Sad news from Britain: The campaign to make a cover of John Cage’s silent composition “4’33” the number one song at Christmas has fallen short. “The No. 1 song in Britain this week is ‘When We Collide,’ a soft-rock number sung by Matt Cardle, 27, who is the latest winner on the hugely popular talent competition ‘The X Factor,’ The Guardian reported. Released after Mr. Cardle won the show’s seventh season, on Dec. 12, the song sold 439,000 copies.” “4’33” sold about 16,000 copies.

Choire: JESUS CHRIST AM I OUT OF CIGARETTES AGAIN

BALK: Fool

Choire: I DO THIS WRONG

BALK: Okay, here’s the deal.

BALK: Take an empty pack of cigarettes and then keep it somewhere close but not directly visible. Every time you open a new pack of cigarettes, take one out and put it in the empty pack. If you ever get to twenty, start again, but until then you should always have emergency smokes.

Choire: …..

Choire: that sounds complicated???

BALK: It’s incredibly simple.

BALK: I learned it from “Ranger Rick.”

Choire: i can’t remember things!

BALK: Sigh.

Choire: i used to hide cigarettes everywhere

BALK: Bad strategy. Go for just one place where you know you have them. The trick is just to make sure you keep adding with each new pack.

Choire: but.. but there’s a finite… number… of…

BALK: Hahaha, okay, stick with your remarkably efficient “OH FUCK I NEED TO RUN TO THE STORE” plan.

Choire: but that’s where the magic comes from!

BALK: Oh, right, I forgot about how sentimental and naive you are on this subject.

Choire: 🙁

Photo by Brett McBain, from Flickr.

There is apparently an ailment called “dead butt syndrome,” which, despite its amusing name, actually sounds quite painful. (It’s “an inflammation of the tendons in the gluteus medius, one of three large muscles that make up the butt.”) Fortunately, it only seems to strike serious runners, so, uh, I think I’m pretty safe. Add this to your “reasons not to work out” list.

Could they make 3-D contact lenses for the movies? Or just put a big sheet of 3-D in front of the screen?less than a minute ago via TweetDeck

Joe MacLeod
JOEMACLEOD666

RIGHT? I mean some of us wear glasses at the movies, and wearing glasses on top of glasses is not a cute look. For starters. Also it’s hard to turn to your neighbor and roll your eyes in those things. Because also I was thinking: “when they looked at the final script, did they think that those 20 sloggy minutes in the late middle weren’t going to be exceedingly sloggy?”

“If attacked by an endangered Florida panther, stand tall and fight back — that’s the advice wildlife officials are giving after a series of recent panther attacks on domestic animals in the southeast U.S. state.”
 — Everything about that sentence amuses and excites!

So you know I had to run right out to the record store click “buy” at iTunes and get the new Ghostface Killah album this morning. (The basketball-sized “W” tattoo I have on my back starts to itch if I wait too long after any new product hits the streets.) I’ve been listening to it since, and it sounds pretty great. Jumping out at me first is track 7, “In Tha Park,” which was produced by Frank Dukes and features the Roots’ Black Thought and a totally awesome guitar sample — all cranked-up and fuzzed-out, you could almost hear it fitting on a Sleigh Bells record or something. Looking at the liner notes in the record sleeve my handy digital booklet (sigh), I see that it’s a sample of Johhny Thunder’s “I’m Alive.” Which blows my mind for a minute because I think it’s this song.

But it’s not. It’s this one:

Which makes more sense.

And I kind of wish that this is the person the Kinks’ classic was written about.

But I think its not.

I’m not sure, but think the Kinks song has more to do with this Johnny Thunder.

The intro to the Ghostface song references Fatback, the funk band who many people credit with releasing the first rap single ever.

And “In tha Park” cribs its titular phrase from MC Shan’s “The Bridge.”

Do smoking bans actually cause more fires? One economist says yes: “In the case of restaurants and bars, it is easy to imagine a person going outside to smoke and then improperly disposing of the cigarette in flammable material such as mulch or shrubbery.” (Nods head guiltily.)

Further effects of the recession: “The United States executed fewer people this year, in part because there is a shortage of the drug used in lethal injections and because executions are too expensive in tough economic times, a report released on Tuesday said.”

Wow. This is very crazy. Even by the very crazy standards of the very crazy rap game. Harlem rapper Trevell “G. Dep” Coleman, who had a sizeable hit in 2001 with a song called “Special Delivery” and released a good and under-appreciated album, Child of the Ghetto, that year for Bad Boy Records, walked into the 25th precinct on 119th Street on Wednesday and confessed to a murder he committed in October 1993, when he was 18 years old. As the New York Post reported this weekend,

“Coleman, who grew up in the projects, told cops he was riding a bike when he rolled up on Henkel, 32, on Park Avenue and East 114th Street and announced a robbery. Coleman told Detective William Dunn that Henkel resisted and grabbed his .40-caliber gun. He allegedly admitted that he pulled away and shot his victim three times in the chest. Coleman said he fled and tossed the weapon into the East River. Henkel was rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.”

Here’s G. Dep, performing “Special Delivery” two months ago.

Here’s the original.

Here he is performing a remix version with P. Diddy, Ghostface, Craig Mack and Keith Murray in 2002.

The numbers are out, and here’s how the House of Representatives will be reapportioned: Texas gets four new seats, Florida gets two, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah and Washington get one new seat each. New York and Ohio each lose two seats, while Illinois, New Jersey, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Missouri and Massachusetts each lose one. This is considered very good news for Republicans, but then again, what isn’t considered very good news for Republicans these days?