JVHatesPhotography

I'm Not Gonna Cry About My Pa. I'm Gonna Build Me An Airport, Put My Name on It. Why, Michael? So You Can Fly Away from Your Feelings?

2012-03-05T09:02:00.004-08:00

You know what time it is! It's that time on Monday morning when I scrap my plans to go to the gym and turn my life around and instead make a mixtape for my blog nobody reads!

This week's mixtape is about SONGS I LIKE from MOVIES I LIKE. This weekend I really wanted to watch Goodfellas, but I gave my parents my DVD player. And I didn't want to watch it on my laptop. I forget how that lead me to come up with this mixtape.

1. Supergrass- Alright
Clueless is and always will be one of my favorite movies ever made. This is where I insert like 15 quotes from it.

2. Death Grips- Spread Eagle Cross the Block

Samples "Rumble" by Link Wray & His Ray Men from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. That Death Grips album was super awesome and I've been needing an excuse to put songs from it into Mixtape Mondays.

3. The Crystals- Then He Kissed Me

Goodfellas. I can't put into words how beautifully done and epic that scene was. But if you have 5 minutes, let me learn you kids something.

4. Nico- These Days

From Royal Tenenbaums. Incest.
It was either that or this:

5. Jon Brion- Elephant Parade

The scene where Joel and Clementine watch the circus go through the streets was made up on the spot, as the film crew and cast happened to be working nearby and Michel Gondry decided it could work well in the film. The part where Clementine disappears suddenly is one of Gondry's favorite moments of the film, as Jim Carrey didn't know Kate Winslet was going to disappear and Gondry likes it because Carrey's face appears so saddened. When the sound blanks out in the final film, Carrey is actually saying "Kate?"
Train by day, IMDB by night. All day.

God damn. Everything about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is beautiful, including and especially the original score and soundtrack. The ultimate movie to cuddle to especially if you're cuddling with a manic pixie dream girl.

6. Reel Big Fish- Take On Me

I never realized how much I liked Baseketball until this morning.

7. Grandmaster Flash- White Lines

I'm seriously addicted to this song, which is ironic. From Shaun of the Dead. The actual song wasn't in it... but, you know. What a tit.

8. Rusted Root- Send Me on My Way

From The Greatest Movie of All Time. I think of this song literally every time I make pancakes or get adopted.

9. The Beta Band- Dry the Rain
It always bugged me that the second he puts the disc in the CD player it cuts to the good part of the song, kinda like how it always bugged me that Ross, Chandler, and Joey watch Die Hard on one episode of Friends and then Rachel dates Bruce Willis a few seasons later.

10. Faces- Ooh La La

And now I want to slow dance with somebody. Or regular dance with somebody in slow motion.

You Selfish Country Music Loving Lady

2012-02-29T02:44:00.001-08:00

Thomas Leuthard (seen here in a YouTube video where I have the top-rated comment) held a street photography self-portrait contest this month. The majority of the entries were direct rip-offs of Thomas Leuthard's personal style of street photography. A lot of high-contrast black-and-whites, a lot of arbitrary shop window reflections, a lot of... high-contrast black-and-whites of arbitrary shop window reflections.

I've gotta admit, there were a lot of killer, beautifully done, thought-provoking photos in the bunch. (Okay, there were only three. The three I mentioned.)

But for the most part it was the crap I already mentioned + shadows. It was exactly what I anticipated.

My idea wasn't to just go out and take a snapshot and enter it the first day of the contest. I had already been considering what a good self-portrait of myself would be. What's something cool and different that I can be proud of? I thought I'd have to be the clear subject of the photo. Using shadows or reflections would be a cop out. Unless I could put some brilliant, Blake Andrews twist on things, and execute it perfectly, I knew that wasn't the way to go. So the first idea I had was to do some nighttime, slow-sync, off-camera flash stuff with a tripod and a remote:

And I kinda... nailed it on the first try. And was satisfied. Does it deserve to win? I dunno.
Here are the rules:

The photo has to be taken in the month of February 2012
The photo must be a self portrait taken on the street
The theme for the contest is "Street Self Portrait"
The photo must contain all the EXIF data (for digital photos)
The photo must be geo-tagged (in Flickr)
The photo can be in any format (landscape, portrait, square)
The photo can be color, black & white or something else
The photo must not contain any watermarks
The photo must not contain any frames
Everyone can submit one photo only

Grand prize is a Leica M9 with 35mm f/1.4 Summilux ASPH lens. Retail value: $12,000.

Oh wait, the grand prize is actually three years of Flickr pro. Retail value: $75. I was way off.

Either way, I'm happy with my entry. It's creative. I'm the only person who used flash. I'm the only person who didn't do either a reflection or shadow. I'm one of only two people who shot theirs at night.
I thought outside the box, or at the very least, I thought outside of everybody else's box.

But since I had all of February, I tried my hand at the obligatory shop window reflection shot:

I even did a shot inside a restaurant I'd consider technically superior to all the other entries:

I did the high-contrast, B&W shadow crap in Hollywood:

I found a way to interact with my environment:

But at the end of the day, I feel like I got it right the first night I went out.

Win or lose, I'm happy that I finally went out and took a self-portrait I can be proud of. Still, three years of Flickr Pro might be useful. Here's hoping I emerge victorious.

They Have Boats?

2012-02-27T20:17:00.000-08:00

Mixtape Monday 6

The theme for this week's mixtape is... some kinda, ambient, post-rock number. I was making a playlist about songs from the albums with my favorite cover art, then I noticed a lot of my favorite album covers were for post-rock albums. Then I went to make a fully post-rock album, but they didn't have any Godspeed You! Black Emperor albums. So then I just started putting downtempo, oddball songs I like into a playlist.

I actually don't think these songs have any unifying genre. I just think they go together nicely. They all have a certain quality I can't put my finger on.

1. Donato Wharton- "Is That Why Yr Still On Earth?"
At Humboldt, the only line I had to try and hang out with cute, artsy freshmen was "we should trade music sometime." One of those cute, artsy freshmen gave me this and I don't know who! I can't describe this, all I know is it's very, very good. I can't rock out to this. I can't get jiggy with this. I can just listen to it on repeat and think "Yes, exactly. This is a lot of things I like put together nicely."

2. Thee Silver Mountain Reveries- "More Action! Less Tears!"
Girlfriend high school bought dis vinyl. I memmer listening to dis on her turntable. Best moment of my life. Durr. Every single time I listen to this I think of the first time I listened to it. It's one of my favorite intros. It's one of my favorite guitar riffs. There's a lot of screechy strings and tremolo'd whatnots that I can't pin down, but they're epic, epic, epic.

3. Isan- "Cathart"
I first heard this in 2006 or 2007 back when I was still enthusiastically making pop music on my laptop. This song is exactly what I was going for whenever I sat down to make music. To this day when this song pops up on shuffle I want to stop what I'm doing and make a track.

4. Four Tet- "Hands"
Just like that Donato Wharton track, how the Hell does one describe this? Or any Four Tet song for that matter. It's like a Hefty bag full of beautiful sounds being rolled the stairs.

