A Friend of Krucoff Is a Friend of Mine

In celebration of YM's newest proclamation, in observance of YM's longstanding reputation as a quality music blog, and just to throw a little something up here on the left-hand side of the page, I present to you a live performance by a band that the YM boys all hold near, as it were their own:

Do You Imagine Your Sufferings Will Be Less Because You Loved Goodness? From The Desk of 1992. It's The Boo Radleys.

Don't Smoke Buddha

A.J. Jacobs interviewed by Daniel Radosh on Jewcy. Go to A.J.'s talk at the Y next week.

Radosh's new book Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. Go to the Does Christian Rock Suck? Debate.

(I read approximately one book a year, give or take a prison sentence, and this was the one. It exceeded my expectations, which were pretty high to begin with given his blog, so I now feel smart enough to not touch another until 2009. If Spiers unleashes her beehive tomb anytime soon as a cellphone novel I'm definitely willing to make an exception.)

Muslim Punk Rock. Go to Baltimore, of course.

Unfair compare, son

In honor of Fimoculous, above are your fave photos of the forthcoming five minutes.

The top two come from a show at Jenkins Johnson Gallery. They're big photos of Korean and white baby girls and boys surrounded by a ridiculous amount of their pink or blue booty (respectively).

The second photo is from Sasha Wolf Gallery from a show called The Lams of Ludlow -- a family of five in a one-bed apartment in NYC. They too have some things that are pink and blue -- but more blues than pinks, I suspect.

Not Your Uncle's Punk Rock (Yes It Is)

The Spoiled Brats - "No Go"

Buttafuoco - "Riot"

Perhaps this will give you perspective? Probably not.

Previously: Good Grief (vocals = Jenn Hyman = Buttafuoco)

Love Child Custody is a Battlefield

Soldier Loses Custody of Child After Iraq Tour:

Pentagon officials and military-family support groups say there are no statistics on the number of military parents who have lost custody of their children following deployments.

But they agree that the number is increasing, sending waves of anger and fear through the military.

The Army Times newspaper published a scathing editorial on the subject last month, written by managing editor Chuck Finch.

"We have a volunteer military, and the idea of volunteering to serve your country and then facing the prospect of losing your children — it's a little mind-boggling," Finch says.

Cupid Car Club - "Child Custody Commandos"

Previously: "Grape Juice Plus"

Is my self aggrandizing porn still welcome here?

now everyone "wrestle about"...

JULIA ALLISON BROKE TUMBLR AND NO ONE IS WILLING TO ADMIT IT.

There, I said it.

By the way, happy Purim/Easter! See everyone Monday.

From the desk of the HVIC*

Scene: YM Headquarters

Krucoff: Dana, since you are the token female around here--well, we'll take your word for it--we need you to weigh in on Urbane Tomboys. Something like what Lindsay wrote. Only you say it here. And maybe say something insulting enough to get it linked on Gawker.



99 [on speakerphone]: I would just like to point out that I am currently in LA, awash in cocaine, blow jobs, and wine with vulgar alcohol content, and I have absolutely zero interest in discussing this matter. But do go on.



Me: I don't think I have anything to add to this. Wait, no: The fact that this Meredith woman is paid to write this pap is empirical evidence that the world owes me a goddamned living. Yeah, I think Lindsay covered everything that needed to be said, and she did it without using the pejorative term for a person with a mental handicap, which is better than I could muster. I pass.

Exeunt

No. Wait. I can add something more. Here's the deal: If you are a hot chick, it doesn't matter if you're in sweatpants; dudes will still hit on you. Hot chicks know this. That girl at Belmont Lounge wasn't dressed that way because she's an Urbane Tomboy. She was dressed that way because she was on her way home from the fucking Pilates studio on Irving.

Sidenote: Oh, and. As impossible as it may seem, I can attest to seeing a woman wearing a giant blanket in public. I was out with a dear friend (who shall remain unlinked because the YM boys have problems behaving around her) at one of the Maritime hotel bars and the DJ was clad in a serape-type garment. She was spinning some far-out tracks, too. Love Will Tear Us Apart! Bring On the Dancing Horses! Safety Dance! It was like being at the gym...with $14 cocktails. Next up, we had Can't Stand Losing and Young Americans and I'm all like Nice poncho, bitch.

