You're traveling to another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of feeble mind. A journey into a strange land whose boundaries are that of weirdness and twirling around goofily with crazy eyes and slapping a conga.
That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: Gheorghe: The Blog, specifically, the music videos of our roster members' namesakes.
zson and I have competed in several Cub Scout Pinewood Derby events. We had the third-fastest car our first year, largely because I was a Cub Scout and I knew there are a bunch of easy things you need to do to make the car faster, and I suspected that most of the dads had no idea how to use a hand saw let alone polish an axle, and I also suspected that most of the dads are also hyper-competitive type-A nut jobs so they would work themselves into a lather after losing the first year and watch all sorts of YouTubes on how to make these little cars go fast, so I put a lot of time into getting the axles smooth, polishing the insides of the wheels, and getting the car right up to the legal weight limit with most of the weight right in front of the rear axle. As I predicted, the other dads came back with a vengeance after that and bought some woodworking tools (and possibly bought fast cars on the internet, but that's a different story).
This year we decided to chase the best design category instead of speed. zson thought a VW Camper Van would be cool and relatively easy. He was right and wrong, respectively. The project involved two blocks of wood to get the correct aspect ratio, lots of drilling and failed attempts to use Juan Carlos's palm router to remove lots of wood from the middle to get under the weight limit, a little sawing and a lot of sanding. We found some groovy reflective iridescent paper for the windows, printed some Grateful Dead images for the rear, and got a VW logo from a brochure at the local dealer. We were very happy with the results.
We took the first place trophy for design so the judges liked it too. I felt pretty good about my automotive woodworking skills. Then I saw this video.
I hope this guy doesn't show up at next year's Pinewood Derby.
You should check out "Done by the Forces of Nature" by The Jungle Brothers. Perhaps the coolest thing I ever did as social chair was put "Feelin' Alright" on a party mix--a bunch of Thetasfrom southwestern Virginia wearing pearl earrings and cardigans spontaneously started dancing to it even though they didn't know the song at all. One of them even went "Alright!" when she heard the singer go "Woo-oo-oooooo-oo-oo" at the beginning of the song. That's how good it is.
1989 was a banner year for influential albums: "Three Feet High and Rising" came out in March 1989, followed by "Paul's Boutique" in July, then "Done by the Forces of Nature" in November. All three, in my humble opinion, influenced the way people sample. For example:
And this:
It makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right?
Although the album was produced by DJ Red Alert, an East Coast stalwart, you can hear the West Coast influence in songs like "'U' Make Me Sweat," which sounds like early Dr. Dre:
You can also hear how this song sounds like "Belly Dancin' Dina," albeit much angrier:
The album also features a number of conscious Afrocentric songs like "Acknowledge Your Own History."
If you're just going to download one song, and, like Connell, you like your hiphop bangin, I suggest this:
Despite having 16 outstanding tracks, no one ever talks about this album, let alone listens to it. You can change this. Get the album now and rock it at your next BBQ--no swearing, no racial epithets, some sexual innuendo but it's oblique enough that prudes won't get it. How can you have a bad time when this is going on in the background?
I've spent a fair amount of time in my hometown over the past three weeks. It's a 30 to 45 minute drive each way so the trip gives me plenty of time to listen to music. zson accompanied me on one or two of these trips and he has a bizarre musical palate for a seven-year-old--I suspect no one else in his class gets in the car and demands LCD Soundsystem or The King Khan and BBQ Show songs by name. Lately he's into Jane's Addiction and we were listening to "Nothing's Shocking" as we pulled into Teaneck. Driving around town listening to this album made me feel particularly maudlin, as it pulled up memories of time spent inebriated with friends twenty-five-plus years ago. Then "Summertime Rolls" came on.
For a second, the line "It's oh so serious, as serious as can be" made me think of the serious state of things around me, but then I snapped out of it. This is a goddamn love song about summertime love, the one of the most fleeting and youthful things on earth. It isn't serious!
I realized I needed to lighten up, remember the Gheorghe mission statement, and try to take things in stride. So from the depths of my iTunes library, here are a bunch of fun songs about summer to help you (or at least me) get through the rest of June.
I used to know how to make yootoob videos turn into a playlist in an embedded player but clearly I don't remember how. No matter! It isn't worth fretting over. Just enjoy the tunes.
The luster is certainly dimmed on this evening's matchup between the 14-38 Washington Wizards and the 9-45 Cleveland Cavaliers, the Cavs' win over the Clippers turning this from a celebration of epic failure into merely one of the worst games in NBA history. Nonetheless, we'll be glued to our televisions, cheering ourselves hoarse in hopes that the Wiz break their road winless maiden. Or watching a particularly amusing episode of Phineas and Ferb. Consider this your Wiz/Cavs open thread.
If you have been following along in the comments the last few days you've noticed that the Zman is having a great deal of difficulty with a certain shit cable company whose name starts with "Time" and ends with "Warner". Here's why said cable guy can't show up at the Zman's house:
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