Road to Recovery: Detroit, Baby!

Detroit is my city and I love it. Despite me growing up in the suburbs and never actually living in the city itself, I consider it my home.

Detroit is a city filled with pride. Whether it be those attached to the city because their great grandparents came here to seek the $5 a day pay rate, or the youth that are attempting to rekindle the “classic” Detroit our parents reminisce about.

I never witnessed the Detroit that was completely functional. And ironically, most of the youth who live in the city that are attempting to revive it never did either. Despite that, those people are attempting to add grease to the gears and transform it back to the well-oiled machine it once was. This is a passionate demographic. The most successful people I’ve ever met or read about are not necessarily the most intelligent or sharpest, but the most passionate.

Having visited many of the major cities in the US, I can confidently say that Detroit is the most unique. “Unique” is a unique word. The definition of that word should ultimately remain undefined by Merriam-Webster with any conventional definition. In fact, if anything, it should simply say:

Unique (yu-neek): Adjective, noun, and verb: 1. Detroit (Please visit the city for definition).

If You Don't Love Me You're Not Human

This is one of the most beautiful things in the world. How can you not smile?

Song of the Day (2.28.2011)

My Morning Jacket - "Lowdown"

Opinion: My Top 50 Albums

Now, keep in mind that I'm not declaring these as the best 50 albums of all-time, just my favorite. I put my favorite track from each album below each one.

50. Black Milk - Tronic
"Long Story Short"
49. The Shins - Chutes too Narrow
"Saint Simon"
48. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
"Pieces of What"
47. Mercury Rev - Deserter's Song
"Opus 40"
46. The Killers - Hot Fuss
"Smile Like You Mean it"
45. Interpol - Antics
"Slow Hands"
44. Green Day - Dookie
"Pulling Teeth"
43 Gomez - How We Operate
"Chasing Ghosts With Alcohol"
42. Face to Face - Big Choice
"Promises"
41. Elliot Smith - XO
"Independence Day"

Song of the Day (2.24.2011)

Alvino Rey Ochestra - "My Buddy"

The granddad of two members of Arcade Fire is Alvino Rey. This was recorded in 1940.

The Web of Beer

This is a pretty cool image to check out. It basically breaks beer down into lagers and ales and then shows how different kind of beers are versions of those two categories. Plus, it offers examples of brews from each category. Very educational.

Click on the image to enlarge:

How a $31 Marijuana Bust Costs Taxpayers $100,000+

I'll refrain from commenting on this one.

Here's the article for the lazy. The source can be found below.


"With states across the country facing serious budget deficits, it is important to remember our country’s tough marijuana laws aren’t just unnecessarily cruel to people who break them, but they are also devastating to our states’ budgets.

Song of the Day (2.22.2011)

Matt & Kim - "Block After Block"

These two are great. This song is off of Sidewalks which is a fantastic album with a lot of great beats and hooks. If you ever want to throw it down with some Brit-pop/80's-esque fun, flip on Matt & Kim.

Song of the Day (2.18.2011)

Fear - "More Beer"

In honor of the weekend being here I find this appropriate.

Song of the Day (2.16.2011)

Iron and Wine - "Tree by the River"

Iron and Wine is easily one of my favorite bands of all time. Sam Beam might be one of the best singer/songwriters from this decade and he only continues to release great material.

I have mixed feeling about their latest album Kiss Each Other Clean, but it's not like that washes away The Shephard's Dog, Our Endless Numbered Days, The Creek Drank the Cradle, or any of their several EPs (including their collaboration with Calexico).

Actually, some of Iron and Wine's best material might be covers(Such as, Stereolab's "Peng! 33," The Flaming Lip's "Waiting for Superman," New Order's "Love Vigilante," Postal Service's "Such Great Heights"). I strongly urge anyone to look up these tracks and give them a listen.

This song is from their latest album, but it's a track that Beam has been working on for years. In fact there's been several different live versions of the track performed over the years.

What's better than and Iron and Wine album? Hear them live and listening to it organically, like this track here.

Wrastlin' Ain't Fake!

I midget in a monkey suit getting their shit told. That pretty much sums this one up.

I don't think monkey jr was expecting such a violent explosion.

Song of the Day (2.15.2011)

The Antlers - "Two"

The Antlers album Hospice is one of those records that will go down as one of my favorite independent albums of all time. From beginning to end the album is a masterpiece, both lyrically and musically.

The theme of the album in general is about a relationship that's on life support and that's the reason why it was titled Hospice. This song's meaning is great and the delivery of the words are top-notch. More or less, this specific track is about his relationship going south and knowing it can't be saved. Meanwhile, he's cognitive to the fact that her past is the reason why she's, for a lack of a better term, fucked up.



I highly suggest listening to this song while reading the lyrics. The video is great, so don't get too distracted, but this song is very, very good.

Mother Russia

Russians are great at drinking vodka and swinging on bars. Now, I don't have any sweet videos of Russians drinking (ok, I don't want to post videos of Russians drinking - today anyways). So, in lieu of that, here's both ends of the spectrum when it comes to Russians and their ability to swing like chimps.

