Mike and Laura thanks for my cake. I love you very much. When are we going camping?!

This was some sort of a dark beer. Not Budweiser. I was not happy.

sleeping with his tongue out

You guys may or may not have noticed that Sean Tillman, aka Har Mar Superstar, wished me a happy birthday on facebook yesterday. No BFD.

oh my god

What could be better than this?

dog party

JULIE

BEN

Why does he move so crazy? At around 27/28 seconds in I challenge to watch him, thinking about him moving like a creep or some sort of Gollum, and not laugh out loud or at least smile a lot. From 30 seconds to 37 seconds is the dance Cameron does to fuck girls. (I LOVE THIS SONG, by the way)

betcha never seen this view of annapolis

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

Here's what I'll say...not that great. Kind of sucks. Aside from a few little gems, this is not nearly as good as it should be. I think they need to loose the 10 million things going on on every song. What's up with sound effects? What's up with Jim James singing different than he used to? Why can't Conor Oberst write awesome songs anymore? Why didn't they let M. Ward write every song? Why isn't this a folk album? Why is it boring pseudo-electronica pop rock? Why do they talk about god? What is sex? Somebody please tell me!

UPDATE: It's better than I originally said. Still not great.

Adam I've been meaning to play this for you for a while to see if you like it. I don't know why...maybe because the chorus would easily lend itself to being sampled (even though it seems like you're not in to that anymore). I love it. And Brigitte Bardot is singing.

So I don't know how I haven't seen this yet. And (assuming it's real) if you can get by how sad it actually is, it is the best thing ever. 2 things: I love when he goes under the blanket and comes out in his boxers and I love when he shoves the remote in his butt.



There are a number of other ones that are just as funny that you should also watch...

Ben and Soccerdude

This was going to be a comment on Ben's blog (I'm referring to the MIB=Satan post), but I'm turning it right into a post of my own, because I am outraged! The comment was:


whoa whoa whoa

what
am
i
missing
?

so his show isn't that great. fine. who cares...we all know that the shorts he makes (that nobody will ever put on tv) are amazing. who cares if what he's best at doesn't work for tv. shouldn't he be able to make extra money somehow? you're absolutely full of shit if you tell me you wouldn't do a shitty klondike commercial for tens of thousands of dollars!

everyone who was on the state is very open about how hard making it in comedy is and a number of them have done shit they didn't want to. you guys are have the audacity to discredit him almost entirely because he is on shitty vh1 shows and bad commercials?

he's definitely not the funniest person to come out of the state, but he's still really funny. and i don't think he's not awesome because he's in a klondike commercial.

in fact, i believe i was just listening to your butt buddy, jordon morris, go on about how bad he wants to do a del taco commercial because he would be so fucking good at it.

My dad and Livingston Taylor

So we went to see Obama. This dude in front of us stood up and started calling him a liar. I like Obama, but secretly I was really physched on it. People went fucking nuts. And Larry threw all his change at his head which was really funny. You can see him do it in this video.

thats a fucking party

just cause jesse likes it...

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

my shoe (right) next to ben's

got em

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

find obama

DROPDOBBS.COM SCREENSHOT EXPLODES ONTO WILEY'S BLOG

What do you guys think about when hip hop artists perform live with a huge band? I don't think I really like it. Roots excluded, I think the drums and guitar are often too over the top. The Black Keys with Mos Def is different. At least I think so. I'm asking because I just watched Jay-Z with Kanye West and Rhianna on Leno last night. (Adam, I also agree with you about Leno) I'm just not that into it and websites are already talking about how good it was. Am I crazy?

RIP Swayze. Now if everyone could stop dying please.

UPDATE:

Chris and I are going to see this guy speak on Thursday. At my school. Ever heard of him?? doyy!!!

UPDATE: Should Chris and I wear Abercrombie shirts and sit right behind him?

Here's the thing...why don't more people talk about how awesome Big Star is?

Well, it's Beatlesmania right now. And I'm am loving it. The radio has been fantastic. WRNR played every album all the way through with no commercials. It was a treat...and solidified, in my mind, that they are absolutely the best band that ever was or will be (even though there was never any question). Every time I got in my car, over a period of several hours, there was, yet another, incredible song playing. Eric sent me a fantastic article Chuck Klosterman wrote about the EMI reissues. It's really worth your time...he did it perfectly.



