Wop Bounce

Lil Chuckee, 'Wop', Young Money Entertainment. If I've got this right, Lil Chuckee's about 14 years old? With a voice like that? And a song like this? Somebody needs to call that boy's mother.

From So Many Shrimp, who notes that '“Wop” is full on New Orleans bounce, anchored by an incredible sample of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.”' Yup. That about sums it up.

Beyond Amelia Earhart

From the Wikipedia list of people who disappeared mysteriously:

• 1501 – Gaspar Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer, disappeared on an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia. Two of his ships returned to Lisbon, but the third, with Gaspar on board, was lost and never heard from again.
• 1502 – Miguel Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer, disappeared while searching for his brother Gaspar. Like his brother, he took three ships, and as with his brother, the ship with Miguel on board was lost and never heard from again.
• 1696 – Henry Every was an English pirate who vanished after perpetrating one of the most profitable pirate raids in history; despite a worldwide manhunt and an enormous bounty on his head, Every was never heard from again.
• 1788 – Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, daughter of a wealthy plantation owner on the French island of Martinique. After being sent to a convent school in France, she was returning home in July or August 1788 when the ship she was on vanished at sea. It is thought that the ship was attacked and taken by Barbary pirates. It has been suggested that she was enslaved and eventually sent to Istanbul as a gift to the Ottoman sultan by the Bey of Algiers. It is unconfirmed if she was the same person as Nakshedil Sultan, consort of the sultan.
• 1826 – William Morgan (52), resident of Batavia, New York, disappeared just before his book critical of Freemasonry was published.
• 1910 – Dorothy Arnold (25), Manhattan socialite and perfume heiress, vanished after buying a book in New York City. She intended to walk through Central Park but was never seen again.
• 1848 – Khachatur Abovian (38), Armenian writer and national public figure of the early 19th century, credited as creator of modern Armenian literature, left his house early one morning and was never heard from again.
• 1985-Vladimir Alexandrov, Russian physicist, disappeared while attending a nuclear winter conference in Madrid.

Reading this list, I began to wonder about standards for inclusion as a mysteriously-disappeared person. Obviously (and sadly) people disappear every day. But what boosts someone from a flyer at the post office to a Wikipedia notable? Is it the same as the rules for getting on the Jumbotron: you either have to be already famous, a tiny child, or a pretty white girl? Why do we all know about Natalee Holloway but not the people who disappear in our very own cities?

This guy knows what I'm talking about:

He might be having fun, of course; one always wonders, and indeed one suspects that men wonder right up until the moment they die, whether one is just having fun, whether one has only to gather himself, his thoughts, set straight a few errands, and then one’s real life will begin, one’s true life. It seems hard to believe that this is it, after all: standing in a parking lot behind a crane inhaling cheap, cold beer on a cheap, cold Saturday afternoon. But this is precisely what it is.

-from Beer in a Parking Lot by Mills Baker.

Kidz In The Hall: "I Swear" feat Vic Spencer from Ruby Hornet on Vimeo.
South Side YMCA. Nathan's. Hyde Park Harold's. Kidz in the Hall serve Chicago realness in their new video 'I Swear'.

that tweaky video game beat. King Louie too cool.

Meltable Graffiti

Pavel Puhov's Eyeglasses (via)

Dog soup, Adam & Eve on a Raft, Clean Up The Kitchen

From the Wikipedia page on diner lingo:

• Adam & Eve on a raft & wreck 'em: two scrambled eggs on toast 
• Adam's ale: water 
• Bullets/Whistleberries/Saturday night: baked beans (so called because of the supposed flatulence they cause) 
• Burn the British: toasted English muffin 
• Cats heads and easy diggins: biscuits and gravy 
• Clean up the kitchen: hash 
• Cops & Robbers Donuts and Coffee 
• Dog soup: water 
• Draw one in the dark/flowing Mississippi: a black coffee 
• Frog sticks: french fries 
• Honeymoon salad: lettuce alone 
• Sea dust: salt 
• Shingle with a shimmy and a shake: buttered toast with jam or jelly

The Best Fake Holiday Ever!

