• Here is Bird Turds number fifteen, in which the main character bird continues to have kind of a weird relationship with all other birds with whom he or she comes into contact, be they sentient or inanimate within the context of the comic strip itself.
• It turns out there were way more people aware of the CFY,K technical-difficulty downtime than I would have thought. So, um. Again. Sorry about that. But it's good to have you back, dudes.
• I hear tell that Shaved and Shamanzo had a little old NYC Sarchichan mini-summit. Somebody send pictures. And anyway I live at a midpoint music hub these days and I ain't got friends really so come visit. Also: Isn't it Nebraska's birthday today? Happy birthday, Nebraska.
• In making this post, I will have gotten everything done that I wanted to have gotten done on my day off. I did my laundry, and, in so doing, conducted further market research for my dream to one day own and operate a coin laundry. And I put away the laundry, which, as I'm sure you know, is like a whole additional, more-horrible chore in and of itself .
Also I finally got it together and went to see Iron Man, which completely fucking ruled. I will say that I was as disappointed as the next guy that Dennis Coles didn't make the final cut of the movie. I guess it's kind of cool that it looked like a Ghostface video was playing in Tony Stark's private jet towards the beginning. More than anything, though, I'm at a loss as to why the cameo that Ghostface shot for Iron Man hasn't leaked online as near as I can tell. Because, really, what the hell is the internet good for if I can't watch a leaked Ghostface cameo?
• Today I was on the phone with the Rai Chile and he told me that instead of investing his money into a Nintendo Wii, he's going to buy those running jump-stilt joints and then run his ass to work. Now, if you know the Rai Chile, just for a second imagine that you're stopped at a traffic light or something, and then he fucking comes leap running past you all wearing one of those aerodynamic bike helmets and goggles and a full-blown lycra bodysuit. And like a super-determined look on his face like he's doing the damn thing. Or even, better, with all that going on and like a long-stemmed rose clenched in his teeth. Just thinking of these scenarios made me laugh so hard I almost threw up.
• I was just looking over the last few posts, and it became apparent to me that I have been too consistently subjecting my readers to my bad illustration attempts. So for today I'm putting up this bad photograph instead. Heh.
• You might not have noticed, because it happened over Memorial Day weekend, but CFY,K was down for a little while there. After using the coding equivalent of a crowbar, I managed to get in there and eff with the HTML enough to alleviate the bizarro script malfunction that had caused the whole thing. Maybe it was my fault. Perhaps I was doing it wrong. But either way, I'm not using those little embedded flash mp3 players anymore, and am going back to the old-fashioned, direct-to-mp3 link, like this one, which will take you to an audio file of valuable advice from Ghostface Killah. • Here is some video evidence, just in case you forgot that Prince is, indeed, the most underrated guitar shredder in the world.
The deal with Kid Eternity is that, like, he was fishing or something when a U-Boat blew up his boat, but when he got to Heaven it was determined by, you know, The Powers That Be that the kid had died before he was supposed to so they sent him back to Earth with the power to resurrect any historical figure he felt like by shouting the word "eternity." There's also this monk/angel guy that hangs out with him called the Keeper.
Then, in the early 90's, The Kid got brought back for a delightfully unreadable three-part miniseries by Grant Morrison. A year or two later, Vertigo gave Kid Eternity his own monthly title, which seemed to have been designed to be a more-accessible comic book, but loosely within the parameters that Morrison established. Kid Eternity was canceled after sixteen issues because no one liked it but me, and it ain't hard to tell why. In the comic, the Kid is constantly surrounded by a rotating cast of flat characters whose only purpose appears to be to relentlessly spew the kind of pseudo-intellectual claptrap that I can only imagine I found to be entertaining fifteen years ago. Now, though, I find Kid Eternity entertaining on an entirely different level. I like that the Kid is surrounded by these idiots and caricatures and their monologues because I have a powerful resistance to these things, and so, probably in spite of the intentions of the comic's writer, does the Kid. He just wants to be Plastic Man, but the people around him won't let him. That, and Sean Phillips occasionally wrecked shit. (Not to mention the kind of hilarious WWII propaganda aspect of Kid Eternity's origin story.) • I figure that since it's Saturday you're probably not at work, so maybe today you can hear some audio, watch a video, and maybe look at a picture of a woman in a bathing suit.
