"ANYTHING YOU CAN DO, I CAN DO META"

SETTING: A small room full of fake Chanel and Kate Spade purses. It is somewhere beneath an unassuming store on Mott Street in Chinatown--through a small door, down a stairwell, follow the barely-lit tunnels, etc.

PLAYERS: A disinterested Chinese guy. A Midwestern family, who clearly don't speak Chinese. Four twenty- and thirtysomething Asian people, who obviously do.

MF MOM: How much is this? (Holds up purse)
CG: Fifty.
MF SON: What?
MF DAUGHTER: Really?
MF SON: Fifty? You're kidding. It's thirty down the street, I shit you not.
CG: Fifty. (Picks at teeth)
MF MOM: We'll be going then.
MF DAD: Yeah.
MF SON: Let's go. (Pauses) We're out of here, cause it's just thirty down the street.
MF MOM: Yeah, we are leaving.
(Seconds pass. Nobody moves.)
MF SON: Let's go down the street--where it's thirty.
CG: Thirty.
MF MOM: Okay! (Counts out wad of cash)
AP 1: Sorry, how much is this?
CG: (in Chinese) Speak Chinese?
AP 2: (in Chinese) Yes.
CG: (in Chinese) If you speak Chinese, then five.

***

SETTING: Shoe store on Upper West Side. The kind that sells very long white tees and overly colorful hooded sweatshirts.

PLAYERS: A salesman and a young man holding a rainbow-motif'd Nike running shoe.

SM: Size eight-and-a-half. That's all we have. You're holding it. I'll get the other.
YM: Yo, this is it? I know I'm not paying full price.
SM: Hey...are you Muslim?
YM: Yes I am. As-salaamu Alaikum, my brother.
SM: As-salaamu Alaikum, my brother.
YM: Nice.
SM: Okay--how about sixty then?
YM: Nice.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Aunt: Hey H**, did you know I'm a singer?
Nephew: I saw your picture in the newspaper.
A: I'm pretty good. Do you want to hear it?
N: How is grandma...
A: Here watch this (pulls out digital camera)
N: Wow, is this really you? Are you lip-synching?
A: I told you--I'm great.
N: I'm really impressed. Is this really you?
A: Ah, I love you!
N: Cool (looks away)
A: THERE'S MORE.
N: I think your battery is running out.
A: JUST WATCH IT.
N: The little battery thing is flashing.
A: OH JUST WATCH.
N: Is that your son clapping?
A: You know, when I was singing and people started clapping, I thought to myself, 'We're recording, you know!' (nods at digital camera) I almost stopped the song and said that. But then I thought, 'Hey this is great.'
N: The battery...
A: I was the best. I asked some total strangers afterward and they said so, too.

(A few minutes later...)

N: That was pretty impressive. I'm impressed.
A: I know. I want more people to see this.
N: You should. Maybe you'll become famous.
A: I do want that. How can we make that happen?
N: Have you heard of YouTube?
A: I want to be famous.
Father: It's all about mouth-of-word.
N: Yes! It's all about word-of-mouth.
F: Mom wants to be her agent.
A: I do need one...H**, you should be my agent.
N: That's impossible.
F: Conflict of interest.
N: Exactly! Conflict of interest.

***

EPMD, "Please Listen to My Demo"
Lavender Diamond, "Rise in the Springtime"
Jorge Ben, "Errare Humanum Est"
Love, "Keep on Shining"

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Astrud Gilberto, "Here There and Everywhere"
Cat Power, "The Greatest (eMusic live version)"

***

Please discuss (and rejoice):

Harold and Kumar 2 is set in motion on the same morning that Harold and Kumar finally satisfy their munchies at White Castle and the object of Harold's affection, Maria (Garces), sets off for Amsterdam. The pair decide to pursue her so Harold can proclaim his love. But when an overzealous passenger mistakes Kumar for a terrorist, the plane is diverted and the boys are off on a new escapade of mistaken identity. From Guantanamo Bay through the Deep South, Harold and Kumar encounter myriad wackos, jerks and whores as they are pursued by the Department of Homeland Security all the way into Bush Country.

***

The fact that Chan Marshall covers "Tracks of My Tears" during Cat Power shows is incredibly deep, and deeply depressing, even if she's sober, etc. nowadays. Is this unique to music? What is the equivalent of the mournful/ironic cover version in other forms (film/lit/etc)?

***

OVERHEARD THE OTHER NIGHT, AT EGYPTIAN LOVER:

"This is some proto-Ed Banger shit."

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

The Association, "Goodbye, Columbus"
The Fall, "Victoria"
Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, "Invisible Man"*

*-One-eleventh of one of my favorite albums of 2006.

***

re: THE SNOW IN L.A. (SEE BELOW):

Father: "Maybe when you are a hundred years old, you will see the end of the world. (Pauses. Chuckles quietly, away from receiver.) We won't see it."