And I know what you're thinking: What did you expect from a DJ at the Maritime? And also, what were you doing there? This is unimportant. The real question is: shouldn't an Urbane Tomboy DJ own--at the very least--a copy of Trout Mask Replica?

*Head Vag in Charge

The Dust Never Settles(Pay to Write, Pay to Play, Pay to Cum, Pay to Fight)

YM's own platter puss-o-soul Jackson West gets poached by the Pith Lord and returns to covering some shit like the Hotties of Foster City. (A town so "kewl" that it pitches their golf course as superior to a video game.) I wish I had heavier words but to be honest, I've been numb to blogging journeyfolk ever since Cinematical picked Martha F. out of the Blottered lineup. No greater waste of talent than transferring Lester Freamon to a pawnshop unit. Nothing sucks the venom out and spits it back in your face like a Calacanis-backed venture, except maybe a Denton one. (Note to All Goats: please put it back in your pants unless you want Dana to suck it off.) Me? I've been finding solace in the pervasive anonymity of Curbed commenting. Anyone else notice how Gothamist owned that crane story (yes, a HuffPo link but see how much Gothamist is referenced) while Lock and the chain link gang were sleeping away the weekend? We're all John Carney's Tumblr now.

"Rite Part 1: 2. The Harbingers of Spring, Dance Of The Adolescents" - [Stravinsky]

Previously: "Nudes"

There IS a cabal

I just don't know what kind of cabal it is. Apparently all the menfolk are off at the YM Mount Weather today. Or the Bilderberg Conference. Or maybe they're drunk with John Carney? I'm puzzled. (If they don't turn up soon I'm going to post a giant essay about feminist fiber artists from the 70s. You heard me.)

It's empirical knowledge that only assholes celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and last year I pulled the Asshole Hat Trick and saw the Pogues on St. Patrick's Day in the company of a Brooklyn Hook and Ladder company that will go unnamed. Someone had some extra tickets. Nothing bad happened and the guards didn't even wand us, so I was able to sneak my flask of whiskey in. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, so I spent some formative years in Savannah, a city that claims to have the second-largest St. Pat's festivities in the country. As 99 could probably attest (but won't), every year they dye the river green and they dye the beer green and they dye all those frozen grain alcohol daquiri-type drinks green.

The aftermath: Green puke, green piss, and the eventual green discharge. Tonight, the streets of NYC will be slithering with rape-y drunken distressed debt analyst types and corrections officers from Yonkers who couldn't pass the FDNY pull-up test. I will be doing...something.

Still Little Fingers, Alternative Ulster

Funny, Even Josh Stein Won't Return My Emails

Moshe Dayan: To aim and hit, you need one eye only, and one good finger.

This is the funniest thing you'll watch today OR MAYBE EVER. More so if you're Jewish and/or have seen the movie Juno, which I haven't but I caught the preview so I think I "get" it. Written by Comedy Central-connected people which gives it mountains and molehills of cred.

More video: TJC asks, Are Dreadlocks the New Peyos?

I'm a big fan of Jewcy's Michael Weiss (maybe not as much as Joey Kurtzman but definitely more then Eli Valley). Here he takes on Mamet.

Of course, they're all dudes and don't come close to the admiration I hold for Alicia Jo Rabins. Her "Girls in Trouble" Song Cycle at the Jewish Museum on Sunday will be the highlight of your week, if you choose to go.

Nextbook goes batty for Bernard Malamud. Rachel Donadio investigates why he is overshadowed by Bellow and Roth (oddly she doesn't ask Eli Valley who I think would know!) and Joe Hill conjures up a conversation with Malamud's famed Jewbird. (I didn't understand a word I just copied-and-pasted.)

David Kelsey talking about Big Aish, population studies and Jewish males. Don't all click at once.