5. XXL- "Birthday Song"
XXL was a collaboration between one of my all-time favorite bands, Xiu Xiu and Italian post-rock band Larsen. The same exact thing I said about "Cathart" can be said about this track. Any time I'd write a song and it wasn't as good as "Birthday Song" I'd be disappointed in myself.

6. Tortoise- "Six Pack"
The way I got into Tortoise is I was ordering a Microphones CD directly from the label and there was an ad on the page for some Tortoise album. I thought Tortoise was the coolest band name ever, so I ordered TNT and Standards at the same time. Along with that Microphones CD. At like $15 a CD... Jesus. I must have been rolling in it. I guess I was... I did work a ton of hours consistently at Save Mart. Oh to be 18 again.

7. Battles- "Rainbow"
Hey, man, you got eight minutes?

8. Mogwai- "Stanley Kubrick"
Back when I was still working with the "favorite album covers" and "favorite post-rock songs" themes, this met the criteria for both. When it came time to re-arrange things, I couldn't bring myself to delete this track. Not because I'm crazy about the track (I like it), but because I really like the album cover.

9. Do Make Say Think- "Frederica"
Well now, there's not much to say other than this song is awesome. Y'know, I should have kept the Mogwai's and the Silver Mt. Zions and the Do Make Say Thinks in a separate, post-rock playlist. But I've already written so much here.... ugh.

10. A Silver Mt. Zion- "The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes"
Best post-rock song ever. I mean...

Pimples are flowers,
Musicians are cowards!
Let's argue in the kitchen,
For hours and hours.

SILVA MOUNT ZION. FUH-EVA.

Arrested Development quote

2012-02-21T11:46:00.001-08:00

No Mixtape Monday. I'm taking a mental health day. I hated that movie.

Just listen to

Zola Jesus – Poor Animal
The Cribs – Men's Needs
Weezer – Hold Me
The National – About Today [Live]
Ponytail – Honey Touches
Jewel – You Were Meant For Me
S.O.D. – Kill the assholes
The Knife – Heartbeats
Jose Gonzalez – Heartbeats
The Thermals – No Culture Icons

Gah, I may as well throw those into a single playlist for you. But I put them in a different order to make the playlist work together nicely:

Mental Health Monday

Who Said Vegetables Were Good for Your Heart?

2012-02-17T00:29:00.000-08:00

I don't always go out with my camera looking for colors repeating within a scene. But when I go out, I always have a camera, and I inevitably start noticing colors repeating within a scene.

I just went to In-N-Out, and when I sat down at my booth, there was a beautiful red paper clip on the table for no reason short of God herself reminding me to keep a look out for repeating colors to photograph. So I started thinking, "What can I do with this beautiful red paper clip?" The answer: Not much.

I hoped either A. somebody would walk in with a beautiful red shirt or B. a spontaneous ketchup fight would break out in the restaurant. Then in walked a guy with a beautiful red shirt. I didn't want to take a quick, meaningless snapshot, so I took a moment to FART. (Feel, Ask, Refine, Take. It's a stupid mnemonic Ken Rockwell came up with, and it's so stupid I'll never forget it for the rest of my life).

Now, the point of me photographing this guy would be to match his shirt with the red and white decor of In-N-Out (at some point while I was waiting for the decisive moment, he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a white undershirt. Even better.) So I started planning how I'd get the chairs in the shot. I'll save you the technical jargon, but I got really hung up over whether I wanted the chairs on the other side of the dining room in focus, or if I'd try to be a little more conceptual and blow out the background, thus putting greater importance on the colors red and white themselves and not the objects.

While I was focusing back and forth trying to decide, I noticed this incredibly smitten couple chatting. They was in love. The girl even caressed the boy's cheek a few times, which was adorable. I couldn't get the greatest shot of them through the glass though.

Naturally, while I was distracted by the two adorable hipster lovebirds, the guy in the beautiful red shirt got up to leave. And all that careful planning went out the window as I threw my camera up to snap a photo as quickly as possible.

Boo.

Well, I really blew that one. "Maybe if I'm lucky, a crew of Norteños will walk in?" I thought. But what are the odds they'd be wearing the exact shade of red to match In-N-Out? Ah well. I'd have to settle for the kid with the bright red shirt who walked in a few minutes later. I remembered to incorporate the red from the tables, decided to go portrait orientation, and took a few shots.

I was content to let the shot on the right be the "keeper". But I really like the shot on the left for a few reasons, the last of which being because it looks like he's caressing his friend's cheek with his hand.

Kinda like:

But maybe that's a stretch.

Maybe you can't always make a serendipitous connection by bending and manipulating things to your heart's content.

That Was a Freebie.

2012-02-13T05:48:00.000-08:00

In February, I have to somehow win three photo contests, come up with a really great 5-minute comedy set, and change the community one child at a time. But what have I been doing for hours at a time every night?

I've been listening to love songs.
I've been over-analyzing lyrics, and searching for truthfulness in subtle vocal inflections.
I've been discovering so much about songs I'd always assumed were the most amazing love songs.
And I've dismissed those very songs in favor of others I'd never taken the time to appreciate as much.

I literally lost sleep thinking about what makes a perfect love song. There are tons of songs in my collection that have single, extremely vivid lyrics that didn't make the cut because they were too abstract. There were just as many that I thought counted as "hopelessly romantic" that ended up being merely psychotically co-dependent.

And we'll get to those in future updates, starting tomorrow.

But for today, I've narrowed it down to five categories of love song, and chosen the absolute best songs in those categories to make this week's mixtape.

I Adore You

Carole King- "I Feel the Earth Move"

Carole is the smitten kitten on this track. She's so in love, she sat down at her piano with a pen and paper and wrote a better expression of infatuation than "Oh Yoko". Sure John called out for Yoko in the middle of a shave, but Carole thought her man was so ah-door-ah-blay she sang the same lyrics over, and over, and over for him.

I Need You/I Need You Back

Dido- "Here With Me"
I Need You vs. I Need You Back vs. I Need You Back Because I Lost You Because I Screwed It Up was a huge ordeal when creating this list. Dido takes the cake because she cannot function until her big spoon returns.

I'm Glad to Have You

Sally Seltmann- "Harmony to My Heartbeat"

Oh Lord. Remember when I mentioned subtle vocal inflections? On paper, this song is pretty silly. But the breathless delivery of the word "exactly" in the lyric "When you hold me I can see, this is exactly where I want to be" kills me every time. It speaks to me so effectively, I had no trouble picking it to represent this category over "Hypnotized" by Ani DiFranco. To be fair, that song is an absolute masterpiece on paper though.