***

what bill o'reilly lacks in a soul, he doesnt really have much more of in terms of sense of humor. but of the two, at least he has a sense of humor.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

R.I.P.

******
******


(about ten minutes in...)

Father: So...did you get my email? (ed. note: see post marked "1/12")
Son: Yes
F: How did Queens do it? How are they so strong?
S: I don't know.
F: Yes. They beat the beatles. Better than the Beatles?
S: Crazy.
F: I heard there is some new band that has been influenced by Queens, and that that had a result on the polling.
S: What are they called?
F: I'm not sure, I'm out of touch now.


Jackie Robinson, "In My Life"
Wes Montgomery, "Day in the Life"
The Moments, "Rocky Raccoon"
Galaxie 500, "Listen, the Snow is Falling"

BONUS: Isley Brothers, "Lay Lady Lay"

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

In a small record store next to the Berklee College of Music in Boston:
A: Someday, you'll say, 'I went to college with her!'
B: What about me?
A: I'll say that about you, too.
B: ...
A: And we'll see each other at the Grammy's. And we'll be all, 'Hello darling, I haven't seen you in soo long! How are you? Have you heard my new album? What did you think of it?' And it'll be like, 'Yeah I loved track three! And track five!' What did you think of mine?'
A: Should we go to orientation soon?
B: I don't care about orientation.

***

At Fenway Park, over the public address system:
7:46 pm: "Now batting, number twenty-four, left fielder Manny Ramirez..."
(Applause, then Cassie's "Me & U")
7:48 pm: "Now batting, number seven, right fielder Trot Nixon..."
(Applause, then Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire")

***

Page 227 of Harry Stephen Keeler's X. Jones of Scotland Yard

"SHORT-STORY
(in 12 [one dozen] WORDS)

Algy met a bear.
The bear was bulgy.
The bulge was Algy."

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Dave: Did you know Pele's wife is down with MC A.D.E.?

***

British people stand at attention to "God Save the Queen," even when they're the only ones in the bar who seem to recognize the song.

***

Heard over and over this morning: "C'mon Crouchy! (pause) Nooooooo!!!!!!"

***

England's Rio Ferdinand had a prank show in which his catchphrase was "You got merked!"

+++

Tru-Life: "One shot for Dip Set taking over the Roc/Excuse me--taking over at Koch!"

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Father: Do you know someone named Matthew Yahoo?
Son: Matthew Yahoo?
F: Matthew Yahoo.
S: Nope. I don't think I know anyone by that name.
F: He's Jewish. Marcus Matthew.
S: No, I have no idea who that is.
F: Marcus Yahoo. I think he is Jewish.
S: Are you talking about Matisyahu?
F: Yes, Martis Yahoo.
S: Yeah, Matisyahu.
F: Have you heard him? We saw him on the Chinese news program.
S: I refuse.
F: He is dogmatic...Jewish. Uses rap, I mean, hip-hop, to sing.
S: Dogmatic...uh...you mean Orthodox?
F: Oh yes, Orthodox. I forgot the word. Orthodox, not dogmatic. Wears the little hat.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

"...so they're going backwards. And these kids can't even drive."

"There's those of us who have heard 'Four Freaks,' and there's everyone else in this restaurant."

"It's like when Infinity MCs go 'Say syn-the-siz-er'...but nobody says it."

"It's weird to think that the Clipse actually rehearse."

"R-E-U-P-G-A-N-G isn't a particularly catch hook to use for every single song."

"I know it sounds corny, but after 'Four Freaks'...I felt like we were high."

"The Fader put me up on this."

"RE-UP GANG! WE ABOUT HAVING FUN!"

"I have to go home and blog this right now."

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

F: "Did you watch the Grammys?"
S: "No."
F: "Sly Stone performed. He looked like a punk head."
S: "Yeah, I heard he had a mohawk."
F: "Yes. Paul McCartney also performed, with some other people. One man was singing, the other seemed to be reading."
S: "Yeah, I think that was Linkin Park and Jay-Z."
F: "Then McCartney came up and they did 'Yesterday.'"
S: "Did you like it?"
F: "No."

...

F: "If they weren't too white, I would like Guns N Roses even more."

...

F: "Guns N Roses are very good. Their instrumentals are good. And their singer has range."

...

F: "Look what Hua bought. (reaches into bag)"
M: "What is it?"
F: (Silence) "I don't know."
S: "It's a Mac Dre bobblehead."

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Ahh, there's nothing like a night of peace and quiet.

And what could be more peaceful, or quieter, than a night at an NBA game?




The one thing I learned at last night's fierce Boston Celtics-New Jersey Nets tilt: Tom Gugliotta still plays in the NBA, and he plays for the Boston Celtics. Also, I am not sure what is worse, the sound of Thunderstix during something important and tense like the World Series, or the sound of Thunderstix during an absolutely meaningless game between two mediocre teams at a half-empty arena in February.

