Lurkage

Is it weird to go to a notorious gay/tranny/drag club by yourself (when you are straight), dance (also solo), drink large quantities of hard liquor, and remain silent the whole time? Oddly, it felt kind of inherent to me, which sadly and officially signals my return to lurker status. I’m not gonna sit back and let my friends (who have no interest in going out) prevent me from being detached and creepy in places that I don’t necessarily belong.

Lately I’ve been thinking deeply about my presentation on the dance floor. I really wanna know what I look like when I dance, cuz sometimes it feels so innate, but alas, it likely looks very unnatural. I’ve danced in front of a mirror in my room, and it did not look very fluid, so I doubt that when I am out that I am somehow channeling Crazy Legs, James Brown, and/or Gregory Hines (which is how it feels in my mind). Not that it matters, as the shirtless guy in the sport coat with the cowboy boots had no problem giving my ass a squeeze, despite my raucous movements. As violating as that was, it played into my insecurities like a college girl with an absentee father.
T La Rock - This Beat Kicks
T La Rock - Bass Machine

Undue Praise

How are you supposed to feel, when everybody thinks you are doing a great job and you think you are performing atrociously? I just received back a performance review (where I rated myself dead center or satisfactory) where my boss and the administration gave me all these stellar reviews stating that I’m surpassing my job description, and that I perform every task perfectly in a timely manner. They are giving me all this over-the-top praise that I do not deserve, and the message that it’s sending to me is that I am the golden child, who can do no wrong. So now I feel that I know longer need to watch my back in any way: I am invincible, and the workspace is now my play place. I’m gonna start looking at porn at work, openly writing blog, reading books at my desk, and additionally (just to pepper up my techy reputation) I’ll search out incurable computer viruses that I can ultimately unleash upon any shared drive. I’ll show these fuckers how satisfactory I can truly be.
Maurice - This Is Acid
Tyree - Acid Over
Armando - Downfall
Phuture - Acid Tracks
Dj Pierre - Box Energy
Sleazy D (Marshall Jefferson) - I've Lost Control

Music Isn't Free

No time for a legitimately frantic post today, I'm getting my balls torched by the demons at work. (Ups to Loose Shus for the last two tracks)
Information Society - Running (Dub)
Aphrodite's Child - Hic and Nunc
Aphrodite's Child - Altamont
Art Of Noise - Moments In Love (45 rpm)
Brian Auger & The Trinity - Pavane

Busy: Blog Hates

I've returned from a little vacation to my city of birth. It left me tired and sore, and now I've got an intense amount of work to do, so I'm just gonna have to get blog the literary equivalent of Arby's as I do not have the time to hash out a home-cooked feast. He's pissed, but still alive, breathing, and no longer starving. If only he would only stop whining; it's getting annoying, and daddy has business to take care of. Posting up some retarded-ass shit today: this group called Circuitry featuring Sam Bostic. Sometimes you just have to buy an album based on the fact that you think its gonna be horrible, which is why I bought Circuitry for $2. To a certain extent it is deplorable, but at the same time, really fun to listen to (its focused mainly on technology and freaky sex shit), and the album harbors the track name of the year: "My Baby Gives Good Phone". Sadly, the year in reference is 1983.
Circuitry - Computer
Circuitry - Seduction
Circuitry - My Baby Gives Good Phone
Circuitry - Driving Me Wild

Hiatus

Every single day of my life at work, this one guy says "Good Morning, Ryan" to me in a very pompous and proud manner, as if to suggest that he is the only cool, older, distinguished gentleman that graciously greets the surfs of the workplace (to set himself aside from the others, who could care less about us peons). Unfortunately that is not my name, and I know that I've missed the window to correct him, however I had no idea that he was even talking to me in the first place for a full two weeks. Once someone has made that particular mistake that many times, the fault falls into your lap if you decide to correct them that late in the game. Anyways, right above my desk, my name is displayed in at least a 72 pt. font size, so he is either oblivious or has a vision impairment of some sort. I must look like a furry ball of colors to him, which prompted me to thinking about how odd and psychedelic it must be to live in a world surrounded solely by tinted fuzzy spheres that talk.
Skying High - Getting Off On Your Loving
Musique - In The Bush (Remix)
CAM Stati d'Animo - Indian Feeling
CAM Stati d'Animo - Psycho Feeling
SPEED - Tremplin
Distortions Pop - Microchaos