Boy Loves Girl

The Postal Service- "Such Great Heights"

This is where things get very interesting. Ninety-nine percent of pop music is Boy Loves Girl. This list started as dozens of songs in that category. Dozens! When I narrowed it down to these five songs, I wasn't sure exactly what category "Such Great Heights" would fall under, until I realized it was the only Boy Loves Girl song left, which says a lot because I didn't even realize I did that. Ben Gibbard is so dramatic, so over-the-top, so emo, you might actually want to throw up. He's already got the girl, but he's still tripping over himself writing her pop songs and blowing up her answering machine. Ol' Death Cab is doing something right if every stupid movie from 2003-2004 wanted this song for the soundtrack, or at least the trailer. He must be doing something right if Sam Beam is huffing and puffing his way through these lyrics in an M&Ms commercial, and awful ska bands are covering it, and the United States Postal Service is suing the band and inevitably using the song in their commercials (you're gonna have to Google/YouTube all of these things yourself). Cutie's doing something right if I never once considered cutting this song from the list, but "My Girl" inevitably got left out.

I Can't Describe It
Mirah- "Sweepstakes Prize"
Best. Love song. Ever. And it's because she has no clue how to articulate her feelings. She doesn't even know where to start, but she's definitely going to try.

The first line is a metaphor, "You remind me of a firework, boy" and she rides that out for the first verse. She's already smashed "Such Great Heights" in the hyperbolic imagery department.

Then the ultra-intimate "everybody sees a funny look in our eyes, 'cause we know that we already won the sweepstakes prize"... She's hit the jackpot, he's hit the jackpot. They've hit the jackpot. Everybody else go home.

Every verse is tied together by the hook "I'd tell you why, but I don't know. It's simple and so complicated. I could walk all day on the railroad tracks, but there's much more to it than that." Game over, right? I can't even... love just leaves you tongue-tied. It shouldn't, but it does in a tremendous way. It's simple and so complicated.
So where did she start? A wild, yet simple metaphor.

Where does she end? With my all-time favorite lyric from a love song.

I'm so lucky 'cause I asked you once, 'hey what are you doing, do you wanna come up

and have a cup of tea, come and visit with me. We'll play guitars and then I'll give you my number.

Again, another paradox. It's the most literal and direct lyric in the song, yet it's so verbose. It's so specific to her and her squeeze, yet it's such a universal expression of how it feels to be in love.

FUCK I'm lonely.

Mine Was Better.

2012-02-12T19:14:00.000-08:00

Will Smith

Won't Smith

I Got Children's All Over Town

2012-02-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

I spent Sunday keeping my eye out for colors. Matching colors within a scene. Echoes. Or rhymes. Whatever you call it when there's some unifying element between the objects within a scene.

Yellow

Teal

Pink

Literally no colors repeat here, but I can't rob you of this one.

Then I came home and watched Ink Master. Normally I avoid competition reality shows like the plague because I know if I watch five minutes of one, I've gotta watch them all. But, I fucked up and watched this one. Possibly because I couldn't find the remote after watching UFC on Spike. It's a typical, bogus, strategically-edited reality show where there's one obnoxious, black asshole you want to go home right away. It's great though. It'd be a little more exciting if it weren't so obvious from episode one that Tommy was going to win.

I Think Some of Them Are Thirsty Too.

2012-02-06T03:13:00.000-08:00

Mixtape Monday 4

Saturday night, Carlos Condit became the interim welterweight champion of the UFC by smacking Nick Diaz around a little bit more effectively than Nick smacked him for 5 rounds. You know what I think his secret to success was? He came out to Rage Against the Machine. Nick Diaz came out to Deftones. Like my brother would say "that shit is hard..." But of course, Rage covering Bruce Springsteen is just a little harder, and it may have very well been the difference when it came down to it.

Well, that, and:

having much more diversity in your striking
landing more effective strikes
working harder to control the center of the Octagon
not getting gassed
clinching and throwing knees to escape a series of body shots
easily defending a few quick submission attempts
and ending the fight in a dominant position on the ground.

But anyway, this week's mixtape is all about UFC entrances. Not only memorable entrance themes, but entrance themes attached to memorable fights or moments. Silly theme aside, throw this mix on and let it play out! These songs all go together pretty nicely, believe it or not.

1. Rage Against The Machine- "The Ghost of Tom Joad"

Very Rage-y. I used to be obsessed with Rage Against the Machine when I was in middle school, and I haven't heard this song in years. Rage makes perfect entrance music for any kind of combat sport. Or sport in general. Or a game of checkers. I was at Rasputin this weekend and I found the single and bought it for $2. I listened to it in the car and when I realized it was only one song I felt like a retard. I could have bought that on Amazon MP3 for a dollar. Or listened to it on Spotify for free, like I'm encouraging you to do...

2. Metallica- "Enter Sandman"
Brock Lesnar came out to this when he lost his belt to Cain Velasquez. I thought it was anti-climactic at the time, so how did it make the cut for this playlist?
Is it because this is the night he got "a hole in his face from some guy punching him in the face"?
Is it because this ties into one of my many "I was hanging out with this cute girl" stories?
Or is it because this was the night he shoved that fucking cop during the walkout?
I'll never tell. But I used a classical cover since the original version wasn't available on Spotify, and the classical cover was the version that made me want to kill myself the least.

3. Eminem- "Won't Back Down"

The legendary Chuck Liddell came out to this for his last fight. Before I heard this song, I'd just listened to the album where Eminem raps in a bad Jamaican accent, and I figured he was done. But he's really tearing through a shit ton of metaphors and puns and similes here, and I feel like he redeemed himself with Recovery. Apparently, this was Eminem's way of releasing a single for Recovery before the album dropped. Unfortunately, The Iceman got dropped first.

4. Weird Al Yankovic- "Fat"
Roy "Big Country" Nelson used to come out to this when he was still knocking motherfuckers out and before fight fans discovered he has Homer Simpson Syndrome.

5. Rohf (ft Big Ali)- "Dirty Hous'"
GSP came out to this in 2007 and has been slapping the shit out of people ever since. Best entrance ever.

6. Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman- "Con te partirò"
To be fair, every time I've seen Akiyama come out to this he's gotten messed up. But god damn if that entrance doesn't make me shed a tear every time.

7. 2Pac- "California Love"
Urijah Faber keeps it real and comes out to this every fight. I mean, if Newt Gingrich came out to this before speeches about colonizing the moon, he'd have my support. Okay he wouldn't, but I'd be like "damn, Newt's keeping it real."

8. Kanye West- "Runaway"

Brandon Vera came out to this when he fought Thiago Silva. I remember thinking "aww, I love this song" and distinctly remember him singing along with it before entering the Octagon. Then he got dealt with, and sustained the worst nose injury I've ever seen in a fight.

9. The Misfits- "Astro Zombies"

Mac Danzig came out to this once. I don't remember how the fight went, but I remember thinking "Is he using this song because he's related to Glen Danzig? Wouldn't coming out to a Danzig song be a bad omen?" So I Googled Mac to see if he was related to Glen and got sidetracked when I discovered he's a pretty baller landscape photographer.

10. Jay-Z (ft Kanye West and Rhianna)- "Run This Town"
Dang. Urijah keeps it real coming out to 2Pac, but Jose Aldo keeps it just a little bit realer. Aldo first came out to this song the night he whipped Urijah's legs worse than Eddie Murphy did Rick James. I can't think of a more appropriate song for such a dominant career.

