Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Bomber's Dozen July 26th-31st: The Tasty Six.

The Bomber's Dozen is a weekend two-part...thing that features 12 pieces of hilariously useless news and one serious piece of incendiary commentary which will likely get me sued.

As if our rampant use of Hitler photos shouldn't.

Bon appetit.




Subsequently, no one cares.

What is more interesting here is Justin Bieber's ridiculous road crew:
"Amazingly Justin, his road crew, musicians, dancers and anyone else connected to the tour get through 10,000 French fries each day and 75 Starbucks drinks.

And a mammoth amount of equipment and instruments are used to stage each show, including 30 miles of electrical cable, 20 rolls of electrical tape ' the equivalent of 3,330ft ' 20 guitars, 14 drum sticks and 10 disco balls for the set.

It takes 11 buses to transport all the personnel and over 500 cases are used to store the tour gear."
Like a CD player isn't enough.



I can feel my ears sighing.

I have an antagonized dislike for U2. I never thought they were as prolific as their success seemed, and the fact that they're so venerated by the musical world plays cheerleader to my angst.

Gimme a U! Gimme a 2! What does that spell? Baaarreeellly mediocre!


Dear "Music News",

No this isn't.

I was not informed of this relationship! I completely disapprove! How was I not told of this???


Because you're not gay...Right?

Ugh, and he met Goldie Hawn (Kate's mother)!
'It's a little bit too soon to talk about weddings and stuff. Ask me in a few months though. I'll let you know how it goes with Goldie - and then who knows?'
These two worlds should have never collided.



"[Winfrey] made this huge speech at the ball praising Lady GaGa about how she is helping Americans to be the best of themselves," MIA explained. "There's millions of other Americans who represent that for me. Is [it] about numbers? About how much you're selling? Is it truly about the journey? Because [Lady GaGa's] journey isn't that difficult: to go from the fucking Upper East Side to a fucking performing arts school and onto a stage at the museum of fucking wherever.
That journey's about four miles."
Bravo.


"My parents were really strict at first, because they didn't want me to turn out like a prostitute."


Not that I would've guessed.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Cookies 'N' Landmines Redux

Me and ConstantlyChangesHerName make an exerted effort to create undeniably adorable craters in your brain, and now, our site does as well.


By adding more cookie jokes.

Welcome to the new Cookies 'N' Landmines. Spread the word. Be the cream 'n' the gunpowder.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Other Side: Cookies and Landmines/Don't Be A Douche

There are two modes of thought in my head. My, more or less, "general" side, where I'm a social butterfly and I'm more than eager to tell the joke and play party to the audience's whimsy. And a philosophical side, who quietly loses himself in thought and is constantly snapped back to attention at the moment a friend recognizes my daze.

Don't Be a Douche is the ever-introspective latter.

But Cookies and Landmines is the whimsical former.


And/or whoever this kid is. He's fantastic.

To separate the two modes into two blogs allows me to play a foil to the heavy-handed style of Don't Be a Douche, a style of thought that I practice way too often on my own for me to stay entertained by it.

But for every deep thought, there is a ridiculous counterpart waiting to break the ice. So, this blog expresses various points of views and stupid jokes that are too delightful to keep on my own. Like girl scout cookies. Minus the jailbait.


Sexy.

It's too fun a dance for me; where submerging in deep thought feels like tightrope walking with weights, my mind releases itself and skips freely along fresh meadows on CnL.

You homo.

In other words, I'd end up a bitter old man at 19; this is my way of avoiding that.

Don't Be a Douche is the puppeteer; constantly tugging in an effort to decipher the world around me, and guides me towards wit and cynicism.

But Cookies and Landmines is the marionette; the thing that I ultimately connect to emotionally, and conveys the impression that I'd want people to have of me.


Because this just isn't as fun as I expected.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

I CAN'T WRITE.

HFUDSHFLIDA,,BFD....LS'ABFDASBF;LDASBLFSDBAF!!!

Haha, get it? Because, because I can't?

Steve Wonder is not amused.

I'm about as sharp as a plastic bag of vomit. And I'm not sure how or when the stagnation began. It's been demoralizing, and has been making me avoid looking at this blog out of intellectual shame. Hence the feeling of cold isolation every time you visit this site.


It isn't the end, I'm sure, and, I know, this isn't the first time. It's just this dry spell's a bit alarming; all my intellectuality and academic drive, the thing I've tried for so long to hone, has scattered into a million little people and panicked in apocalyptic fashion, telling itself "OH GOD WE'RE DYING" like I were Charly in the last few pages of Flowers for Algernon.


Learning'; my way through!,. being funny again:'!&;


Truth is, I'm quietly losing my thirst for psychology too. Not for people, but for their inner workings. It's a little startling.