Feline Fine (Sorry)

Blog has drained me. I’ve put everything into it and recouped absolutely nothing. Not once has blog bought me lunch, invited me to the bar, given me a ride, or lent me a dollar. I know for a fact that blog would not take a bullet for me, despite the fact that it survives solely on my nourishment. Blog even kicks me when I’m down, and spreads nasty rumors about me to strangers. To say the least, we have a complex relationship, based mostly on enabling. Blog encourages my mind to speak freely and in return I allow him to incessantly torture and plague my thoughts.

Music selection for today, is a couple themes from the movie Cat People (which was actually an erotic remake of the original from 1942), written by one of my heroes, Giorgio Moroder, with some vocal work done by another music genius, David Bowie (unfortunately the tracks featuring Bowie are not the strongest on the soundtrack). The plot to Cat People is off the hinges: The Cat People originated way back in time, when humans sacrificed their women to Leopards, who mated with them. Cat People appear similar to humans, but they must copulate with other Cat People, otherwise they turn into panthers after mating and then must kill in order to take human form again. Pretty harsh dilemma, especially when the population of Cat People is few and far between. The movie, Species, pretty much has the same plot, except they substitute Cat People with an Alien, and the soundtrack’s not that great, so my suggestion is to go with the ’82 remake.
Giorgio Moroder – Irena’s Theme
Giorgio Moroder – Leopard Tree Dream
Giorgio Moroder – To The Bridge

Worst Post Ever Pt. 2

Just to make this clear, the whole point of blog is to share music with people, and attempt to get a laugh in here and there. Any type of tirade against any subject is for the most part my caffeine addled brain sending some shit out without too much thought or recourse. I’ve lately been thinking about starting another blog: one which is completely vulgar, abstract, and offensive, and then having this one be PC, formulaic, self-promotional, and safe. Of course this would be a further step into pointless blog-dom; I don’t know how much more schizophrenic I want to get in cyber space, as my mind lately has been rather delicate. Part of this is due with the fact that the feedback I’ve received has either been overwhelmingly positive, or drastically negative. If everyone just said that blog sucks, then it’d be easy to just give it up and move on to something else that is equally as pointless. The only people that seem to “get it” are people that already know me, so obviously they are inclined to support me with positive feedback. I wonder, are they plotting against me. By simply encouraging me to open the caverns of my mind, knowing full well that I do not function well when it runs rampant, are they merely using me as tool to control the oxygen supply on Mars. I never should have done that appointment with Recall, as it is now tough to tell if I am living in reality or not. Kuwato and the rebels claim to need what’s inside my head, the cab driver has five kids to feed, and my wife (or is it?) is pleading with me to take a pill which will act as a symbol of my will to return to reality.
Bits & Pieces - Don't Stop The Music
Kenny Clairborne and the Armed Gang - Are You Ready
Kenny Clairborne and the Armed Gang - Funky Fever
Kenny Clairborne and the Armed Gang - Say Yeah

PLAYER ERROR!

This about as self promotional as I get, but... My newest mixtape Player Error is up on the Beat Electric Blog right now. This blog is far superior to mine, both in terms of readership and the consistent quality/rarity of tracks they post, so I'm pretty juiced to have my mix up there.

Check out and download Player Error here.

