Handclaps & Half-Shut Eyes

i'm bored of justifying posts only tangentially related to poetry. Suffice it to say that i'm an English grad student: i'll read just about anything and i'm happy to extend that to songs, especially because i <3 cultural texts like that.

i think i could produce a reasonable manifesto on 12:51 (links to video), though i wouldn't bore anyone. It's just that i had always thought it was a sad song masquerading as a bouncy party-rock deal. There's the fast beat, the sooper dooper catchy synthy tone on the guitars, and of course the content: if you don't listen too carefully, it sounds like it's something along the lines of 'hell yeah, i'm around, let's hang out and get drunk & have fun.'

mister Jakob Battick (tea & oranges website coming soon! stay tuned!)first pointed out the references to "stage" to me and reminded me that Room On Fire is their second album, the archetypical underside-of-success album, in some way. All this to say that on seeing the video, Julian Casablancas's bored speaksing and half-closed eyes really take on a new set of meanings. It's not just hipster cool anymore--they made their money on that in the first round--by Room On Fire, what was a laconic coolness has turned into a sadness that really permeates the album...

I think i might teach this song next semester.

Butt Rock pt II

So ages ago, I bitched about Wikipedia not having a page on Butt Rock. They still don't. This means war, assholes.


But,ah, i didn't mean to star a war with the biggest fucking nitpicker weirdos of all time, wikipedians (god, i'm fucked. they're some vengeful fucks. they'll put up "citation needed" all over my ass if i ever have an entry). Besides those cretins (can't.....stop.....) what i meant to do was crusade pro-butt rock. Not listening to it, jeez, just kind of raising its profile. This Yelp discussion might be one of the most awesome Butt Rock-related things on the internet. My vote probably goes for "Sister Christian" as well, if i had to pick a greatest butt rock song of all time.



And uh, by the way, who the FUCK spells the word genre like so: 'janra'



Really, commenter on yelp? doesn't the wiggly red line under your horrible affront to written communication mean anything to you? Why on earth would you do that?

nablopawhaat?

So i guess it's November, the month that apparently everyone is supposed to do something significant with. National Novel Writing Month (as if anything decent ever comes out of that), National Blog Posting Month (well i guess it got me to log back on to this thaaang) and of course, No Shave November. Now growing a beard doesn't require the majority of my attention, but this one seems like obviously the most important of the group. Of course, instead of looking manly, I'm looking rather teenagerish with my stalled facegrowth. Still, this is only the halfway point.



NaBloPoMo just seems silly to me because i suck so bad at writing any sort of blog. but it seems like it might be fun to say, and maybe i can even work out a pun with my (incredibly taxing) course on postmodern lit: nablopomothics...mo? national blowing off postmodern ethics....month? ugh. i'm tired.