PS- Of course it was because Brock shoved the cop! Sorry, Plant, but that shit was priceless.

Sandwiches?

2012-01-31T12:44:00.000-08:00

I got 9,790 views for this... I went looking for this clip the day Macho Man died (RIP, Mach), and every version of it on YouTube was shitty, low-quality, or some retarded remixed bullshit. So I ripped it from the DVD and uploaded it myself. I saw something in demand not being offered by anybody, made it available, and made thousands of theoretical dollars. I gotta apply this to photography somehow.

I Used It to Dig the B Unit

2012-01-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Mixtape Monday 3

This week is all about The Best Tracks on the Worst Albums I Own. Some of these were gifts, some of these were very inexpensive impulse purchases, but all of these albums range from "blah" to "blegh" in my opinion.

1. The Streets- "Such a Twat"
The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living was so god damn shitty, I didn't even pick a song from the actual album to add to this playlist. So I'm already abandoning the theme from the start. I was at Rasputin, this album was $3... I liked the other Streets albums, and even though every review I'd read of that album said it sucked ass, I bought it anyway.
"Such a Twat" from A Grand Don't Come for Free basically sums up how I feel about owning the albums on this list. "Why did I have to go and do a stupid thing like that... I'm such a twat."

2. Saves the Day- "At Your Funeral"
I downloaded this on Kazaa when I was 13 and really liked it. Then one day I was hanging out with this girl, going through her albums, judging her, and saw this. She was like "Yeah, that album is terrible. You can have it." I was like "Come on, man, there's probably some redeeming qualities about this album..." But she was right. Total crap. Just that one faggy emo song I liked as an 8th grader.
Who the fuck am I kidding, I still like this song.

3. Fine Young Cannibals- "She Drives Me Crazy"
I saw this for $2 and thought "I LOVE THAT SONG... let's find out what these guys were all about."
Faggy garbage, that's what they're about.
Once, this girl was going through my iPod and she was like "You have Fine Young Cannibals!"
"Yeah, there's only one song on there that's good. The rest are totally gay."
Then she put on "Good Thing" and we argued about which was better, "Good Thing" or "She Drives Me Crazy". I felt like "ughhh, get out of my car and die in a fire." but I didn't actually say that. I told this story to my friend and he was like "You should have been stoked that she even knew who FYC was..."
He's right, but also, fuck her.

4. Tracy Chapman- "Fast Car"
Ugh. What was I thinking? Jesus, I spent $3 on this. Now I can listen to it on Spotify for free. Truth be told, I really, really, really liked the Xiu Xiu version, and apparently that song is really important to Jamie Stewart as a songwriter and person. But if I had a dentist appointment the day I bought this, I would have heard this song in the waiting room, gotten it out of my system, and spent that $3 on an 11oz bag of peanut butter M&Ms.

5. New Radicals- "You Get What You Give"
I love this song. Like, unironically, I like this song, and don't consider it a guilty pleasure. The rest of the album is hot, wet, garbage though. It's like classic rock with whiny vocals and pop sensibilities. Essentially some sort of pussy/cock-rock hybrid. Seriously, this song is really good though. I've loved it since the first time I heard it during the summer break between 5th and 6th, or 6th and 7th grade, or whenever it came out. Then again, I don't be buyin' $2 Matchbox 20 albums just because I like the video for "Real World" when I was nine.

6. Sage Francis- "Underground for Dummies"
Same as the Streets, but not so bad. I loved Sage Francis, heard this album was boring, decided to give it a shot. It wasn't very good at all. I do thoroughly enjoy this song though, lyrically and thematically it's very solid. And musically, it incorporates a brilliant sample that I can't quite put my finger on... and right now it's driving me crazy. I just spent the last half-hour before typing this sentence trying to find the answer. I even emailed the guy who made the beat. I'm pretty sure the sample came from the old MTV News break titles in the 90s... but I can't be sure exactly. If you know where it came from and can show some evidence, I'll be eternally grateful if you tell me.

7. DMBQ- "She Walks"
DMBQ absolutely rule live. My ears literally rang for a week after I saw them at Howie's. My ears are kinda hot just thinking about it. But the awesome live show doesn't translate to a good CD. Cock-rock isn't somehow, magically, more interesting just because it's some Japanese guys doing it.
Great. Now my sand castle has a giant pool in it.

8. Lali Puna- "Faking the Books"
The Books are one of the greatest, greatest, greatest things to happen to music, ever. Faking the Books is an album by Lali Puna that would come up anytime I searched online for more albums, tour info, t-shirts, videos, or any other information about The Books. Then one day after like four years of that shit, I actually saw Faking the Books in a record store and bought it... sight unseen... or whatever the audio equivalent to that expression is. I loved the first track. Mellow and enjoyable in its subtleties. The rest was kind of boring, even thought it got a little Stereolab-y a few times.

9. Dynamite Hack- "Anyway"
Literally the worst album I've ever owned. Big time guilty pleasure though. I listened to it every day when I was 12, and I'm not sure what even happened to my original copy. I bought another copy of it last year for 50 cents at Rasputin. One day, somebody broke into my car where I had a trunk full of stuff from Costco, and a $60 camera strap in the back seat. All they took was the change from my center console, and this disc out of the CD player.

10. The Who- "Baba O'Riley"
When I was 16, I'd finished going through all of my "phases". All I really went through was like, a "metal" phase in middle school and a "punk" phase in high school. One day I realized everybody in a clique was a faggot and then (to completely contradict myself) went through this "I'm gonna learn everything about music, and know every song by every band, ever!" phase.
Jesus, isn't The Who like, the perfect example of where a clueless 16-year-old boy would start on a trip to Borders to find out about every song by every band, ever?
Sadly, I bought this album when I was 20, and not at Borders. I kinda knew I wasn't going to give a shit about it, but I had money to burn that day. Still, that thirst for knowledge is partly to blame for my inability to throw an album out, no matter how shitty, so long as I like one song on it.

These Kind of Skills?

2012-01-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

You know what's really awesome, and actually kind of beautiful? Some guy named Steve was able to register just his first name as his username on YouTube. Right place, right time, and now every motherfucker after him who tried to register as Steve got the "This username is already taken" message. That guy is part of people's lives in a way...

http://www.youtube.com/user/steve

But you know what would be extra dope? If @steve was the same guy. Fuck that would be cool...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steve
http://www.facebook.com/steve
http://myworld.ebay.com/steve
http://steve.blogspot.com/

EAT IT, BITCH!

2012-01-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

Mixtape Mondays 2

The theme for this week's playlist is parenting. I felt a little iffy about doing a comedy mix right away, because if you liked what you heard from any of these comedians, you might go ahead and listen to their entire album. I mean, if I see a good comedian on TV, or an old, funny bit pops into my head, I immediately run to Spotify and listen to the guy's entire discography. But there are are a ton of good comedians and bits/tracks out there, so hopefully this won't spoil it for future Mixtape Mondays.

If you take one look at this list, you're probably thinking, "No Bill Cosby!?" Trust me: he makes a cameo. You're also probably thinking, "No women? What about the mother's perspective? Don't you think women are funny?"

