Year End Wrap Up

I more or less gave up on this blog because I was fired by SBCGLOBAL.NET and so thus my email account was dinked... so logging on to Blogspot.com has become a Maxwell Smart maze of tricky trap doors and forgotten passwords...and I get so fatigued...

hello?

*taps mic*

Is this thing on?

Anyway...I'm a big fan of ellipses and YouTube links (I've tried to upload an old Soul Train video of Aretha Franklin NAILING 'Oh Me Oh My' to this blog many many times but to no avail)...but I'm an even bigger fan of year-end best-of lists so here's mine:

Best Return To Form:

Jon-Jon Diary: I had a good time hating on his juicy, odious ass courtesy of his brain-bruising, self-aggrandizing blogs on the interwebs but then all-of-a-sudden his vile, yet articulate, spewage took a sharp turn south and I couldn't make heads nor tails of what exactly he was madly raving on about. Alas, he's clawed his way out of his psychic K-hole, he's made it through the rain, and it turns out he's no longer a sickening guilty pleasure: I'm actually proud to say that I now hate him, intellect fully engaged, with no holds barred, now that he's struck a rich vein of shuddersome clarity. Stick with it, Yer Godawful Abhorrence...at last I remember why we loathed each other in the first place. In stark, fastidiously proofed old-school font no less!

Google the disagreeable cur. I'm not linking to him, nohow noway.


Best Cinematic Masterpiece of 2006:

The only movie I saw in 2006: Dave Chappelle's Block Party

I also witnessed 'Strangers With Candy' but that straight-up sucked serious ass so I'm pretending as if I never saw Philip Seymour Hoffman mumble his way through some tragically unfunny bullshit alongside the most overrated entertainer the American media has ever mistaken for a comedic genius: Stephen Colbert (hate him...love his politics, love his writers...his delivery blows).

But DCBP was truly satisfying. It takes a look back to the 'Wattstax' and 'Woodstock' and 'Born To Boogie': all those amazing live-performance, community-affirming movies that I stayed up late to watch on cable way back in the eighties. Those movies gave me hope. Chappelle's concert movie felt so off-the-cuff and so fricking joyful that I just wanted to be there. And be there I am. Turns out I live a few blocks away from where it was filmed in Bed-Stuy and the neighborhood feels pretty turned out, not necessarily because of what Dave Chapelle and his director, Michel Gondry, threw together but because there's a certain community activism in place. It's lovely. I love getting up in the morning to get my coffee at Tillie's and walking around amongst folks who say 'hi'...it's just very nice. And The Fugees, Jill Scott, Mos Def and Common, not to mention Erykah Badu...they all sing/speak their souls to people invested in building community. It's so beautiful. I love this movie. See it with a friend you love.

I keep meaning to see but never do for whatever reason:

'Shortbus'
'Borat'
'Babel'
'Charlotte's Web' (Honestly, I'll never see this unless I'm on a flight to Milwaukee)
'That Clint Eastwood Movie(s) about WWII' (I'll never see these, period)
'Let's Go To Prison'
'Really Long Beyonce Video Featuring American Idols And Eddie Murphy'


YouTube has satisfied all my moviegoing needs, thank you very much.


Best Single:

This is a toughie.

'Hang Me Up To Dry'/Cold War Kids: Dudes, this track fucking ROCKS. All the elements are in place: Reformed Born-Again Christian lead singer working it on OUT. Jesus! This guy is UPSET! Add some wicked black-widow bass, scary-movie soundtrack reverb-happy production, psychotic-devilchild keyboard...'fell asleep with stains/hang me up to dry/I'm pearling like the whites of your eyes'...fucking YIKES!

I'll never stop playing this song out in the clubs. You bitches need a wake-up call as you play grab-ass at the bar, jostleing for bottles of Amstel Light...y'all don't know what you're manhandling there when your happy hands do that dance they do.

'StickwhichU'/Pussycat Dolls. Fuck you. I love this song. I want some pretty bitch to love me up with a harmonica parked in his/her mouth as he/she coos never-ending commitment to me, dammit. If Stevie Wonder were five sluts in dominatrix gear he would have wrote and performed this gorgeous tribute to eternal monogamy. Absolutely heavenly. "Singin' 'cuz your so-so into me..."

*sigh*

"Irreplaceable"/Beyonce. When this lush-hipped M to F strains for a note and absolutely nails it, I can't help but cry. Sure she's a tranny with a monstrous forehead but who really cares when she sings like a freaking siren sent from some mythical place (Xanadu?)? Actually, she sounds like Jeff Buckley sometimes but that's not always a bad thing. Plus the lyrics are right on point. Buh-bye, cheating dawg, indeed. To the left, to the left.


"Punkrocker"/Teddybears ft. Iggy Pop. Self-loathing Iggy proclaiming that he's sick of being God as he slithers his skank ass along Bleeker Street over a hate-fuck electro-beat: Irresistable, no? The lesbians love it!

Honorable Mention:

'Vans'/The Pack
'Wind It Up'/Gwen Stefani...it's so fucking dumb you have to hear it three or four times to believe it.
'Black Sweat'/Prince
'Comfort Of Strangers'/Beth Orton
'Down With Prince'/Hot Chip
'When You Were Young'/The Killers
'Let's Impeach The President'/Neil Young
'LDN'/Lily Allen
'Deep'/The Redwalls
'Crazy'/Gnarls Barkley (of course)
'New Hampshire'/Matt Pond PA