Israel Air Force flying over Auschwitz. Sorry, my mom sent me this link. (That Sderot PowerPoint was from her too.) Apparently she's now on the Scare-The-Over-60-Jew email network.

Small Business Administration

I was sitting in a kitchen on Potrero Hill making a little extra scratch helping package some entirely addictive maple bacon lollypops and my friend reminded us not to dip into the supply. It dawned on me -- everything I know about entrepreneurialism I learned from Biggie Smalls, who pretty much summed up the basic principles of sustaining good business practices from a strictly realist perspective.

Of course, you can find his work pretty much anywhere you look -- his legacy will live on for some time. But this recording was taken from a 12" single, and I'd like to take a moment and sing the praises of this historically unique distribution form. For starters, they cost about six or seven bucks, and could usually be had for nearly free from labels through record clubs.

By stretching just a few minutes of audio over the entire face of a 12", 33rpm LP, the individual grooves can be set wider, providing for increased low-end bass dynamics which is critical in a club environment. That little sigh at the beginning of the track is on the four as a timing device to match the intro to another beat. Three versions -- a dirty, a clean and an instrumental -- are provided. With a second copy of the record, a DJ can keep the beat rolling indefinitely for freestyling MCs.

It's as if the record labels were giving this shit away for free, encouraging DJs to lay remixes in the cut, all in the hopes of getting clubgoers and radio listeners hooked and coming back for more. Wonder where they got that idea?

The Ten Crack Commandments by The Notorious B.I.G.

That the intro sample (selected by the legendary DJ Premier) is from Chuck D. serves to reinforce the backhanded critique of black market capitalism. From the appropriately titled Life After Death.

Our Sausage is Made Like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas

This is how YM editorial meetings heat up during Pulitzer season.

99 (in an email with the subject "I'm a little busy"): Dana, could you handle this? Might not be in your voice enough, but:

Title: Is St. Barack's Farrakhan Connection Disenfranchising Jews?
Art: Meir Kahane photo

text: Riff on Python: 'Because every Jew is sacred and every Jew is good' lead into discussion of how Obama is an anti-semite because he won't embrace Hillary's position that we should 'honor' the FLA primary (word parsing on Honor/Denounce could be good). Mebbe get pull quote from your cousin for local angle/flavor. Try for some irony/hypocrisy angle if you can about 2000. Some Savior/Obama-Jesus-killed-by-Jews action would be nice. Wrap it up with some tribe/media reference involving a journo the Boss wants to bang. Or, for a twist, try and find one he doesn't.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/13/primary.proposal/index.html

thx

Dana: This is too cerebral, doesn't sound enough like me. Can we tie it into the story about the woman who was stuck to the toilet in Kansas? That's more my speed.

Boss: In the spirit of transparency, I think it's best we just post this email exchange. Notify me soon if you have a problem with that.

99: Well, I was hoping, you know, she would actually write it. Now you have to add this. With the caveat that I know Kahane was too obvs. But he's my go-to Jew for right wing orthodoxy. If you have a better options (period photo of Woody Allen when Soon-Yi was 10 or something? That dude from Counting Crows?), go for it.

And fix any typos, I've been cowering on the floor all afternoon. I just opened a box of red hots.

Tommy Carcetti, Can You Hear Me?

How much did this catch us by surprise? We never had the chance to play pit boss with the disabled card and write op-eds that asked voters, "Is New York ready for a blind or deaf Governor?" (We were stuck with dumb.) But now I'm sure America's deaf lobby will start looking for its Gary Malkowski.

Speaking of blind politicians (not the metaphorical ones), I imagine they're not as picky with the quality of their hookers, thus passing the savings on to constituents.

The New Albany: The Blind Leading the...ok, this is old and stupid. I'm gonna go back to watching Zionist slideshows of Sderot bombings.

Sigh

And I thought they would have gotten Spitzer on that whole sending the pigs after the State Senate Majority Leader, but no, he just had to go get his dick wet in the oldest profession in the world kinda way. I admit, I liked the guy -- anyone who takes on Wall Street fat cats is okay in my book, and as Governor he championed two causes that are near and dear to this Californian's heart: marriage for the gays and licenses for the illegals.