Tonight, went to the Arcade Fire show. What was that? Oh my bad - I went to the The Arcade Fire show.

The following was uttered either between sets or after the show, but never by me:

"I honestly feel bad for big tobacco."

"Yeah totally. The first time I heard it, I thought it really, really sucked!"

"He wasn't really playing 3/4 of the time, the sound was looped or he was playing along to a tape. And he got the nine levels of magic in Dungeons & Dragons wrong."

Anyhow, a fun and totally unpretentious time was had by all, especially the people jumping up and down on my right foot. Actually, it wasn't exactly fun when their last song unfurled into a funeral march through the audience, but it was something. It was quite a surprise how much they rocked. I imagine if I was in college, I would have been jumping up and down on my right foot as well.

I know it looks bad, but this guy was really entertaining, and at the very least it was something you don't see everyday, if ever. He goes by the name Final Fantasy, which makes it very hard to find anything about him on the Internet.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

An M.F. Doom bonus beat: "You just have to stay strong in those types of times, stay focused. I’m like this—failure ain’t even in my vocabulary. Even though I just used the word. You know what I mean."

Coincidentally, Doom's mask is the same one from Gladiator. Not the exact same one. You know what I mean.

***

"Can you give me an example?"
"Sure. We're targeting verbs - you know, like He be or We was."
"Aaaah."
Overheard the other day at a cafe in Brooklyn. (I think they were teachers.)

***

Back in Cambridge. Watching NESN's Red Sox Winter, an extreme act of closure-slash-catharsis consisting of the 1975, 1986 and 2004 World Series games in their entirety. I am in the 10th inning of Game 6 of 1986, waiting for "it" to happen. Vin Scully has just crowned Marty Barrett the NBC Player of the Game. Here is Kevin Mitchell, batting without any underpants on. (As legend has it, Mitchell was just chilling in the clubhouse, in the buff, waiting for the game to end, when he got called up to pinch-hit.) (A different legend has it that Mitchell beheaded his girlfriend's cat, but that was just Dwight Gooden talking that crack-aided nonsense.)

***

Writing about music is fine but sometimes I forget how much I prefer talking about it. Free associations, air guitar and the shutdown logic of a vigorous nod. Reminded of this last week at Mama's, where I was reminded how much I love the Verve, and then again tonight, talking about the Strokes, Avril Lavigne and Domino Records with Peter Prescott, who works down the block. Somehow, when the drummer for Mission of Burma says he thinks something is derivative, you don't question it. You just nod vigorously.

***

I used to do this in college, only it was in right-wing chatrooms and not sex ones. This is a lot funnier.

***

Just as I was preparing to pour myself some Jameson, comb liner notes and lament the fate of Old Rappers, I came across something amusing on Ex's blog. Not only does D-Nice have a blog, he has a section of photographs labeled "Fruits and Vegetables." It's exactly what you think it is, but then not really.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Back from Chicago, where I spent some quality time with M.F. Doom and inhaled something called "strawberry cough." Some odds and ends that won't make the final cut:

"I was into everybody. Alpha Flight was ill. Vindicator--they bodied him too early, he was an ill dude. Same with Sasquatch."

Have you ever heard that Boogie Boys diss track, 'KMD Step Off?'
"Oh word?"
Yeah, it's about Kool Moe Dee, but they use the KMD initials..
"Do they say his name or do they say KMD?"
They go (adopts gruff voice) KMD STEP OFF!
"(Cackles) That's hot. I might answer that. Make a diss record!"

When you say that everything is wack, what do you mean? What are you actually feeling these days?
"There's a couple people who ain't wack. Madlib ain't wack. Pete Rock ain't wack; that's my ni99a. Premo aint' wack. Guru ain't wack. The whole Wu is dope. Who else is not wack? Nas, he do his thing. Even the other genres'Kelis, she a good friend of mine, I love her music. This dude Kurt Elling, a jazz singer, he's ill, he's not wack, his music inspires me a lot too. Diane Reeves is a woman vocalist, she's not wack. It's like we're all kind of the same age, I look at what they're doing. Who else is not wack? Kurious he's not wack, he need to comeback. Talib ain't wack. Mos Def ain't wack. The whole Spitkicker crew ain't wack. My Rhymesayers fam ain't wack either. Everybody else is wack. (cackles)"

***

"This airplane takes twenty minutes to board but only ninety seconds to evacuate." - Flight attendant, coaxing us into paying attention to the pre-flight safety video.

