Streetball Soundtrack a.k.a. The only way to make white guys whiter is listening to black music

1. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion* - Calvin
2. Public Enemy - Welcome To The Terrordome
3. Jay-Z - D.O.A. (Death Of Autotune)
4. Beastie Boys* - So What'cha Want
5. Kool & The Gang - Funky Stuff
6. Brassy* - Play Some D
7. Arrested Development - Everyday People
8. Beck* - 1000 BPM
9. 2Pac - California Love
10. Sly & The Family Stone - Sing A Simple Song
11. Kanye West - Gold Digger
12. Salt-N-Pepa - Shoop
13. The Meters - Hand Clapping Song

* I'm well aware that these aren't necessarily classified as "black music", but you know ... they kinda are.

Max Dalton

Firstly, just check out this amazing bowling game:

Would it be even more awesome if it was based on The Big Lebowski?

I've Been To The Mountaintop

For some reason I have recently developed a huge amount of interest in history, especially American history. I think some credit for that has to go to having too much time on my hands and getting lost in the never-ending web of Cracked. If you haven’t ever been there before, its probably summed up best by a random list of the article titles:

8 Movie Special Effects You Won’t Believe Aren’t CGI
The 7 Most Condescending Sports Euphemisms
10 Mind-Blowing Easter Eggs Hidden In Famous Albums
8 Filthy Jokes Hidden In Ancient Works Of Art
The 6 Craziest Sieges In History

My First Ever Sketch

Well, that title is definitely a lie.  I know that I've done lots of sketches before, but this is the first one I've done that hasn't been for a school assignment.  Actually, that is stretching the truth a little bit too.  I remember my parents giving me some pencils and a sketch book when I was younger, but I was just really bad at it.  My mum seemed to have some sort of artistic skill and I can still see the picture that she helped me draw as vividly as the day I (read: she) drew.

Under The Table Tennis

A few years ago, I was at the Laneway Festival in Sydney and a friend demanded that we go to one of the stages and catch a guy named Tim Fite. Before I try to describe the show, check out his most well-known song "Big Mistake", the film clip for which he illustrated himself:



But I hadn't seen this or anything else before I walked into the packed room to see him play. What resulted was one of the most bizarre yet perfect shows I have ever seen (which still stands now). During the first song, his off-sider "Sexy Leroy" walked around the whole crowd with a rope and pulling it tighter and tighter so that everyone was squashed to the front of the stage. It definitely beat the age-old and awkward cliche of the frontman saying "There's lots of room down here in the front to dance. Why don't you all move forward?"

Osama and the 1960s

Once news broke that the US had found and killed Osama bin Laden there was widespread rejoicing in many parts of the world, particularly in America and even more especially in New York. All of this is completely understandable, but the point kept getting raised in conversations I had with different people was that it seemed odd for so much celebration over someone's death. And I remember similar conversations coming up when Saddam Hussein was executed.

With these thoughts going through my head, I wasn't really surprised when some Facebook friends posted a Martin Luther King quote as their status update. The full quote read:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Week 1 Of The Album A Day Project

So this project of mine has failed on both accounts. I haven't listened to an album every day and it hasn't prompted me to write more. The plus-side though is that I have been listening to a lot more music than the last couple of months and I have been listening to a lot more albums, rather than just tracks I like.

For the sake of pretence, I'm going to write about 7 albums at a time even if they weren't listened to in a calendar week.

It all started with Radiohead's "OK Computer". Its a little bit embarrassing to think that I didn't like Radiohead until about 3 or 4 years ago, but I'm now so well acquainted with this album that I found myself tuning out until I heard my favourite tracks.

A New Album Every Day

When I first started this blog, I didn't want to make it all about music because that is already such a big part of my life. But in the tour van the other day I decided that I needed to make more of an effort to listen to a wider range of music. I realised that there are a lot of classic albums that other people take for granted, but that I'd never properly listened to. Plus, there are hundreds of more recent albums that I've always meant to listen to, but never got round to doing.

So I've made a commitment to listen to at least one album in its entirety every day for the next year. No cherry-picking favourites or skipping ones that don't give me instant gratification.

Good and Evil

I was trawling Youtube the other day and came across a great video made by RSA Animate. Basically what they do is get a talk by an inspiring speaker and then illustrate the talk. Not only is it really cool just to watch the illustrations take place, it actually helps (me, at least ...... and probably the other however millions that have watched all their videos) remember what the speaker is talking about.

I'd come across one of their videos before, so I was pretty sure I'd like this one too:

Bowling Is Meant To Be Fun

On the weekend, Katy and I took our nephew out bowling. We were about halfway through the game when a boy (maybe 14yo) came up to our lane and picked up the bowling ball I had been using off our rack. At first I thought he was being silly, but when he turned to walk away with my bowling ball, I stopped him and said that I was still using it.

As he put it back down, I heard his mother (or who I assume was his mother) whisper angrily at him “Over there” and point at the wall behind us where all the spare bowling balls were.

I was a bit put off by the mother’s reaction, so I watched him as he picked his ball and went back to his lane and immediately start bowling. By himself. And I don’t just mean that he was the only one bowling (which is true as well), but it was as if his mother wasn’t even in the same room. The whole time she sat virtually unmoving except for her fingers on her mobile phone, either playing some inane game (that didn’t seem to bring any pleasure to her judging from her facial expression) or sending messages to people more important than her son standing in front of her.

