Out of my window I saw a four-foot guy (approx.) in thick black framed glasses and a vintage ski coat. And I think I just came up with a great children's book title: The Littlest Hipster.

Feel free to co-op that. I ain't writing the damn thing. I'm going to sleep.

"Sum Shit I Wrote" (Common [Sense], Resurrection)

Felt like cleaning out some ol' shit lying around my cellar; this one, a little doodle I wrote in the Fix before it even had a record shop, was actually what I spun up off a Craig's List ad to get me into SNR. And the rest is history. Of a sort.

And if you didn't know, OK Soda was this, and squagels were the subject of David Cross' ire, once.

Jed and James are sitting on beanbag chairs around a table with a very large water pipe on it, and a dinner bell. Jed is scribbling frantically in a notebook with a big Spongebob Squarepants sticker on it. They are clearly very, very high.

JAMES
Jed, it’s a bad idea.

JED
What d’you mean it’s a bad idea?

JAMES
Who’s going to buy a greeting card that says, “Sorry you died”?

JED
Wrong question, man, wrong question. The question is, who isn’t going to buy a “Sorry you died” card. Death is, like, a part of life, man. The end part. Everyone loses loved ones, no one wants to go to funerals, but oh, what can they do about it? (James doesn’t respond) I’m asking you, what can they do?

JAMES
What can they do.

JED
(quickly, thrusting a “Eureka!” finger) They can send a “Sorry you died” card. That’s what they can do, my friend. (with the pipe in his mouth, garbling his words) This is gonna be bigger than birthday cards, my man.

JAMES
How are people who are dead even going to receive “Sorry you died” cards? Jesus, you come up with some stupid ideas when you’re high, but this is worse than when you made me join your ukulele jam band.

JED
We were ahead of our time. Our followers are still catching up.

JAMES
Or the dancing doll of Robert Smith from The Cure?

JED
The Dancin’ James Brown people ripped me off, man.

JAMES
Or Orbitz.

JED
Look, man, it’s not my fault people weren’t ready for soda with little globules of gelatin floating around in it, alright? No one laughed at bubble tea, did they? Huh? (picking up the dinner bell and ringing it) Edmund!

Edmund, a butler, enters.

EDMUND
Yes, sir?

JED
Edmund, tell Sam to get off the phone with the people from Berlin and come down here, a-sap.

EDMUND
I believe he’s attempting to sell Germany on the Kung-Fu Dodgeball League, sir.

JED
Kung-Fu Dodgeball sells itself! Get him down here!

EDMUND
Yes, sir.

JED
Oh, and could you also bring us some squagels and a jar of jelly-jam? We’re quite hungry.

EDMUND
(slightly revolted) Square bagels and peanut butter and jelly in the same jar. Yes, sir.

JED
And maybe a couple cans of OK Soda?

EDMUND
Certainly.

Edmund leaves.

JAMES
Peanut butter and jelly doesn’t taste as good out of the same jar! And OK Soda tasted like flat orange soda!

JED
James, I apologize for not asking if you would prefer a Crystal Pepsi. I’m sorry.

JAMES
And square bagels? Of all the useless…

JED
Whose house is this? Whose pot were we smoking? Whose Electric Light Orchestra album were we listening to?

JAMES
(after a pause) Yours.

JED
That’s right. This is my house and if I offer you a snack of some of my finest inventions, you will say thank you. If this was your house, I would gladly eat all the foodstuffs you got mass-marketed.

Enter Edmund (with a tray of squagels, jelly-jam, and OK Soda) and Sam, a loud-talker in a sharp double-breasted suit.

SAM
Boss, I got good news! The Berlin Buddah Monks just became the 15th franchise in the World League of Kung-Fu Dodgeball!

JED
I see a rivalry with the Rotterdam Ronin!

SAM
Not to mention the Amsterdam Eagle Fist!

JED
(ripping a page from his notebook and handing him his OK Soda) Sam, have an OK Soda to celebrate, and then you get back up there and sell Hallmark on this. It’s a sure-fire sell.

SAM
(looks at the page) “Sorry you died” cards? You’ve done it again, sir! (downing the OK Soda) Ah, the taste of Generation X!

Sam leaves, Edmund enters.