The Complete Package

I’m clearly in dire need of more caffeine. I’ve been listening to disco all morning, drinking coconut juice, and staring at a blank computer screen, as a result of last night’s love affair with scotch. Scotch pretty much guarantees that the next day is gonna suck, but that doesn’t seem to matter to me, as I clearly have no foresight into any resultant consequences; everything has got to be pleasure now, now, now. My partial dedication to Thursday night hedonism is both impulsive and retarded, and now my eyelids feel heavy and my mind sluggish. If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s probably that just because someone offers you something free does not mean that you have to take it.
The music selection for today is two Johnny Wakelin tracks from the album Reggae, Soul, and Rock n Roll. Usually I try not to post up a picture of the featured artist, as I find it a bit more fun to search out some picture that relates more abstractly to the sentiment of the post, but this guy is such a goofball that I kind of have to post up at least a few pics (the top one is from http://www.johnnywakelin.co.uk/, which is the funniest/saddest site I’ve seen in some time. Anything that highlights 3 semi-hits from 30 years ago with a current pic is getting into some pretty laughable territory). The album has one of the coolest logos of all time, which is supposed to be some dude in a beanie dancing with a lady (although it totally looks like he’s taking her to the bone-zone; check the expression on his face). I’d first heard the track In Zaire on this comp that Jarvis Cocker put together a couple years back, and I never really put together an image of the singer in my head. It’s weird how you can hear a song and not assume that the singer is gonna look a certain way. Then when you see a picture of the dude, you are absolutely astonished by the way he looks for some reason, despite the fact that his looks are merely an extension of the way he sounds. I mean when you hear some guy like Tony Benet or even Afrika Bambaataa, they are dead ringer visually to complement the aural experience. Why I was surprised to see some huge white weirdo in a cowboy hat singing this shit is uncanny, since that’s exactly what he should look like.

Oh yeah, fyi, by now I’ve had so much coffee that I am basically in the future, and my pet turtle seeks solace in the drains.
Johnny Wakelin – Reggae, Soul, and Rock n Roll
Johnny Wakelin – In Zaire

Blog's Position On Blog

In posting music, I often wonder if there are rules or no-no’s within the music-geek blog community. Obviously these rules can and are broken constantly, but I’m sure that certain types of blog activity is frowned upon and mocked by the senior bloggers and purists. In skateboarding (and life; deep I know), you can pretty much do whatever you want on your board that is physically possible: push mongo, do ho-hos and handplants in the parking lot behind Sears (that’s actually pretty cool), launch benihannas, and do kickflip sex-changes. Any of the aforementioned tricks would probably result in a harsh mocking by seasoned skaters, although this trick degradation is solely a social construct. God or some underlying universal force did not will any of these things to be good or bad; a couple influential people did. So I started to wonder if I’m currently breaking any of the unwritten blogging rules myself. Here are a few things that I occasionally do which might make the list:
1. Repost tracks that I’ve downloaded off other people’s blogs. I don’t do this too often (and especially not if the track is tagged. How embarrassing, right). If I seriously can’t find the record, the track has a high sample rate, and it’s a stone cold jam, I will commit this crime. Whatever dude, I’m like a music blog Robin Hood.
2. Post up shit that I’ve uploaded from CD. Doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but, some folks claim that unless you record it from the original vinyl it doesn’t count. While I do feel that having the original vinyl copy is crackerjack (I got that term from the Merriam-Webster Online Thesaurus by the way, in searching for a synonym for “excellent”), I don’t think it is absolutely necessary. Besides, if you are actually concerned with supporting the artist, it’s probably better to buy the CD brand new from the store (if it exists), as some of that money might actually make it back to them (depending on how they negotiated their deals).
3. This is a music blog, right. So what the fuck am I doing whining, complaining, praising and ranting about non-music related things, like Laundry and Haircuts. I should be whining, complaining, praising, and ranting about music solely, as my music related opinions matter! They do, right?
4. Posting the same artist’s stuff over and over again. For example I’ve posted a lot of Bohannon, and I’m gonna post more in this post, and I plan to post even more in the future. What can I say, I’m a fan, and although I should space his shit out more, I’m super impulsive.
5. Posting really obvious pop music, that everyone knows and has heard a billion times. I haven’t done this too much yet, but I’m sure I will be posting up some Madonna in the future.

