Tilt shift parade rant

The City of Samba from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Tilt shift can make anything look amazing. Case in point, me talking about a parade video. I hate parades worse than crotch itch. I've never been to Rio, and I've never experienced carnavale. This ish looks kinda crazy, so I'm not ready to write off parades completely, but...

Any parade I've been to is bad food, annoying music, and way too many sweaty, gaping mouth-breathers. In Portland, the Rose Parade is a license for suburbanites to literally pitch tents and camp out on the sidewalk for days with all their cousins' cousins, blocking traffic, and spewing litter. As a kid, the Macy's day parade was a huge deal. I remember going one year. Things that stuck out: big floats, sequined dancers, Buster Douglas (he had just upset Mike Tyson and was the sports celeb of the moment); also too many Griswolds in one place, no way to get across the parade route, and having to pee really really bad and not being able to find a place to go...so maybe I'm a little biased. Maybe it's just the generic, American, Disney-fied parades that are terrible, I need to get to Brasil for a followup; or maybe just down to Mardi Gras, cause that ish on Treme is intense.

Truth in Hip Hop: The X

This is one of the best interviews in hip hop ever thanks to Power 105.1 DJ Envy, Charlemagne the God, and Angela Yee. If you love the real, you gotta have a soft spot in your heart for X. Dude sold a ridiculous number of albums, stayed the most grimy rapper; prayed like a preacher, and barked like a dog. Most recently, he's the rapper that stays losing, getting locked up for what seem to be easily avoidable situations over and over again. "Anger gets the best of me sometimes" he admits in this vid. Perhaps an understatement, as he is referring to a famous incident where he impersonated an FBI agent at the airport, in the process of other sitcom-worthy infractions. He may not have the strongest grasp of reality surrounding his career trajectory, but above all he keeps it real...hilarious. Choice quotes: "Rick Ross just talks about food too much...how much can you eat?" and "I don't like anything about Drake...I don't like his face, I don't like his haircut..." Enjoy

Nerd Corner: Mad Max ish

Confession, I still look forward to some game releases. Not many; most games these days are overproduced crap with nothing unique or creative. Kill dudes. Level up. Repeat. Game developers run out of ideas faster than movie studios, hence all the crappy spinoffs and sequels. Yes, this game title has a number 2 after it too, but that's because there's no way they weren't going to make a sequel to the cell shaded brilliance of the original Borderlands. Looks like they didn't just trot out the old characters and run them through a few rehashed scenarios. After all the expansion packs from the original game, new characters should make the sequel interesting from the beginning.

World Politickin: Greek debt

Interesting story about Goldman Sachs using an imaginary exchange rate to reduce Greece's perceived debt, allowing them entry into the Euro....aka why Greece is f%#ked right now:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17108367

I would embed the video , but BBC wont let me...head on over there to watch, or just file this away under "I don't understand how the world works"

Evolution: Nike flyknit

While most of the departments at Nike are busy raping their heritage and rehashing "vintage" shoes from the early 90s, some mad scientist out in Beaverton is still pushing the boundaries. Case in point, this Flyknit ish right here. This looks like some next level material they pulled out of their Nike time machine (forget those corny Back to the Future joints). Even if it's just plain old nylon with some of the threads taken out, the video really sells the whole idea of this as some space-aged, futuristic material. And that's what Nike is really all about. Performance. The idea that whatever they create will make you better, faster, stronger...

vid of the day: The D

A Number of Names - Shari Vari

OK the audio is a little rough, but you get the idea. Soul Train ain't got ish on the D. This song is a straight banger, and the visuals with the audio? classic...anyone who's a fan of real Detroit Techno can appreciate the roots.

Sample this: Steely Dan pt. 2

Speaking of maniacal perfectionism, this section really gets into the level of frustration Fagan and Becker inflicted on their musical brethren. All legendary in their own right, musicians were put through hours of grueling musical direction, only to be replaced by an entirely different band the next day. The section where Michael McDonald talks about singing backup vocals over himself, and trying to get the intonation right on Peg, is mindblowing. These are they types of things you only hear and appreciate after listening closely several times, because there is so much going on in these songs, which becomes all the more apparent when Fagan and Becker are messing around in the studio with outtakes and isolated vocal tracks. Any producers watching this video are salivating over those raw studio tracks...