EDMUND
Sir, a Mr. Dave Matthews is at the door. He is asking if your ukulele band wants to “jam” with him.

JED
Tell him I’ll be right there.

JAMES
(beside himself with anger, shaking his OK Soda) It’s…not…fair.

JED
Dude, take it easy. I’m angry OK Soda didn’t make it out of test-marketing either, man, but…que sera, y’know? Now is Uke Juke gonna play with Dave Matthews or what?

JAMES
(pause, then reaches for his ukulele, hidden behind the chair) Uke Juke will play.

JED
(grabbing his ukulele and getting up) I told you this was a good idea. Let’s rock.

"Holiday Rap" (MC Miker G and DJ Sven)

In honor of your day off, I present to you possibly the worst rap song ever. I first heard this one at about 4 a.m. on Mexican radio on my way to Benito Juárez International Airport. Strangely, it hasn't gotten any less surreal since.

"Pokerface" (Ghostface [Killah], More Fish

Someone once asked me...

MIKE said...
Suggested blog topic: Why do white people like Ghostface so much?

I'll tell you what, I'm White People and I don't really know. I call here for a greater explanation from Professor-to-be Cameron L-Picone of a certain University clad in crimson to write me a few lines on this, since he is the blackest white person I know, but I'll give you two reasons I do.

1) Shuffling poker chips on a hip-hop track sound are awesome. I genuinely understand what Pretty Toney is talking about here.

2) I love Speed Racer.

Miles Davis Shouldn't Rap #4: Easy Mo Bee

Easy Mo Bee created "Flava In Ya Ear" for Craig Mack, "I Love The Dough" for Biggie (which I've actually come around on since I wrote this even if it is just a bumped up Angela & Rene song), a nice chunk of Ready To Die, and.....Doo Bop.

But I don't blame him for this record. No, I still blame a Miles Davis who went quickly from a period of recording few complete records (even Get Up With It was table scraps) to making something, following his producers' leads more than he did with Teo, because the wear created by the drugs were finally making it difficult. He produced a decent record with a Danish guy ("Electric Red"?) and a weird vaguely political record with crappy pop covers. (And both of the original songs are good songs!)

And yes, I'd rather Doo Bop never exist, but artists of Miles' caliber are allowed mistakes. On The Corner was one to a lot of people too, especially at the time.

And yes, young Easy Mo Bee couldn't possibly turn down a chance to work with Miles, and Miles probably died too early to complete this record, much like this one.

The experience of going through this Divine Comedy through this pop-rap-jazz-crap-whatever record, which ends here, has made me realize that there is something to be gained to hearing almost any LP in the proper context, albeit not on headphones. I've bored a little deeper into this one than I wanted to but I'm happy I did it.

But fuck a Grammy. I mean, seriously, fuck a Grammy.

"Pimpin' Ain't Easy" (Big Daddy Kane, It's A Big Daddy Thing)

Oh dear god. As my friend Matthew Schneider-Mayerson (one of the auteurs behind the Lincoln piggy assassination, clip below) put it, right in this clip, "larry the cable guy enters the national debate over the war."

For the record "Larry The Cable Guy" is a stupid, exaggerated character created by this lame comic...



...who has transformed quickly into the redneck Andrew "Dice" Clay. Clay, of course, was a (perhaps) once entertaining character created by one Andrew Clay Silverstein which became just plain irritating. Both are fun to use in one's individual ironic contexts. But how exactly would Andrew Dice Clay's Iraq policy work?

Before:

Jack and Jill went up the hill
And Jack would try to hump her.
Jill said No / and Jack said So
I'll ram it in your dumper.

After?

"Jill" was actually a group of several friends: Sheila, Sunny, and Karla. They were miserable because they were being pimped by a guy named Saddam. Without a plan, we shot him in the head, somewhat like Travis Bickle shot Sport in Taxi Driver. Sheila and Sunny and Karla were kind of hoping we'd actually give them a better life thereafter. Not so much so.

Miles Davis Shouldn't Rap #3: "The Doo Bop Song"

"The Doo Bop Song" is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, possibly. Which explains why it's attached to the dumbest post on the dumbest movie ever, Finding Forrester.

Seriously, this is a song in which Miles Davis blows three notes while some guys you've never heard of sing...

"Just kickin' that doo bop sound, just kickin' that doo bop sound..."