Chuck Klosterman Repeats The Beatles
by Chuck Klosterman
September 8, 2009


Like most people, I was initially confused by EMI’s decision to release remastered versions of all 13 albums by the Liverpool pop group Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes. The entire proposition seems like a boondoggle. I mean, who is interested in old music? And who would want to listen to anything so inconveniently delivered on massive four-inch metal discs with sharp, dangerous edges? The answer: no one. When the box arrived in the mail, I briefly considered smashing the entire unopened collection with a ball-peen hammer and throwing it into the mouth of a lion. But then, against my better judgment, I arbitrarily decided to give this hippie shit an informal listen. And I gotta admit—I’m impressed. This band was mad prolific.

It is not easy to categorize the Beatles’ music; more than any other group, their sound can be described as “Beatlesque.” It’s akin to a combination of Badfinger, Oasis, Corner Shop, and everyother rock band that’s ever existed. The clandestine power derived from the autonomy of the group’s composition—each Beatle has his own distinct persona, even though their given names are almost impossible to remember. There was John Lennon (the mean one), Paul Stereo versionMcCartney (the hummus eater), George Harrison (the best dancer), and drummer Ringo Starr (The Cat). Even the most casual consumers will be overwhelmed by the level of invention and the degree of change displayed over their scant eight-year recording career, a span complicated by McCartney’s tragic 1966 death and the 1968 addition of Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, a woman so beloved by the band that they requested her physical presence in the studio during the making of Let It Be.

There are 217 songs on this anthology, many of which seem like snippets of conversation between teenagers who spend an inordinate amount of time at the post office. The Beatles’ “long play” debut, Please Please Me, came in 1963, opening with a few rudimentary remarks from Mr. McCartney: “Well, she was just 17 / If you know what I mean.” If this is supposed to indicate that the female in question was born in 1946, then yes, we know exactly what you mean, Paul. If it means something else, I remain in the dark. These young, sensitive, genteel-yet-stalkerish Beatles sure did spend a lot of time thinking about girls. Virtually every song they wrote during this period focuses on the establishment and recognition of consensual romance, often through paper and quill (“P.S. I Love You”), sometimes by means of monosyllabic nonsense (“Love Me Do”), and occasionally through oral sex (“Please Please Me”). The intensely private Mr. Harrison asks a few coquettish questions two-thirds of the way through the opus (“Do You Want To Know A Secret”) before Mr. Lennon obliterates the back door with the greatest rock voice of all time, accidentally inventing Matthew Broderick’s career. There are a few bricks hither and yon (thanks for wasting 123 seconds of my precious life, Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow) but on balance, I have to give Please Please Me an A, despite the fact that it doesn’t really have a proper single.

Things get more interesting on With The Beatles, particularly for audiences who feel the hi-hat should be the dominant musical instrument on all musical recordings. Only one track lasts longer than three minutes, but structurally, it would appear that the Beatles were more musical than any songwriters who had ever come before them, even when performing material that had been conceived for The Music Man. It’s hard to understand why the rock press wasn’t covering the Beatles during this stretch of their career; one can only assume that the band members’ lack of charisma and uneasy rapport made them unappealing to the mainstream media. Still, the music itself has verve—With The Beatles earns another A.

A Hard Day’s Night provided the soundtrack for a 1964 British movie of the same name, a film mostly remembered for its subtle advocacy of euthanasia. The album initiates like the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man,” and never gets any worse. These Beatles were doomed to a career in the cut-out bin of record stores, but they were clearly learning lessons about life: Though they’d covered “Money (That’s What I Want)” just one year before, they had now reached the conclusion Mono versionthat money cannot purchase love. It was a period of inner growth and introspection—they wanted to know why people cry and why people lie, and they embraced the impermanent pleasure of dance. They also experimented with the harmonica, but that turned out okay. I was originally going to give Hard Day’s Night an A-, but then I heard the middle eighth from “You Can’t Do That” (“Ev’rybody’s greeeeeen / ’Cause I’m the one who won your love”), so I’m changing my grade to A. I assume the accompanying movie is on hulu or something, but I don’t feel like searching for it.