Shit, that’s all I can think of. My blog may be in the red, but it’s not the worst (I could provide some links to some of the worst I’ve seen, but that’d be fucked up and subjective), although One Man’s Problem is still completely un-respected and unknown, which is fine. Still, I’d like others to tell me the rules of blog and what else I am doing completely wrong. On the converse, here are some of the things that I see constantly on other blogs, which I feel violates music blog convention:
1. Posting up music at a low sample rate. Yeah, I fucking love it when the drums (and everything else), which are normally thunderous and heavy, sound like metallic high frequency garbage. Plus I use Serato (which I will likely get hated on hard for using. Is it still lame to use Serato, when I record all my vinyl at the highest sample rates to disc, and I get to use other MP3s, some which I will likely never find anywhere on vinyl in my lifetime, as well? I know the answer is yes [that it is in fact lame as hell], but my back is likely to be in better shape at the end of the day) which means that there is no way I’ll ever keep or play out anything from your blog (which may be your intent, to just tease, expecting that if you like the track enough you’ll go out and find it, which (if that is your intent) I respect (sort of, but still it’s a bit greedy). In that case, why not just go the extra distance and just put up snippets of the track, to really tease, ensuring that a false MP3 copy will never be misused. I’m sorry for the overload of parenthesis used in this passage, but my writing is very fragmented, and I want to accurately include all that shit.
2. Posting twice a month, or less. Actually, I think less than four times a month is kind of pathetic. This is relatively self explanatory, unless you are dropping serious amounts of blog-age in those posts, to tide peeps over till the next one. I understand that you are a busy person and maybe don’t have time for blog. If that is the case, then you DON"T have time for blog: give up, as nobody cares about you or your blog anyway (just as nobody cares about me, or my blog, and yet for the time being, I persist).
3. People who post up all the new 12”s and singles which are being released in the present. I know it’s tempting as there is some good stuff coming out (most of which sounds like it could’ve been released in the late 70s and early 80s, which is bittersweet I guess) but nonetheless, these dudes stand to benefit from the money that music dorks like me would normally spend on their output, as opposed to the money that I’ll now spend on something else, since I just downloaded a high quality MP3 off your blog. This maybe the case to post the low quality MP3, but I feel like many will still be satisfied with the free, yet crap quality version. Just post up the snippet, and/or shout it out and link to the Juno download or some online shop. If you are cool with the artist and they give you permission to post it up, or if they already offer a free approved download via their own label or site, that’s justified also. I know some blogs are popular (unlike this one), and may actually have the power to promote the artist, song or album, but I also know that in my case, if the track is just sort of cool (as opposed to essential heat), and I already have the high quality MP3, I’m not gonna be buying a hard copy.

I could go on, but I’m a total hypocrite and I’ve likely already done everything that I’m speaking out against, or will in the future (perhaps in this very post; irony is a strong theme here at One Man’s Problem). Besides I’ve already spent the whole morning writing this, and I’m sort of out of decent ideas. So going on would mean more babble; live and let die.
Bohannon - Dance Your Ass Off
Bohannon - The Groove I Feel
Bohannon – Party People
Mandonna – Into The Groove
Doris D and the Pins – Shine Up

Dribble

Since I'm not at work, I'm basically breaking my own rules by putting up a post today. So instead of thinking/writing out a real post, you'll just get these tracks (I highly doubt anyone is complaining). I'm well aware that the Mutiny tracks kind of sound like they were recorded in a cave, and instead of blaming me, you can blame recording engineers Bruce Hensal (Miami), Neal Teeman, and assistant engineer Hugo Dwyer (NYC), as well as Stanley Kalina who mastered the record on the CBS Discomputer (TM) System.
Gary Wright - My Love Is Alive
Mutiny - Will It Be Tomorrow
Mutiny - The Ballad of Capt. Hymbad