Music

This is gonna be a really scattered post, but I can lay the blame on something other than me. My iPod. More specifically, the shuffle option on my iPod. It takes me from one end of the mood spectrum to the other with no warning or sense. And the best thing is that I’m loving every second of it.

I’ve come to realise that music means quite a lot to me. That is probably fairly obvious to anyone that knows me well, or simply knows that I’m in a band and has assumed it to be the case. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter if it is loud, trashy punk or the softly spoken beauty of folk music, if it is angry shouts or anguished cries or sweet nothings, I love it all. Although sometimes a song will bring me to tears (especially late at night), they are happy tears … except when I listen to the Eels sometimes.

But I just wanted to list some of the tracks that I have re-discovered since I started shuffling at the start of my shift at work today:

Beck - Mixed Bizness
The Hives - A Little More For Little You
David Bowie - Heroes
Cake - You Part The Waters
Gang Of Four - Natural’s Not In It
LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great

This isn’t meant to be an advertisement for the iPod, but I’m not sure what I would do without it. I certainly couldn’t show up to work day in day out without it, I know that.

You've got to fight for the one you love

I used to watch coverage of awards shows and always be amazed that some of the actors/musicians had been in long-term relationships, whereas most of them seemed to only be able to have fairly short ones. I actually felt that the celebrities that did stick and work on their relationships had more integrity. And in a way, I still think that.

Romantic relationships are a funny thing. Although there are plenty of arguments on how love changes and advances or whether there is only one “the one” for each of us, the fact remains that relationships go through difficult times. Even the best relationships go through difficult times. And if you’re in that difficult time in a relationship, you are faced with a simple decision - do you work on the problems and try and get out of that difficult time, or do you end the relationship. Simply (and evolutionarily) put: fight or flight.

Haiti

There is something extremely distressing about natural disasters, especially when they end the lives of large numbers of people. Although I haven’t been entirely tuned into everything about the earthquake in Haiti, it has really affected me. I cried when I watched one of the news reports mainly because of the pleading screams of people stuck in the rubble, desperate for help and escape.

The last catastrophe of this magnitude was the tsunami in 2004 that resulted in approximately 200,000 dying.

I don’t know if it is because Haiti is a lot further away from us than Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and all the other countries affected by that tsunami, but this tragedy in Haiti doesn’t seem to be entering into the public Australian conscience nearly as much. And I feel kind of guilty that I haven’t really paid all that much attention to it.

There are varying estimates of how many people have died in the earthquake (30,000 to 200,000), but they have reported that 3 million people have been directly affected by it. That is almost completely unfathomable. Its like if everyone that attended the grand finals of both the AFL and NRL died in one major event.

I’m not really writing this to make any deep points or extol anyone that happens to read it to donate money to the cause. I’m just upset about it and need to write something.

Kyle & Jackie O

I've been meaning to get back into this blogging thing and I've had lots of ideas of things to write about, but I just haven't had the time. Normally its the other way round. I have lots of dead time to kill, but can't think of anything to write about. Either way, I have a few posts ready, but I thought I would hit this one first because its "topical".

If you aren't aware, Kyle & Jackie O have a breakfast show on commercial radio in Australia. I don't listen to it and don't really know much about it, except that in all their advertising (billboards, TV etc) that I DO see, they both seem like total douches. So my opinion is probably already biased against them, but I think that even if I could be completely objective and impartial, I would conclude that they ARE total douches.

Here's what happened:

What a freaking awesome idea!

So it seems that I just can’t get enough of this blogging at the moment. What I wanted to talk about is something I heard on a TV show last week. The thing is, the show in question has a host that I previously thought was a bit of a prat … but I think I’m beginning to be able to tolerate him and at times, might even like him.

I’m talking about Wil Anderson and his show The Gruen Transfer. Check it out on ABC1 on Wednesday nights at 9am.

ANYWAYS, what caught my attention on last week’s show was the innovative way the New York Department of Education is trying to improve school attendance, student behaviour and class performance.

Best music of this century

Well. It has certainly been a long time between my 2nd and 3rd blogs. But I’ve been inspired by my good friend Gilbert, who is planning to start blogging about cars. I know nothing about cars, but I still really enjoyed reading his drafts for his blog, so he must be good.

Anyways, I’ve been thinking that since this decade is winding up, what things have really happened since the turn of the century? Obviously there was the 911 attacks, the war on terror, Obama-fever, getting married, Brisbane Lions 3-peat …. but what I’ve been really thinking about is pop culture.

Warner Music

Warner Music really sucks a lot of balls.

I just read an article about how they were in contract negotiations with Youtube about payment for people watching clips on Youtube that had music from artists on Warner (or one of Warner’s subsidiaries). The contract negotiations failed, so Warner Music demanded that any clip with Warner Music had to be either deleted or muted.

Some of the videos that got deleted include:
- a baby dancing to a Prince song
- someone playing piano to and singing “Winter Wonderland”
- Death Cab For Cutie’s official film clips
- Led FREAKING Zeppelin’s official clips

Welcome

This is my first proper blog post. Its going to be a pretty boring one, because I'm at work and all I really wanted to say was welcome to my blog. Its going to be a fairly random experience for everyone. I already know some of the topics I want to blog about (ie music, Wes Anderson films, Leon Trotsky, American customer service) and none of them are particularly related in any way.

My idea is to post a new blog every Monday, but I'm sure that will continue for about 2 weeks before I start getting lazy and do it whenever I feel like it.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I undoubtedly will.

Warm regards,

MC Bad Genius