...and you have to ask, what the shit is that? Hip-hop plus doo-wop plus Miles' first style, be-bop?

As for the rhymes, I dunno, Easy Mo Bee, the producer of this record and of such actual good songs as "Flava In Ya Ear" by Craig Mack (1994?), just can't rap. Consult the lyrics if you like...I can't seem to find them in the ten minutes I'm taking to write this on my lunch break...but I'd rather use the lyrics I made up for a play I wrote the first draft of six years ago. (And man, was it rough then.)

JIM
When I rent a car, a-yo I rent from Avis/
And I'm chilling on the corner with Miles Davis!

Absolute madness. More on Easy Mo Bee next time. And yeah, if you're reading this, just like Sean Connery in above-mentioned bad movie about two writers who could not exist, one based off one that does, well, what can I say? You're the man now. Dog.

"Dollar Bill" (Count Bass D, Begborrowsteal)

Saw a guy wearing a black Yankees cap, of a sort, waiting for the E train to move from 23rd-Ely. It had a golden hundred dollar bill pattern stitched to the side. And rather than find it ironic, I thought, "Cool." But then again, a few minutes later I was staring at the subway map as the train stayed in the station just wanting the damn thing to move, so my opinion of the moment might have been a bit disjointed.

"All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother." -Abraham Lincoln

(My friend Matthew Schneider-Mayerson wrote the below introduction for his video I'm putting up per his request. I have yet to see it, but I await that viewing eagerly. Enjoy. -jd)

MSM:

Here you'll find two clips from our 262 part series, Scenes from the Life of Lincoln. You'll note, of course, that Honest Abe is played by a pig. This is not a coincidence, but it is not necessarily intentional.

First, a note on our actor. This is Minibus' first major film, and we thought he was perfect for the role. Primarily, he is a domesticated sausagebowl, provided the stability that your average wild animal just can't provide. The zebra we imported bit the cinematographer time and time again, and the elephant was unable to display the subtle emotional shades that this film required. The lion did a striking (if somewhat inappropriate) version of Lincoln, but was unable to cry on cue.

The opening sequence, with a steroidal Americana song and a series of images of Lincoln, is meant to invoke both the open-endedness of history -- the way even basic historical facts are open to subjective interpretation -- and of the tendency toward revisionism. Did Lincoln really wear a dress? Doubtful, but who's to judge?

Perhaps the most jarring moment is the opening of the Gettysburg address. What's meant by this? Do the filmmakers intend to compare Lincoln to a domesticated ungulate and imply that his message of "a new birth of freedom" and equality for all seasons was merely rhetoric? Are we to infer, further, that the slimy yet sexy words of all politicians are to be equally distrusted? As a character says in the classic film Glitter in response to the self-posed (and to this discussion very relevant) question of "Is she white? Is she black?", I don't know.

The other critical moment I want to talk about here -- and I have so little time, my boat is leaving, hey there, you! give me back my catamaran! -- is the assassination sequence. This has become the controversy of our time, now that angry seas of Brangelina and TomKat have settled. Minibus, as Lincoln, begins eating the ketchup, his own blood. This was entirely improvised, so maybe only the star himself can address this question. What is meant by this? The blood of Lincoln sanctified, deified the great man, and cemented the resolve of a nation (although blood is actually not useful as cement). In his death, he became more than a man -- he became a man-God. Perhaps, as in the Borges story about Irish town that stages an assassination, Lincoln actually orchestrated his own death. Perhaps he had betrayed the Union, and his punishment was to save it by martyring himself. Is this what's meant by the pig drinking the ketchup? And why does the pig refuse to sit lifeless after his putative death, even as military taps swell around his piglike head? Is it because Lincoln refuses to die, is it that he remains even more relevant and politically powerful today than when he was actually president?

Thank you for your time.

Miles Davis Shouldn't Rap #2: "Human Nature"

(Presently I don't have the song file necessary to finish this post, second of a series on Miles Davis' Doo Bop, but later today, an awful Miles Davis cover of a Michael Jackson record [not on said Doo Bop album] will explain this haiku. Seriously. Unless I forget it tonight because this is the worst holiday ever.)

Blow your horn away.
Liked the original, but,
Just die already.



(Video from 1991. Nearly dead.)