1. Anthony Jeselnik- "Bad Parenting"
Deadpan, sardonic. Y'know, Anthony Jeselnik.

2. Patton Oswalt- "The Gifted Child"
It's hard to really review comedy tracks without giving away the punchline. This is a really good bit, and it's part of a trilogy of jokes about parenting/children on Patton's newest album.

3. Marc Maron- "'I Didn't Know How to Love You'"
Painful and depressing, it's honestly not even told in a jokey manner, or made to be more accessible. It's no different than what he'd say to a therapist while crying, but place it in the context of a comedy album and it's unbelievably funny in its... fuck I need a thesaurus. IT'S REAL GENUINE AND FUNNY.

4. Greg Giraldo- "Divorce/Snacks/Kangaroo Fucking"
Greg Giraldo (RIP) was one of the greatest comedians ever. There's a few things in here he says about hypothetically raising gay kids and/or loving your kids equally that I've definitely heard borrowed by other comedians. My one problem with this track is the kangaroo fucking part could have been separated into a different track. But if you listen to this track once, you're not going to be able to say or hear the word "snacks" without laughing for like a month.

5. George Lopez- "Birthdays"
From my favorite comedy album ever. All I can say is everything he says on this album (and most of his albums) is a pitch-perfect representation of what it's like growing up Mexican. Even if this wasn't your household, it was your grandparents'.

6. Al Madrigal- "Best in Show Mom"
Kind of the counterpoint to the Patton Oswalt track from earlier on the mix.

7. Eddie Murphy- "The Barbecue"
Ugh, listen to this and it's clearly the funniest "my drunk dad" comedy bit ever, but don't let that be all you take from it. Because the part about trying not to cry when your parents hit you is fucking priceless.

8. Bill Burr- "Being a Mother"
I introduced my parents to Bill Burr recently and now my dad thinks he's the epitome of comedy, and he's brought this bit up a few times in conversation.

9. Dane Cook- "Benson's Animal Farm"
No Dane Cook bashing. The "number one quote... you all heard at one point or another..." still makes me chuckle out loud every time. All the douchey, roaring fans and Dane Cook-iness aside, this bit is simple and awesome.

10. Louis CK- "My 3-Year-Old Is a 3-Year-Old"
Pffff Jesus, fuckin' duuuuude. Louis CK has the best routines about parenting known to man. I've watched him since before he was actually a parent, I just realized. He still does the same ultra-hilarious, hateful observational humor that he's always done, but the first time I heard Shameless I thought to myself "It was this guy's destiny to have kids so he could make fun of them in his act..." Therefore, Louis CK's parenting material is a gift from God. Not just his comedy material, every story he has about his kids is a gift. Go listen to him talk about his first daughter being born on Marc Maron's podcast, and tell me it's not incredibly touching. Louis CK fucking rules.

Oh, now you LOVE The Ten Commandments.

2012-01-22T08:51:00.000-08:00

This morning, when I saw the little "1" next to the email icon on my phone, I thought "yay, that guy on eBay accepted my low-ball best offer on that camera!" But what it turned out to be was an email about Picnik shutting down. Picnik is an app I added to Chrome because I had (and still have) this romantic idea about selling my PC, buying a Chromebook, and doing everything with cloud based services. Needless to say, I added it, used it once, and went back to using Lightroom. In the email, it said that anybody who paid for Picnik Premium would be refunded in full, even if it was the last day of their subscription. That's very nice of them. What really interested me is that they were letting anybody use Picnik Premium for free until it shut down. So, at first I did the cynical Vince Torres thing:

But while I had the app fired up, I figured I'd delve into it a little bit. And let me just say,

Picnik is powerful enough to take a bad photo:

and make it worse.

I had to stop myself because I actually started having fun like an asshole. But the photo of the guy randomly dragging a cross on wheels down Mooney Blvd. is a rejected snapshot of mine that I've wanted to share for the longest, like five weeks. It's just such a poor shot, I figured I'd never be able to share my true vision with people. So I took advantage of Picnik Premium and made it happen:

That's What It Said on 'Ask Jeeves'.

2012-01-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

The new Ani DiFranco album came out today. Overall it's a real snoozefest. There's this really awesome song she's been performing in concert for at least two years now called "Promiscuity" and even that sounds disposable and boring on the album.

I remember when I saw her live... it was very neat. After the show a bunch of homos (no homo (what?)) were outside waiting to meet her and her tour manager came out and was like "She doesn't sign autographs, and she doesn't take pictures, don't touch her, don't fucking look at her, and she'll be outside to meet with you at about 1am." Okay, he only said the first two things and the last thing, but honestly... he may as well have said the things I added.

Anyway, I went to eat something, then came back at 12:30 and nobody was there. Her tour manager walked by and was like "She came out earlier and now she's on the bus getting a massage. Did you have something you wanted me to give her?"

So... she doesn't sign autographs or take photos with fans, but we're supposed to bring gifts to her?

My whole perception of her up to that point was... well, not a woman who doesn't sign autographs or take photos with fans because she has to get to her gigantic tour bus for her massage... She's my single favorite lyricist of all-time, and if I ever have a daughter, I'm naming her after Ani... but she's kinda full of shit.

Whenever I see this photo I took of the girl who grabbed her setlist that night, I think "I should have punched her in the face through the paper and run off with it."

*I don't mean "homos" in a derogatory way whatsoever. It's just, a lot of her fans are homos, y'know?

Take Your Fun-Fun!

2012-01-16T17:47:00.000-08:00

Mixtape Mondays!

So I used to follow this skateboarding website that used to do (and still does) cool segments for each day of the week. First Try Fridays, where a pro-skater has to come to their skate park and do a challenging skate trick on their first try without warming up. Thrashin' Thursdays, where they'd show a general compilation of a given skate team tearing it up at the park. And Buttery Ass Mondays, where this dude named Donovan... I can't even explain it. But was the greatest part of my week, every week. Then they not only got rid of Buttery Ass Mondays as a segment, but they deleted the entire archive of Buttery Ass Mondays videos! This is why I stopped following and am not hyperlinking to that particular website.

Anyway. I thought daily segments was a cool idea. On one of my old blogs (2010-2010, RIP) I used to do a thing called 1.8 Wednesdays, where I'd post a photo I'd taken from the past week at f/1.8. I've been considering rolling out daily segments on this blog. I know nobody's reading this. Actually, to be creepily honest, I can tell who reads my blog and doesn't comment because music I recommend shows up in their Spotify history shortly thereafter...

Anyway. Mixtape Mondays! That's an easy one. I've been thinking about this one for a long time, and now with Spotify I don't have to upload a mixtape to Mediafire. I've been trying to think of a theme, like they did in High Fidelity but I don't know what's relevant to my non-existent readers' interests. So for the inaugural Mixtape Monday, I picked the first ten songs to come up on my iPod Shuffle to write about.

Mixtape Mondays 1 (if you don't have Spotify, get with it, asshole.)

