"Dis beat was bubblegum so I had to chew it."

July last year there was New Boyz' "You're a Jerk." Now (or for the past few months...), Cali Swag District's "Teach Me How To Dougie," which is sort of indivisible from the prior. It's for-and-by THE KIDS, and it's (the style's) from Cali via Dallas, I think. What I know for certain is it's party music (hip hop root music). And "[they] show these cats how to do dat down South dance dat [they] learned a lil' too fast." The whole hangs on cute teen bravado and carelessness, an angle and set of mannerisms quintessentially American (cool).
And also, reading a lyrics site, I find that one guy off the track is called Brody....!!! Cali Swag, of course.

Just Touch My Cheek Before You Leave Me, Baby

yonkers!

Room at Top STOP

















I love Europe and The Euro, and they're blown-up these days Stateside (Thanks to pop producers and The Jersey Shore cast?).
But, in this multi-task era, both The Euro and The American can be Top for The Euro and The American at the same time, you know (like, look at Lindsay right there, right always)? Like, Tom Friedman was totally off-base with the whole World-flattening, World-shrinking post-Internet theory back when......The World is (and seems) big and bigger. The more we know, the more we cannot say we don't know, and the more we cannot forbid and limit. All of The Decades may look good, at once (no need to say goodbye to 60s volume and 80s avant- because we say hello to the jolie-laide 90s and sun-bleached, nostalgic 70s via 90s). Understatement and overstatement and middling-statement may all be deemed effective, at once. A thing, a style, may be proliferated widely, Globally, and be treated/contained/strained differently in each place, demi-place, school, household, and all look good, at once.
This week, for the 4th, the 234th 4th, I intend to celebrate America, post all about America (good and bad), but none of it framed in opposition to Europe. New World and Old World, like Town&Country, one must needs both! I just think this is a moment for American styles (Tommy Girl) and a moment for Euro styles (Sally Shapiro), both at once (along with everything else...AFRICA, THE WHOLE EAST, THE OCEAN). And, as I write all about America this week, I want that kept clear. Style, as I see it, is just less exclusionary everyday (OMG!). Limitation of others is the only thing that's naff, really.
Now, we find (because we are more able) that we have so much in common with each other, and that we like difference too----WE BROADEN, more, more, more. But at the same time, we are not teleporting. It still took me eight hours (stuck in Jerz Turnpike traffic) this weekend to ride (on a G-d damn bus) from New York to D.C....to cross a border, an ocean takes still more time, and we can feel the distance, feel the scale of our Earth. Last night, on the leg back from the Capitol to home, almost in the Holland Tunnel, we spied a dusky pink moon, low and dim. Then it was orange, higher and higher, clearer. I thought maybe it was Venus (goddess, not planet). So, I made a wish. And I thought about how easy it is for me to pray to the moon, how direct and effortless...and necessary (?) it feels. And I felt Ancient too, like one of many, not simply the many of now, the teeming populations on populations made privy to the same moon at same or slightly delayed moment, but everyone, every ancestor, the oil in the ground.
I felt big (and...so did everything else).

Think of all the Libertarians graduating from law school right now and weep.

I'm loving it.
(part one----rangy, rah-rah---am fan of Coors commercials)

I almost got 'God Bless America' printed below my address on the new set of cheques I ordered ayer (chose a waving flag instead). It's in the air, has been for a long minute (G-d and The U.S.A.). All of the sinister xenophobic (even vaguely White Power) implications/warpings/repurposings of stock, regular American patriotism (it's style, it's proclamation) in the last decade have faded (for obvious reasons). And it feels great!
And beyond the flag motif, is THE BRAND, The McDonald's, The Coca-Cola, The Disney, The Wal-Mart---these logos and slogans and whole adverts and store designs and product ranges....lifestylez---in an unremittingly complicated way----are also grand emblems of (U.S.) America and our Americaness, better/worse, sickness/health(?).
I often complain (sorry) about how the poorly stocked, strangely constructed chain megastores and restaurants of New York City (as well as my lack of truck to haul goods with) make me feel unAmerican, not in America, with its promise of big/easy/everything at once, and it bums me out.
Like in Clueless-----
"No shit you guys got coke here?!"
"Well, yeah---it's America..."------
Constant, present availability of new and various (also same, typical, universalized...) goods, franchises one just like the next, parking, air-conditioning, free samples happen here like nowhere else. And to love the flow of product and product-image is like self-love (another American talent/export/thing worth celebrating). And when done proper, self-love is not delusional; it's our stiff-upper-lip. It's our way of reconciling with forward momentum, acknowledging that nothing is wholly good; nothing is wholly wicked; that we're lucky too.....
Global-titan McDonald's originated as a single burger joint in San Bernardino in 1940! Whatever one might think of cheap meat, chemical flavors, Globalism, the Corporate model full stop, it must be noted that such growth, such ingenuity and subsequent power, is impressive, important, inherently American and a big deal. We pursue happiness, money and an idea of happiness, a McFlurry, a cartoon princess, an imprint everywhere.
I feel a little clever and powerful when I hold the symbols, the mini-carton of fries, the can of Cola, the Hannah Montana beach towel.
Irony got so busted and dumb; it seems not a proper descriptor for how we might celebrate the emblems of corporate America. Outside parties might rightly perceive irony in it, but I assure you I love these new Coors commercials straight-up, because they're not nerdy, smarmy and self-loathing. They are self-loving (and good-looking).