Police Is Gross Sometimes: Missing dash-cam

Yet another case of a missing dash-cam this week. Seattle's finest have a bit of a reputation for questionable police work. Unfortunately for two Seattle individuals who matched a caller's description of (I'm not joking here) "tall black guys, both of them were wearing jeans". One of them wasn't even wearing jeans!!! Apparently the officer didn't want to waste his time finding two black guys in jeans, that would be much too difficult in Seattle. As their attorney points out, these guys were simply "guilty of being black in Seattle."

Of course the officer was "exonerated" of any misconduct, and as the police investigator points out, people just "have to believe in the system, to trust the process". And why wouldn't they believe in a system upheld by virtuous and noble individuals like Officer Makestuffup. Good thing KOMO News in Seattle fought so hard for access to the dash-cam footage that was so conveniently lost (along with tens of thousands of other hours of possibly damning footage). Now the news station is suing Seattle PD for the footage under FOI. It's good to know that police departments are so forthcoming with evidence; it really makes you want to "believe in the system, to trust the process"...

Daily Disco: Love you more

Funk in the trunk...

Daily Disco: where have I heard that before?

Bernard Wright - Haboglabotribin.

Ok, nobody knows what the hell that is, and noone thinks it's an amusement park. Dre knew WTF was up when he sampled the intro though. You thought he put some nursery rhyme with some funk ish on Gs and Hustlers huh?...nope, that was 'Nard. Notice how there's Japanese writing on the record sleeve in the youtube vid? that means you can't get a copy, but you can still hear it...thanks to the internets.

History of House

This is the definitive history of house music right here. There's a lot of crap towards the end (and in the intro) about all the euro pop trance ish, but the first few parts get into the foundation and evolution of Jak. You can find the other parts on Youtube...

Sample This: Steely Dan rules

Their versatile catalog spans numerous genres, with classics in several eras. The "ultimate rock antiheroes", Steely Dan has a special place in the hearts of music fans from multiple generations. You only have to watch 10 seconds of this video to see why, when Donald Fagan starts singing the hook to "Uptown Baby" over the intro to Black Cow. This song has been sampled numerous times, including the obvious one that Fagan refers to in the video, and the possibly less well known, more subtle Doom sample on Gas Drawls.

This whole Classic Albums episode about the Steely Dan album Aja is great. You really get an insight into the type of perfectionists these guys were on a musical level, as well as some of the intricacies of their lyrics. The documentary gives music fans a completely different appreciation for two of the most talented perfectionists ever to grace a studio.

Daily Disco: Shalamar

An official video for Shalamar. This makes you wonder how many other official gems are sitting out there collecting dust. Good sound quality on this one too. How is there not a throwback video show for stuff like this?, maybe there is....educate me people...

Fishing Without Nets

...sounds so innocent doesn't it? You're thinking, "Those resourceful Somalis, what do they use?poles...spears...a hook on a string perhaps?" No, speedboats and rocket launchers. See, this is a different type of "fishing", the type that might bring a response from Seal Team 6 if you go after a particularly large haul. This documentary about Somali pirates looks crazy...Vice has an account from the director about the surreal experience of receiving an award at Sundance shortly after being "robbed, scammed, hassled and put in jail" in East Africa while trying to film the project. All in a days work for some, I suppose.

Daily Disco: Melba

Melba Moore - You stepped into my life

Whoooooooooo. House heads will recognize the sample at the breakdown..."you stepped"...with the claps? Ridiculous.

WTFacts: Meth Burns

File this column under, "I read/saw this ish somewhere, so it's mostly likely true"... but even if I can't point to the exact source all the time for WTFacts (in this case it's Time magazine 2/6/12), I'm not just pulling facts or statistics out of my arse...although in this case...look, the only excuse to read Time magazine is in a waiting room, airplane, or on the throne; I read this tidbit after a strong cup of coffee.

According to an AP report of hospitals surveyed in the south, midwest, and west (I don't specifically know what this geographic allocation means either, I said it was Time) 1/3 of all patients in burn units were scalded while cooking meth. Even accounting for the wonky survey area, that is quite the statistic...good to know the tweakers are keeping hospital staff busy.

Daily Disco

Atlantic Starr - When Love Calls

that 4/4...dont let it slip away

Song of the Day: What kind of horses?

Q Lazarus - Goodbye Horses

Too many hiphop posts on here...time to even it out with some random ish. If you don't like this song, maybe you had some scarring experience in the 80s...or maybe you watched Silence of the Lambs one...too...many...times. This is one of those tracks that give you goosebumps when it comes on the radio, no matter how many times you've heard it.

