Super Highway to Hell

And, when my time finally comes to shuffle off this mortal coil, and make my way to the big bad VIP room way downstairs, I wish I could do it here, so it could be broadcast live on the internet for all my fans who will be unable to attend my “intimate (no +1)” cremation. Alas, since I could never pass for Jewish (details, details), I’ll settle for having my ashes snorted by my nearest and dearest in an after-hours basement. “Live (sorta) from New York….”

Crazy Penis, Southern Comfort, Starting Something

Paper goes pop!
“You Started Something,” the bubbly disco track by Crazy Penis from our boys at now defunct Paperecordings in Manchester, UK has been bumpin on the small screen and in newsgroups online in the new campaign for Southern Comfort.
My Paper chase began with the first Splinter compliation, led to a torrent of gushing emails and collecting almost every single (on sight, unheard), peaked with a Passerby DJ set featuring Danny Wang and Ben Davis and continues through emails with Pete, who’s coming to town later this summer. He jumpstarted another label, defDrive, this time with the impossibly deliciously named Lulu LeVay, journalist and former Paper PR. Andy introduced us at a Harmonica Sunbeam gig at the old Two (“Is that Calvin cruising those hustlers?”) Potato on Christopher Street.
Not sure if SoCo’s aware of the connection to dirty homo zine “Southern Comfort” featuring good old boys displaying another kind of crazy penis, but there you have it—even if on the company’s website they’re demurely referred to as “Crazy P.”

P-Star: More Bounce to the Ounce

A more productive adolescent than those loitering on our Text Chat services, Harlem’s 11 year-old P-Star spits fire with the finesse of peers twice her age. Yet to hit her teens and already she’s got street cred to spare. Watch her blow up in the next few years and show the blonde teeny bopper set how it’s done uptown…all without uttering a single curse.

Repost excerpt from MasReggaeton:
P-Star is an 11-year-old rap superstar that has been sweeping the streets of New York with her dynamic flow, charm and beauty. This young feminist phenomenon named Priscilla Star Diaz aka “P-Star” has been “rhyming” with the city’s best for four years, and receiving much respect for it. P-Star’s debut album with Urban Box Office (UBO) is set to be released in the fall of 2006.
P-Star attended the Jo Lee Dance and Performance Arts School, and received acting lessons at the City Lights Youth Theater. Since then, she has appeared in the Off-Broadway production of “Take the Train to Maine” at the Second Stage Theater, played a little girl who died from AIDS in a short-film called “Sita” released on 2005, and appeared in “Hijinks”, a candid camera style show for kids on “Nick at Nite” featuring Susan Sarandon.
Besides being a gifted rapper and dancer, this young lady of Cuban and Puerto-Rican descent won, in 2004, first place in the “Little Miss Harlem” Black and Latino Beauty Pageant, the Miss All American State Finals, and the Junior Miss International Beauty Pageant. She was the first female in beauty pageant history to perform Hip Hop on-stage and win the pageant. She was also the youngest female to battle in the city-wide Hip-Hop competition, and won. P-Star received the “Latina of Distinction” award in 2005, and received, from the NYC Dept. of Education, the Legendary Hip Hop Pioneers for the Future of Hip Hop in the recognition of “How Education is Important.” Recently, she appeared on the MTV show “MADE” and on the show “DLIFE” on CNBC. She will also be making an appearance in a soon to be released documentary on BET, “Girlfight.” In addition, a documentary about P-Star, titled P-Star’s Redemption, is being filmed by TRU/NOBILITY Productions.

Watch Video:
P Star – Biggie Bounce Music Video Codes

Bioluminescent Creatures

A nature show on PBS triggered a frenzy of mediation on bioluminescent creatures. My imagination hopscotched from jellyfish and fireflies to “the glow” of pregnant women, saintly halos, wayward poltergeists, the rapid fire synapses of the man who’s brain had just “rewired” itself, the asteroid that just missed earth by 260,000 miles, and our timeless fascination with all manner of lights in the sky, cosmic, pyrotechnic and unexplained.
As my extended metaphor was about to snap, it was reeled in by an email from Dan in Chicago. It was a CNN blurb on a Pakistani prisoner who had reported to infirmary for the removal of a light bulb that had become lodged up his ass—inexplicably of course:
Fateh Mohammad, a prison inmate in Pakistan, says he woke up last weekend with a glass light bulb in his anus.
Fortunately everything turned out (left to loosen, presumably) OK in the end: “Thanks Allah, now I feel comfort,” quothe Fateh.
The subhead on the piece reads, “Unknown how many it took to screw it in.”
[Insert explosive bioluminescence kicker here...ooops, too late!]
Happy 4th, y’all.

