Living at Don's Pt. 1

For the entirety of this week I was displaced from my house to the humble abode of Don. His house is basically my house without cable, reliable internet, and with an assload more stairs. As you can imagine this put me in the brightest of moods when I had to crutch up and down a set of stairs to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. But that one negative was not enough to outweigh the positives! Right?!

For those of you who don’t know Don and will probably never have the luxury of meeting him, he’s one of those eccentric genius types. He was a lawyer of some sort so he loves to argue, and if you survive a full 30 seconds of arguing with him two things will become readily apparent:

1. Don is a lot smarter than you. He’s definitely one of those retirees who takes in the world around him simply because he can, but he goes a step beyond simply being well traveled to the point that he can kick the shit out of you on raw knowledge of almost any subject. (Except homo’s tossing around dinner plates and calling it a sport, which transitions wonderfully into the next point)

2. Don doesn’t give a fuck what you, or anyone else, thinks. Don’t get me wrong, we consider each other family and we treat each other as such, but the likelihood of Don holding his tongue during a conversation about ANYTHING is about as likely as me growing wings.

If I was forced to summarize the man in one sentence it would probably go like this: Don is one of those eccentric genius types who wields his knowledge with the subtlety of an axe all while carrying a brutal Boston accent in tow; he treats his friends extremely well with unmatched generosity and generally makes those who wrong him feel retarded for doing it. Fuck it, two sentences: He also seems to pick up hobbies on a whim, and lives with an awesome cat named Moesby, who hates me because I only want him to love me and express that emotion by torturing him. (not actually torturing him, just scritching his belly to provoke clawing and biting, the life of a cripple is a tedious and masochistic one)

Anyway, I found myself fully entrenched in argument with Don over margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant that truly boggled my mind and renders the previous paragraph completely useless because it summarizes Don in all his glory.

· The Subject? Gay Marriage.

· Our positions? Don against, me and both of my parents for.

· The Bizarre thing? Don has no problem with homosexuals, or homosexuals being together. Nor does he think marriage is a sacred bond that should follow the rules of the bible, he just doesn’t want more people to be paying less taxes than him.

· The semi-explanation: Don is single, has been for a few years, he doesn’t like spending money at all (despite having a lot of money backed up, like enough to very generously pay for a good chunk of my college tuition without blinking, he still refuses to: get cable, text message, and fix his koi pond (which admittedly was a doomed experiment anyway, but there haven’t been fish in that pond since his son and I removed their popsicle’d corpses and threw them at hard surfaces in the ninth grade)) Anyway, married people pay lower taxes than single people, which Don doesn’t like at all. I’m not going to attempt to summarize his position because I know I’d botch it, but it should be known that despite the fact that he was arguing with both of my parents (who, although this probably doesn’t need to be said because you’ve all met them, are very very smart) and I (not an idiot), he was essentially toying with us. Don won the argument by leaps and bounds, using the gay marriage debate as a medium to grumble about taxes. Of course by that point everyone had downed enough margarita to make the evolution of the argument take a platypus-like turn and we ended up running around in circles about nothing until our food came.

The point is, Don is stinking awesome.

To briefly address the NBA finals. Despite the fact that I’ve liked the Lakers and Kobe Bryant since I started watching basketball, I’m taking Orlando in 7. Half because I think Dwight has turned a corner and is going to put up retarded numbers for the rest of this series and next year and half because I want to see Stan Van Gundy/Ron Jeremy/Shrek and Sasquatch’s lovechild prove to the world that he’s a fantastic coach who got absolutely screwed by Pat Riley in Miami.

MORE TOMORROW! Or maybe later than that!

Rock/NBA talk

And now we come to the rock one. To be completely honest I have no compulsion to write this for a plethora of reasons. Firstly I do enjoy rock music, but I’d guess the number of complete albums I have on my computer of actual quality rock that doesn’t fall into my guilty pleasure “angsty rock” genre barely reaches 10, with a couple of albums by the same artists, so I’m not really one to honestly discuss quality rock music. Secondly, I like angsty rock, so you probably shouldn’t really respect my attitude on rock anyway.

You get a handy dandy counter to realize how limited my rock interest is:

2! The Darkness: Permission to Land and to an extent One Way Ticket to Hell and Back: The attempted resurrection of glam rock, one awesome album, one borderline album. Taken apart like a true glam rock band by drugs and an idiot lead singer (I know I’m a psych major, but I was still surprised when I read that their lead singer retired temporarily because he had bulimia. I mean, he also had several drug addictions, but bulimia? Really?)

1! Kings of Leon: Only By the Night: It’s just a good album, I haven’t been able to get into their other stuff, largely because I haven’t gotten a hold of it. I should prolly get on that

2! The Black Keys: Pretty much anything: Admittedly these guys are realllllllly easy to get tired of, but their albums are really good to listen to a couple times a month. It may be a personal thing (in fact it definitely is) but the replayability of these guys is almost null to me.