The Beatles get darker and (I guess) cheaper on Beatles For Sale, now fixating on their insecurities (“I’m A Loser”) and how difficult it is to waltz a girl into bed when her ex is a corpse (“Baby’s In Black”). There are a bunch of unexpected covers on this album, so it’s kind of like Van Halen’s Diver Down. It only warrants a B, despite the tear-generating mondo-pleasure of “I’ll Follow The Sun.” More importantly, Beatles For Sale nicely sets the supper table for Help!, a mesmerizing combination of who the Beatles used to be and who they were about to become. The signature track is “Yesterday” (the last song Mr. McCartney recorded before his death in an early-morning car accident), but the best cut is “You’re Going To Lose That Girl,” a song that oozes with moral ambiguity. Is “You’re Going To Lose That Girl” an example of Mr. McCartney’s fresh-faced enlightenment (in that he threatens to punish some dude for being an unresponsive boyfriend), or an illustration of Mr. Lennon’s quiet misogyny (in that he views women as empty, non-specific possessions that can be pillaged from male rivals)? Each possibility seems both plausible and impossible. What makes Beatles lyrics so wonderful is not that they can be interpreted to mean whatever the listener wants; what makes them wonderful is the way they seamlessly adopt contradictory (yet equally valid) interpretations as the listener matures. It’s unfathomable how a couple of going-nowhere guys in their early 20s could be this emotively sophisticated, but that’s why the little-known Help! gets an A.

After Mr. McCartney was buried near Beaconsfield Road in Liverpool, Beatles bass-playing duties were secretly assigned to William Campbell, a McCartney sound-alike and an NBA-caliber smokehound. This lineup change resulted in the companion albums Rubber Soul and Revolver, both of which are okay. Despite its commercial failure, Rubber Soul allegedly caused half-deaf Brian Wilson to make Pet Sounds. (I assume this is also why EMI released a mono version of the catalogue—it allows consumers to experience this album the same way Wilson did.) If you like harmonies or guitar overdubs or the sun or Norwegian lesbians or taking drugs during funerals, you will probably sleep with these records on the first date. Rubber Soul gets an A- because I don’t speak French. Revolver gets an A+, mostly because of “She Said She Said” and “For No One,” but partially because I hate filing my taxes.

1967 proved to be a turning point for the Beatles—the overwhelming lack of public interest made touring a fiscal impossibility, subsequently forcing them to focus exclusively on studio recordings. Spearheaded by the increasingly mustachioed Fake Paul, the four Beatles donned comedic Technicolor dreamcoats, consumed 700 sheets of mediocre acid on the roof of the studio, and proceeded to make Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a groundbreaking album no one actually likes. A concept album about finding a halfway decent song for Ringo, Sgt. Pepper has a few satisfactory moments (“Lovely Rita” totally nails the experience of almost having sex with a city employee), but this is only B+ work. It mostly seems like a slightly superior incarnation of The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, a record that (ironically) came out seven months after this one. Pop archivists might be intrigued by this strange parallel between the Beatles and the Stones catalogue—it often seems as if every interesting thing The Rolling Stones ever did was directly preceded by something the Beatles had already accomplished, and it almost feels like the Stones completely stopped evolving once the Beatles broke up in 1970. But this, of course, is simply a coincidence. I mean, what kind of bozo would compare the Beatles to The Rolling Stones?

After the humiliating public failure of Pepper, the Beatles returned to form with Magical Mystery Tour, an unsubtle compilation of the trippiest (“Blue Jay Way”) and kid-friendliest (“Your Mother Should Know”) material they ever made. “I Am The Walrus” seems like sarcasm, but “Penny Lane” makes me want to purchase a digital camera and apply to barber college. Will history ultimately validate Magical Mystery Tour as the band’s signature work? Only time will tell. A. Now hitting on all 16 cylinders, the Beatles bolted back to the woodshed for The Beatles, a blandly designed masterwork that could inspire any reasonable citizen of California to launch a race war. To this day, we don’t know much about the four men who comprised the Beatles, but listening to this exceedingly non-black album makes one detail totally clear—these guys truly loved each other. How else could they make such wonderful music? In fact, they adored and trusted each other so much that they didn’t even feel the need to perform some of the songs together. It must have been a great era to be in this band. Amazingly, they even wrangled a cameo from noted blues musician Eric Clapton (still best known for his contributions to John Mayhall’s Bluesbreakers). The Beatles is almost beyond an A+; in retrospect, they probably should have made this a triple album. If nothing else, they could have simply included the five Pepper-y songs from Yellow Submarine (C-), which I think might have been a Halloween record.