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Land of the Freaks, Home of the "Big Green Thing"

Memphis church building Christian Statue of Liberty

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP, 7/1/06) — A 72-foot-tall replica of the Statue of Liberty erected at a Memphis church is green like the original, with the right arm extended upward in the familiar pose.
But instead of a torch, this statue holds a cross. And the famous inscription — “Give me your tired, your poor …” — has been replaced by Roman numerals representing the Ten Commandments.
The Statue of Liberation, to be unveiled at a July 4 Independence Day ceremony at the World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church, also has a tear running down her face, representing her concern for America.
“People don’t talk about Christ anymore and our morals are gone,” said church pastor Apostle Alton R. Williams. “People cannot drive by our statue without thinking about their relationship with God.”
The $260,000 statue is not a welcome sight for the entire community.
Evelyn Douglass, 11, said she takes the long way home to avoid seeing the “big green thing.”
“The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of the United States of America. The cross represents a specific religion,” Douglass said. “It’s not right that they are mixing the two. That church is trashing the meaning of America.”

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Fundamental

Here I am on Independence Day weekend, having announced to my dubious sublessor that I am moving September 01. Practically broke, paying rent early, only to find out she’s been spending it (as well as my security deposit) on other things for at least two months now. There are a couple options around the corner in Terre’s building, but that might be jumping out of the pan into the fire. Adding to my blues, Brazil is out, so there’s no Latinos to root for in the World Cup. After all the bashing my peoples have endured lately, a FIFA trophy would have balanced the karma and popularity deficit a bit in our favor, thanks. Fortunately, yesterday I received a slip from the post office to pick up something that was “too big to fit in box.” It turned out to be the Pet Shop Boys‘ latest, “Fundamental.” The first single and video “I’m With Stupid” proves Lowe/Tennant still got the goods; it celebrates other questionable pairings with a brilliant parody of their alter egos by satirical darlings Little Britian. I tried to wrangle a chat with Chris, but the PR at Rhino said, “the guys are not doing interviews right now…”

YouTube Video Link here.

You’ve got to give it up for Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant, especially with new wave Svengali Trevor Horn back at the helm. Arguably 20 years in the making, Pet Shop Boys Fundamental is just that: BIG BRITISH POP of an essential order. Tennant’s acerbic lyrics are personal, political and spot-on; Lowe’s instructive electronic accompaniment imparts due cohesion and resonance; and Horn’s Midas production comes giddily close to gilding the lilly. The dozen tracks meld theatrical Broadway orchestration, monster Prog-rock chords, dark dance beats, deadpan delivery and are sequenced like an electro-acoustic operetta. “Psychological” comes out swinging with a punchy retro-toned dismissal of the asymmetric haircut set “Is it a cry for help/Or a call to arms”; “I Made My Excuses and Left” poignantly rhymes elephant, supplicant and embarrassment in a melodramatic ode to infidelity “Each of you looked up/but no one said a word/I felt I should apologize/for what I hadn’t heard”;”Numb” (penned by songwriter’s songwriter Diane Warren) moans “I feel I feel too much”; “Casanova in Hell” tackles conflicted-gender erectile dysfunction with a spry, Bacharach melody; “Twentieth Century” ruminates at mid-tempo on the fine line between salvation and despair, “Everyone came/to destroy what was rotten/but they killed off what was good as well/Sometimes the solution/is worse than the problem/Let’s stay together.” The ballads outnumber the floor stompers, and most of the words are introspective and melancholy, but all is not geriatric angst and ennui however. “I’m with Stupid” is easily the catchiest summertime disco jam about loving the idiot (be it Blair and Bush, Tennant and Lowe, or you and your ex): “You grin, I pose/It’s not about sincerity/everybody knows.” “The Sodom and Gomorrah Show” is a 3-ring testimonial to enlightenment via decadence “There was a place down below/It was there I realised/the meaning of the show”; the throbbing stoccatto of “Minimal” winks at their Manchester/Hacienda peers; and “Integral” hits the Euro-rave panic button as it lambasts the piracy of privacy “If you’ve got something to hide/You shouldn’t even be here.” The companion DVD collection Catalogue and bonus remix CD Fundamentalism feature the respective micro-techno and steroid mashup stylings of Michael Mayer, Richard X among many eager others (including Sir Elton John). Pet Shop Boys and the attendant adoration they inspire turn the old axiom about journalists as musicians on its jaded ear. As zeitgeists go, one’s generation could do worse than knight Tennant/Lowe their Lennon/McCartney.