1. Sonic Youth- "Incinerate"
This was on my list of my favorite songs from 2006. How can Sonic Youth go for like, 30 years, sound basically the same the entire time, and still crank out modern classics every album? They just do. Believe it or not, but this song blew out my back speaker when I was driving home from Hanford in 2009. Of all the fucking hip-hop I listen to... it was this shit!

2. Cannibal Ox- "Ox out the Cage"
A lot of the time, I don't feel comfortable breaking down a hip-hop track. Real hip-hop bloggers would look at my critiques and think they were garbage. Unless I have a specific attachment to a rap track, I never have anything besides "This beat is dooooope... I like that one lyric..." Besides, Spotify only had the instrumental version of this, so all I can say is the "This beat is dooooope..." part.

3. The Game ft. 50 Cent- "Hate It or Love It"
All right, this is one of my favorite rap tracks ever. First of all, this beat is dooooope. Second of all, there's a lot going on lyrically from the very first bar. 50 Cent reveals his mother is a lesbian (which oddly, I already knew from being an avid Blender reader), Game's ma considered aborting him, and niggas stole 50's bike. What's weird is I heard one of Game's verses from this song on a Girl Talk track before I actually heard The Documentary.

4. Wavves- "So Bored"
If you're old-school caring-about-Vince's-opinions, you already know I wrote a list of my favorite songs from 2009 and posted it to Facebook. It's a fuzzy, catchy pop song. I even think Wavves was deliberately avoiding coming off as catchy and poppy by covering that entire album in superfluous fuzz.
Spotify didn't have this song in its library, so for no reason I put "It Ain't Gonna Save Me" by Jay Reatard in its place.

5. Beastie Boys- "Intergalactic"
There's nothing I can really tell anybody about "Intergalactic"... we've all heard it. It was the catchiest shit ever. The beauty of The Beastie Boys is their songs are timeless; this song could come out today and it would be the freshest shit on the radio. I guess a bit of useless JV trivia would be that this is the first CD I ever saw that didn't come in a traditional jewel case. Kyle Dent loaned it to me in 5th grade and I was like "wtf is this!" when I opened the digipak. I thought it was some futuristic, outer-space shit that only The Beastie Boys knew about...

6. The Thermals- "Here's Your Future"
If you're OG caring-about-Vince's-opinions, you already know this was on a list of my favorite songs from 2006 that I posted to Myspace. One day somebody either called and texted me and was like "Yo, The Thermals is on Weeds right now!" and I thought that meant The Thermals was one of the many bands in the third season to c over the theme song during the opening credits. But, uh... that's not what they meant.

7. Wolf Parade- "I'll Believe in Anything"
I love this song. Any time I sit down at a piano or keyboard I tap out the melody over and over. "Your blood, your bones, your voice, and your ghost..." Which reminds me, in 2005, I felt like every new band had the words wolf, ghost, or fire in their name, and I'd joke around and ask friends if they "heard that new Ghost Wolf album." Then one day, six years later, I was walking downtown and found out there's actually a fucking band called Ghost Wolf...

8. Aesop Rock- "Daylight"
If you're OG Triple OG caring-about-Vince's-opinions, you know that on Halloween 2003 I was going through Eileen Schorr's Soulseek library when I found this and it became, like, my second favorite song ever. I'm sure she got it from her ex-bf, my friend Bo (RIP) who went through a lot of phases (emo, hardcore, skinhead, emo-hardcore, polka probably) during his wigger phase. This is the only song on this list that I used to take everywhere in my pudgy CD player back in the pre-iPod days. When I saw Aesop Rock the night before I turned 22 he played this, and it was the greatest moment of my life.

9. DMX- "Get It on the Floor"
I listen to this, and "Takeover" by Jay-Z on repeat before every job interview (not kidding, go check my last.fm). He ends the first two verses with the n-word, for no reason! I can't stress enough how pumped up this song gets me. When it comes on and I'm at the gym I just wanna rap along with it, and also beat the fuck out of Tank Abbott. There's not a single lyric in this song that you can shout and not get thrown out of the gym though. And this is where I list bat-shit lyrics from the song at random. If you're reading this, you need to go out and listen to this song, bitch-ass nigga!

10. Ponytail- "All Together Now"
This song is weird. I'm not even sure the girl sings actual words, she just chirps and gurgles. That's literally how she did the mic check when I saw them at Howie's. She just yelled "yip!" and "yooo!" And then during the actual set she'd just freak out and her eyes would roll into the back of her head. It was great.

A Million Fucking Diamonds!

2012-01-15T20:46:00.000-08:00

"You poor mother fucker. You're gonna miss everything cool and die angry."

I'll Be Bringing You Some Salmon Rolls Right Away.

2012-01-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

A woman was hit by a car and killed on Tulare Avenue just west of Garden Street on Monday night. I drive west down Tulare every night at around the same time on my way home from work. I saw a sidewalk memorial the next day on my way to work and felt bad.

Then today I noticed (and was particularly annoyed by) something I see literally on a nightly basis:
Some random asshole riding his bike against traffic on Tulare Avenue without a light.

I thought it would make for an interesting juxtaposition to get somebody riding against traffic in the same frame as the sidewalk memorial, so I took my camera over there and waited for over an hour tonight. I was actually ready to take the photo when I got my opportunity, but the guy turned north into an alley just a couple seconds before entering the frame. It was like the world was screwing with me.

I was about to give up when I started noticing something much more interesting than what I'd originally gone there to shoot: people driving past the memorial while texting. Some of them even looked up from their phones to gawk at the memorial for a second as they drove past. I really wanted to capture a photo of this, and I felt it would make for an infinitely stronger image, but there are a lot of variables in that equation: how dark it was, how dim the light from a smartphone reflecting onto a driver's face really is, the speed they're driving at, their windows being up...

And then I gave up.

Normally I wouldn't write about the process if I didn't get the photo, because I kind of feel like no matter how great an idea is, it doesn't mean anything if you didn't get the shot. But I would have written this down to think about anyway, so I figured I'd share it.

Look at Me. Getting Off.

2012-01-10T05:05:00.000-08:00

Password: mma

Okay, so. My desire to get in shape, read more, make more friends, learn new things, grow as a person: That's John Fitch (the guy in the red trunks). He's not the most exciting fighter (read: he's probably the least exciting fighter), but he's unshakeable. He's the #2 welterweight in the world, and he was widely expected to mash Johny Hendricks' face into the mat for 15 minutes straight.

Now, YouTube and Facebook are Johny Hendricks (black trunks).
"Try'na grow as an individual and succeed in life, GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE."

And then Steve Mazzagatti is like any 24-hour fast food place, I guess. I wake up after having been defeated and I don't know where I am, but Steve's there like "it's all right, you just got ktfo, but I'm here for you if you need like, a dry cheeseburger or stale fries and a milkshake."

And I guess Johny Hendricks' beard represents. My beard.

I wish.

PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS PENUS

2012-01-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

Good to see my photos getting out there! Or is it?