Let It Be comes next (or last, depending on how you view the universe), and it’s a wholly confusing project—it’s often difficult to tell who is playing lead guitar, and many of the songs could either be about having sex or dropping out of society, which might be the same thing. Fake Paul’s beard looks tremendous, and his (increasingly less-lilting) songs are still beautiful, but his focus feels askew; he seems like a guy who wants to make a record with his wife (which is what Mr. Lennon was already doing, although for totally different reasons). “I’ve Got A Feeling” is my preferred track, but it’s also the first time I really don’t believe what these fellows are trying to tell me. I give Let It Be a B-, although The Replacements get an A and the cast of Sesame Street gets an B+.

Though the artwork for Abbey Road seems eerily familiar (that’s actually my car in the photo’s background), the music it symbolizes is vaguely alien—I don’t know why they wrote a song about a Clue character, but that’s par for the course for these lovemaking, chain-smoking longhairs. The opener sucks (seems as crappy as mid-period Aerosmith), but Mr. Harrison follows with a wedding song that effortlessly proves why people who try to quantify visceral emotion should just stop trying. The entire band seems oddly unserious on this endeavor, but in the best possible way—for the first time in a long time, they sound as free as they look. That said, the audio quality is especially heavy and detailed; one suspects most of the arduous lifting on Abbey Road fell on the shoulders of unheralded Jeff Beck producer George Martin. Everything ends with “The End,” but then Fake Paul decided to add a superfluous 24-second mini-song that wipes away any historical closure Abbey Road might have otherwise achieved. The real Mr. McCartney would have never even considered such frivolity. I give Abbey Road an A, but begrudgingly.

I’ve noticed that this EMI box also includes the gratuitously titled singles collection Past Masters, but I’m not even going to play it. How could a song called “Rain” not be boring? I feel like I’ve already heard enough. These are nice little albums, but I can’t imagine anyone actually shelling out $260 to buy these discs. There’s just too much great free music on the Internet, you know? You might find the instructional, third-person perspective of “Sie Leibt Dich” charming and snappy (particularly if you’re trying to learn German the hard way), but first check out “myspace.org,” a popular website with a forward-thinking musical flavor. That, my rockers, is the future. That, and videogames.

caught. thanks erin.

HAPPY

BIRTHDAY

STERLING

YOU

SCOUNDREL

So I'm on facebook and I see...

I think 'hey, Adam's cool...what is this?'



well the truth is out adam. we all know the only contract you signed was a contract to watch and enjoy babies singing. nice try, "licensee man"

so then i'm like 'hey, whats this?'




'yeah chris is cool, i'll check this out...HUH!?!?'



lastly, where is this mystery post that I can't get to?

thanks adam. easiest money i ever made. im going to get a tattoo now!

Billy I'm sorry I keep missing your calls. You keep calling at weird times. I'll call you today. I'm listening to African music I just got. Konono Nº1 and Ali Farka Toure. It's really awes. TTYL!

somebody got neutered...

aren't we darling?

Classic comedy

We just got back from Old Rag. We got up in under 2 hours...a new record for me. After we woke up today we went to another trail that Eric claimed was a mild 9 mile loop that we would leisurely walk. He lied. It was a treacherous vertical ascent. I made it almost 3 miles (UP...VERTICALLY) and had to turn back. In all seriousness I was holding back tears during the last mile or so.

We also went skinny dipping in freezing water last night with wine and ciggies and it was sensational.

I give the trip a 10 out of 10. Except for my bleeding feet which I now have to amputate. 9.5 out of 10.

lady and the tramp...who's who??

These are golden.

Well pitchfork really trashed this. I know that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I think, unfortunately, they may be right this time. He is not a middling guitar player though!

UPDATE: I've given it a couple listens and it is way way better than a 2.2 out of 10. It's definitely not amazing...which Entrance is certainly capable of, but it's not horrible.