Someone on the Internet has decided that February shall henceforth be known as the Month of Letters. As far as arbitrary holidays go, this is about a million times better than Sweetheart Day.

The rules are simple:

1. In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs.  Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
2. Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

That's it. She figures you're going to send 24 letters in total, maybe more if it catches on. I'm so in, if only because it gives me an excuse to play with stamps. Email your address if you want me to mail you something. I might be asking you anyway, so consider this fair warning.

Ice Cube's 'Good Day' Identified

A persistent rap detective and historian took it upon himself to verify the actual date of Ice Cube's legendary 'Good Day', as immortalized in the video and song above. That day was January 20, 1992, the only time in the early 90s when Yo MTV Raps was on the air, the Lakers beat the Supersonics, South Central LA was relatively smog-less, beepers were in production and Ice Cube had nothing to do but hang out with his friends. So there you go.

late > never

donald glover. heartbeat.

stuck on you

swooooon

Amateur Vagrancy

“There is nothing we enjoy more than a little amateur vagrancy — walking up one street and down another, and staring into shop windows, and gazing about as if…the whole were an unknown region to our wandering mind.”

-Charles Dickens on walking, via

cf. also: dérive

Rarely do I watch a movie and know instantly that I'm going to watch it  five more times in the next week. bill cunningham new york is one of those.

-his file cabinets. the importance of saving, referencing, remembering.

-the simplicity of his life compared to the proliferation of his work. how he seems almost boring personally when measured against his output.

-'you see, if you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do, kid! that's the key to the whooole thing. don't. touch. money. it's the worst thing you can do.'

-'money is the cheapest thing. liberty, freedom, is the most expensive.'

-the UN dude from nepal. nuff said.

-his accent! it's boston, right? not new york? can't tell. wikipedia's still blacked out.

-Editta! Editta Sherman and her hats

Carry on, Jeeves

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever go back and reread your own books?
WODEHOUSE: Oh, yes. 
INTERVIEWER: Are you ever surprised by them?
WODEHOUSE: I’m rather surprised that they’re so good.

*********

INTERVIEWER: Did you always know you would be a writer?
WODEHOUSE: Yes, always. I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.

*********

INTERVIEWER: Have any other writers ever been envious of you?
WODEHOUSE: Well, I always thought A. A. Milne was rather. We were supposed to be quite good friends, but, you know, in a sort of way I think he was a pretty jealous chap.


...and other gems from the P.G. Wodehouse interview here.

picture is unrelated, but incredible

- Falcons are girls and tercels are boys, or used to be, because only five people actually pay attention to that stuff anymore
- The expressions "fed up," "wrapped around his little finger," and "under his thumb" are all derived from falconry
- Apparently, falcons do not grow to love you, and only return to your glove because you provide them a small advantage in obtaining prey
- If you are a crappy falconer, which you probably would be for a long time, they will not return to your glove at all

...and more gems about falcon ownership here.

dream operator

let the children do the shopping

“The question of repetition is very important. It is important because there is no such thing as repetition. There is always a slight variation. Somebody comes in and you tell the story over again. Every time you tell the story it is told slightly differently.”

-Gertrude Stein

Lately I've been thinking about repetition and its disproportionate power to amplify and modify the thing it's talking about, simply through its own insistence on itself. It's lovely that Stein was the one who said this, because her work reveals that, while linguistic content may be reduplicated, a reader's understanding of, interest in and emotional connection to that content exists in perpetual flux. The thing is, it's not just that the reader changes, but that the repetition changes them.

See also: blues music. See also: the Loops episode of Radiolab.

your new favorite emoticon

t(*-*t)



give it a second

My Horoscope is Illin Right Now

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

This hits the sweet spot in my Venn diagram. You know. The one where hip hop, etymology and crosswords collide.

