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vomiting kermit on Conan? I'm apparently not watching nearly enough television.

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Oh and I watch Beasmaster with the sound on. That and Conan the Barbarian count as the good barbarian movies of the 80's. Sadly, Red Sonja I think belongs mostly in the crap pile.

yeah, i can picture that being funny. conan is one of the few things i miss about not watching tv much. god bless him.

do you remember the time he tried to get dirty dancing rereleased by threatening to fire La Bamba (the horn player), that was some fucking comedy! three weeks into his campaign, he actually watches dirty dancing, and then next night opens with "y'know, dirty dancing sucks. its a terrible movie."

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i have a birthday party album but i only listened to it once even though i do dig nick cave. every now and then i just don't play cd's for a while. like i bought rob zombies new cd when it was new three years ago and hadn't really bothered listening to it until this week. i'll check out their cover though.

Dude, you're forgetting that I'm Canadian. You cannont convince me of the quality of any American beer, even if it's microbrew.

Thank you very much. Keep the spirit.

i like to watch garbage barbarian movies from the eighties(deathstalker, blademaster, etc) with the sound off and heavy metal music playing in the background. i don't know why, but i find it enjoyable when i'm inking or painting.

i forget how fucking cool u are between readings of your journals. damn youre cool.

Hi there. I wrote an awful lot about Mos Def and music and things in general. So much so that I thought it best to add it to the previous journal entry you made! If you go back one, you'll find it.

I've heard some other people say that about Mos Def, but I think really it's a misconception. Black On Both Sides is a fairly mainstream album: it's not about guns, drugs, or thug life, even ghetto life, really. As such, I think Mos had to come out and say, without ambiguity, 'this is still a black album' in order to avert any criticism about selling out. I don't mean that to sound bad, or calculating, but he is absolutely an artist who wants to have his cake and eat it. I have no issue with that, really, the ability to reach a large audience without selling out is what every artist hopes to achieve, that's exactly what he managed to do, and I don't deny that he believes in his philosophy: even those parts that to me, as an outside observer, seem contradictory.

Is hip hop about about the struggle of disadvantaged people or of black people? I've no idea, really. The black ghetto was responsible for hip-hop, something still unique (i.e. not appropriated by Elvis, The Rolling Stones or any of those other people he lists in that song), and was really born out of black impoverishment. As such it is/was their culture, and I can see why you wouldn't want to let that go, get diluted by people who 'don't understand'.

There is a parallel here with football (you can skip this if you like). Football in the UK was always associated with the urban poor and working class. You've spent the week shovelling coal, building railroads or whatever, talking about football, talking about people from your neighbourhood who'd been signed by a big club and got out of the mire. Nowadays it's been co-opted by wankers who couldn't care less about its roots, culture, traditions, etc. And I despise those people! I've never been down a coal mine in my life, but it was mine! They didn't want it for years, and now they've come and taken it away and ruined it. Football isn't just a game for me, and I don't think hip-hop is just music for Mos Def.

If you compare the political content of Black On Both Sides to the chapter on racism in Michael Moore's Stupid White Men there is a huge amount of common ground. Reading it, I could almost imagine Moore listening to Mos Def while he was working on that part. I can understand that when Mos Def says it, it's different: essentially, we want what we fucking deserve; whereas Moore basically says, look, give these people what they fucking deserve.

But at the end of the day, I can't pretend to be anything more than a consumer: my life is no closer to that of Mos Def growing up in a black neighbourhood in Brooklyn than it is to Frank Zappa's, growing up in the middle of a desert in California. I suppose sometimes that distance, possibly, gives me a nice ignorance that allows me to enjoy both things equally with only occasional feelings of being an interloper. I've been to hip-hop clubs in Germany where the whitest kids you've ever seen are calling each other nigger: most of them have never seen a black person in their lives, it's like fiction for them. I don't think I'm quite that naive. Where was I? Oh, this comment is too long anyway...

UK hip-hop scene? I can't imagine I'm the best source. Obviously, Roots Manuva who is excellent: a unique flow. He's probably matching Mos Def for guest appearences by now, I'd have thought. The winner, I think, of last year's Mercury Music Prize was a kid called Dizzee Rascal, who's album is pretty fierce and a grower, a definite UK sound falling somewhere between UK garage/two-step, US hip-hop, and something more punk, I think NME have started calling it 'grime' or some other stupid bloody thing. His crew member, Wiley--who has actually been around for a while--has recently released an album, which has been getting good press but I haven't heard yet. A different type of thing is The Streets' new album, A Grand Don't Come for Free which is much less bangin than the first LP, but better too, really: a very UK sound, and not so much rapping as spoken word.

Hey, sorry it took so long to say so, but I just wanted to let you know that your submission is going in FoB3. Thanks for sending it. It's kinda funny because I'd never heard of Yellowcard before I read your article, but then the same day you sent it I saw one of their videos on TV. Truly awful.

yeah, i guess my vibe was that most people don't bother to see and most of the ones who do just think i'll never pull it off and it just creates a rift between me and them.

i definitely feel like that when i put on a tie and "nice clothes" and dress all sharp. that was one of the fun things about running my own business was taking off the nail polish putting the sexy clothes on and nailing a client meeting, getting a deposit and making an impression. its good to have fun with that sorta thing. just can't let it go to our heads.

ohhh, the Four Quartets.

It was certainly a brutal review. I'm glad you thought it over a while longer than I did: my comments were pretty much a first impression and read as such. I agree with the majority of what you say, and I think it stands as a pretty decent album, all things considered.

Your point about Moz's battle with the UK press is interesting. As you may know, NME basically branded Morrissey some kind of racist after he was spotted waving a flag at a gig, which at the time was something strongly associated with neo-Nazis (if only he'd waited until Britpop, eh?). It didn't help that he was playing the show with Madness who had an unfortunate skinhead following at the time. Rather than intepret it as a bold, patriotic reclaiming of the Union Jack, they saw it as some kind of right-wing statement, even though there was nothing to support that theory at all in Morrissey's lyrics, interviews, etc. Anyway. The UK music press, NME in particular, has always built an artist up to better shoot them down later on.

If Moz bears a grudge, it doesn't show too much, as he's recently been all over NME: a two-part interview, photoshoots, and most recently, an interview with Franz Ferdinand (which was actually the best thing NME's printed in ages).

Good album huh? I give it an 8 out of 10. Lightyears better than Uncle, Southpaw or Maladjusted.

well, i could use some more hit points thats for damn sure...

and maybe some kind of potion...