[Edit: a few hours later.]

Here's "Human Nature" if you can possibly stomach it. Oh, and happy valentine's day. Whatever.

"What?" (Devin The Dude, To Tha X-Treme)

Seriously, I'd heard of it before, but what is this bullshit? (Sorry that's not a free NYT article anymore, but I picked it of a paper I found on the G train.) The more times I read this, the stupider it is. And I'm a little surprised that this isn't badly written.

"Working Class Hero" (John Lennon, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band)

I'm not sure what this is beyond being a semi-esoteric brief monologue built from a stolen quote that sort of baffled my friend Nick, but that's pretty much the reason I'm posting it. Thoughts appreciated.

ALEX
Nothing's that big a deal. If you want to hit a baseball, you practice hitting a baseball. If you want to play shortstop, you practice playing shortstop; if you want to play third base, as I now do, you practice playing third base. There is no mental element if you tell yourself there's no mental element and just swing the bat. (beat) If Joe wants me to take out the trash, I take out the trash. I don't question authority, honestly.

Joe enters with a bag of trash. Alex takes it, Joe leaves. Beat.

ALEX
I don't think I meant that literally.

Pause. Alex sort of shrugs, goes off to put the bag of trash out. It's a heavy bag. End.

Miles Davis Shouldn't Rap #1

Today is the first day of an attempt to truly understand what a bad record actually is. A daily analysis of Doo Bop, one of the most inexplicable creations in our godless universe. Probably about four days worth but the four days worth may be spread out over six.

Doo Bop is essentially Miles Davis' rap record. I wrote a play with a fake reference to it before I'd actually heard the record because the concept of Miles Davis on a rap record is just that stupid. There are things to contemplate about it that I'll probably post tomorrow.

No Context Necessary #4

"Si Acabo (La Malanga)" (Bobby Hutcherson, Montara)

The most well-known quote from Malcolm Lowry's Under The Volcano translates oddly online.

"¿LE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN, QUE ES SUYO? ¡EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO DESTRUYAN!"

(Rough simple translation: "Do you like this garden that is yours? Be careful that your children don't destroy it!")

(The soft voice of http://ets.freetranslation.com/: He likes this garden, that is its? Avoid that its children destroy it!)

But there are worse translations.

"Love Is Strange" (Mickey & Sylvia)

An entire show some friends of mine put on, roughly, is on YouTube. You'll have to click on this if you care to watch it, because it's a strung-together set of clips, but Rob, Laura, Matt, and Stacy are funny motherfuckers and I wish I could have been there to see this live. The writers' blogs are on the sidebar, by the way, as is Stacy's Manhattan Comedy Collective. I miss doing Saturday Night Rewritten even if I don't miss the title.

"King of Pain" (The Police, Synchronicity)

I'm getting a little tired of Bill Simmons and haven't even watched The Grammies yet, nor am I sure that I will, but there was one line of his running diary of the dumbest show in music that I sort of loved.

"8:01 -- The Police kick things off with their much-ballyhooed reunion, which would have had me 20 times more fired up if this were 1995. I can't believe it took them 23 years to forget how much they hated one another. Most bands only need five or six. Better late than never, I guess."

If you actually care about awards, J Dilla rocked an entirely different awards show, among several other artists. (The list below is significantly edited from the source.)

Album of the Year: Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

Female Artist of the Year: Neko Case

Hip Hop Album of the Year: Spank Rock - Yoyoyoyoyo

DJ Album of the Year: Girl Talk - Night Ripper

Avant Album of the Year: Xiu Xiu - The Air Force

Artist of the Year: J Dilla

Live Act of the Year: Broken Social Scene

Song of the Year: Band of Horses - "The Funeral"

Record Producer of the Year: J Dilla

Music Video of the Year: Wolf Parade - "I'll Believe in Anything"

Album Art/Packaging: Hot Chip - The Warning

Record Label of the Year: Sub Pop

Live Music Venue of the Year: Bowery Ballroom
(J. Drimmer: Really?)