• Here is Bird Turds #13. Stay tuned to CFY,K for for next week's pro-themed Bird Turds #14. Unless you're The Red Fantastic, in which case you should stay tuned to your mailbox for next week's pro-themed Bird Turds #14.
• I woke up the other day knowing that I had to change my front driver's side tire, which kind of sucked, but was way better than, like, finding out in the morning that you have a flat tire and then you have to get all sweaty before you go into work. So I put on my spare tire, which was also flat, and rode to the end of the block to buy a used tire, which, you know, cost money. It was a less-than-spectacular morning. (Read: early afternoon.)
But then I got back to my apartment and found that less than twenty-four hours after I had made a half-serious quasi-request, the lovely Red Fantastic had supplied me with a Flickr pro account! Day saved!
• I seem to have gone a week without posting a new Bird Turds. Sorry about that, dudes. So here's one. (It's not that I didn't have one ready, of course. I think that the readers of Curtains For You, Kid have grown accustomed to a greater degree of professionalism than that, right?)
• I'm not sure what having a Flickr pro account does for a person, exactly. And if I had one, I would almost certainly never take full advantage of it. What's weird is that if you have a Flickr account, you can buy a pro upgrade for any other Flickr user. So, it's not that I want one, really, but I will say that whoever buys me a Flickr pro upgrade will get an original Bird Turds comic strip, which I can nearly guarantee will never be worth as much as you'd spend on said upgrade.
• I went, the other day, to this live satellite presentation of This American Life. Until I actually arrived on the scene, I thought it was going to be, like, a live performance of This American Life. Like they do with Whad'ya Know?, but it wasn't. So I did not, in fact, get to see the condensation on Ira Glass's glasses.
{Never let what you consider to be a good line go to waste, eh? - Ed.} The place, a movie theater south of town, was packed. It was so crowded, in fact, that this woman had to scoot two seats over closer to me to accommodate this guy and his kid.
And then the show started.
And then the theater lost the video portion of the satellite feed. This made the experience, you know, exactly like sitting in the dark listening to the radio with like 300 groaning, muttering strangers. The audio, which was to accompany a preview segment from the second season of the This American Life TV show, soldiered on.
"I think," said the lady next to me, "that if I keep staring at the screen, and, you know, focusing, then the video will come back on."
"You know," said the guy on the other side of the lady, "it's bad enough that I can't see what's going on. Now I can't even hear it."
So whatever. We shut up. Because, you know, at least on my end, I get it. You paid a lot of money to be here. So far be it from me to fuck it up for you.
But then, a minute later, the video came back, like everyone knew it eventually would. And then the good folks in the projectionists' room "rewound" the feed, so everyone could see the show in its entirety. Which, I mean, shit. All of this was bound to happen. Every theater manager I've ever met - and I have known a few - would much rather yell at some high school kid for ten minutes than deal with several hundred angry NPR enthusiasts.
"Hey, look," said the lady next to me to the guy next to her, "Now you can see all that stuff you missed."
But he wasn't feeling it. So when, a few minutes later, the vertical hold fucked up for a little while, he seized the opportunity the storm off and demand a refund, which was fine with everyone.
• It's funny to me that if you have a blog, then really you just end up "blogging" (ecch) about other blogs. I mean. As long as you're not trying to promote anything, and you have figured out that no one really cares about what you did with your Saturday if there's no free mp3 in the offing. Anyway. I read this post that The Style Guy put up about the Basquiat and the Warhol that he knew versus the Warhol and the Basquiat that he has seen portrayed in various films.
• The collecting of vinyl toys is one of those nerdy things, like role playing games and musical theater, that I just sort of missed the boat on, because I was too busy doing other nerdy things like obsessively reading comic books and dorking out at record stores. Recently, however, I have come across a couple of sets of vinyl toys that I completely co-sign. Those new Adult Swim toys look like something I'd like to own, or at least the Venture Bros ones do. (And, you know, the Carl.) The question is: does Biscuit already own these things? And if not, then why not? The other thing that piqued my interest is the Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem playset, which looks like it would be a lot of fun to just look at.
• As you may know, I consider myself to be a more-than-casual fan of rap music. And, as such, I find myself occasionally preoccupied with the sort of lesser-known figures within the classification. But, given the nature of most of my friends and acquaintances, not to mention the kind of embarrassingly juvenile nature of rap music itself, I am often without anyone with whom to discuss lesser-known rappers. Or anywhere to, like, put these thoughts.