Olga brings the noise...and the the funk. Incredible.



Nut shot. Not incredible:

This Is Why You Don't Pass Out

Ok, I'm torn on this one. I think the friend has right to be pissed, but this is absolutely hilarious.

Possibly the best prank ever.

Pizza With the Olsen Twins

This might be one of the most hilarious things in the world if you're in the right mood. Give it time. You can just skim through the original to get the gist.

Original:



Slowed Down:

FAIL Jump

Go-go gadget shoes!

[land]Lord of the Flies

Last June I decided to make a bold decision. It was a decision I had only decided to do two other times in my adult life. This was the decision to move.

I didn't move because I was necessarily unhappy with my old apartment. My previous place was the perfect size and it had all the essential amenities that any guy who lived alone would want: stove, shower, toilet, and refrigerator. The decision was based primarily on two reasons.

First, my old apartment was a little off the beaten path. It wasn't quite close enough to the downtown area in the city where I live in for my liking. During the summer the walk to the bars/restaurants was fine, but in the winter, the same walk had a very different feeling (it was fucking cold). Secondly, the carpeting was diarrhea. My landlord wasn't necessarily a poor landlord, but I repeatedly asked for replacement carpeting from day one and was promised that it would happen; it never did. That went on for almost two years before I decided enough was enough. So, like I said, it was more or less the culmination of those two factors that forced the "bold decision." I gave my 30 days notice and began to seek new living arrangements.

Song of the Day (2.14.2011)

The Damned - "Neat Neat Neat"

The Shifting Democratic Paradigm

As we sit in America looking past oceans and continents at the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt do we, or should we, envy the opportunities they have? Has our democracy descended into a plutocracy? How has this tainted our democratic processes? Questions like these are raised in an interesting op-ed from Bob Herbert of the New York Times that challenges us to look at the democratic revolution in Egypt reflectively. It's a short and worthwhile read.

When Democracy Weakens- NY Times

Song of the Day (2.13.2011)

Pearl Jam - "Just Breathe"

A great song, and paired with a fantastic video of a son restoring his dad's old BMW motorbike. It's a moving tribute that shows the strong emotional connection people have with objects.

Now, here is the description of the slideshow.
This is a photo story of my father's 1958 BMW R50:
Boy meets girl, gets married, buys motorcycle. Rides it for 60,000 miles and has accident when wife is pregnant with 3rd child. (me) Wife orders motorcycle to be taken off road until all her children are grown and on their own. One day when bike is moved to a different storage location, son sits on bike and dreams of being a Jedi Master like his father. Couple grows old together and bike is not ridden for 40 years. Husband is now a grandfather of 7 and married for 50 years, when he dies of a stroke at age 71.
Son looks over the old rotting machine and finds note attached to it from his father to him. Son decides to restore the old 1958 BMW R-50 as a tribute to his father. With the help of many friends, especially Peter Nettesheim, world renowned BMW collector, bike is restored to look even better than it did when it was built in Germany.
Watch it at 720p in full screen for best quality.

Song of the Day (2.12.2011)

Trans-Am - "Future World"

Please Stop

Around 2000 I waited with baited breath for the release of Spider-Man. I drank in every publicity photo, video clip, and trailer. It had been since the Batfilms in the late 1980's and early 1990's since a quality superhero flick was released, and the fandom was in a tizzy.



within a decade Spidey had gone emo, and the rest of the comic to film players weren't faring a whole lot better. Fantastic Four was a fantastic bomb, Ang Lee's Hulk was as bloated as its title character, Ben Affleck Daredevil, Electra, Ghostrider, X3, Cat-Woman, and on and on. As years passed the quality and inventiveness of the genre died more. For me the soullessness genre reached its nadir with Zack Snyder's Watchmen. It was by far my favorite comic, and the way it eschewed the comic industry while being a part of it was genius. The movie though represented all that writer Allen Moore railed against in the creation of Watchmen. If written in the mid 2000's rather than the 1980's Ozymandias would've been hyping the movie with his Watchmen action figure line. It was sad.

This summer is lining up to be yet another uninspired, bland buffet of comic-rag crap. Set to come out are: Captain America (fuck yeah), Thor, Spider-Man (gone emo kid), and X-Men (also branching out in a decidedly emo direction). As a comic-con going geek I am in the target audience for these films, and I honestly say I've had enough.

I can only hope that projects like A&E's Walking Dead will raise the bar back to where it had been. Put the focus back on creativity and storytelling rather than the marketability of a character.

It Hurts to Be Beautiful?

This video makes me cringe when I watch it. I'd say I feel bad, but she gets paid to walk. Sometimes I have bad days at work, so should she.

Song of the Day (2.8.2011)

T-Baby - "It's So Cold in the D"

In honor of the frigid weather.

Chernobyl: As it Sits Today

Every time I see photos of Chernobyl, I'm as creeped out as I am interested. A blogger decided to share photos from his tour he just took at the abandoned city. Take a look! You can see the entire album here.