2! Cake: Anything again: Holds a special place in my heart because of the enormous black cashier at best buy who stared at me angrily at me when I bought one of their albums for a friends birthday and growled with a completely straight face “CAAAAAKE” as if he would totally be down for eating some Cake, possibly with me.

1! Velvet Revolver: Contraband: This one came out of left field for me too. Downloaded after hearing Slither on the radio, really enjoyed the album.

2! Audioslave: Chris Cornell’s misguided attempt at a solo career with Timberland is forgiven because I enjoy Audioslave that much.

2! Rage Against the Machine: Same band, different singer, very different sound.

2! Muse: Yup, them too.

Yup, that’s 14, I could have included the radioheads and dispatches, but those are really just on my computer because I enjoy like 3 or 4 songs a piece by them and everyone else’s pants shrink when they find it on my Ipod.

So now we arrive at my infatuation with angsty rock music. I suppose this should be prefaced by the fact that this infatuation is entirely situational. The only times when I listen to an excessive amount of the angsty angst come when I’ve had a shitty day, if I’m driving, or I’m warming up for a sporting event. Why You ask? I grew up with rap, and angry rap either sucks a fatty (Any member of G-Unit) or is way too angry (Killer Mike), and quite frankly driving with Killer Mike blasting gives the complete wrong impression. So I couldn’t turn to rap for the situations previously listed, so I just started to listen to selected songs by otherwise average bands like seether, disturbed, my chemical romance, buckcherry, etc.

Ok, I’m done with music for now. I’m going to discuss sports in the next paragraph or two, so those of you who react to sports in the same way that most people react to fire, stop reading. (And for those of you who may confusedly stumble in assuming I’m talking about Frisbee, I’m talking about basketball)

I think I severely misjudged Stan Van Gundy’s coaching ability. Not to say that the skepticism when his team almost mutiny’d his ass when they were playing the Celtics wasn’t justified, but it seemed so bizarre that people immediately dumped on him for being a crappy coach. He’s done exactly what every team should do to beat the Lebrons, stick one good defender on Lebron, but otherwise allow him to do whatever he wants, forcing the rest of his extremely sub par team to beat the magic, and lo and behold, they can’t. The Cavs have stayed close because Lebron is on an entirely new level for NBA players, and I’m still not sure that the Magic are going to win this series, despite the 3-1 lead. I do find it gratifying that Stan Van Gundy, a coach who got torn up in earlier rounds of the playoffs, is making Coach of the year Mike Brown look like an idiot. I don’t think Mike Brown should have earned COTY anyway, he did exactly what any marginally competent coach could have with the Cavaliers. He surrounded the best player on earth with a bunch of sub-par offensive players who will work their asses off to play defense for him and can shoot threes. He didn’t do shit, he just sat off to the side and allowed the fact that Lebron can make anyone play hard to take effect and rode the wave to a ridiculous record. I sincerely hope that the Magic win this series, not because I hate Lebron, I think he’s the best thing to happen to the NBA in a long time, but because I hate the structure of his team, and his coach.

As an aside, if the magic lose this series straight up, fine. But if they lose because NBA ref’s are atrocious and give Dwight Howard a technical at every conceivable opportunity, I may go on a violent rampage against old racists who should have retired 10 years ago.

Music Post Pt. 1 (The rap one)

Yes, it’s a music post. It’s a two parter addressing rock and rap and the artists that I think are worth downloading

Allow me to make it clear that I know less than nothing about musical ingenuity and as much of a musical simpleton this statement makes me appear, I like things that sound good. Luckily my absurdly basic requirements for music hasn’t attracted me to creepy shit like thrash metal or neo-sadist Goth cutter music. Growing up in D.C. and having a bizarre obsession with wordplay led me to a more… wiggerish palette, consisting mostly of rap and whatever rock they played on D.C. 101 before I had an I-pod. I’m not going to address music without lyrics, thump thump thump music, or indie music; the first two because either they have no lyrical content (which means they’re super for sleeping to or doing homework, but not much else) or they’re the same song over and over and over and over and over again, which doesn’t fly with me when I could just listen to one of my enormous play lists multiple times, or I know nothing about it, and kinda want to stay that way. (I may explain that one later, but don’t hold your breath)