***

-I thought I did, but prior to Sunday, I did not understand Daniel Dumile. I may have understood M.F. Doom or KMD or Monster Island, but that is nothing like understanding Daniel Dumile. I still don't understand him, but I think I know why.
-Speaking of which, I was reminded, as a result, that it is a lot easier to be all ho-hum yeah that's cool-noncommittal to rap when you don't actually come into contact with the grist. When your experience with the 'culture,' any 'culture,' is mediated through various scrims, it becomes easy to forget that, deep down, most of the people you respect are actually thoroughly depressing/depressed people, even if they don't see it that way themselves.
-I have a friend who works in the SF Giants' luxury suites, and he confirms that Willie Mays is one stingy dude. I understand this more nowadays. Kris "Big (pay)Days Ahead" Benson is getting rich because of you, just as you got paid on the backs of people who were paid even less than you, if at all. I understand why this might irk you.
-In contrast, rap provides no pensions.
-Which isn't to say Volume 10 or Willie McCovey deserve to be paid like Roger Clemens. Roger Clemens doesn't even deserve to be paid like Roger Clemens.
-Yeah. Fuck Clemens. Even if our ex-President Bush thinks the Rocket deserves to get paid because he's "a good guy."
-But I digress.
-It's not that critics should base their judgments on something soft and doughy like empathy. At times, though, I fear what we are letting happen. Happening to what? Compared to what? Who we? I don't know. It's just a feeling. Like the cloud from White Noise.
-I've been thinking about Greg's piece about hip-hop at age thirty, and the acid it inspired. Was it merely generational? And why do blogs seem to produce so much casual, petty hating? Is the proliferation of voice - of thinking out-loud, not actual thought or opinions - an unqualified good thing?
-Because by and large I find the blog world's armchair quarterbacking icky. For every thing that provokes me in a good way, there are three things that make me wonder, Would someone have really formed these words with their mouth, as opposed to their fingertips?
-Tangent: Why don't people close the door behind them when they walk into a cafe? You already know it's cold outside - you just walked through the damn door.
-Back to blogs, etc. While the bifurcation between twee/hothead might once have seemed weird inna college radio sort of way, the Younger Generation - bloggers, mainly - take eclecticism to that elusive "Next Level." I don't deny that they/you/we mean it, it's just so different now than when I was young, when most curious civilians were studied adherents to either Sonic Youth or NWA, and rarely the twain shall meet. Nowadays, that eclecticism - that Looking for the Perfect Playlist mentality - is the norm in a way it never was pre-Interweb. Not to say there aren't provincialisms - my Screamo-loving cousin, for example - I just wonder how I would relate to these things nowadays. Just a totally random, rather obvious thought.
-(Before you jump the cyber-handlebars, I'm saying most dudes back in the day were like that. Not that there weren't miscegenators, and a lot of them. They were just more diffuse, less the norm.)
-(And I think you see the result of all this in the culture writ large. Nowadays, there seem to be far more records out there produced by or for people nurtured by iPods rather than the elitism of single subcultures.)
-(I suppose this is why Pavement appealed to me. The sprizz and spray, the nonsequiturs, the smallness of it all - it sounded like a distress signal from kids marooned somewhere, with only a faint college radio signal for rations. It sounded like it had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world. I would have been ripped open by metal explosions if I had heard the Rapture or Bloc Party back then.)
-This, more or less, is something I like about how things are/will be. It's like when Bristol reconstituted hip-hop as Massive Attack and all that other stuff - something new (and possibly Hegelian) will come out of it, and it's a bit nearsighted for me to cling to the old provincialisms and past-due orthodoxies that irked me in the first place.
-But then I think about what I said up above, about how the Internet - the parts of it I check, at least - is largely an amoral place. When not amoral, they are anti-moral, which isn't like saying it's immoral.
-This is not an argument that there is a moral way to relate to music. They already dealt with these kinds of things.
-I'm going to stop this jingle jangle ramble. Unlike Doom, who inspired this runaway train of thought, my fingers are cold, not metal.
-One last thing: in re: the hint of trouble mentioned above. This is why I always skim (his flow is infinite, my time is not) Exo's blog. Because, more or less, I can't really associate with a lot of stuff out there, and Kris has been sent here to annoy us, to hate on haters. Ditto t h e m, a n d others (see right). You want to love it, but there's part of you that can't. Because that part of you knows that this book should be re-published, but few in 2005 would buy it anyway.

***



I'm not in love with Street's Disciple but it's compelling even in its foibles. He has that sound of someone who survived a near-death experience - it's like a clarity that takes on a didactic shape. Watching the 'Bridging the Gap' video it made me wonder how it must feel to love your dad but still be part of hip-hop, which sometimes seems fueled by exorcising a buried raging against deadbeat dads.