I Don't Understand the Question, and I Won't Respond to It

2012-01-06T13:53:00.000-08:00

Last night, I was invited to a comedy battle. The way it was described to me:
We all tell jokes, and the comic who tells the least funny joke has to take a shot.

Sounds like a bunch of comedians telling jokes for a few rounds with the least funny one getting wasted, right? Turns out, it was me and one other guy, one joke apiece.

So homeboy grabs the mic, "What's the most popular brand of makeup in Iran? Covergirl"
The crowd boos as they very well should.
My turn. "I thought I was going against Eulalio [shy promoter/comic], I thought I had this shit in the bag." Laughter.
"Wait, did I win? Does that count!" Laughter
"Okay, I got one joke about pedophilia, and one joke about diarrhea."
"DIARRHEA!" 99% of the crowd shouts
"Pedophilia it is!" Laughter
"My girlfriend dumped me because I have a small apartment. I was like 'bitch, you live with your parents!' and she was like 'fuck you! I'm 16!'" Laughter and cheering, they assumed that was the punchline.
"I didn't know she was 16! I DIDN'T KNOW SHE WAS 16! But the minute I found out she was 16... I rented a bigger apartment." More laughter and cheering, I took that wave of adrenaline (or rather, it took me) to Taco Bell to get a quesadilla and Baja Blast.

The only thing I wish I could have done was Sage Francis the other guy's punchline (call it out before him to illustrate how hackneyed it is). I actually liked the makeup-in-Iran joke though! Sounds like something Gallagher would have said in the 80s, or Larry the Cable Guy in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Which reminds me, did you hear it's Bring Your Parents to Work Day in China? Get-r-done!

Across from Where?

2012-01-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

Chris Lytle emailed me!
... and he called me TJ! Not even close, but who am I to correct this dude?

Everybody Dance NOW!

2012-01-04T17:14:00.000-08:00

So this crap has been making the rounds. It got me thinking... why do I take photos?

Well, it's not something I really have to think long and hard about. Since the day I got my first digital camera, I've known why it's important to take pictures of thing, and it's not unlike the blubbery drivel in that cancer portrait link thing from a paragraph ago: I like to document things.

In one of all-time favorite comedy bits, George Lopez says that Hispanic people take lots of photos, we just never develop the film. He did this bit on video and he pretends he's holding up a film canister and goes "See, this is when we went to Disneyland..." That's basically how it went for me. I have all these cool memories as a kid, and not a very diverse range of photos. I went through the chest in my family's living room looking for good photos (aka, photos of me, happy, as a child) and was only able to find about twenty! I did find the actual negative of my all-time favorite photo of me and my Dad:

And a few photos of me keeping it real:

But the photo of Bret Hart doing his signature pose on the turnbuckle in front of me? GONE.

I did find this okay photo of Lex Luger before he became a meth head and killed Miss Elizabeth or whatever:

Anyway.

When I first got to Humboldt, I bought two disposable 35mm cameras. I figured, 54 exposures would be enough to cover all of my college experiences. I finished the first roll the first week I was there (naturally, I never got it developed). All I remember shooting on that first roll, was one day in the J (dining hall), we had "clam strips" and I took two or three photos of the label. I saved the second camera for in case I went to see DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist when the tour came to HSU. A few days before my birthday, my family visited, and brought me a birthday present. I had my fingers crossed: c'mooon iPhone, COME ON iPHONE!

Sony W200.

I'm eternally grateful for that camera. It got mediocre reviews, but it was hot shit for 2007. It was compact, had a pretty quick little lens, took relatively good video, and had TWELVE whatchacallits... megapixels. My dad spared no expense. He doesn't know anything about cameras, but he walked into Best Buy and told them motherfuckers to ring up the most expensive Sony they had for me. Which is why when I graduated to a Sony H20, and shortly thereafter a Nikon D40, I gave the camera in pristine condition to my father.

... But not after photographing EVERYTHING. Concerts, rib sandwiches, cool dorm rooms, the best cantaloupe ever, my nieces, weird stuff, stuff at work, stuff on the street, Jelly Belly's shaped like dicks, my cat that ran away, cool food labels, meeting my idol, sacrilege, weird girls I had crushes on, dicking around at work, meeting more idols in a cramped venue, strawberry jam, multimedia graffiti, my best friend, everyday milestones....

I love documenting stuff. All that crap in the last paragraph came from ONE camera. Imagine all the crap I've recorded since. And it's not just photography. I'll scramble to get weird things on video, and at one point I even carried around an audio recorder that hooked into my old iPod... just in case an insane anti-choice rally broke out, or an old Jewish guy told a cop to go fuck himself in the BART leaving San Francisco (I lost that audio a few laptops ago, sorry).

"So why you being such a hater about that article about the lady who gets cancer and regrets not having $500 photos taken of her and her family before her hair fell out and shit?"

Because get this: you can take your own photographs. The message in the article (a photo is priceless) is considerably cheapened in my opinion when it's shared by a network of people who get paid to take photos (a photo costs money), especially when those people charge a lot for their services (a photo costs a lot of money). Photos are priceless, but they don't have to come from a professional photographer to be priceless. My most cherished photo from my childhood was taken on a throwaway camera. It's me waiting for people to show up for my birthday party (nobody came, I developed abandonment issues, I became an asshole, 20 years later you're reading my blog). I'm not saying it's not nice to have photos taken by a professional, but blubbery sob stories going around on stuffy photoblogs makes me want to puke all over your head, sir.

Now everybody go out, grab your camera phone, grab a point-and-shoot, grab a disposable, point your webcam at your family in the kitchen, hide your kids, hide your wife, and start making some god damn memories.

No sugar for you. You just get more awful.

2012-01-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

My New Year's was awesome. I went to the 'Nard, hung out with my fr'nds, took photos, finished my 100 Strangers Project, we watched Warrior, discussed Tom Hardy's traps, discussed Tom Hardy's traps more, found out "Tom Hardy's traps" is like the top Google autocomplete suggestion when you type the letter T, came home.

On the way home I had my phone's music player on shuffle and "Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again" by The Books came on. It's one of my favorite songs ever. I've yammered about it on basically every blog I've ever written since 2004. Here's a new twist: that song inspires me to take great, intriguing photos. If you listen to this song even once (or a hundred times over the course of 7 years) you take a lot of the samples within the song for granted. One day while driving on the 99, you'll start wondering "who are April, Tammy, and Brad?"

"I'm sorry this happened to you, but just leave me alone, I'm not the person who, the person who..."
THE PERSON WHO WHAT? God damn it, that's intriguing when you really, really think about it.... I want my photos to be that interesting. I want people to discover things in my photos many years after first seeing them. I mean, it's not really possible to input things like that into a candid photo, but I want that. When I first discovered Blake Andrews, I thought he was the most brilliant photographer in the world. I emailed my friend to share Blake's website, and I said "He's like The Books of photography" without actually knowing what that meant. I just knew Blake's photos reminded me of The Books' music. And now I've got a little more insight into that. By the way, my greatest photo of 2011 is a lot like something Blake Andrews might produce.

All the music is a rainbow.