#uck a halfpipe

Snowboarding is barely recognizable as the sport/activity it once was. The alternative sports marketing machine has churned the natural mountain into a Cirque Du Soleil snowcone, with lazers and garish, skin-tight suited acrobats pulling as many 1080-double-rodeo-flippity-doos out of a halfpipe as humanly possible. Outside the X Games contingent is the "street-style snowboarding(?)" of the northeast and midwest: kids in oversized pants and basketball jerseys strapping jib boards on their feet and hucking down a set of stairs. Plenty of skill goes into both of these endeavors, but to anyone who has 10-15+ years on the mountain, this video might look a little more familiar than anything you see in TransSnow, or ESPN2 these days...

True Hip Hop Stories: Pun Corleone

Rappers these days are mostly a fabricated marketing gimmick with fake chains, a crew of never-has-beens, and rented out cars and cribs. So it's entertaining to hear about some of the individuals that actually lived the life they talk about on wax. People generally don't doubt the authenticity of rappers like Pun (RIP), and the internets is full of crazy stories about the "most lyrical miracle spherical" to ever grace the mic, but this is just straight Don Corleone ish...enjoy Who Kid's first hand account of damn near getting murked by Pun and the Latin Kings. If you enjoy these types of stories, do yourself a favor and check out Quest Love's Celebrity Stories.

...and now for something completely different

Pos and Dave ditch Maceo for their latest project, First Serve. Hadn't heard anything about the project until this vid showed up on the interwebs today. This song won't necessarily be in the heavy rotation, but it's nice to see the Plugs still having fun 20+ odd years in the game...

Mad Blu

Blu and Madlib connect for the song that is the subject of today's vid. Some might argue this jesus project that Blu put out is the first solid effort since he linked with Exile on Below the Heavens. Still can't figure out if this dude is born again, or what, but the poetic flow is still on point...

Vid of the day: Pharoahe's breath control

I guess this sponsored vid is better than one with an ad...Pharoahe has been one of the best lyricists since Organized. This song/vid talks about his struggle with asthma. Most of his (too few) fans recognize the enormity of his lyrical feats, keeping his breathing restriction in mind while trying to process his complex metaphors and dense, intricate wordplay. Maybe you're just a fan of Jill Scott, either way, this song is straight gospel.

Police Is Gross Sometimes: Officer Punchnkick

Most police probably join the force because they want to protect and serve. Unfortunately for them, videos of good policework don't often make it on to the internets. What's even more unfortunate, is that videos such as the one of the two fine upstanding offeces above are all too common. Just imagine all the good peace keeping work these guys get up to that goes unrecorded.

Officer Punchnkick in the video up there reportedly tried to turn off the dashcam before practicing his Cop Fu on the 66 yr old man. Apparently he understands the mechanics of a dashcam about as well as he understands his job, because technicians were able to salvage the footage of him busy doing the work of Florida's finest. That may be proper police procedure in Florida for how to deal with a "non Caucasian combatant", so maybe they shouldn't be judged so harshly. There's no sound, perhaps the old guy was audibly begging to be kicked in the crotch.

Respect to anyone who puts their life on the line to serve the public, but individuals who uphold the law shouldn't be above it; some would argue they should be held to an even higher standard. The again, those officers might argue that people (especially males of the darker persuasion) should just stop walking around asking to be beaten all the time.

The come up: David Choe

There probably aren't many artists out there that deserve to make stupid money off their work more than David Choe. One of the few extremely talented individuals that made the transition from "street art" to gallery work, without just tagging his name in a frame and hanging it on the wall in an empty space. Anyone who's seen Thumbs Up!, his hitchhiking travel show, can observe that the dude is a one of a kind genuine deviant, and an artist in the purest sense; not a pretentious douche with a fabricated persona, and too much money (Art Thoughtz has more on that).

According to this NYTimes article, dude is set to net about $200 million from the stock options he got in exchange for painting Facebook HQ. Smart, insightful, compassionate, and talented as hell, it looks like Mr Choe is about to be the richest deviant on the planet...who knows, maybe they'll even let him back in to Japan some day.

RIP Don C

It seems like we're losing icons faster than they're making 'em these days...everyone's looking for those old classic soul train clips on youtube right now, but they're all copyrighted out the yang, and the sound quality is terrible, just put on the O' Jays and look at this pic instead. Or maybe you have access to Questo's stash...