I interviewed Nas right around the time of Stillmatic. I think he and Kelis had just started dating. The interview took place in his hotel room. He was in a real shitty mood from being on a bus all day. A woman walked in and just splayed herself across the bed, listening to us talk - I didn't look at her, as I was too worried about Nas' defiant unpleasantness. The only thing that brought anything resembling a smile to Nas' face was when I asked him about Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud or Poet or MC Shan's Audi, and he would look over to the woman, who I then noticed was Kelis, and ask, "You remember that? Super Lover Cee - 'Do the James?'" She would shrug her shoulders and then smile to me, "He always does this. He's like Mr. Trivia." Nas would laugh. Near the end of the interview, I asked him where he saw himself going in the next ten years, and he said he just wanted to be happy. He wanted to write screenplays and raise his seeds and eat grilled corn and be with a woman he loved, someone he could wife. He looked at Kelis, but at the time, it looked like he was looking right through her. His glare seemed icy, like she wasn't at all the one he was describing. Maybe it was just the weariness of riding on a bus all day. In retrospect, maybe I was the only one he didn't want around.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

I can't say I didn't nod off during various points of Tsai Ming-Liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn. It is as minute and beautiful as it is unfathomably slow. It reminded me of what the notoriously deliberate and slow Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami once said about how he likes to nap, make himself a snack, walk about his living room, etc while a movie plays - it allows the film to mingle with his waking life, and vice versa. I thought about this as I unwrapped and then consumed a Skor bar, possibly the loudest candy bar on the market, during a tiptoe-quiet scene wherein the protagonist (if you can call him that) is terrorized by two fellow moviegoers snacking loudly behind him. If you would like to see a series of gorgeous photographs that occasionally move, rent Goodbye, Dragon Inn posthaste! If you would like to see a film about going to the movies - about charms, rituals and ghosts in the face of Late Capitalist megaplex-ization - then read the blurb about Goodbye, Dragon Inn at your local art-house theater, then go rent Goodbye, Dragon Inn posthaste!

Incidentally, Close-Up is my favorite Kiarostami movie. It's about a man who accidentally cons a family into believing he is a famous filmmaker who wants to shoot something on them, then becomes so smitten with the family that he thinks about cobbling together money to make a film about them, only he isn't actually a filmmaker. They sniff him out, turn him in and it evolves into a bizarrely rational, precise courtroom drama, starring the real-life "con-man" and his family of marks.

I can't figure out if 2046 was slow, weird or bad. I do think it is my favorite Wong Kar-Wai soundtrack.

This is so much better than this. Malamud's account of the ball un-balling into a ravel of string is so pert, understated and, in the end, mystical.

I've always thought "Five Years" would be a perfect piece for a clever filmmaker - especially that line, "It was cold and it rained and I felt like an actor." I've never been enamored with Seu Jorge's records, but his renditions of "Five Years" and a bunch of other David Bowie classics sprinkled throughout Life Aquatic steal the show (not that it was a particularly dificult theft...). As a proxy for dialogue, they worked far better as part of the film than, say, on my iPod.

"Get Carter" is probably the best theme ever. No, not the remake. If it were possible for Stereolab to bungle a theme that sounds like it was written for them, well, they did it, even though it wasn't their fault.

It's only a matter of time before they commission a loud Hollywood remake of Infernal Affairs. That adaptation will feel like someone (even if it's Scorcese, as predicted) killing a joke, while IA feels like someone who comes up with a clever twist on something oft-repeated and oft-mangled, post-John Woo. (Similarly, Johnnie To's The Mission sidesteps the joke altogether. To extend (kill?) the metaphor a little more, it's like a meditation on the mechanisms of humor.)

My Bloody Valentine's videos look like they sound, and Kevin Shields speaks just as you think he would, minus the fact that you wouldn't think he'd eat french fries and such a heavy sandwich.

"Hello, How are you? Where are you? Nothing much. Just calling to chat-chat. Eh, in the paper, I read there's a movie currently called Sideways that is ranked very high. But the Mercury...eh, no, New York Times' A.O. Scott has a piece that says its overrated. He says film critics, for our part, clearly have plenty of self-love to go around. Last night we watched The Day After Tomorrow. Have you seen it? Terrible. Okay. Bye.
- My father, left on my answering machine the other day

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Sam: "Do you have anything from Queensbridge?"
Huh?
Sam: "Some kid just poked his head in the booth and requested 'anything from Queensbridge.' Dorky white kid."
Ah. We've seen him before.

...mere minutes later...
(Dorky, well-meaning white kid pokes head through booth) "Queensbridge? Anything?"
Hmmm...not sure.
"M-O-B-B?"
Didn't bring any tonight, sorry.
"Awwwwww...I can run home and get some if you want."
Uh, you don't have to do that.
"I just live around the corner, I can run back to my apartment and get my Mobb Deep records."
Okay, but, I can just bring them next week.
"No Mobb at all?"
Well, if there's really something you want to hear, go for it. If you go home and get some records, I will play whatever you bring.
"That's all right. Do you have any Nas?"