It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together

It is marvellous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvellous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
To feel the air suddenly clear
As if electricity had passed through it
From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
All over the roof the rain hisses,
And below, the light falling of kisses.

An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
If lighting struck the house now, it would run
From the four blue china balls on top
Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
And we imagine dreamily
How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;

And from the same simplified point of view
Of night and lying flat on one's back
All things might change equally easily,
Since always to warn us there must be these black
Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.

- Elizabeth Bishop

music to make clean by

YG & Nipsey Hussle - Motto [Remix]


Infamous 3rd (Mysfits) -Test Dummy


S.dot - Drill Music


Money Mob Cannon - Untouchable (most videos via So Many Shrimp. And Chicago.)

Advice from Aurelius

"They cannot admire you for intellect. Granted—but there are many other qualities of which you cannot say, “but that is not the way I am made”. So display those virtues which are wholly in your own power—integrity, dignity, hard work, self-denial, contentment, frugality, kindness, independence, simplicity, discretion, magnanimity. Do you not see how many virtues you can already display without any excuse of lack of talent or aptitude?"

-Marcus Aurelius

so then i'm like

On the use of like as a quotative.

(via)

Oh, you know. Just another intergenerational lip dub of Tyga's 'Rack City'. (Warning: Language not suitable for all grandmothers.)

The Language of Stamps

With the advent of greeting cards came a new way of communicating - the language of stamps. Through this code, a stamp's orientation on an envelope could say so much more than words. After a Hungarian weekly paper first explained this philatelic parlance in 1890, it went on to be taken up by love-lorn correspondents in countries as far-flung as Finland, France, Bulgaria, Russia and Great Britain, and developed new dialects everywhere it emerged.

Two dozen more examples can be found here.

Stream of Time, Chart of Universal History (1842)

An early infographic from the Big Map Blog that charts great names and events from Western history along interconnecting 'rivers' of time. Equal parts ambitious and dizzying.

rough drafts

Via Wikipedia:

Sexting is the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photographs, primarily between mobile phones.

A few potential alternatives:

• psexting: the act of sending psychologically explicit messages about your sexual subconscious
• nexting: the act of breaking up with someone explicitly, primarily between mobile phones
• hexting: the act of cursing someone explicitly, primarily between mobile phones
• flexting: the act of explicitly bragging about your musculature
• texmexting: the act of convincing someone to grab tacos with you later tonight
• lexting: the act of sending explicit legal advice, primarily between mobile phones
• kleenexting: the act of explicitly asking someone to pick up a few basic household necessities for the apartment, as long as they're out

Stankoff 2011

I wasted about 20 minutes today reading this Outkast Tournament Bracket, trying to discover which Outkast song would ultimately reign as The Best Song of All Time Ever. No spoilers on the outcome, but here are some choice judgments:

• How dare a song challenge Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
• Storytellin, pt. 1 is my song when I need to get a wake-up call on life
• Nothing from Idlewild stands a chance
• Hey Ya! is...just Andre, doing his spaced-out, Capt. Crunch, weird schtick
• The trumpet in SpottieOttie is better than any track on the Love Below. Just the trumpet.

Truer words. Not only is this article a reminder of how fun it is to make brackets for arbitrary things, it also makes you want to listen to wall-to-wall Outkast for the next three months. As if you needed more incentive.

Obit

Our love will not come back on fortune's wheel -

in the end it gets us, though a man know what he'd have:
old cars, old money, old undebased pre-Lyndon
silver, no copper rubbing through...old wives;
I could live such a too long time with mine.
In the end, every hypochondriac is his own prophet.
Before the final coming to rest, comes the rest
of all transcendence in a mode of being, hushing
all becoming. I'm for and with myself in my otherness,
in the eternal return of earth's fairer children,
the lily, the rose, the sun on brick at dusk,
the loved, the lover, and their fear of life,
their unconquered flux, insensate oneness, painful "It was..."
After loving you so much, can I forget
you for eternity, and have no other choice?


-Robert Lowell