There's Too Many Words

It must suck to visit blog with the sole intention of downloading some tunes for free and having to scroll down through all the pointless text to get to the real meat. In our current, fast-paced, instant gratification world, One Man’s Problem does not always instantly gratify, and I assume that the average net surfer would tire of the extra 5 to 10 seconds they are wasting with their finger depressed on the clicker. I mean this in all seriousness (I know that I have a penchant for sarcasm which doesn’t always translate well in type, since it’s hard to enunciate text; you have to use CAPS, underline, or color the word, and even that doesn’t always drive your point as intended. There was a Mr. Show episode where David Cross writes to some cereal company about how much he LOVES their cereal, so they keep sending him free cereal boxes, and he’s all pissed that they don’t get it. Conversely, once a person gets accustomed to the sarcasm in print, it’s also tough for them to ever take you seriously again. I guess I’d still prefer the latter) and the main criticism I've received regarding blog (other than "its a pointless waste of time") is that the posts are too long. I guess in order to somehow focus the downloader’s attention I could post the link within the text (color-coded of course, otherwise, they’d get flustered and just 86 the site, without free tunes), so they’d probably have to at least read that particular sentence. I could pepper up the sentence with either some radically interesting factual information (like every other blog, and only if it exists), some bizarre fiction about the artist, or create some fake internet award to suck the reader in and procure a click. I was going to provide examples, but I’m over it, as the track You Can Do It by the band Five Special, who I’m posting up today, is totally uninteresting, aside from the fact that they were produced by Ron Banks of the Dramatics, older brother to band member Brian Banks. Then I found out that shortly after recording the dub version of the aforementioned song, You Can Do It (Dub), band member Steve Harris photographed the world’s first unicorn in a barn adjacent to his house just outside of Dearborn, MI (this was quickly covered up by the FBI). If you are reading this now, you are the 1,000th viewer of this post, and you are subject to a $10,000,000 Dollar Cash Prize: Click here to claim your prize, Five Special – Sexy Lady.

Metaphors

It always happens that just when I think that I’ve heard every amazing cut put out by a certain artist (and I’m ready to close the book) I get nipped inside the ass (as opposed to on the exterior), and find myself listening to the same song on repeat for an hour straight. I picked up a copy of Here, My Dear the other day, and I had to again confront the fact that Marvin Gaye had somehow tapped into this cosmic sexual vortex of understanding. Some shit that despite race, gender, etc… 95% of English speaking people can probably feel and connect with. I guess you could probably speculate the sentiment of the song without understanding the lyrics, as he definitely has “the voice”, but it’s not within my realm to be able to surmise a person’s reaction/connection without them having the necessary language skills (and they’d probably just assume all his songs are love songs, which is not the case). I’ll leave that to a pro to figure out, and besides it’s completely irrelevant to this post, and again I’ve gotten off topic. Fuck. This particular album is the summation of Gaye’s divorce cut on wax, a somewhat cathartic outcry that evokes the hidden beauty of pain, rejection, and anguish (not that doing that is a first or anything, a large chunk of pop music deals solely with this type of stuff). Outside of being a performer and vocalist, Gaye was probably just as retarded and insecure as the rest of us, and worse, he was an arrogant, delusional, coked up asshole, whom in his last days (according to http://www.findadeath.com/. Seriously, that’s where I went to research this post) was known to frequently don a bulletproof vest out of fear that he was being stalked by murderers (The article also mentions that while staying at his parent’s house right before being murdered by his father [irony], “He was strung out, doing loads of cocaine and spent hours watching porn videos in his bedroom). It’s not that his lyrics are especially keen either, but as Coach McGuirk puts it in the above video, “It's called creative use of words. It's like poetry, you know? Robert Frost. Stopping by the woods. On a snowy fucking evening. That kind of shit. But it’s my poetry, it’s the everyday man’s poetry. Alright, cuz we can’t find good metaphors like the woods, or the snow, or the horse, or that kind of stuff.”
Marvin Gaye – Time To Get It Together
Marvin Gaye – Falling In Love Again/When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You (Reprise)
Marvin Gaye – Is That Enough

Nerd Out

Time to turn this crap back to being sort of music related for at least a post. Enough about urinals and tools for the elderly. To either the delight or chagrin of the reader/downloader, I'm putting up some 70s jazz fusion today. I just picked up a record that kind of blew me away the other day, and I'm gonna put up my three favorite tracks from the album. The album in question, is the first album from The Eleventh House (called Introducing Eleventh House), which features Larry Coryell on guitar, Alphonse Mouzon on Drums, and this guy Mike Mandell on synths and piano. The bass player and trumpet player are on point too, and I don't remember their names or have the record in front of me (and I'm too lazy to look them up), so sorry to those two dudes who aren't getting some just props. For all the nerds out there, Mike Mandell mainly used the ARP Odyssey on most of the cuts here and that thing serenades the future and fucks it in space. I don't have much else to say, I'm busy and tired, and if thats a problem you can all suck it.
Eleventh House - Birdfingers
Eleventh House - Yin
Eleventh House - Right On Y'all