...hours later...
"Do you have any Prodigy?"
Prodigy?
"Prodigy. Yes."
Prodigy the rapper, or Prodigy as in The Prodigy? 'Firestarter' Prodigy?
"Not the rapper, just Prodigy."
I'm sorry, we don't have any. Anything else you might want to hear?
"No."

(Girl exits)

Wow, that would have been pretty thug if she had wanted to hear Prodigy the rapper.
Sam: "Yeah, but girls like that ask for shit like that. They like that thug shit. It's like, they met some really thugged-out guy once, and it reminds them of the past."

...minutes later...
That girl...is...really...getting down.
(DT, Sam and Cameron peer through the booth's faux window. The girl is getting freaky with her friend, who also happens to be a girl.)
DT: "Uh, yeah they are."
Sam: "Uh-huh."
Cam (non-lecherously): "Yeah."
I wonder how long this can go on for.

Big Daddy Kane - 'Warm It Up Kane'
(Girl yawps consent. Much dancing...)
Tuff Crew - 'My Part of Town'
(So damn tuff. Perplexed, but more dancing...)
Trick Daddy - 'In Da Wind'
(See above...)
Too Short - 'Burn Rubber'
(Girls dance. And by dance, I mean 'take turns freaking each other.')

and so on. if it was possible to say this without sounding sleazy, we just wanted to see how long this could possibly last. after all, anyone who has ever been to the enormous room knows that cantabridgians don't really get down: my boys don't dance they just pull up their pants and...hit the books. hard.

so this was more of a social experiment than anything resembling voyeurism.

and it ended, oddly enough, with this great song here.

...walking home at 2 a.m...
dave tompkins, excitedly, with brows in full effect: "we got paid for that?"

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

My mother, after a meal at The Helmand: "America, what a funny place. They'll go to war with you, but then eat your food, too."

Last night, as Nas' "One Love" was playing:
Do you have any more Moroccan music?
More Moroccan music?
Yes.
More?
Yes.
No, we don't have any Moroccan music, sorry.
(Silence. Disappointed, almost judging look.)
Sorry.
(Disappears around corner.)
(To Chhay, the other DJ) Did she say Moroccan music? Or 'more rockin'' music? I didn't know we played Moroccan music here.
(Re-emerges from behind wall) I said Moroccan music. Something more mellow. (Squeezes face) Not this gangster rap.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Hua: How is Derek doing?
Mother: He's fine. He just bought a pair of glasses. It's because...what's the name of that music he listens to?
H: Emo.
M: Yes. He bought a pair of glasses but there are no lenses. Because he listens to Emo.
H: Plastic glasses?
M: Plastic. But no lenses.
H: But Derek isn't Emo is he? Has he changed since I was last home?
Father: No, Derek isn't Emo. But James is Emo. Or is it Derek? No, it's James - he's Emo.
M: Yes, Derek isn't Emo. His school friends are Emo. That one tall boy with the painted nails. But Derek bought the glasses and a poster.

END

Observations from the weeks that were:
-Jim Jones' Sizurp Purple Punch doesn't taste as bad as one might think.
-Anyone who saw this knows that this guy did not deserve to win a million dollars. He had no skills whatsoever. Balls were flying offscreen into the dugout.
-Nothing to do on a Saturday night in Baltimore? Park your rental in front of the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon and listen to this.
-I haven't publicly big-upped Eugene (my non-Derek, non-James, non-Emo cousin) in a long time. He recently put up an amazing site dedicated to his trip to the Middle East.
-Even though it unspools near the end, I'm really glad I never read Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album back when I bought it, as it probably would have tampered with my faith in things like activism, political movements and the academy that much earlier. (Similarly, I'm glad I had learned the rules of alcoholic moderation long before even hearing of Fred Exley's A Fan's Notes, since the book's whiskey tractor beam would probably have fouled me up at a younger age.)
-If anyone's got the hook-up with the California Highway Patrol's 11-99 Foundation, get at me!

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Second place (outside of a UPS Store): "Hey, do you know where the record label is? There's supposed to be a label office around here - do you work for the label? I thought you might be opening demos or something. We're trying to drop off our demo and we're looking for a record label."

THIS THURSDAY [6.24]:
ME.
DJ P.NICE.

THIS SATURDAY [6.26], A SOMEWHAT BIRTHDAY PARTY:
STRAIGHT OUT OF OAKLAND, THE MOST FEARED HIP-HOP WRITER...EVER, DJ O-DUB.
ALL THE WAY LIVE FROM NEW YORK CITY, ONE-HALF OF THE INDO-PAK ATTACK, JAZZBO AND HIS COLLECTION OF DANCEHALL, HOUSE, NEPTUNES AND 1980s SOUNDS.
AND ME.

Enormous Room [www.enormous.tv]
567 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge / Central Squre

AIN'T NOTHIN' FUNNY - WE LOOKIN' LIKE HAMMER BEFORE HE LOST HIS MONEY.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Nothing eventful this week.