Music Festival of the Year: South by Southwest

Music Blog of the Year: Brooklyn Vegan

Magazine of the Year: Paste

College/Non-Commercial Radio Station of the Year: KEXP

Record Store of the Year: Amoeba Music, Hollywood, CA

Specialty Show of the Year (Commercial Radio): Sirius Left of Center - Blog Radio

Podcast of the Year: WOXY.com Lounge Acts

The Sample and the Source vol. 3: J Dilla and The Jackson Five

Tonight at Galapagos Art Space a few Stones Throw away from my joint in Greenpoint, a one-of-a-kind event is coming off that, to your luck if you're in New York, was not featured in the Village Voice, which I guess might still give a shot of getting in. That is, if you think a free event hosted by the reemerged Pharoah Monch with a Brooklyn Brewery open bar from 10-11 p.m. and some of the greatest hip-hop ever playing from the speakers has any chance of going under the radar. The event is Donuts Are Forever, a special event to celebrate the life and life's work of J Dilla/ Jay Dee, possibly the greatest hip-hop producer ever.

The amazing instrumental record the event's title references, Donuts, was completed by Dilla as he lay dying, using whatever minimal equipment could be moved into Jay's hospital room; although the beats may be his best ever, they are also simpler insomuch as they are a return to the bread-and-butter of hip-hop production, pure sampling. (Jay's trademark drum productions are nowhere to be found; either they couldn't haul the drum machines in, or he just didn't want to go out like that.) Simple, but beautiful; heartbreaking too, when you know where he was when he made this record, what he knew would be among his last acts of creation before the Creator came for him, much like Matisse's cutouts. I've listened to this record more than anything I've owned since I was 13 and first bought Midnight Marauders, and that record was what actually started me as a serious music listener.

The sample source of "Time: The Donuts Of The Heart" off Donuts is a Jackson Five track, "All I Do Is Think Of You"; it retains the melancholy of the track, but speeds it up in interesting ways, then finds an ill spot to just luxuriate (or perhaps, judging from the female voice in the background, bonestorm). Sure, you lose a performance by Michael of the sort that actually had people convinced he might be straight, and the bassoon touch in "All I Do..." needs to be heard, but I think this is just a great example of just how little a hip-hop producer needs to do sometimes to create a magic minute. The hip-hop producer, after all, is just the cousin of the DJ, and the DJ was born the first time cats like Kool Herc discovered the joy of playing the sweet spot of a record again and again.

The video below is mindblowing as well...a Korean punk rock band covering this very Dilla song. Read that sentence again.

Oh, and then look again at the shirt Jay's wearing at the top of the picture. And tell me where I can buy that.

Head out to Williamsburg if you can, especially since I can't be there. Rest in peace, James Yancey.

J Dilla- "Time: The Donuts Of The Heart"

The Jackson Five- "All I Do Is Think Of You"

Hip-Hop Lines: Greatest Misses

"...America, we love you
Because you rock and you roll with so much soul
You can 'rock 'til you're a hundred and one years old..."
-Wondermic of the Sugar Hill Gang, "Rapper's Delight" (Long version.)

America was actually 203 years old at the time Wondermic spat these lines. Later in the long version of the song, another member of the Gang, Big Bank Hank, kicks the line "you never let an emcee steal your rhymes" (90% or so of his rhymes were taken directly from the rhyme book of a real emcee, Grandmaster Cas of the Cold Crush Brothers) and has a line about Farrah Fawcett without a face. Ew.

"I dominate break loops, giving mics ministral cycles..."
-Nas, "It Ain't Hard To Tell"

It would appear the post-Nasty, pre-Esco (i.e., "good") Nas is talking about menstrual cycles rather than making up a word having something to do with ministers. Then again, it's so easy to become a minister in the Universal Life Church, perhaps Nas has in fact made each of his microphones men of the cloth?

Speaking of men of the cloth...

"Every jam we play, we break two needles
There's three of us but we're not the Beatles!"
-Run of Run-D.M.C., "King Of Rock"

First of all, only a really bad DJ would break not one, but two needles at a jam. Jam Master Jay (R.I.P.) was not a bad DJ.

But this line drew my attention because, well, what's Run got against Ringo? (Assuming John, Paul, and George are the three Beatles he's thinking of.) Okay, sure, he's more a "Beatle" than a Beatle, but his drumming got the job done. If this was a dis track, it shoulda at least been titled "Fuck Ringo." That's a record I'd like to see made. But then again, I'm still waiting on "Kill Bin Laden."