Low Brow

When you use a shared bathroom with the same people 5 days a week (and a large group of people), you start to understand the high traffic times for restroom usage, and whom to avoid in a restroom tete-a-tete if at all possible. I know not to use the bathroom between 12:30 and 2, as it’ll likely be crowded and/or smelly, with few or no stalls available. All the shit I'm about to talk about relates directly to experiences in the Men's bathroom, as I have very little experience in the Women's arena, except when I'm drunk at a bar, the Men's room is full, and I really have to go. I’m of the disposition to prefer a certain extent of restroom solitude (this does not necessarily mean that I have to be alone), especially in the case of the dreaded Number 2. I don’t want to share that type of anguish/embarrassment with another in the same situation in close proximity, and I don’t find the restroom a good place to bond for any reason imaginable.

There are certain people that I’ve learned to avoid in the restroom, based solely on their interior etiquette. These are all people that I have no problems dealing with outside of the lavatory, but once inside they change drastically into vulgar, insensitive, classless weirdos who have no regard for the fact that others are also relieving themselves. I’ll provide a few situations and examples. A small wiry man, who resembles actor Wallace Shawn from The Princess Bride (the one that was in cohoots with Andre the Giant, see pic), does this thing where he goes to pee (and this guy probably pees about once every 45 minutes so you kind of have to time your pee around his, since he’s always in there), and performs this odd ritual. He always uses the urinal against the wall, and then while peeing, puts his arm up on the little wall that divides the urinals and stares down the line at the other three urinals, which breaks every rule in the fictional urinal etiquette handbook (I think there was a Curb your Enthusiasm episode that got into this territory once). You are not allowed to make eye contact and stare at anyone else’s dick or face while you are peeing. Additionally, you can’t enter another man’s stall/personal space, and the arm over the divider breaks that contract. Plus, if you are looking at me, that means you are not looking at your dick and monitoring where your pee is going. So you could potentially be peeing on the wall, your pants, or your shoes.

Another couple of guys like to have conversations with me and others in the bathroom. I find this to be a very grey territory, and I’ll try to illustrate what is okay and what is not. Two friends or acquaintances enter the bathroom talking, pull up at the urinal (still talking), and they both piss and continue their conversation. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this is okay, and I don’t really know why. It just feels okay, and why let piss get in the way of your stream of consciousness or flow. Piss is flow; just let it combine with the overall flow of the convo (rhymes!). New example: one guy is pissing, the other friend or acquaintance enters during the guys’ piss and starts talking to him and starts pissing as well, in an adjacent urinal. Whether or not this situation is valid depends on the depth of their friendship. You have to be pretty close with someone to talk to them mid-piss (literally as well; you cannot pull up to a urinal and talk to someone over the head of someone else pissing in between); exemptions being a bizarre event just occurring, an emergency, or maybe you are strangers both drunk at a baseball game (and even that is iffy). What is completely off limits, is talking to someone mid-piss that you know but have not achieved a friendship-type of relation with. Not Fucking Allowed! Even worse, giving out work assignments or even talking about work in a manner where one has to pay attention mid-piss, is un-fucking-warranted. What do you want me to do, write it down with my dick in cursive? This has happened to me multiple times in the bathroom and by the same two offenders that just don’t seem to get that this kinda shit should not go down ever, for any reason. One guy even pulled up to piss, farted, and then instructed me to put something together for him. Because of people like this, I need to be spry and alert when I enter the bathroom, and use all of my faculties (literally, waka waka waka) to be quick and avoid any awkward relation.

I don’t think that people really talk to each other in a public restroom while shitting. I haven’t witnessed it recently, and I don’t even want to get into it. It’s always rude and wrong, but it has the potential to be way funnier in certain contexts (the last one I can remember is two drunk idiots in an airport restroom yelling at each other, with some poor unrelated guy was trapped in the middle of their two stalls). On the contrary, if you have to use a urinal trough, all rules are null and void and guerilla tactics can be applied. You can talk, yell, eat, text someone, talk on the phone, stare at someone’s dick, pee on others, and even take a shit into it if you please. The trough is the one of the lowest of the civilized male human bathroom experiences (other than being the janitor that cleans and maintains it, and at least he/she gets paid), so it can therefore be treated with the most low brow behavior possible: either to enact revenge on the bastards that cheaped out and installed a trough in the first place, or as a haven for all the creeps that already break all the aforementioned public restroom rules.
Omni feat. Conni Draper - Out of my Hands
Kebekelektrik - War Dance (Greg Wilson Edit)