Anyway, prefacing the bulk of the post again, modern rap/hip hop sucks… A LOT. Other than a few gems, the general quality of rap that gets packaged to the masses has fallen so far off the deep end. The stupid trend of making up some random statement and then doing a stupid looking dance to a halfassed beat while repeating that statement really needs to stop (honestly, I could probably write a gold album basing it entirely off of changing the words to Raffi songs “The wheels on my whip bounce up and down, up and down, up and down, the wheels on my whip bounce up and down and all them hooooos looook” yup, theres a hook, elaborate and you have a radio hit. How depressing is that?) Old school artists need to be dragged behind the shed and shot (I’m sorry Eminem, you’ve been limping towards obscurity since the eminem show, just take the enormous amount of respect you’ve gained and stop making albums, I don’t care if you dedicate your time to producing for the garbage that is G-unit, just stop wiping poop all over your legacy.) And people with no lyrical talent have to just dedicate themselves to producing for the artists they discovered who are infinitely more talented than they are. (OH HI KANYE)

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, now comes the list of albums and artists you should grab in no particular order. The numbers after the album indicate how much I think one would have to enjoy rap to feel the same way about the album that I do.

Killer Mike- Monster- 4 - If you can look past the over the top obscenity that comes with Killer Mike’s songs this album is pretty fucking amazing. His newer albums are borderline crap/crap that’s not even worth trying to listen to, but this album is just fantastic. Once again, I know nothing about musical complexity, but the beats complement how very angry Killer Mike comes off through his lyrics and delivery without being overwhelming and he’s quite clever with his lyrics despite how very inappropriate most of them are. My brother likes to introduce people to Killer Mike with this line from Blow (Get down) “I’m in to risqué sex two hos can swallow me- if a bitch giving brains I’m giving lobotomies” because quite frankly if you can’t appreciate the wit in that line you prolly aren’t that into rap anyway, so this post is wasted on you.

Lupe Fiasco-The Cool- 1 - You’ve heard of him, every song on this album is either good or amazing. Of any of the albums on this list, this would be the first I’d recommend downloading if you’re just a borderline rap fan.

Dizzee Rascal- Boy in Da Corner- 3 - At the moment this is the only album I have of his, but he has better ones. He’s from England, his accent manages to permeate his music, I like his accent and his music sounds really good, however incomprehensible it is at times.

Cunninlynguists- A piece of strange- 2.5 – I have nothing else from these guys, but this album is a bizarre mix. Some of the songs are haunting and make it readily apparent how well these guys work with their beats and others are just a raw testament to their lyrical prowess.

Deltron 3030 -3030- 2 – Yes, the guy from all the older Gorillaz albums. This album is 24 songs long, so there are some hits and misses, but the ratio of hits to misses is greater than that of a shorter album. He’s also one of those weird neo-nerd rappers who raps about his computer and videogames; which is always a plus.

Cee-lo Green- …Is the soul machine & Cee-lo Green and his perfect imperfections- 3 – Cee-lo, the guy from Gnarls Barkely, possessor of the weirdest voice in music, and one strange motherfucker. All that aside, if you were to combine these two albums you would have one of the greatest albums of all time. Each one has 3-4 great songs and 6 songs that are almost there, and then a couple average songs. Either way, I’m don’t know how much people know about Cee-lo before Gnarls Barkely, but it would appear that everything he’s involved in is golden (except the dungeon family… oops)

Bubba Sparxxx- Deliverance – 3 – Obligatory white rapper? Nope, one of the most talented rappers out there. Just like killer mike, his newer stuff has been disappointing by comparison, but this album takes what Sparxxx started with Ugly and surpasses it. He has a lyrical style that’s impossible to describe and really shouldn’t work, but somehow he gets away with it, knocking out an album without a bad song.

Mos Def- Anything by him really- 2-4 – I have a man crush on Mos Def, mostly because anything he does is either weird enough to be appreciated or really fucking good. His individual “rap” albums are full of great original songs or great remixes of other artists songs, his experimental albums are weird as shit, but work really well, and Blackstar is just… Blackstar, if you don’t know it just trust me, its better than just about everything you have heard of.

Mickey Avalon- Anything- 2 – He’s not the most talented rapper, but his songs are catchy as shit and at least in my case I find myself fascinated by how such an ugly motherfucker can pull of the confidence that practically drips from his music. He has a biography on the L.A. Times website (just search his name in google and scroll through the links)

Saul Williams- Saul Williams- 3 – He’s more of a poet than a rapper (like a super Common basically) but this album is a good listen on a purely musical level. If you listen to the lyrics it gets better, so its definitely worth downloading.

Wyclef- Ecleftic – 3 – This album has a special place in my heart because it drew me into rap. It’s not even close to as good as the carnival, the average songs are closer to bad than average, but the good songs are great, so a nice balance is struck, because too much Wyclef will make you do silly things like disband the Fugees (of course I realize it was not entirely Wyclef’s fault, Lauryn Hill is a psychopath too)

There are obviously more, I don’t think I should have to tell you to download artists like Outkast and Eminem and such, so I won’t. I’ll do one of these for rock which will, for the most part, be completely devoid of substance and become a combative rant attempting to establish my guilty pleasure music as legitimate.