Category Archive

Youtube made Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. a smash over the summer. The song is infectious. Virulent even, sticking its noxious hooks in your ears. The schoolyard imperative shouts “Do the dance!” And you do. And you should. It’s a great song.

But I thought for sure that I’d broken it over the summer. That “do the d-a-n-c-e, 1-2-3-4-5″ would quit repeating in my head. Pop hits are usually toast by late summer. But Justice’s sugar pop had been taking its licks well into the fall.

Now finally the clincher–the antidote for those of you still spellbound by D.A.N.C.E.’s ABCs. This is the song performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, Prince and Rick James all on one stage? It’s like when you get your slurpy straw just right and you get ALL syrup concentrate, sucking the slush into a chunk of flavourless ice.

And if that video didn’t make you lose your lunch, then here’s Simian Mobile Disco’s Hustler:


Above is the alternate video for Kanye West’s Can’t Tell Me Nothing, created by and featuring comedian Zach Galifianakis.

Kanye West’s official video sucks. The video is shot on a desert with long dusky shadows. It trades cuts of a woman in a billowing dress dancing in the wind and West rapping and gesticulating wildly. The video ends with a Lamborghini pointlessly spinning out, raising a huge plume of dust. The title of the Youtube video should read “Kanye parks car on the set of an Enya music video.”

Zach Galifianakis’s lip-syncing farmer video is not only better than the original, but gives Kanye’s angsty lyrics some weight. Kanye says that it is he who is “way more fresher, with way less effort” and that “when you try hard, is when you die hard.” Ironically on Zach’s bushy silent lips, the lyrics backfire poignantly on Kanye and his empty headed video.

Notes: Galifianakis’s red shorted hoedown homey is indie-darling Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy). The video was shot on Zach’s farm in North Carolina. And dude drives a mean tractor.

Here’s Zach at it again, with Fiona Apple:

When Carlo I and decided to get married, I got scared. Not because I was unsure of our relationship, but because it dawned on me that we’re going to get old, and then we’re going to die. Please don’t ask me how I made that leap (apologies to my parents, who are my marriage template– you’re not old yet!).

On the other hand, I was excited. My dad told me (and I paraphrase, because I don’t know who said it first, or even really what he said) that a marriage is two people who know they can do more good together than they could apart. When we’re not bickering about the evolution of internet social networking sites (which, by the way, I still don’t think necessarily reflect the age and changing needs of their primary users) I know that’s what Carlo and I are. We’re a great team.

But we’re still going to die. That’s why I like this song by UK band The Hours so much. First, there’s the positive message, the stick-to-it, pick-yourself-up, it’s-okay-to-fail message. And the cultural references–you’ve got to like a song that mashes up Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela and Beethoven, not to mention the star of the song, Muhammad Ali. I also love that the “Jungle” of the title refers to Ali’s historic fight against George Foreman, who went on to sell us the grill Carlo bemoans in an earlier post.

What brings this all together for me, though, is Jonas Odell’s great steampunky collage video. First, it’s just really cool. Like Carlo said, inspirational music is all right as long as it’s got skulls and fighting. But those skulls remind me of the tradition of the memento mori, a Latin phrase that translates loosely as “remember you’re going to die.” When I think about it, knowing that I’m going to die isn’t such a bad thing. If we’re all going to die anyway, why shouldn’t we do the things we dream about, like getting married and writing about food and music, and actually cooking all those recipes we think up? So that’s what we’re doing.