Brilliant Observation

I was watching a lady with a walker today, and I noticed that the tennis ball is basically the standard issue accessory to use as a glider for the back legs of the apparatus (I already knew that, but it was reaffirmed). Does a brand new walker, come with a free Pringles can of tennis balls, or has this just been adopted by the elderly, as some insider trick (like how scratch DJs used to [and some may still] balance their needles by putting a penny on top of it)? The tennis balls on this lady’s walker were extremely faded and dilapidated, which was in complete contrast to her rather expensive attire. I would expect her to have the crème de la crème of tennis balls adorning her walker, but this was not the case, and to top it off, she was out in public (as opposed to in a home or hospital, i.e. safe havens for the elderly). This poses the question of whether new tennis balls function better, worse, or the same as worn down ones on a scale of walker glide-age. I mean how often do you see a walker with that fresh neon pop from a pristine box of Penns? Hardly, I’d assume, but I hardly ever see walkers, so it’s a double rarity for me. By now, it'd be wise to market a more durable walker glider type of ball or pad, and the product is out there, but the final commodity seems kinda retarded, as they’ve designed it to look exactly like a fucking tennis ball (it even has those lines that tennis balls have which doubtfully has any positive impact on the traction, see pic).

Although an effective tool, the tennis ball cheapens the image of the walker and its inhabitant, and its time for a change! If you drove a decent Acura, I don’t think you would choose to deck the rims out in protective Styrofoam, when there are a ton of better looking and more durable products out there for rimmage. Well, maybe when it comes to walkers the rules of high school apply: if everyone else is doing it, it just becomes acceptable and often desirable. I guess the elderly community is very similar to the kids in that show the Hills in that respect, in that their walker decisions are highly influenced by peer pressure and homogeny. I think it’s time to step it up and create the high end, classy version of the walker tennis ball. Market it to all the cool kids at the elderly home, and start the frenzy.
Supermax - Fly With Me (Ichisan Edit)
Eddie Drennon - Disco Jam
Adonis - To Far Gone

Parasites

If you’ve ever recorded a mixtape as a single track (as opposed to cutting it up into multiple tracks, which is way cooler, and I still haven’t figured it out), it is often very surprising and saddening to see what happens as your mix comes up in iTunes. There are literally hundreds of thousands of single track CDs and mixes that have already been uploaded to the Gracenote Media Database, so not only has a single track CD to the exact time specification of your mix already been uploaded, but it is also likely on the fruit boot tip. The new mix that I just recorded came up as Cosmic Girl – To the End of the Earth, but luckily I forgot to delete the last 20 seconds of silence which extended after the end of the final record. After deleting it and bouncing it to disk, it now comes up as Deejay DAI – The Platinum Mix 2009; a significant improvement but not quite the marketing/notoriety that I’m looking for with a Hotthobo affair. I don’t want Deejay DAI blowing up on account of my selection, and I’d like to think that I have the Midas touch (although I have yet to use it). Maybe I should be optimistic about the mislabeling of my mixtape. Perhaps just mentioning Deejay DAI on blog will somehow boost my page views significantly, and we can have a symbiotic relationship where I burrow into his skin and function like that hookworm that you get from wading in urinals in Papua New Guinea which cures your allergies. As a hookworm, in the end I will multiply and conquer Deejay DAI, as explained by Dr. Hotez in the hyper-linked article above, “If a kid is infected with 25 hookworms, he’s being robbed of his daily iron requirement, and because the worms suppress the immune system, they can increase the host’s susceptibility to diseases like AIDS and malaria,”. I guess it’s not symbiotic when I end up killing him in the end (but at least I sort of win).