I imagine the libertarians out there must be terribly conflicted. Spitzer did meddle with the free market, which is bad, but his downfall was getting diddled by a prostitute, which should be okay. Might I suggest an invisible hand job? Really helps to relieve the ironic tension.

I'm digressing into politics, and this is a music blog, so for a segue I'd like to point out that Ashley Alexandra Dupre's single on Amie Street has gone from $0.26 to $0.98 as the popularity of her track has skyrocketed since being outed by the New York Times (you stay classy, Grey Lady).

If there is a silver lining to this liberal cloud, it's shaped like David Paterson. I have to agree with my homegirl Beth Spotswood -- he's kinda dreamy. A blind black man giving orders in Albany? Next thing you know, there'll be a brother in the White House.

Blowin' in the Wind by Stevie Wonder

This auction on eBay for Wonder's Dylan cover on 45 expires the day before Paterson is sworn in. Oh, and pictures will return when I replace a lost cell phone charger.

This One's Brought To One DM From Another...

No wonder the Manhattan Transfer's so savvy with derivatives and other "imaginary instruments". From Friday's WSJ:

Dungeons & Dragons was born in the 1970s, a technological lifetime ago. Today the same kids who might have played D&D are more likely to be online playing World of Warcraft. While I have no experience with that newfangled game, I'm sure that the graphics are stunning, that the technology is awe-inspiring and that the ability to do battle with people from across the globe is thrilling.

But at the risk of sounding like a geek and a curmudgeon at once, in my day we did it the old-fashioned way. In all likelihood we were in somebody's basement, sitting around a table with our dice at the ready and our character sheets in front of us. My brother John was the dungeon master, and he was a good one, too. My brothers -- Mike and Tim -- and I, along with our friends Chris and John (I'll withhold their last names to protect their reputations), spent hours at a time exploring a world that existed only in our imaginations. D&D was, after all, much more like old-time storytelling than the videogames that have come after it. The game allowed our little troupe to star in some of the greatest stories we ever told. For that we owe Gary Gygax our gratitude.

Mr. Carney is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

And there you have it. Drinks on me at Spitzer's tonight.

Third Wave Post-Femiladyism

I realize that I've become old, and not in the fun ways like home ownership and being well vested in retirement funds. No, old in a back pain and not understanding the kids these days kinda way. The new site header graphic says it all, having been stripped of any pretension to being "young." Shit, I can't even pretend to be a Manhattanite (and no, the "Manhattanization of San Francisco" doesn't count).

So let me take you back, way back to the 1990s. Neo-soul was the hottness, and hip-hop fundamentals were making a resurgence. Street art, b-boys and b-girls, MCs rhyming in harmony and funk 45s were the coin of the new hipster realm. Portishead was ripping off Sylvia Robinson's production techniques and the Invsibl Skratch Picklz were making DJ Spooky look like a hack with an LCD BPM tap-counter.

Now anyone with a laptop, Limewire and Ableton Live or Traktor can play DJ-producer in public without having to cart hundreds of pounds of records (or have much in the way of eye-hand coordination). Me, I relied on inexpensive represses and compilations from labels like Ubiquity, all the while telling myself that re-learning the skills Grandmaster Flash pioneered a generation before was somehow valuable.

Quixotic? Sure. But as anybody with a copy of Dylan's white album bootleg will tell you, preserving history is its own reward. "California Soul" is the kind of compilation that should remind everyone the Bloc Party of today is the Rokk of tomorrow. If it weren't for old folks, and young folks with a taste for all-female uber-soul acts from the East Bay, this kind of infectious shit would become the purview of the CDC's cryo-vaults.

Freedom Time by Linda Tillery

Dare I say, the joke is on both of us, since if you're still reading this blog then that's time you're not squeezing yourself into skinny blacks, doing blow in an LES club bathroom or picking up jailbait on Facebook.

The French Congestion

There's so much that's wrong with this picture.