But wait. I have a "blog." (Which, yes, is embarrassingly juvenile in and of itself.) So I'm putting this stuff here today, conveniently buried away "after the jump."
I
Like Young Chris. You might be familiar with that one song. Maybe.
Lately I've been thinking that it is a good thing that Young Chris has finally taken - heeded? - what I imagine must have been the advice of every A&R he ever came into contact with, as he has been steadily releasing material sans Neef. (Who, by the way, is the other guy in Young Chris' group The Young Gunz.) It just sucks that he waited until the record industry straight up died before he started doing that. (Now that I think about it, though, the second Young Gunz album may have been the clearest early indicator that rappers would need to dramatically lower their expectations in terms of record sales. I don't think anyone even stole that piece of shit.)
At press time, it seems like Young Chris' best-case scenario would be for Jay-Z to put him under the banner of whatever he's got going on with LiveNation, where any new Young Chris album would almost certainly be indefinitely shelved, because, again, nobody buys records anymore, and Young Chris isn't one of the threeorfour rap acts - not counting Jay-Z - that can draw a crowd¹. That, and being indefinitely shelved is just sort of what happens to albums by members of S. Carter's supporting cast.
¹This probably has more to do with the fact that every rap show that I have ever been to, on any level, suffers from a lethal combination of impossibly shitty soundboard management and overzealous hypemen than anything else. II
In recent months, I have been hearing more and more about this Jay Electronica fellow. Like, apparently he had some beef with some other guy or something. And Just Blaze seems to like him, which, as we'll see later, may or may not be a happy circumstance. Some Jay Electronica songs are, to be honest, ill as fuck. There appear to be, however, at least two glaring flaws in Electronica's overall gameplan:
1. "Jay Electronica" is the worst goddamned rap name I have ever heard. He might as well call himself Johnny Opera or Mr. Country-Western, since he obviously doesn't listen to the musical genre he's named himself after. (Because, you know, if he did, he'd know that ain't nobody called that shit "electronica" since The Fat of the Land.)
2. Jay Electronica has the same problem as Young Chris, in that he has decided to become a professional rap artist at a time when it doesn't seem like there's any money in it for anyone who isn't already famous. Electronica's only famous on the internet, and he's only barely famous there. And even if he became really famous on the internet blog scene, it's not like there's any money in that. Until I see Tay Zonday pushing a Bentley, I'm just going to go ahead and think that rap music is fast turning into indie rock, a genre in which most of the principal artists have, like, jobs in addition to their musical careers.
III
I remember a fleeting moment where I thought that Saigon might really do it and come out with an album that I wanted to hear. This was before my expectations lowered to just "maybe Saigon will come out with an album." And before his weird public pseudo-feud with Just Blaze. (And before Just Blaze's stamp of approval stopped meaning anything at all.) And before he quit. And before he un-quit. Back when people actually watched Entourage. They don't anymore. Just like they don't buy records. While the proposed title of this record, The Greatest Story Never Told, sounds almost too perfect, I think he ought to change it to The Chinese Democracy That Nobody Gives a Shit About.
IV
The guy that I think has done something right in the past few days is Busta Rhymes. I mean. Despite that thing where he got together with Linkin Park to make a track. But I figure you've got to put that into the "Happens to the Best of 'Em" file.
I've said this before, probably on this website, but I think it bears repeating. I have never heard an entire Busta Rhymes record, and I probably never will. That said, I have never heard a completely bad Busta Rhymes track. I've always considered him, in this respect, to be like the John Cougar Mellencamp of rap.
Busta just came out with this video, "Don't Touch Me," featured below. It's like a postcard from Flipmodia, sent just to let you know that everything is running smoothly. Spliff Star is still playing the background and being hilarious. (If Busta is Mellencamp, then Spliff is the guy who could've been just a mediocre weed carrier but wound up being rap's own Harpo Marx.) The fisheye is in full effect. The hat matches the jacket. "Don't Touch Me" relies on one implicit truth throughout: shit has never been as good as it was in the late nineties, so fuck it, the best move is to make an awesome-ass late nineties rap video.
• Have you made it this far? Really? Well. I'm honored. If you didn't, though, you missed out on me getting back to some shit you probably do care about. (Spolier Alert Level: guarded.)