"What's next, what's next, what's N-X-E-T?"
-Warren G, "What's Next"

This isn't even dyslexic. This is simply retarded.

"30's the new 20, n@*$a, I'm still hot"
-Jay-Z, "30 Something"

Where to begin?

a) No, it's not. And pink isn't the new black, and ubiquity isn't the new exclusivity and night isn't the new day and [ ] isn't the new [ ] unless you're saying something logical, as in, "Daniel Craig is the new James Bond," and if you ever use this sentence construct in my presence you may find that a punch in the head is the new handshake.

b) Jay's not so much 30 as he is damn near 40.

c) Kingdom Come sucked and the album before it (Black, not Grey) was your best. To paraphrase "Encore", you may be less like Jordan coming back wearing the 45 and more like Jordan...wearing the teal?

"Black Cop" (KRS-One, Return Of The Boom Bap)

I think I enjoy this more than I should due to my love of the KRS-One song dude flips into a tribute to Coaches Dungy and Smith, but at the very least, it's a hell of a lot better than most of the reverent, over-the-top bullshit that came out of the convergence of two black coaches in the Super Bowl and the shortest, coldest month of the year: Black History Month. It's a nice footnote, not Martin Luther King's whole dream, people. (25,000-plus hits? [Side note= Malcolm X gets 346. I'm not saying what you may think I'm saying: I find this shit just as mystifying as the King connection.]) And we all know nothing's really been accomplished until there are black men in space, right?

(Free Desmond Pfeiffer!)

"Why Hip-Hop Sucks In '96" (DJ Shadow, Endtroducing...)

Same reason it sucks even more in 2007. It's the money...

"Orange Pineapple Juice" (Common, Resurrection)

Gnarls Barkley is holding a weird haiku contest, theme "Solitude" or "Pineapple," (or, if possible, both) so I had to spin up a couple. The subjects aren't exactly in my wheelhouse, but I might have come up with one and a half good ones. Feel free to vote for the one I should submit in the comments.

staring at the walls
drinking rum and pineapple
alone is okay.

holding thorny fruit
with no knife to open it
i miss you so much.

acidic, sweet life
drowning in too much syrup
canned love, overripe.

girl, be the dole corp.
I'll be a third world country
please, fuck me over.

"The Horse Song" (Iggy Pop)

Rexy, Rexy, Rexy...good God. The Chicago Bears were somehow still in a game where they were utterly and totally (statistically) dominated, thanks to Devin "Tecmo Super Bowl" Hester (because only in the classic NES game is it so easy to break past a few guys at the line and then be gone like Buster Douglas) making for the best beginning to a Super Bowl ever; one mighty Thomas Jones run and a sharp Rex Grossman TD near the goal line; a shitty Colts punt that made a short drive for a field goal quite easy; and the Colts' total failure to score touchdowns and put the game away. But then, Rex, you finally had to give in to your "Gun"slinger nature and say Fuck it, I'm throwing it downfield. Down by five points, you threw an ugly, limp dick of a pass that couldn't not be intercepted; seriously, your wide receiver, Mushin Muhammad, was actually boxed out by one of the two Colts covering him as your terrible dying quail hung there for one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi...and was subsequently returned for a touchdown. And...game over.

The Colts were clearly the better team in this sloppy, sloppy game, featuring two series of back-to-back turnovers (as in, fumble, followed up by fumble on the very next play), Cedric Benson's injury seemed to take a lot of wind out of the Bears' sails, and all the same, the Bears kept it close, in what was an entertaining game down to the end, at least if you'd bet the Bears with the +7. Billy Joel sung what I actually thought was a classy, dignified, and not that showy Star-Spangled Banner, thus covering the under (1:44, of course, being the over/under on everyone's favorite Super Bowl prop bet, except for the degenerates who actually bet the coin flip [and by the way, 5 of the last 6 Super Bowl teams to win the coin flip lost the game]), and the ads were alright, although why Super Bowl advertisements = talking animals and semi-homoerotic humor, I can't tell you. It did seem unfortunate, however, that the only ad featuring talking monkeys was the worst of an impressive crop of Budweiser/Bud Light ads, and I'm including the Carlos Mencia ads in here.