earth dad? space dad?

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Why is this 24-yr-old getting Botox to the head?!

SILVER (GOLDEN) SURFER


After two weeks' protest, I'm ready to admit that "California Gurls" is a good song, the best summ-summer single released thus far (where you at Sean Kingston?!).
The problems I have with that (her) 'one of the emo-punk bois' brand of nasal singing are pointless, or beside the/a/any point; the KIDS can't get enough, so.....
A few of Perry's lines are lazy, not polished (or, alternatively, loose) enough like, "We're undeniable" and "Fine, fresh, fierce/We've got it on lock" just both seem too vague and missing the mark, missing opportunities to actually describe.
But that line, "You can travel the wuh-orld/But nothing comes close to the Golden Coast" is genius and bright and sonically uplifting. The whole is rather uplifting, like literally lifting-of-ones-feet-off-pavement or dancefloor.
---And "California Gurls" (is she talking about Big Star with that spelling?) is fun!
What a bummer that Lady Gaga has decided to not be fun (Weimar--right now, really?!)....and Ke$ha's trying too hard to be hard (or hip in the manner of ten years ago) to be fun, same with Miley.....etc...
Meanwhile, Perry is looking better-than-ever in Spice Girls rubber dresses and likening SoCal to a game of Candyland (a smart way to discuss airy, nuts projections-of-California). I'm finally getting why/how she comes off like a cartoon:

Asia! Virtual Reality! Comics!--$.
Celebrate!


TRUE


I've also been loving (with not a bit of hemming and hawing) T.I. and Keri Hilson's "Got Your Back." For those (us!) who watch BET's brilliant, wholesome and glamorous (wholesome and glamorous!) self-help/lifestyle reality program, Tiny & Toya, this track is a not-at-all veiled serenade to/of/for Tameka "Tiny" Cottle, Tip's real lady love, mother of his children, former member of Xscape.
Though his profile is Mechanicsville (?) Rude Boy, young and scrappy, Tip has made LOVE songs in the past, most notably his rolling-on-a-Gulfstream collaboration with Justin Timberlake, "Let Me Talk To You/My Love," and "Whatever You Like," an I'll-cover-you-in-swag song off, pre-prison Paper Trail. But both tracks happened before I watched Tiny's show, and, in turn, before I knew about what a beautiful family life Tip has, how epic his own, true-life LOVE narrative really is.....like this season on Tiny & Toya we saw Tip spontaneously (from the chokey) have tropical flower arrangements and Gucci bags and shoes delivered to Tiny every thirty minutes for a whole afternoon, each one brought with different hand-written LOVE notes....what a Prince (and she deserves it----is just the calmest, kindest, coolest woman).
So, in Summer 2010, sentence complete, their wedding approaching, with breezy, beautiful paparazzi pictures of them in Paris and Los Angeles, at cafe tables, in convertibles, smiling like teens roaming the halls hand-in-hand circulating, "Got Your Back" reads more real and sweet-hearted, more whole, than any previous effort of its kind.
And Keri Hilson (who is so great) is an appropriate stand-in for Tiny; they are both female singer-songwriters belonging to a groundbreaking generation of self-made, Atlanta creative-millionaires------strong, smart women. This song feels like such the antidote to yr typical cold, careless depictions of women in hip hop. It's a spell of true romance, true love, true, true, true (with bells [swag] on).

thoughtful

mendoza y'all

yess

borders

"Lucy Liu Looks Like A Gorgeous Italian Wedding Cake."

Albrecht Durer, title page from The Apocalypse, 1498, woodcut.