In the meantime, I'll try to recapture that beautiful douchebag that once posted on this, and the take the advice of comments from the previous "OH MY GOD I'M DYING" blog. It's difficult to carry a blogspot all by yourself consistently, but I will make the effort.


Because you know I'm the only writer here and there totally isn't someone else who hasn't written in month.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

ONTO WILLIAMSBURG! Pt. 3




Random old guy alert! There's one at every concert-festival, isn't there?



Looks like we missed a spy.



Me and my friend, fitting in like a lock of hair on rice.



No hipster place is complete without these little ma 'n' pa stores that sell tons of media. Cassettes, records, videos, DVDs, books, CDs, everything! All in affably ghetto boxes and shelves. As seen here, the Pool Party kids spilled in after it was over.


Entering an apparently flooded and useless train station.



Being attentionwhores on the train back. Attention whoring on an NYC subway is equivalent to masturbating in front of a girl to get her into you.


Taking the escalator down to obscurity again.

This particular set of escalators interest me. Mind you, there's nothing special about these escalators. Just a set of about seven or so of them that take about 30 seconds to complete their descent. These are the escalators everyone must take to leave the city by the popular PATH train.

Every day, thousands, possibly millions, make their exodus. 30 uninterrupted seconds of reminiscence; the understanding that at the bottom of these escalators, your day will have turned from existence and into nostalgia. I have to wonder; what were the memories like for the riders going down this 30-second realization of the end? What were the mortal days that became eternal here?

My contribution to this ethereal bank of nostalgia involved the hipster hippies of Williamsburg. The escalators elicited thoughts of them dancing, them looking like jackasses, and them reveling in all of it. And the fact that they simultaneously shattered and solidified my feelings about them.

I didn't like them; all the shallow frills of being one of those kids, trying so hard to fit in, and by association, so hard to become forgettable.

And yet, I embraced them. To take yourself and mold it to the what you want it to be, with nothing holding you back, is admirable. Even if you get lost in a sea of douchebags wearing neon sunglasses, at least you were who you wanted to be. And no one was getting in your way about it.

Scene kids play a rare paradox for me. It's always one or the other for me. But they're the first. It's been nearly one whole week since Williamsburg, and still, they have me puzzled. But I enjoyed that. And I enjoyed those stupid kids. They'll be gripping my attention for a while to come.

So here's to you, hippie girl. You look like an idiot. But you loved it all the same. And, I guess, that's all that matters in the end.



That and Speed Stick.

Friday, July 16, 2010

ONTO WILLIAMSBURG! Pt. 2

ONTO WILLIAMSBURG! Pt. 1




The infamous scarf that raised our hopes. It was our hipster "Shroud of Turin".



Ahhh we finally made it. We knew for sure thanks to the sunglasses. But also...


'Cause of these fucking pants! They were everywhere! I hate these things with a passion. Please, for God's sake, just wear shorts.


Hipsters trying to grab some of mommy's money. Perez Hilton makes a cameo in this one.



New York Senator Chuck Schumer started gathering a crowd. His mic kept breaking up, which led me to make loud accusations of being a robot. Person behind me sarcastically yelled "Keep it up!". Needless to say, we appreciated his appearance.


As the crowd drew, I couldn't help but notice this poor man's feet have been inexplicably forced into these shoes. I hope the people who did this to him were properly reprimanded. But wait...what the hell is that on the right?



It's an ol' fashioned gay hippie dancing to the techno music warm-up! He was one of the people who made me question my thinking. He seemed pretty happy and enthusiastic, which was pretty infectious. In spite of the underoos.


Nice of her to let me take a picture. But I kind of wanted to punch her. 'Cause I'm hatin' on her carefree spirit. Okay so I wanted to hug her.




Here's the act. It was a collaboration of two bands I never heard of, Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof, who covered songs from Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" album. Us Americans have no goddamn clue who Joy Division is; so me and my friend were just kind of along for the ride.

The frontman was strange. His entire outfit looked pretty aggressive...save for his socks. Which embrace his oddly gay stage style. Annnnnd he read the lyrics off a music stand. Here's a vid of one of the songs.



Ah! A girl guitarist! But she didn't do anything at all. Seriously, there were times when she was tuning while the song was playing...


...And playing the guitar with a drumstick. Well, tried, anyway.

As much as I thrash the band though it was still a fun performance thanks to the energy of the other band members. Joy Division's music was a little alienating and odd live, but the band was charismatic enough.

A few more pictures left!
Here's the last part of this delightfully filthy hippie trilogy.

ONTO WILLIAMSBURG! Pt. 1

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. How I learned of the mystique of Williamsburg is kind of hard to explain; it trickled surreptitiously through websites here and there, and at some point, I just kind of knew the place existed.

And its full of hipsters.