Moving on I’ve realized that I need to somehow identity-proof blog, so that real world interactions are not traced back to me personally, and so I am ultimately not fired from my job and judged by people that do not know me well. I've alluded to this in earlier posts, and with all the shit I talk about all the time I waste at work, it’s probably best that people at work do not read blog, as the post times (which are well documented) validate the fact that I often spend about as much time crafting this as I do doing whatever it is I’m paid to be doing. This means removing any promotional linkage on facebook, myspace, gmail, etc., and although this absolutely breaks my heart, it is necessary for my survival to go back into the depths (and let the fame come naturally. It will, I guarantee it!). I was told by a friend to also double check that blog’s filthy mug does not pop up when you google your real name (which I checked, only to find that some idiot with the same name as me has the worst Twitter page of all-time. Twitter never did anything for me unless it was some lunatic hobo lurking the streets with a Bluetooth and PDA. Then it’s kind of amazing). In that sense I am in the clear, but maybe like 4 people at work do know my DJ handle, and although there is virtually no chance of them ever googling that to find any information for any reason, the possibility does exist, which has given me the fear. Before you judge me, take into account that you are currently reading this and are hopefully entertained by my tales and logic (or lack thereof). I work free for you, boss, and although you have no creative control over the final product, you can always post a comment (I always get giddy when I see a new one), and you can download of bunch of tunes at high bit rates. So stop thinking about others, and get selfish for a sec: One Man’s Problem benefits you.
Charlie - Spacer Woman
Doris Norton - Personal Computer
Devo - Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA

Post Halloween Post

In the wake of Halloween, I’d be outright lying if I claimed that I acted appropriately around random strangers, or even my friends. I feel downright filthy for some of the things that I thought of, performed, exploited, and viewed last weekend, and from what I can tell, my behavior was in some way more controlled than some of my incorrigible Bay Area peers. I think you are allowed a hall pass of sorts, to traverse to the wild side during these festivities, which becomes more and more endurable and valid following large amounts of liquor, and the mental confidence/insanity that a costume can furnish your psyche. Regardless, it is still important to hold on to a fraction of decency in these situations, and not completely lose track of all intuition, humanity, and ethics. If you outright lie, cheat, or defraud a friend (or stranger) on Halloween, the “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” mentality does not excuse your behavior. Here is a short and vague list of a few things that I personally did this weekend, which make me feel vile in retrospect:
1. Fabricated a lie because I thought it was funny. Instead, it just made everyone worried and doubtful.
2. Danced very lewdly next to a girl that actually seemed to enjoy my company (at least until then) ultimately ushering her disappearance, and likely grossing her out.
3. Said or screamed some very blunt and tasteless things to get a reaction.
4. Lit a cigarette backwards.
5. Used a computer inappropriately to entertain people.
6. Hocked a loogie on a guy by accident. He was cool with it (thank god).
7. Generally suffered from poor judgment decisions for 3 days straight.

So in order to make up for my shit behavior, I need to tip the scales in the opposite direction for the next 3 days, to correct the evil balance opposition I’ve created. Maybe I’ll go feed a baby deer in the forest, tip really big at the coffee shop, or listen to my mom give me her top three picks of graduate schools for marketing or account management. I’m sure I could be a little more valiant than that, but at least it’s a good start.

Another way I’d like to give back is by posting up one of my favorite party jams, The Cars That Go Boom by L’Trimm. A great song, about Bunny D and Tigra being infatuated with guys that spend a lot of time and cash on their car stereos; until this point, I don’t think that that specific group of guys had really gotten their due. I never understood the name, L’Trimm, but I did always think it sounded super cool. Trim is a slang word that can mean either an attractive girl, having sex with a girl, or vagina. I’ve occasionally heard Bay Area homies proclaim “I pulled hella trim last night” and high fiving, or throwing the rock while riding the bus. I don’t think that L’Trimm were attempting to evoke the slang meanings of the word trim in their moniker, and I would assume that the aforementioned usage of the term “trim” came later on in the mid 90s. Plus there are two Ms in Trimm, so maybe that lends itself to an entirely different meaning all together. I’d have to ask someone who was active in the club scene in Miami in 1988, and I’m not that resourceful.
L'Trimm - The Cars That Go Boom
Eddie Trauba & M.M. Greco - Macaroni Radio
Human Egg - Love Like This