The scene:
The night is ending. Only the hardest of core remain, including (but not limited to) two of my students evidently unconcerned about tomorrow's final exam and a rasta holding a martini in one hand and a beer in the other. A young man approaches. After lunging for a date with one of the waitresses, he makes his request. Ghostface's "Run" is currently playing.

"Can you play some Wu-Tang?"
Didn't bring any Wu-Tang.
"Wu-Tang?"
Didn't bring any.
"Aww man. Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta fuck with! (Makes chopping gesture.) Tigah-style!"
Yeah.
"So no Wu?"
Well, this is Wu.
"This is Wu?
Yeah, it's Ghost.
(Blank)
Ghostface.
(Blank) "Oh yeah, Ghostface. Yeah, of course."
(Blank)
"How about some Dre? Snoop Dogg!"
We'll work on that for you.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

"You play requests? You got 'Dwyck?'"
Yeah - Guru and DJ Premier.
"No, no - Gang Starr."
Yeah, that's DJ Premier and Guru.
"No, no, no, it's Gang Starr. It's old school. You don't know that. Ask the DJ."

"What is this? Snoop Doog?"
No, it's Dead Prez.

"What is this? Mantronix?"
No, it's actually Dead Prez.
"Ah, it's the same thing. You feel me, right? Mantronix!"

"You got that one song, Listen to the music, listen to the me-yooooo-zik..."
I don't know what you're talking about, I'm bad at identifying..
"Aaah, you don't know."

"How about that other song, Let's dance! Let's dance to the drummer's beat..."
Me: Yeah, we have that.
"Yeah, yeah, put that one on for me."
Me: Okay.
(Moments later)
"You know what would really go with this? Let's dance to the drummer's beat!" (Dances to demonstrate)
Chhay (deadpan, no part of his body moves except for his lips): No. It's too fast.
"No man, I used to do this when I was young." (Dancing, singing) "Dance to the drummer's beat - let's dance! Let's dance!" (Beat-matches his own rendition with whatever I am playing) "See it fits perfectly, right?"
Chhay (even more expressionless than before): No. It's too fast.
"Look, either your man can or can't do it. Aaah, you don't know."

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Whenever I go to baseball games, I keep score. I've been working on my current scorebook for nearly two years, and I just finished it tonight at Fenway. Overheard at some point over the past years:

"I'm as gay as they come, hook me up with Mike Piazza."

"He's not a Braves fan, he's a fa**ots fan!"

"It cost fifty-cents for a bag of popcorn and they're charging $5.75? They're making, like, ten dollars!"

"Tim Wakefield sucks my ballsack!"

A t-shirt: "Protesters suck...and so do the Yankees. Support our troops."

Hey mom, they could easily catch up.
(Scoffs at child) The Yankees could catch up.
I'm just saying, Mom. They could catch up.
There's a possibility.
There's a possibility!!!
(Dismissive) I like your optimism.

"Spike Lee - Your movies suck!" (This was directed at a random black Seattle Mariner)

"I-chi-ro! I-chi-ro! I-chi-ro! YOU SUCK!"
Dude, that's not Ichiro. That's like Mayberry or Mary or some shit.
"I-chi-ro! Forty-seven! You suck! YOU SUCK!"

"Does she like sports?"
Yeah but she hates hats.

"You hate (Mark) Grace?"
No one hates Grace.

"I would like to see a death match between Scott Spiezio and Stuart Scott."

On the jumbotron: "The students had the opportunity to ask Derek Lowe questions about cancer and about baseball."

"U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" (during Manny Ramirez's first at-bat after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen)

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

"Do you have 'Renee' by the Lost Boyz?"
And then, one week later ... "Do you take requests? I know this is stupid, but do you by any chance have 'Renee' by the Lost Boyz?"

A crowded bathroom underneath Fenway Park's leftfield bleachers. There are queues snaking in and out, and every urinal is occupied. It smells awful. Spontaneously, a chant starts up: "U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A..." Mid-piss fist-pumping ensues.

Hey, can I have a dollar?
No.
How about a cigarette?
Sorry.
Hey. You know what? You two guys look like heroin addicts.
(Silence)
What? Do I look like a heroin addict?

"Rubberband Man." This was during Pokey Reese's at-bats over the weekend at Fenway. Tonight, he came out to "Dirt Off Your Shoulder."

"Is Bill Murray coming to our class today? Is he?" (The answer, oddly enough, turned out to be yes.)

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

This time, the scene is the Quannum show. (Thanks to everyone who showed up for my set, which began at 6 (!!!) P.M. I finished, walked out for some fresh air and it was still sunny.) I don't mean to sound snootysnobby, but it strikes me as strange when you don't know anything about the group you've come to see. Especially when, on their one and only album, they offer a handy pronunciation key.