Last Sunday me and my friend, who's very much into joining scenes, seized the perfect opportunity to go there when we found out about the Pool Parties. A series of free concert festivals? Why the fuck not?

Tricky thing though, places; if you don't know where they are, you end up lost as fuck. Which is kind of what happened.

We got off the subway in Brooklyn, and asked some stranger where it was. He immediately shot us down with a small guffaw followed by "...Well it's like 45 minutes away", which was a polite way of saying "You guys are retards."

We went in the direction he pointed to, though, and walked. A walk like no other; we had little beyond faith to keep us going, and the area only managed to combat it. We went through a ghetto, with shirtless angry black guys and bodegas that'd probably slip in a dimebag if you know the password.

However, as we continued to trekking, there was a small scarf with a gray base and pink/blue striping. A piece of hipster clothing!, I thought to myself. I mentioned it to my friend, and he took it as empirical evidence of Williamsburg being on the horizon.

"When we start seeing neon-colored sunglasses though," my friend said, "you'll know we're there."

I still didn't believe we'd get there however. So I laughed off his advice.

Shortly thereafter we somehow landed in a completely Jewish neighborhood. I mean, completely. School buses with Hebrew language printed on them, women and children dressed in exactly the same clothing. And pennies being picked up feverishly off the ground.

No of course I didn't see the last part. But this deterred me from hope as well. Until I saw the bikers and skaters that rode towards us as we walked. More hipsters, and they were coming from the same origin.

We were almost there.

And indeed we were, after passing the primarily Latino neighborhood. The smell of rice and chicken wafting through the air always takes me back to sandals being thrown at my face as a kid. Mmmm, good times.

We finally saw the sign, which pointed to Williamsburg Bridge being in the exact direction we were walking, and not after about 5 minutes, we began looking all around us. Lazy thin colorful t-shirts. Haircuts with the sides buzzed off and the top left full hanging over their foreheads. Pants that may or may not have been their sisters'. Shredded Chucks and Vans being worn without socks.

And, yes, neon-colored sunglasses.

We made it. We walked to Williamsburg. And shortly thereafter, we reached the festival. Unfortunately, we only made it in time for one band, but the time I spent there was generally fun, and it broke my initial perspective of hipster people. To this point, because of Williamsburg, I'm not sure if I embrace these scene kids or not. If its admirable that they're so dedicated to their lifestyle, or believe that they look like flamboyant jackasses.

After the festival we went through a street which appeared more or less the main street of the neighborhood. Everywhere you looked, the festival's hipster residue made its mark as they hung out on doorsteps, at restaurants, and bars. What was unexpected was how ghetto the street looked. Graffitti tagged nearly every other wall, more of the apartment buildings look pretty antiquated, and the kids themselves wore clothes that were arguably torn off their curtains.

Wasn't as high end or yuppie as these scene places usually are; I expected something like Hoboken, NJ, which was a cross between suburb and city life. The atmosphere of openness and trashiness led me to believe, surprisingly, that Williamsburg was more or less neo-Haight Ashbury.

Without LCD-fueled aeronautics.

I did absolutely enjoy myself, though. I love being at a place where everyone just wants to get along and enjoy themselves, and so was the case there.

But enough of my babbling. TIME FOR A WHOLE BLOG OF PICTURES!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

The Repetitive Nature of Pop Music: Miley Cyrus.

Or popular music is not unlike a rapist. Either way, same difference.

For about 15 or so years now, there's been feelings that pop music has been kind of repetitive. But if someone asked you to point out what's repetitive, what would you say? Lyrics don't count either; if the lyrics or the rhythm/melody of pop music itself were a legitimate point to make, then we might as well just call everything repetitive, because every genre is repetitive in that respect.


Hi, Broken Social Scene? Message from Death Cab For Cutie: Fuck off.

"Okay, MrIndieDay, we get the presumptuous crap. Give us your specific reasons beyond music and/or lyrics, you dick."

Fine, excessively-pushy-reader. Here's Part Two of the "Nature of Pop Music":



Miley Cyrus - "Can't Be Tamed".


Alternatively titled "First Step into Whoredom"

Comparisons: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera.

Disney is a land of opportunities for white kids who already have them, and Miley Cyrus breaks no new ground in that. Aided/vicariously lived through by her father Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley managed to land her own Disney sitcom "Hannah Montana", a show I know nothing about, but presumably is a homage to "Debbie Does Dallas", in which she shamelessly has sex with Disney executives in the state of Montana.


Assuming it's a sitcom and not a loose biography.

Through that (The show, not intercourse), she found herself a career in music. Signed to Disney's Hollywood Records, she produced the company's quota for poppy drivel with her first (un-Hannah Montana) album. Much like, oh say, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera did almost exactly 10 years earlier.


Sluts always seem so hopeful at the beginning.

