On the off chance you haven’t noticed, we’re taking the summer off. Writing up new material, redesigning the layout, changing servers, all that stuff. As Stan Lee would say, Excelsior!
In the meantime, I’ll be periodically posting mp3 mix tapes. This one is basically for stoners, and it’s best enjoyed outside on randomized order. A soul one is coming soon and you can probably expect more after that (depending on how long the redesign takes).
Tracklist and a mediafire link are after the jump.
A New Hope?
Well it’s now late May and the Mets are sitting right around the .500 mark that they were projected at for the season. There have been some expected things, like Oliver Perez and John Maine not really being people you want to bet 40% of your starts on, or Carlos Beltran’s lack of knees. There have been some positive things, like Mike Pelfrey’s surprising decent-ness as a starter, Rod Barajas’s home run total, or Ike Davis’s emergence as an above-average big-league first baseman. There have been some negative things, like Jose Reyes’s batting average, Elmer Dessens’s presence on the roster, or the sheer number of players’ last names that end in “s”.
The other night I was really craving a good hamburger. Like, totally juicy, stuffed with pungent blue cheese and topped with caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, lettuce, tomato, spicy mustard, and ketchup. Not your standard picayune burger. (Side Note: I’ve been reading a lot of David Foster Wallace recently, and he uses the word picayune three times in one essay. Really, David?)
Since I’d been trying to meet up with a friend of mine for a while for dinner, and since I only had about half of what I needed to achieve my burger dreams and since those burger dreams demanded achievement, I suggested dinner at my place – halfsies on ingredients. Of course the beers were a bonus, and the cheese might have been a little pricey, but I think we did well for way less than we would have paid eating out. Right, Bryan, right? Those burgers were delicious. The kind of thick, heavily laden burgers that need to be squashed flat before being eaten. Bam. Burger magic.
Little Women, Sex and the City, and Foucault’s Repressive Hypothesis
In The History of Sexuality (1976), Michel Foucault writes about the “repressive hypothesis” – that, in human desire to become fully liberated and the masters of our sexuality, our overbearing discourse and need to tell about it has actually made us more subject to it than ever. The more we voice how incredible our new Magic Wand is; the guy we met at our friends’ party who we gave an anonymous and simultaneous hand-on-genitals to; the more we admit our complete and utter lack of power. This example of duped self-owning can perhaps best be seen in two works about infuriatingly zesty women written over two centuries apart: the March sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy) of Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) and the “fashionistas” of HBO’s Sex and the City (Miranda, Carrie, Charlotte, and Samantha). While all of these women openly discuss their liberation ad nauseum, one cannot help but notice their slavery to the heteronormative white male regime. And above all: none of these women can really grasp how truly annoying they are because of this.
The face of the Met-killing franchise.
So, here’s the thing- I should be happy. After winning 9 out of their last 11 games, the Mets are only ½ a game out of first, and seem to have turned things around after a dreadful start. But unfortunately, I knew there was a catch (there’s always a freakin catch). And the catch here is that while they may look decent on the surface, this Metropolitan squad will never, ever beat this current Philadelphia Phillies team.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, we’ll win some games here and there. But when the chips are down and we need a W against them, either to make a statement (as we needed to do last night) or just to stay in the race (I’ve got the August 13-15 series circled on my calendar as the weekend the season effectively ends), such wins shall not be readily forthcoming, methinks.
Big news: I’m broke. I mean, what’s new? Except this time I really am. This time I made the egregious error of spending all my savings on a ticket to St. Croix at the end of May. Which will be great, for sure. And I’m trying to look at this whole not-being-able-to-buy-groceries for a month thing as a pre-bikini diet. And the ensuing frugality as a training of sorts for when I do decide to save money for some grander purpose. And as a force-fed way to find cheap eats, right? I’m trying to be very blessing-in-disguise about the low funds (and the two painful weeks until my next paycheck), but I’m finding it just a smidge difficult – at least until I remember Chinatown buns.
You may be familiar with a few Jim Jones’s. One is the lovable hip-hop star and member of Dipset who brought you such hits as “We Fly High” and “Honey Dip.” But then there was another Jim Jones—a much creepier Jim Jones. This Jim Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples’ Temple, a cult which carried through one of the largest mass-suicides in recorded history. After murdering a San Francisco congressman who was visiting Jones’s purchased land in Guyana (which had been dubbed “Jonestown”), more than 900 of his devoted followers toasted their accomplishment with a refreshing glass of cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. Flavor Aid?! Jeez, they couldn’t even spring for Kool-Aid?! Or Tang?! Jones later put a bullet in his brain.
Greetings Metropolitan enthusiasts! So here we are, two weeks into the 2010 season, and I feel a bit slighted as I didn’t even get to make my first post before the Mets were looking up in the standings at the Washington Nationals. So goes life as a Mets fan.
After a several week hiatus, Robert Downey Jr. and I are back and ready for action! I would guess that most have never heard of this week’s film, Johnny Be Good (1988). Remember little Anthony Michael Hall, John Hughes’ nerd extraordinaire? Imagine something decided to make a movie wherein Hall played the jock rather than the dweeb. Okay, let’s take that a step further. Not only is he a football player, but he’s one of the top players in the country, being recruited by schools from all over the nation. Unbelievable as this may be, herein lies the premise of this late-eighties gem (note: “gem” to be read with intense sarcasm).
Anyone can do it
Every spring the baseball faithful get a chance to dream of victory, even when they know it’s out of reach. On Opening Day, even the Pirates and my fantasy team are tied for first in their league. So let us hope together now, you and I.
Though my pre-season baseball research is mostly scrambling to figure out ways to amuse and annoy people with my fantasy draft picks, I also tend to take a measure of the general expectations that writers have for the Mets. This year was no different ($26 Hunter Pence, anyone?), so I read several professional opinions about the study in mediocrity expected of the Mets this year. Basically, unlike previous years, no one is picking them to win the division or wildcard.