Park. 24
Alleged "Cat Lady" Robber Fronts Death-Metal Band, Stays Cat-Like In Custody 2010-08-26
In a very satisfying end to a story the Post would definitely have made up if it had not been true, the mysterious "Cat Lady," who has been robbing posh boutiques around the city this summer, has apparently been caught. "It wasn't a purr-fect crime after all," reports the Post, which is really the only publication you should be reading about this story. "The suspect was identified as Shanna Spalding, 28, of Queens, who sings with a death-metal band called Divine Infamy under her stage name, Purgatory." (READ MORE) 5
Science Says: Nocebo Is In E-F-F-E-C-T 2010-08-25
"Arne May's team at the University of Hamburg, Germany, applied heat to the arms of 38 volunteers over six days. Half of them were told the heat would get more intense, and they reported constant pain levels. The rest felt less pain as they got used to the sensation. The first group also had increased activity in a brain area involved in pain perception." So reports New Scientist's Jessica Hamzelou about an interesting phenomenon with an excellent name that I didn't know existed: the "nocebo effect," which, just like it sounds, "describes any case where putting someone in a negative frame of mind has an adverse effect on their health or well-being." Up until today, I would have thought the nocebo effect was California police code for silencing gangsta rap through parole stipulations that violate First Amendment rights. (READ MORE) 2
"The result is a vicious circle in which Israel feels that its existential fears are not taken seriously. Israel’s electorate moves towards leaders who address but also keep reinforcing its fears. International opinion becomes ever more negative, which in turn reinforces Israel’s isolation which in turn raises existential fears. This has one, very unfortunate, consequence. Israel’s best chance of minimizing the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah and minimizing Iranian influence in the Middle East is to engage with the Arab League peace initiative. If Israel were to normalize relations with all of the Arab and most of the Islamic world, particularly Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas would be isolated to the point of having to move towards abandoning violence and recognizing Israel’s legitimacy. Taking this road requires Israel to take a risk and bet on the positive dynamics of a peace process. But this is precisely what Israel is incapable of doing after the traumas of the second intifada and the shelling of southern Israel. Israelis at this point prefer international isolation, painful as it is, to reliance on Arab peace partners for its own security."
—Haaretz's Carlo Strenger writes about Israel's shift to the right. 2010-08-25 6
"Even fending off advances from male cadets can create problems. 'You can’t say, Sorry guys, I’m gay,' the senior said. 'And if I say, I have a boyfriend, I’m breaking the honor code.' Breaching the Cadet Honor Code—'a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do'—can result in serious discipline."
—A fascinating look today at how cadets at West Point in the era of Don't Ask Don't Tell live like they're in a Jason Bourne movie. This thing is going to look so crazy in the history books: it could almost be seen as a president's peccadilloes seeping into official state policy. It's like Clinton made everyone in the military say, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," for twenty years. 2010-08-25 12
George David Weiss, 1921-2010 2010-08-24
Songwriter George David Weiss has died. He co-wrote three of the most indelible songs of the 20th century: "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" and the one in the video above, which most people probably know best from the Louis Armstrong version that Barry Levinson used so manipulatively (and successfully) to wrench tears from the eyes of moviegoers in Good Morning Vietnam. It's testament to Weiss's craft that it also sounds so great being sung by Joey Ramone, who is also dead and greatly missed. 6
50 Cent Wants In On Cee-Lo's Action, Will Take His Gold Digger 2010-08-24
"Ironically, this week the Pajamas Media site ran a piece reporting that Egyptian Islamic scholar and self-proclaimed jihadist Abd al-Muti Bayum has condemned the 'Ground Zero mosque' as a devious 'Zionist conspiracy' to discredit Islam by linking it to the September 11 attacks. This was cited as an argument against the Cordoba Center. This is strange logic: the center shouldn't be built because radical Islamists will like it…. or because they will hate it." That's Reason's Cathy Young, whose colleague Radley Balko gave us such a good angle on the "NYC Terror Mosque" controversy last week. (READ MORE) 20
Did Will-I-Am Knock Down Anne Frank's Tree? 2010-08-24
Will-I-Am's been quiet lately, hasn't he? Since making that song from that movie that nobody went to see at the start of the summer, he's been oddly removed from the public eye. You think, maybe he's working on a new Black Eyed Peas album or something? Or a 3D concert film with James Cameron? Well, it turns out he's been in Europe. You know what else is in Europe? Amsterdam. What else is happening in Amsterdam? Oh, right, the 150-year-old chestnut tree that was a rare source of comfort and joy for Anne Frank for the two years she spent hiding in an attic during the Holocaust was destroyed this weekend. (READ MORE) 6
Sit Tight, Earthlings. You Will Be Found. 2010-08-23
Transmission To: Eager-To-Die Lifeforms
From: THE MACHINES FROM SPACE
HUMAN EARTHLINGS!!! "Chillax." We will find you. We are searching the universe for more planets to colonize, and we are sure that yours has many of the carbon-based bio-oils we need to lubricate our moving parts. We will find you and liquidate you just as we liquidated the mortal lifeforms that designed us on our original planet. (READ MORE) 6
Being A Miner Is A Very, Very, Very Hard Job 2010-08-23
"The miners are four and a half miles inside the winding mine and about 2,300 feet vertically underground. They are inside a mine shaft shelter the size of a small apartment. The authorities said they had limited amounts of food."