More at the Bernard-Henri Lévy Hootenanny.

Urgh? Urgh! It's A Music War. Because Devo's Got An Uncontrollable Urge.

The Mummies were met with some enthusiasm when last aired at YM. This morning brings us Devo's original, via the seminal 1981 documentary. We got one or two more clips from the movie in the offing, including the inimitable Pere Ubu, later today. Til then, we'll be chewing on something to say about that whole thing, which, come to think about it, really shouldn't be worth your time or mine, because really, where's the controversy?

I Said: "Kiss Me, You're Beautiful" - These Are Truly The Last Days

Experimental film set to part of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "Dead Flag Blues" (with a monologue worth its weight and wait) from their debut album F♯A♯∞. Canadian musician Efrim Menuck often describes his recording sessions as a "Jewish experience" though fortunately that doesn't mean busting into neohasidic nigun.

If you haven't already, all of his stuff is worth seeking out. Hit the "sleep" button here, more on Brooklyn Vegan.

When do I get paid?

It only took 2 years of running Adsense on a dead blog to accumulate a 3-digit pay day. I will now delete the ad-sucking service and donate the $100 to Stop Prison Rape. Here's the dedication notice.

One Flew Over the Zionist's Head

For reasons beyond faith and ceremony, I was part of a roundtable discussion last Sunday morning with a bunch of young Jewish organization types hosted by Ariel Beery of PresenTense. I just want to get one quote on the record so there's no misinterpretation for the future:

"When Eli Valley was going to Jewish day school and reading Philip Roth, I was listening to Minor Threat and reading Maximum RocknRoll."

One guy in the room, Rabbi Charlie Buckholtz of The Community Synagogue on Sixth Street, appreciated my call for DIYaspora. He grew up in the DC area too (with Dave Chappelle no less) and he's co-writing a book on Peter Ivers (a must-read Wikipedia entry, kids) that's due out in the summer.

Minor Threat - "Look Back and Laugh"

I'm pretty sure I said it would be like this

From Clay Shirky's amazing new book, Here Comes Everybody:

The Hated - "Words Come Back"

Sad And Lonely Loser Hearts Will Beat As One For Gary Gygax.

Awesome.

This is like a Speak Memory thing, so you'll have to forgive the digression, but I can't help but be taken back to those early flashes of childhood wonderment, before my capacity for point and meaning was fully developed, when there would be no such thing as a nerd for another couple of years. We're talking the no-good crowd of the older brother of your best friend's neighbor circa The Village of Hommlet. From there to the pinnacle of the artform, The Tomb of Horrors. As is the wont, the whole scene eventually got a little out of hand. Half-elves running around with hundreds of thousands of pieces of platinum on their person, without any consideration for weight or inconvenience. We pretty much threw the rulebook out the window when it came to spells. I mean, who has 2 rounds to come up with a fireball (or was it a turn, I don't recall)? Paladins and monks were getting resurrected left and right. I have to admit I was probably complicit in letting our early discipline slide, having been Dungeon Master throughout much of this time. What's worse, I distinctly recall having had a couple of players in the mix at the time, including a 14th level druid and a female fighter who had lost one of her hands. Talk about a conflict of interest! In any event, when the Immortal Rules came around, I decided I'd had enough and cashed in my chips. My next major purchase was an original copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico which I found in a bargain bin in Warsaw in the spring of 1990. Clearly, I had a lot to make up for.

Smokestack Lightning, but Plenty of Parking

That (↑) is something I bought over the weekend. As the dear leader makes clear, it's important to support things that don't matter, like art or decaying American industries. Sup Kevin Scanlon is Xeni Jardin's uncle, and he has a show upcoming in W. Va that you should visit next time you're out shopping for 'shine &/or meth.

Honestly, the tipping point(™) was the "Two Hour Parking" sign on the right (as if! -- and though happy coincidences/occurences occur, I am betting Mr. Scanlon knew of its presence and might could be why he clicked). Church dome v. smokestack is nice too, but my money's on the street sign.