Hail, hail the Colts, and may this be the start of us hearing a little bit less about Peyton Manning, but he was not the Super Bowl MVP, not with one TD, one INT, one shaky half, and one solid half of football.

The MVP was, of course, the skinny motherfucker with the high voice. Sure, his set didn't contain many surprises on his own tracks: three from the Purple Rain OST plus five seconds of "1999", but at least "Baby, I'm A Star" was a surprise from said OST...I would have preferred "When Doves Cry" over "Let's Go Crazy," especially since "Let's Go..." was played ad nauseam in the ads for halftime. But the covers were an interesting lot, with "All Along The Watchtower" (a natural fit, more delicate than Hendrix's version with the right about of guitar God-dery thrown in) looping into...a Foo Fighters song? "The Best Of You?" Which sounded...awesome?

All this on a rain-soaked, glowing Love Symbol, with his back-up dancers somehow wiggling around in high heels. Yeah, Rex Grossman fell down twice in what were counted sacks, Muhammad nearly fell in the middle of his touchdown celebration, and Prince dancers in high heels didn't even budge from the slick ground.

Best Super Bowl halftime ever. With the In Living Color halftime show that caused channels to flip over to Fox instead of seeing the NFL's "A Winter Carnival" as a close second, the now-creepier Michael Jackson halftime show, last year's semi-emasculated Rolling Stones show, and, I suppose, the infamous wardrobe malfunction somewhere in there for sheer memorability.

If you were too busy watching Puppy Bowl III and missed the other Bowl, here's the only highlight reel you need. Now I'm going to go see if Jerome knows where my mirror at.

"Red, Red, Red" (Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine)

Isn't the Cleveland Indians' logo bad enough without scalping poor Chief Wahoo right on the hat? I really thought things had gone forward between sports and the American Indian since the fade of the Tomahawk Chop and the retirement of Chief Nokahoma.*

*Atlanta Braves mascot. You know, as in "knock a homer"? Hilarious, ain't it?!

"Southside Superbowl" (Common & Kanye West)

This is definitely the best song in preparation for a World Championship that isn't likely coming since Paul Wall's song about the Houston Astros pre-2005 World Series. Gotta love the big-ups to Oprah, Jennifer Hudson, and the 1985 Bears, as well as the lack of sheer embarrassment this song includes, unlike the ol' Shuffle. It's a nice 1:30 quickie with a hot Kanye beat that I kinda wish had ended up on Common's West-produced Be, a letdown after the hype and the enjoyable if not always successful freakiness of Electric Circus. Then again, the Shuffle is enduring, albeit not in the right ways.

By the way, if Kanye understands "how the soldiers feel" through war at Soldier Field, give the man a gun. Having viewed the above atrocity of a renovation just yards from Ma and Dad's home in the Chi, however, I will admit that it is an Iwo Jima to the eyes.

Click here for "Southside Superbowl." Look below if you somehow have never Shuffled.



(My prior prediction still stands, by the way, and I am tempted to root for the Colts just so I can stop hearing about Peyton Manning for awhile. But I love an underdog, and can't imagine what it'd be like to see Sexy Rexy have a 20-25, 300 yards, 3 TD game. So yeah, let's shuffle/hustle Bears. And go Rex Grossman, you glorious non-Jew. F*&# it, let's throw downfield.)

"Incarcerated Scarfaces" (Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx)

A Seoul survey of Korean police and jailed mobsters found that 65% of police were somewhat or very satisfied were happy with their life in law enforcement, while a whopping 79.3% of Korean mobsters reported the same level of satisfaction with their career. Yup, JAILED mobsters enjoy their work more than free cops. So, everything 2Pac, Martin Scorsese, and Scarface taught me is actually true? I'm speechless. I never thought the Infernal Affairs trilogy (as well as the American adaptation, The Departed) were meant to be interpreted this way. I guess crime indeed pays in mad ways.

Fascinating Filmography of the Day: David Kellogg

Director of the mighty infamous Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool as Ice and...a buncha video Playmate calendars. And a Lionel Richie video. Oh, and Inspector Gadget...the Matthew Broderick one, that is.

Also the writer of Playboy: Farmer's Daughters.

I'm as confused as you are. I coulda sworn Gore Vidal wrote that one.

Ah, truth. The more of strange, strange you I find, the less I want to bother with fiction.