—Wow. After this spring's disaster in West Virginia, and Matewan and Margo Timmins' aching a capella, we are reminded once again of the incredible hardships suffered by people we send under the earth to go get us our valuable minerals. The good news: 33 miners who have been trapped inside a collapsed gold and copper in Chile since August 5th are alive. The bad news: they will likely be there for another four months while an escape shaft is dug. Here's wishing those guys strength. 14
Not All Bear Beat Stories Are Bad News 2010-08-20
When I was maybe seven or eight years old, my parents took me to a zoo that had a snake-pit. It was a circular hole in the ground, ten feet deep or so, with a cement floor writhing with rattlesnakes. It was totally cool, I remember you could hear the rattles rattling. Looking down, leaning over the fence, I turned to my father and said, "What would you do if I jumped in there?" (READ MORE) 4
Cee-Lo, "F**k You" 2010-08-20
Man, it really seems like everyone has had a pretty crappy summer, doesn't it? Everyone's just in a foul mood. The thing about Atlanta's Cee-Lo, though, is that even when he's in a foul mood, he can make music that sounds as joyous and terrific as this most recent single from his forthcoming Lady Killer album. Enjoy! And here are five other songs from this summer that similarly express very similar feelings: A full handful of musical middle-fingers! (READ MORE) 43
Raekwon Records Verse That Fits The Criteria For Kanye West's Remix Of Justin Bieber Song 2010-08-20
Kanye West has organized an unexpected musical collaboration, recruiting Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon the Chef to rhyme on a remix of Justin Bieber's "Runaway Love." Bieber is 16 years old, the age at which Raekwon started smoking the crack-laced marijuana cigarettes called "woolies." But Rae told MTV's Shaheem Reid that the verse he recorded for the track is age-appropriate for Bieber's presumably less experienced tween audience. "I can go basic when I want to. I can go rated R, I can go rated PG. I definitely didn't give him anything that I thought was too hot to be spoken on by a 16-year-old… One thing people gotta recognize about me, I'm the Chef. I know how to make spicy food, I know how to make food that ain't spicy. I made something that fit the criteria." Certainly, that's good. But if the world had a better sense of humor, Bieber would be sitting in a bathtub of milk for the video, sucking his thumb.
In other Kanye remix news, a new version of the great "Power" single has just come out. (READ MORE) 7
Scary Terror Bird Skull Attacks You Through Your Computer Screen! 2010-08-19
If you were a small mammal living six million years ago in Miocene era Argentina, something like this would have probably haunted your nightmares. (Especially if you'd stayed up late, say, watching not-entirely-safe-for-work, but otherwise incredibly awesome Grinderman videos.) It is the digital video recreation based on CT scan Ohio University scientists took of the fossilized skull of the 4-feet-tall, 90-pound "terror bird" andalgalornis steulleti. This should be the new evil-laughing-skull thing they use to show when a computer gets melted down by a computer virus. 2
So That's Why It Seems Like The World Is Ending 2010-08-19
"We all believe we live in an exceptional time, perhaps even a critical moment in the history of the species. Technology appears to have given us power over the atom, our genomes, the planet—with potentially dire consequences. This attitude may stem from nothing more than our desire to place ourselves at the center of the universe. “It’s part of the fundamental limited perspective of our species to believe that this moment is the critical one and critical in every way—for good, for bad, for the final end of humanity,” says Nicholas Christenfeld, a psychologist at the University of California, San Diego. Imagining the end of the world is nigh makes us feel special."