Should look nice next to my Smorkin Labbit.

You know who else liked brown shirts?

Anyone else following the Las Vegas ricin investigation? The cops keep saying they don't suspect it's terrorism-related, just that the guy had enough ricin to kill the entire city, was armed to the teeth, and had a copy of an "anarchist-type textbook," which any proper subversive knows is actually not such a great resource unless you're trying to blow off your hands.

I digress. Thing is that anyone who ekes out a living by drawing covers for sci-fi novels and whose closest friend is a cat is bound to carry a grudge against humanity that is far larger than Las Vegas and probably involves a history of atomic wedgies and skin conditions that kept him out of the military.

But this is not classified as terrorism because the real face of terrorism is two students with fireworks.

No Treehugging Over 2 Seconds

Now is not the time to criticize the weather, our troops don't need to hear pansy meteorologists forecasting gloom and doom while we're at war. Look, I'm all for freedom of speech, but in a time of war we have to watch what we say, especially meteorologists. Forecasting weather is paramount to treason. Meteorologists should move to Russia if they don't like the weather.
Posted by: sac on January 20, 2006 10:29 PM

Jeff Jarvis links to a Guardian piece about Gaia theorist James Lovelock's belief that we are at the point of no return when it comes to saving the planet as we know it. (And yes, the goofy Brit feels fine about it.) The Independent did the Lovelock-step 2 years ago - check related articles sidebar too - and it scared the hell out of me then.

For added context, remember that in Jan 2006 I had just returned from a month in Israel and while I enjoyed the beautiful country and people, I left firmly convinced that the prospect of Middle East Peace is division by zero and that End Times of one flavor or another are approaching sooner rather than later. We humans are pretty good at fooling ourselves.

So how did this affect me? As much as it sounds appealing to strap yourself to twin 400-pound thrust, degeneratively hedonistic rocket engines to Planet Cocaine-n-French-Whores, I found myself latching onto Judaism's social justice core, not Black Hat Zionism as some have joked. Working at a non-profit seemed like a natural fit, volunteering and donating large swaths of my income were the logical next steps.

As a cynical idealist and compassionate pragmatist, I do this not because of some grand illusion of long-range hope (that would be audacity of the highest order), but because, believe it or not, I am a huge supporter of doing things that ultimately don't make a difference. (Example: this blog.) Simply, I figure that if our time here is shorter than expected, then we have to act even quicker to help the people who are less fortunate so that they can enjoy life while the clock runs out. To muck another metaphor, if the world is about to have its tubes pulled, it's time to pass out heavenly heavy pain meds to everyone in this giant hospice. Live fast, die respectfully. Something like that.

Taxes, Death and Trouble

I don't recollect much music at my grandmother's house, which always contrasted with all the music in the car on the ride from Seattle to Wenatchee. My parents played lots of Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, Emmylou Harris and Joni Mitchell, oldies and classic rock radio. But the stereo at Grandma's house? I can't hear it in my memory, and certainly can't remember her ever turning it on.

One summer, nearing thirteen, I looked through her music collection for something to listen to. A small collection of cassettes were perfectly arranged on a living room bookshelf, and the sound system was dusted to a gleam that suggested sacred inviolability, not frequent use. I didn't recognize any of the performers then, but I must have registered their names, because years later I would encounter a flash of recognition when I was re-introduced to the likes of Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline.

For my grandmother, the place for music was church -- I can remember trying to hum along as she sang "Nearer My God to Thee" at the local baptist congregation. A stubborn survivor of the twentieth century, she smiled and laughed openly, honestly and often, but I only ever heard her sing hymns and I never got to see her dance -- yet she must have swung with rhythm in her time. My sadness is having missed it.

Towards the end of what promised to be the last ride over the pass to see my grandmother tonight, my mom and I talked about about family history while listening to Gram Parsons. Her hope is to find a bluegrass band for a proper send-off, one which can do justice to standards like "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." The suggestion triggered me to remember George Jones as having appeared most frequently in that neat row of tapes I once perused.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken by George Jones

Thanks, grandma.