Hey man!
Hi.
Hey, do you know if Leh-tricks is here?
Huh?
Leh-tricks. Is he here?
Oh. Yeah, Latyrx is here.
All right! (High-fives friend) Score! So he's here!
Yeah, they are.
Awesome. Is Cut Chemist here, too?
No.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Last Thursday, at the weekly gig:

Can you play something really groovy man? Something groooooovy.
I don't know what you mean. Can you be a little more precise?
Something groovy! (Smiles. Sort of makes the universal gesture for grooviness, which apparently is a bathtub shimmy.) What do you recommend?
I don't know. What do you want to hear?
Look, let me explain it to you this way. I have a friend. I am here with a friend. And she is drunk.
(Blank)
And she wants to dance!
(Relief) Okay. You're still not giving me enough here.
Hmmm. Okay, here. Imagine this: A Korean girl. She is drunk. (Smiles)

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Highlight #1 from Thurrsday night:

(obviously drunk) "Can you play some salsa? Everybody wants to hear some salsa!"

"Sorry, I don't have any salsa."

"We've heard it before. Right here." (Hiccup) "Some salsa."

"Can't do nothin' for ya, man."

"How about something with percussion? Per-cussion Do you know what percussion is?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."


Highlight #2:

("4 Better or 4 Worse" by Pharcyde plays. Same drunk man reappears.)

"YEEEEEEEAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH. PHAAAAR-SSSSSYYDE!"


Though I was once mistaken for Chad Hugo at a mall in downtown Philadelphia (it's a long story that involves Roscoe P. Coldchain and an oversized white t-shirt), I am not a huge fan of the new N.E.R.D. album.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

My gigs of late have yielded few complaints--the money's been okay, the dancers have been well-fed, the occasional playing of "Bucktown" has kept our hardcore constituency intact and fewer requests for "that birthday song" have kept us DJs happy. I remain positive about our chances in this upcoming season. However, as open-minded as I am--I'm open-minded, cotdamn--any requests for us to "Mix that shit up, that funk and old-school shit with some techno, I mean I like techno music--Oakenfold--you got any Oakenfold?--Oakenfold, Sasha, Digweed. Just mix that shit up (makes motion with hands that suggests 'mixing shit up') with what you're playing now, I mean is this making you happy? Look out there (screams) nobody is dancing! Nobody! Maybe--MAYBE--if you played something someone had heard of--some REAL shit--we'd be dancing. Like if you mixed up this with some OakenfoldSashaDigweed, I've seem people here do that and people go crazy dancing. Or do you have that Elvis song from Ocean's 11? That remix? What? You've never heard it? Wait--you've never heard of Ocean's 11? With Brad Pitt? Fuck you--you've never heard of Ocean's 11 or Brad Pitt? Fuck you...(drops glass, stumbles out of the DJ booth)..."? Those requests get the gas face.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

(probably) overheard somewhere out there during the opening grammy number:

"Is this a new Outkast song, mom?"
"No, it's Prince."
"Who's Prince?"
"He was big in the 1980s, before you were born. Outkast was heavily influenced by him and Parliament-Funkadelic."
"Mommy, what's a Funkadelic?"

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Overheard conversations from the first day of spring semester. Word to Paolo Friere!

"For the purposes of our study, Asian Americans were not considered minorities. Sorry."

"In case the professor forgets, can you please bring a copy of Blade to the first class meeting?"

At the semesterly conference for teaching fellows:
Engineering Student #1: What is this? What are 'hot moments' Have you ever had a 'hot moment' while teaching?
Engineering Student #2: Is that when students come on to us?
Engineering Student #3: No it's...(points to description in packet)...these kinds of things."
Engineering Student #2: Pffft...this has nothing to do with us.
Engineering Student #1: Yeah, unless someone in section is really into COBOL!!!
(In unison): Chortle chortle!

"We went to Aspen for intersession, we, like, skiied our ASSES off."

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS

Thanks for checking in, homeslice!

My Thursday Night Observation: When the place you're DJing at isn't officially a dance club, you're not obligated to cater to their every whim, right? How about if they come back to the booth and tell you all stern-like that they're ready for you to start entertaining them? I didn't think so, but I just wanted to make sure.

This week's version of the Lord Finesse Exception (see below): I declare that requesters can be as formal as they wanna be if if they are so eager to cut a rug they don't even wait for us to mix into something obvious and start dirrrty-dancing to Mobb Deep instead. Gully, but a little weird.

(The other exception is if they say, "You know, a little Anita would definitely set this party off right.")

I went into Boston the other night and I can't wait for beisbol season to resume. Fenway may be buried in snow and ice, but somewhere within those walls, Nomar Garciaparra is getting even more swoll than ever. Dude's going to have no neck by Opening Day. Somewhere else, Manny Ramirez is starting for Game Eight to start.

Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS