Spike Jonze’s visceral masterpiece, Where the Wild Things Are, employed the voices of several high powdered celebrities. Most notably, James Gandolfini, who is everyone’s favorite Jersey gangster patriarch. The situation just got a whole lot heavier for poor Max.
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Off Freeway and Jake One’s upcoming Rhymesayers release, The Stimulus Package, which drops February 16th.
Download: Freeway + Jake One feat. Raekwon “One Thing”
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After a long week of digging through news, scores and tantric sex techniques, I realized that there’s a ton of interesting things that I never get around to posting. With that being said, I decided to end the week with a couple links in a Friday finale called Close but No Cigar. If I haven’t tormented/enlightened enough during the week, hopefully these will tide you over until Monday. Happy Hour here I come!
Seven-year-old raises thousands for Haiti quake victims
Two men arrested for crack possession. Turns out to be candy
Minnesota Supreme Court Rules DUI Possible in Inoperable Vehicle
How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes
NFL Taking RedZone Service to Cellphones
Real-life inspiration for paper target in firearms training, ex-NYPD Lt. Jesse Oldshein, dies at 92
With word coming out that Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner has retired, it looks like Matt Leinert is gonna have to get the bubbles percolating in the Hot Tub Time Machine. Initially, Warner was brought in to be Leinert’s backup, but five Pro Bowl selections later, Leinert has barely had a taste of the playing field. Now everyone expects him to step into the starting spot and lead that passing attack? Not unless he’s got said time machine. I think Leinert is better suited to teach Tim Tebow that babies don’t come from the stork, and that Fleshlights are against the collective bargaining agreement.
Every year there are a couple bands that emerge, seemingly out of nowhere, that get the music blogs all hot and borthered like an un-neutered spaniel in the springtime. Tracks go viral, clumsy diatribes are composed, and all the band can do is ride the wave, make the best album they can, and release it with perfect timing. The cool thing about the internet is the band can truly come from anywhere, it has nothing to do with what record label they’re on, or if alternative radio spun their music incessantly. It’s rare form of good art reaching it’s audience without too many filters or obstructions. The main obstruction in fact is other bands- hard to tell in those early days, based on one or two songs, whether a band has the goods or if their lead singer happened to share a dorm room with someone who writes for Pitchfork now.
It’s early in ‘10, but one of those bands for this year appears to be Local Natives. Perhaps they are on my radar a little strongly because I remember getting tipped to them about 9 months ago and had an early eye on them. I am going to keep the frothing to the other animals in the blogosphere. I will simply mark my appreciation that their first video still maintains some mystery about the band. In marketing bands these days, everyone decides that artists need to open their closets and expose themselves in all their Flipcam glory, but just like you don’t need to see Stephon Marbury chow down on Vaseline, you don’t need to know every gory detail about your favorite new band’s proclivity to eating spicy Cheetos while pissing out of their van. So kudos to LN for making a video that doesn’t reveal much about the band. Mystique is a good thing. Ultimately it comes down to the song, and in this case they appear to have a natural feel for a good, unique hook. This is also a good thing.
So here’s the video, check it out and decide for yourself if you like the song without relying on other opinions (except mine, of course).
Letters of Note is a really terrific site that… well… showcases “letters of note.” In the wake of J.D. Salinger’s death, they’ve unveiled a letter from 1957 that is a correspondence between Salinger, and someone who is interested in obtaining the film rights to The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger makes the point that Holden Caulfied is an unactable character. Undoubtedly, Mr. Herbert went on to a lucrative career in the adult film industry where he won an AVN award for The Catcher in the Rear.
R. D. 2
Windsor, Vt.
July 19, 1957Dear Mr. Herbert,
I’ll try to tell you what my attitude is to the stage and screen rights of The Catcher in the Rye. I’ve sung this tune quite a few times, so if my heart doesn’t seem to be in it, try to be tolerant….Firstly, it is possible that one day the rights will be sold. Since there’s an ever-looming possibility that I won’t die rich, I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end, though, I might quickly add, to know that I won’t have to see the results of the transaction. I keep saying this and nobody seems to agree, but The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes” - only a fool would deny that - but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons - in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights. There are many of his thoughts, of course, that could be labored into dialogue - or into some sort of stream-of-consciousness loud-speaker device - but labored is exactly the right word. What he thinks and does so naturally in his solitude in the novel, on the stage could at best only be pseudo-simulated, if there is such a word (and I hope not). Not to mention, God help us all, the immeasurably risky business of using actors. Have you ever seen a child actress sitting crosslegged on a bed and looking right? I’m sure not. And Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biassed opinion, is essentially unactable. A Sensitive, Intelligent, Talented Young Actor in a Reversible Coat wouldn’t nearly be enough. It would take someone with X to bring it off, and no very young man even if he has X quite knows what to do with it. And, I might add, I don’t think any director can tell him.
I’ll stop there. I’m afraid I can only tell you, to end with, that I feel very firm about all this, if you haven’t already guessed.
Thank you, though, for your friendly and highly readable letter. My mail from producers has mostly been hell.
Sincerely,
(Signed, ‘J. D. Salinger’)
J. D. Salinger
The first transexual-only prison is set to open up in Tuscany in March. Really? I bet all those effeminate dudes who weren’t getting raped and beat up in regular prison thanks to the tripods are pretty pissed off right now. I heard they’re trying to get Snooki to cut the ribbon and christian thee, “Alcatranz.”
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With Pee-wee’s recent resurgence, it’s safe to say that after you’re caught working yourself over in an adult theater, you have to wait at least 20 years before coming back into the public eye. Masturabatory remorse: there’s an App for that.
Listen, sweetheart. I’m really happy that you’re married and have two kids. I really am. But I don’t wanna see pictures of your kids eating spaghetti and opening up their Hanukkah presents. You wanna know when we were friends? Back when you were doing shots of tequila at the rich kids dorm, throwing up, and everyone referred to you as the town bike.
The always corny, PETA, is peddling a thong for Valentines Day with the slogan “Vegans Taste Better” on the crotch. First it was ironic t-shirts, now we’re forced to deal with ironic lingerie. I get the message. Hopefully my wife will get the message when she sees my newly stitched boxer shorts that read : Suck My Sausage Then Go Do The Dishes.