Artists and pop music in particular tend to capitalize on trends, hence why Spears, Aguilera, and Jessica Simpson exploded in about the same year or so. That's a given. So the question is what occurs from that initial shitty stage. Most artists don't evolve in the same fashion; some remain the same, some mature in their sound, others stop altogether by the second album.

What makes Miley Cyrus a case worth following is that, holy shit, she's following the same exact path as Britney Spears and Aguilera. It's a definitive formula, and they're parlaying it right in front of our faces. They debut with simple teen pop albums, followed by a sophomore album with sexually charged "adult" material.

Looking at the album covers side by side makes it all the more uncanny.

"Happy-Go-Lucky Toothy Jailbailt Smile " Albums:




Okay, admittedly, Christina Aguilera has always been a bit of a cumbucket. But here are their sophomore releases:

"Look at my Stomach and Deadpan Face, aren't I a Grown Whore" Albums:





They all have the same attributes! Exposed abs, lack of facial expression, their hands clutching something, clothing with some set of straps on them. It's unreal. They really did this three times over.

I may be preaching to the choir here, but here's an angle you may want to arm yourself with that means more than just "Pop music sucks" (Also I wanna stand on an Internet soapbox for 15 seconds):

The fear isn't simply the corruption of innocent kids or some family values-related garbage, but it's the idea that music corporations truly believe we're this generic and easily entertained. That we'll repeat "2+2=4" 3 times over and still drool with happiness. It's a fucking insult and a half.

We should be challenging major corporations to create higher quality products for the sake of advancing human culture and intellectuality. Not letting them slap us in the mouth and tell us to drink the kool-aid anyway.

No, this doesn't mean they need to produce Muse's "Resistance" music with Arctic Monkeys' "Humbug" lyrics, but goddamnit, don't let them give us this recycled shallow garbage either.

Not that it matters, because we've already proven ourselves the dumb monkeys they think we are.

[Can't be Tamed's in its debut week sold] 102,000. This new entry is Cyrus' eighth album to make the top three in less than four years (counting Hannah Montanaalbums). Five songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Can't Be Tamed," which jumps from #16 to #12.

Fuck.


At least I have new jack-off material.

Friday, July 9, 2010

The Repetitive Nature of Pop Music: Cody Simpson.

Or popular music is the AIDS to my creativity. Either way, same thing.

For about 15 or so years now, there's been feelings that pop music has been kind of repetitive. But if someone asked you to point out what's repetitive, what would you say? Lyrics don't count either; if the lyrics or the rhythm/melody of pop music itself were a legitimate point to make, then we might as well just call everything repetitive, because every genre is repetitive in that respect.



Hi, Brody Dalle? Joan Jett has filed felony theft charges.

"Okay, MrIndieDay, we get the presumptuous crap. Give us your specific reasons beyond music and/or lyrics, you dick."

Fine, excessively-pushy-reader. Here's Part One of "The Repetitive Nature of Pop Music":


Cody Simpson: "iYiYi" ft. Flo Rida



I liked (or fucking hated) this better when it was "Baby" by Justin Bieber feat. Ludacris.

This will be insensitive: What the fuck is an "iYiYi"? Isn't that the sound someone makes during a seizure?

Warner Bros. Music attempt to rodeo the coattails (Yes, not ride, rodeo) of Universal's tween garbage isn't even subtle; they grab a tween kid (Or in this case, Fred's little brother) and pair him with an already established Southern rapper, assumedly to further the kid's credibility as an artist.



Or emasculate his. Like a reverse quid pro quo.


They even make an effort to exemplify Cody's masculinity by suggesting, in layman's terms, that he gets mad bitches. At the beginning of the video, Cody receives a text, at which one of his baby-testicled comrades comments "New flavor of the week?". The entire exchange is so awful, I felt like they should've collectively said "L-O-L" afterward, followed by a truck sideswiping the group and aptly ending the video.



No, truck-on-people collisions are not funny. Unless they're preteens.

This is all too similar to Justin Bieber's "Baby" music video, in which Justin enters a bowling alley with his posse of uninitiated prostates, only to be stared at by all the girls, and promptly cheered on when he's capable of hitting a strike.


No doubt he gets hella teenage pussy with that bowling arm. Consent? What's that?

The song structure is precisely the same as well; two girl-like verses and choruses, than the manly southern drones of a rapper, and one last girly belting of the chorus. When listened to side by side, the two are difficult to distinguish by mind alone. They mentally gel into each other like a venn diagram. Except instead of circles, they're two silly bands.



And there's our first silly band reference! And our last.

I mean, damn, can these two be any more similar? It's like record companies have no subtlety or creativity; they just shell out whatever's already worked.

Well, yeah. And Pt. 2 will just drive the point home.