I love you! I LOVE--

Entries get more views when you attach photos.

Drug delivery!

2011-12-29T03:38:00.000-08:00

2011 was the first year I wasn't obsessed with music. And it's weird, because I had a lot of methods for discovering music at my disposal. Amazon MP3 kicked the shit out of iTunes with sweet deals like, every single day. Lala got shut down (either this year or last year, I don't remember), but then Spotify came around and was like magic. And eMusic (even though I cancelled them for selling out and losing the indie vote) sent me free or practically free month-long subscriptions just about every other month.

Basically, in 2009 and 2010 I had to really, really whittle things down to come up with my "20 favorites" list. This year I've got NINE that I feel comfortable putting on the list. But I totally like these nine, and I'd have more if it weren't for my one-selection-per-artist rule. Also, I thought of a way to make it a nice, even ten. ALSO, I'm gonna do the video thing like every year, but now I'm also going to link to them on Spotify! And I'm going to incorporate Spotify into... basically any other time I talk about music on this blog. I just have to figure it out first. Oh, and if you don't have Spotify, kill yourself, or download it.
What am I rambling about SHUT UP, HAVE A SODA!!

10. Louis CK, "Other People's Kids"

Technically, not a song, but it's hilarious, and I listen to it on Spotify a lot. It's brilliant. I've always loved and admired stand-up comedy, but this year I was particularly studious of it. Louis CK is my idol. I can't explain it, just go buy every album or DVD he's ever put out right now.

9. Mates of State, "Palomino"

First Google Music gave me this song for free and I was like "cute". And then way later I was like "What was that cute song again...?" And then I found it on Spotify and starred it. Then one day I was like "I need this on my iPod shuffle" so I went to buy it and Amazon MP3 was like "here, man, it's free." Mates of State was trying to get this song to blow up, it seems. It's really, really cutesy. I could hear it in a laptop, or digital camera, or Bacardi, or feminine hygiene product, or JC Penneys winter clearance sale commercial. Also, I've got a friend whose last name is Palomino, which is the reason I checked it out in the first place.

8. Washed Out, "Before"

So last year I listened to any scrap of music from Washed Out, Small Black, and Toro Y Moi I could get my hands on. Then Toro Y Moi got really fruity and unappealing, and Small Black didn't do anything new, and Washed Out's album cover (to me, at least) looked vaguely similar to the cover of one of my favorite albums, Women as Lovers by Xiu Xiu. So I bought it the day it came out, full price, like a homosexual. It was okay, but this song. Something (the female vocal sample, let's be honest) kept bringing me back to this track. On bike rides to summer training for work, and while walking the track at the gym, and while shooting photos around town, this was a big go-to track for me.

7. Panda Bear, "Last Night at the Jetty"

Tomboy was everything I expected and wanted from a Panda Bear album. Obviously I can't explain why Panda Bear's music resonates so resonate-ily for me, it'd be like trying to explain why a kitten making muffins on your belly is comforting. This is another hypnotically repetitive bike-ride song. Doesn't it sound like he's playing a keytar made of jello? Nvm. (The crappy fan video for "Last Night..." is better than the official video for "You Can Count on Me")

6. Jay-Z and Kanye West, "Niggas in Paris"

Pff, because it's "Niggas in Paris". God damn. That shit cray.

Two of my sixth grade boys spontaneously sing different parts of this song during outdoor activities. One kid always goes "doctors say I'm the illest, 'cause I suffer from realness!" and the other one goes "BALL SO HARD *mumble mumble* WANNA FINE ME!" I gotta be like "Hey, I know what he says in that song! I don't wanna hear you singing that anymore" but secretly I'm like "This kid is awesome. He ball's so hard motherfuckers wanna fine him."

You know how great this song is? People who I haven't even explicitly discussed Watch the Throne with will text me and be like "What's Gucci, my nigga?" I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS.
So, there's no official video for "Niggas in Paris", but there was Watch the Cradle:

5. M83 featuring Nika Roza Danilova, "Intro"

You know why I bought this filler-packed double album? Three reasons:

I really loved the album cover.
When I was 16 or 17 "Run into Flowers" was constantly on my iPod.
For some stupid reason, I expected Nika Roza Danilova to be on every track.

Originally I thought, they couldn't let the song called "Intro" be the best song on the entire thing, right?

But they did.

The only video that actually has Nika in it has the worst sound :-(
I like how people call her "Zola Jesus" like that's her name.

4. The Antlers, "I Don't Want Love"
Lot of silly things happening here.

On paper, this song has shit lyrics, slapped together in an offensively short, verse-chorus-verse pop format.
I DO want love. All I god damn want in life is love. Jay-Z and I have the same Achilles Heel.
I have a strange attachment to this song because it reminds me of one of my cameras. I'll spare you that musty old claptrap of a story.
This song was #1 on the list originally because I listened to it like 30 times all year. And many, many times more on my phone which doesn't scrobble to Last.fm, so I had to have listened to it like a hundred times.
"Putting the Dog to Sleep" might technically be the better choice from Burst Apart...
You know what, screw it:

3. Death Grips, "Guillotine"

So the timeline on this one is: I downloaded the album forever ago because some blogger asshole said it was good. I never listened to it. Somehow I wound up listening to it on Spotify. Somehow I ended up seeing the video on YouTube. Then I listened to the album. Then I listened to the album on repeat, like, a lot. Then I told my friend Aaron to download it asap. Then Aaron was like "I downloaded it forever ago, I just haven't listened to it."

This track is particularly insane. It gets me so god damn pumped up at the gym, or like, before I work with kids, or like, when I'm flossing after eating bbq pork. YUH! Oh, and when Tito Ortiz choked out Ryan Bader with that beautiful guillotine... I was all ABOUT this song that weekend. It goes (x8). Guillotine. Yuh.

2. Youth Lagoon, "Cannons"

It's warm from the sun. I'm a sucker for heavily reverberated vocals. Pretty melodies. Drum machine claps. Like, everything I'm a sucker for is in this song. If this song were a girl, I'd friend her on facebook and stalk her and constantly ask mutual friends about her and ultimately never work up the confidence to ask her out. But it's not! It's a song! So I just listen to it (along with the equally beautiful album it's attached to) all the time. It's warm from the sun.

1. St. Vincent, "Cruel"

"They could take or leave you, so they took you, and they left you." Pff.

Let Lily Lick Lionel's Lusty Leathers

2011-12-27T15:34:00.000-08:00

I should be doing stuff but I'm not.

And Secondably!

2011-12-10T00:44:00.000-08:00

1. ihatephotography.blogspot.com was already taken... by some guy who posted two things almost five years ago...
2. I'm okay with jvhatesphotography

3. I actually love photography, obviously.

4. I love blogging.
5. I love making pop culture references.

6. One of my goals for my Facebook page was to name every photo album after a Simpsons reference.

7. One of my goals for this blog is to use an Arrested Development reference as the title for every post. Other things I considered quoting exclusively were Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Matilda, and Harriet the Spy.
8. I gotta go. It's spaghetti night. I gotta make spaghetti.