"WHAT MORE HAVE I TO SEE THAT I'VE SEEN ALREADY?" - SANCHO

I got a freelance assignment yesterday to write [some bullshit] for [someone I don't want to reveal because at least they were nice to me]. It was nice and easy payday. I felt energized and eager to dive into it. I had reference books on the table. Like everything I write, I wished deep down for it to be the "the most beautiful, the liveliest and the cleverest imaginable." While I began punching the keys in my room alone, I was as if a being of singular virtue, focus and drive.

When my girlfriend came home, I became Don again. I told her about the assignment.

"But why would somebody need another [some bullshit]," she asked.
"Well, it's like when you're starting a new journal or website or something..."
"You don't know what it's for, right?" she said.
"I didn't ask." She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, when you start something like that sometimes you want to include a [some bullshit]. But you need to generate original content. You can't just copy/paste from Wikipedia or some book"
"But that's all you're going to do," she said.
"No. I'm going to read all that stuff and write it in my own words and... stuff."
"Yeah, OK," she said.

My productivity was shot for the rest of the night. I woke up this morning with the intention of getting an early start and powering through this [some bullshit] copy with time to spare. I wrote for about two hours through frequent interruptions and my ego replayed yesterday's conversation for about a dozen encores (this one goes out to the true fans!) until the thought of [some bullshit] made my mouth taste like throw up. I ate lunch. Then I quit.

You're right, Girlfriend, the world probably doesn't need another hack [some bullshit]. I thought I wanted that $80 bad enough, but I guess I want your respect a little bit more.

And that sucks.


Tunes Tonight:

"THERE IS NO PROGRESS. THINGS START GREAT, THEN GET CRUMMIER AND CRUMMIER." – HEIDEGGER (ABBRIDGED)

The morning of the 17th, around 10 AM, I woke up and immediately pulled my laptop off my nightstand. I breezed through my morning internet rounds (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Newser, Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, Nympho Ninjas [NSFW], Questionable Content and Mangareader) with a general sense of well-being from having finally gotten my mandatory one smug rant about music out of my system. I look forward to never thinking that hard about what I listen to again. 

I followed one link to another to a Youtube video about the contraception "debate." I scrolled through the comments with increasing distaste as the dialogue moved almost instantly to indiscriminate gender war. I spent nearly an hour writing about this phenomenon before I came upon this comic from 2010 which basically sums it all up for me.

Oh well.

Tunes tonight: "Climax" by Usher sounds so much like a The Weeknd song that he should be a little embarrassed for himself. It is catchy, though.

GRAMMYS, INDIE, AND BEST OF 2011

The Grammy's aired two nights ago. I don't know if award shows are becoming better or more controversial, or if a hundred tweets, statuses and blogs can make anything once stale seem vital again. Either way, I threw the 54^th Grammy's up on the bedroom TV while I wrote with the expectation that I was participating in something somehow important.

I was not.

We could talk about the trend of mainstream recognition of "indie music" or dubstep. But other people already are, people that get it what all of it "means" more than I do.

LL Cool J said that Grammy night is a night to celebrate music. If anything, I have to take issue with that. I mean, is Chris Brown even a singer, or is just the front man of the "Chris Brown Lip-Sync and Dance Troupe?"

The Grammy's are not a celebration of music. Unfortunately, they are a celebration of a music industry. Nominations are not handed out for great music but popular music. Sometimes greatness and popularity coincide, but it's usually a bit of an accident. The major labels have pop/rock/rap stars on their payrolls who come and go. They also have producers, songwriters, image consultants and marketing gurus—they tend to have longer careers. They trend-watch and focus-test all around the clock to create radio-friendly music geared to least offend a general audience. It's good business.

Thanks to the taste-makers in backroom deals between Clear Channel and the five super-labels (Sony, Universal, BMG, UMI, and Time Warner), pre-approved music stars get played over and over everywhere in the country. Think about it, when was the last time you heard a "new artist" on the radio who wasn't, somehow, already popular? Where does that popularity come from if you, radio listener, haven't even heard it yet? 

This isn't a conspiracy theory. This is a conspiracy fact.

When Bon Iver said there was a lot of talent "out there" that will never be nominated for a Grammy, he wasn't just feigning humility. He has spent his career until now as part of another music industry, one where people learned to play instruments and made music with their friends because they loved it. It was a world where no one got "best new artist" trophies, especially for their second album. Seriously, what does it mean to call someone a "new artist" who has been around for years? "You career doesn't matter until we say so?"

-----

 

I have an ex who has told me that she "is over" indie music. The enormity of that statement overwhelmed me. What did it even mean? Indie is not a genre. It doesn't have a "sound." Of course, anyone can tell when a song is an indie song: it doesn’t sound like something on the radio.  But there is much more new indie music each year than new mainstream music, and there much more room for variety. 

So why can't you be over indie music? Because indie is the discovery that there are not dozens of professional acts to choose from, there are thousands. It is the discovery that some bands do not write songs for a general audience, some bands write songs just for you.

So Fuck the Grammys, just a little. Here are some of MY favorite albums of 2011:

WAR WATCH 3: Revenge of the Sith

Funny/Edgy? Is HIPSTER RUNOFF ruining my writing style?

HEADLINE: ""Madonna Fans in Israel: Don't Bomb Iran Before Show.

WAR WATCH 2: Electric Bugaloo

How I regret getting so carried away with myself in my last post. You would think that all the time I spent in the journalism library combing through back issues of papers--ramble, ramble, ramble, I'm so educated, ramble--finding data to code for Poli Sci research would have taught me better than to expect new stories about any non-economy-non-election story every day. As it turns out, you would be extraordinarily wrong.

Anyway, here's yesterday and today:

Headlines:"Iran: We Can Strike US 'Around the World'"; Israel, Iran Terrorists Are Killing Scientists: Officials

From The Onion: Iran Worried US Might Be Building 8500th Nuclear Weapon


Tunes today: Lana Del Rey - Born to Die (I'm still with you! #LDR! #pray4carles!)

WAR WATCH

Ask my friends to agree on just how to take Newser*. I dare you.

*Newser, from journalist and Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolffe, meets the expectations and attention spans of the casual consumer of online news by doing away with most that pesky text. "La-la-la, reading's for fags." Newser serves you headlines on the main page as a sort of photo-menu. Clicking a photo takes you to a one-or-two-paragraph summary of a fresh story along with links to the full story (wherever it was earnestly reported). Money in the bank.Whatever. I think it means well. 

I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish here. But I think can best be explored by my initial reaction to checking Newser this morning: "God, what if every story about Iran sounds like a predetermined lead-up to war and we actually end up in a fucking Iran War this year?" I've been thinking it for months. So now Newser is on watch--twice-daily screenshots until wars breaks out, the year ends, I get bored, or I forget.

(Headlines: "US Fears Israel Will Hit Iran Without Warning;" "US: Iran May Be Cozying Up to al-Qaeda")



Tunes this morning: "Elysium" by Portishead; "Still Blazin'" by Wiz Khalifa