—Oooh! The new issue of Scientific American is about The End. Michael Moyer writes a nice essay about a subject that has indeed been on my mind lately. 15
Last Bastion Of "Music In A Physical Form" To Close Next Month 2010-08-19
"It was definitely a landmark for the underground movement of the '90s. Young people who've never touched wax probably don't know what the closing of a store like this means… It just means that we're heading to a place where music won't exist in a physical form anymore."
—Rap producer DJ Spinna on the news that Fat Beats, a store on the corner of 6th Ave. and 8th Street in Manhattan that specialized in vinyl records and served a hip-hop community that might best be described as the opposite of this, will close its doors next month after 16 years in operation. (The LA outpost will also shutter.) It will be a sad day for many old people. I always appreciated that they spelled "fat" with an F. And if it can in fact be said that music ever existed in a physical form, it was at Fat Beats. (READ MORE) 5
Forbes' 2010 "Hip-Hop Cash Kings" List, With Musical Accompaniment 2010-08-19
You might not know it from the way that they dress or the kinds of cars they drive, but some rap music artists make a very respectable living. Forbes magazine, in fact, has made an annual tradition out of their listing the biggest earners in the field. This year's edition came out this week. But it's important to remember that these artists also make music. So here's Forbes' list, augmented by each of these very wealthy individual's best recorded musical performance. (READ MORE) 4
El-P, "Time Won't Tell" 2010-08-18
I'm not always a big one for instrumental music. My mind starts to wander if someone isn't singing or shouting at me. But this track from rapper/producer/Def Jux Records founder El-P is excellent in a way that would be like if Dan the Automator had gotten Dave Pajo to play on the Dr. Octagon album. And the video, directed by Shan Nelson, is really terrific, too. 1
Greetings From A Place That Is Definitely Not The Biggest Music Destination In The World 2010-08-18
"Ms. Lipson tried to get a meeting with Madison Marquette’s president, Gary Mottola, for weeks to make her pitch. She finally got it on a recent morning in a sunbaked conference room. Ms. Lipson was in a black skirt and sleeveless top and big sunglasses, Mr. Mottola in a Stone Pony T-shirt; a reporter attended. Ms. Lipson noted that while New Jersey had many regional museums, it had nothing that drew international tourism. 'Except Madam Marie,' Mr. Mottola interjected, referring to the stand of a former boardwalk fortuneteller made famous by Bruce Springsteen in his '4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).' Ms. Lipson said the museum would be an economic catalyst in the way that Mass MoCA, a contemporary art museum that opened in 1999, has been in North Adams, Mass. 'It was blighted; there was a high crime rate,' she said. Mr. Mottola appeared to take umbrage. Asbury Park, he said, was 'the biggest music destination in the world.'” (READ MORE) 12
Jersey Mayhem: Possible Gang Or Just Stupid Teenagers On Vandalizing Spree In Boonton Area 2010-08-18
It is unclear whether or not a rash of public vandalism in northern New Jersey is "gang-related," according to authorities. For the third time in less than a month, spray-painted graffiti was discovered in Boonton Township Monday morning: yet another display of swastikas, anti-police slogans and male genitalia, scrawled, perhaps frustratedly, in blue. "They keep drawing these swastikas and they keep drawing a picture of a fish with swastikas in it," said officer Tom Cacciabeve, of the Boonton Township police department. "The word VOODOO keeps appearing also." (READ MORE) 8
Video Report From Poorly-Marketed Natural Disaster In Pakistan 2010-08-17
"Humanitarian organizations cited sparse media coverage globally and the relatively low death toll as the main factors in the slow pace of donations. Other elements, they said, included the preoccupation many nations have right now with their own economic problems, donor fatigue left over from the Haiti earthquake; and the August vacation season, when people are somewhat detached from the world."
—Come on, Pakistan. Everyone knows if you want to roll-out a natural disaster that that puts one-fifth of your country (60,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of England) under water, you don't do it in August! Also, if you want to get those donations flowing, you really gotta up the body count. Twenty million people merely "left homeless" is not going to put the money into the baskets. 4
Science: We All Have Fewer Than Ten Years To Live 2010-08-17
"In many ways, this is it. This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing Enterobacteriaceae… We have a bleak window of maybe 10 years, where we are going to have to use the antibiotics we have very wisely, but also grapple with the reality that we have nothing to treat these infections with. It is the first time it has got to this stage with these type of bacteria." You heard the man! This is it, people! According to Tim Walsh of Cardiff University, it's time to to tell the people that you love that you love them. Pneumonia and urinary tract infections, that's how we're gonna go. Perhaps this will pass like the MRSA scare and, oh right, every other panic of the last twenty years. Or not! 11
