I had to shout just to get my voice back

Last night I went to see The Cool Kids at Subterranean. The show itself was really great, I think Cool Kids and their crew have a real chance to put a stamp on a cultural something. Their mix of retro pastiche and nasty ass beats is pretty unique, I think, and musically they run the gamut of contemporary hip hop, from grime shit to down south to whatever. It's mad fresh.

Also, though, everyone kept hyping their myspaces. At the end of each group's set they'd yell out to peep their myspace. And it wasn't a joke (the above link is to Cool Kids' myspace, if you haven't figured it out). What the fuck? What was once a cultural mainstay for high schoolers has turned outdated....and yet with regard to music dissemination and getting people to hear your shit, it's not only an effective resource but also a totally acceptable one. And for good measure, too. In many ways it DOES offer people that wouldn't be able to hear you a chance to check you out, without having to have an actual website (which costs dollars) and giving you so much more of an audience than shitty-ass demo tapes could ever do. But, of course, this isn't anything new - at Pitchfork lost of information we get is gathered off of Myspace sites, and when I was in miscellaneous bands in high school and shit the first thing you did once you had something recorded was set up a myspace. It was just funny to see one's myspace site boasted about and advertised in such a way.


Which is an interesting display of the uses of social networking sites after they lose their relevance. They can potentially gain new relevance (perhaps unintentionally) by performing different services. Like giving you access to new bands. And porn.

Grove Street 4 Life

It's warm (finally) in Chicago, and I've been eating a lot of barbeque over the weekend. It's been pretty tasty.

ALSO: I've rediscovered the joys of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I've wasted a good three hours already this afternoon, and were it not for homework I probably wouldn't be finished yet. There's something about the actual gameplay and storyline and whatnot that's fun, of course, but for me there's also an added nostalgia from when my best friends and I used to gather around the television after school and take turns, each person wreaking as much havoc as possible until they died, then the next person's turn.

However, since my musical knowledge as well as my knowledge about LA has grown considerably in recent years (due to a friend in The Angels and......growing up) I've come to a little bit of a greater appreciation. Especially in light of literature/media theory, GTA stands as a vanguard for the appreciation of video games on par with other media. I mean, why not? It seems to make sense considering the recent admiration for the whole Web 2.0 (which name, of course, I hate), why can't a medium that's a mixture of user-creation and author-creation be a valid art piece?

Somehow this youtube video turned into a gift one can give on facebook. What a bizarro world this new trans-modern (or whatever) one this is.

-We in Chicago are going to host some nasty boxing. That'll be fun.

-I'm from Arizona, but nonetheless this ain't no good. Dude needs to get with the times and realize the whole "thanks to the internet everyone will see you no matter what you do" thing is real, and will (already has) fucked him and his chances up.

I just saw Judd Apatow's newest: "Knocked Up." It's really good, but I've also just recently finished watching "Freaks and Geeks" again on DVD, and I think there's something really good here (obviously). He manages to really mix emotion and comedy and come off poignant, something all too rare in modern cinema.

I think. I don't know


I've been trying to connect it with the Virginia Tech shooting today, because learning about (or empathizing with) each I got the same terrified emotion. Hearing about the shooting I realized how easy it would be for something like that to happen on my own campus, and that all of the rationale I might later (objectively) apply would go out the window, and I'd just stand like a deer in the headlights.

Which is, of course, true if I were to have a baby with somebody I didn't know. Or even somebody I did. The same gut-feeling of being too young to be involved in something so big struck me.

I wonder if that ever goes away. if we ever feel satisfied with the "work" that we've "done." I reckon not, of course, but does it ever get less fragile?




One of my best friends crashed his bike and has a broken clavicle. had a couple of cars not swerved out of the way he could be dead now. I wonder what that's like, the feeling that a split-second can save you. I mean, I guess we're all a split second away, and that that's how it works abd you just don't worry about it, but every now and then it turns the other way.

I got pretty terrified today.