Baby Jesus Butt Plug

You've seen everything, right? So you thought. For that born-again friend in your life or that Christian neighbor who simply doesn't know when to take down the Christmas lights, there's a gift to brighten their day. It's the Baby Jesus Butt Plug!

This isn't a joke! You can purchase this for $35 at Divine Interventions. It also comes in Green, Black, Gold, and several other colors!

Roa Takes on Mexico

Graffiti artist Roa just took a trip to Mexico and some of his works were posted on ekosystem.org. I think Roa is doing some of the slickest stuff right now and he's quickly becoming one of the my favorite artists in the scene.


From ekosystem:
"Roa: "Mexico is just wonderful, wonderful nature and people. I have some credits and people to mention; the whole trip was on invitation of Gonzalo Alvarez from MAMUTT ARTE in collaboration with MUJAM (Roberto), so two organizations from my friends Gonzalo and Roberto. And I painted with Sego and Saner.""

Saner and Sego aren't too shabby themselves. These pieces are amazing!

Song of the Day (2.7.2011)

Yo La Tengo - "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House"

Selleck Waterfall Sandwich

Every so often I come across a website or blog that blows my mind away. It's not necessarily that the content is important or essential, but it's the fact that it exists. Well folks, I want to introduce you to one of the more incredible blogs I've ever come across.

The theme is simple. It's images that feature three things: Tom Selleck, a waterfall, and a sandwich. Ironically enough, the blog is called "Selleck Waterfall Sandwich"

Song of the Day (2.4.2011)

Yolanda Be Cool vs. DCUP - "We No Speak Americano"

Revolutions

The age of Aquarius has supoosedly brought the American Revolution, Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and perhaps, again, it brings revolution in Egypt.

Revolutions are scary. With few exceptions, they're not peaceful and result in many lives lost. However, the voice of the people are heard.

I remember talking to my host dad in Ukraine about revolutions, specifically the Orange Revolution and my desire for a revolution to occur in America. He got very furious with me, and told me never to say that. He had lived through many revolutions with the break up of the USSR and the events that followed. I realized what I wanted was more of a paradigm shift--this begins with value changes.

I suppose revolutions are a culmination of a lot of factors, but usually it involves a change in leadership. American change in leadership needs to change through value changes in Americans--not through revolutions. Sarah Vowell, an editor for This American Life on PRI, describes what this might look like.

"I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's 'Two Sleepy People,' Johnny Cash's 'Five Feet High and Rising,' and 'You Got the Silver' by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on the earth dealing with the most complicated problems of the world--poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office Computer, and one by one decrypt our woes."

January 2011 FAILS Video Compilation

We Used to Drink Water From the Spring

By the time the average Westerner dies they will have spent 7 months, 4 days, 3 hours, 44 minutes and 17 seconds deleting junk emails from their hotmail, gmail, yahoo, and facebook accounts. This eventuality forces one to question the central tenets of evolution—no, it is not the rambling of Creationists that throw a MONKEY wrench (get it? monkey) in Darwin’s theory, but rather statistics like the aforementioned that make one question the idea that humans develop, improve, get stronger, smarter, better. It is what we do on a daily basis that proves or debunks the claim of our steady advancement, and on the basis of a look at these daily activities, I must say that we have not progressed. Consider the following:

We used to gather food and cook it over a fire, now we dig up coal to make a fire in a plant to make electricity to send to a freezer to freeze our food on its ways to a grocery store where it will stay frozen in a freezer powered by electricity (fire) so then we pick it up and start another fire in the internal combustion engine of our cars to take the food home turn on a light turn up the furnace throw away our junk mail and pop our “food” into a microwave (more electricity/fire) that will “cook” it for us, if cooking means altering the chemical composition of the food so much as to destroy any nutritional value left after it was picked from the vine too early to be frozen so it could be reheated. What?

We used to drink water from springs, now we pollute the spring to make a plastic bottle then build a factory to purify the water and put it in the bottle that polluted the spring in the first place, and we do this so we can have drinkable spring water. Right.

We used to eat corn, now we eat high fructose corn syrup.

We used to listen to music, now we listen to [put random auto-tuned robotic voice black dude here or any of the Li’ls].

As you can see, I could clearly go on, but I'm sure it's obvious why I'm skeptical about this thing called human progress.

Song of the Day (2.3.2011)

Mercury Rev - "Goddess on the Highway"

A Borrowed Sound

It seems that each generation experiences its own revolution. I don’t mean ‘revolution’ in the sense that the government has been overthrown and our dictator hung in the town square to be stoned. I mean it in a much more broad term. If I’m going to nail down what I’m referring to, I’ll call it “social revolution.”

I Googled “social revolution” to see if it was an original concept or not, and it turns out I’m not that original. It’s a term that one website described as (fragmentsweb.org), “Social revolution is nothing more than a change in the way we live our lives. It springs from changes in the way we think.” I like that wordage, so I won’t bother creating an original description to pass off my ‘non-original’ concept. So, think of it as nothing more than a new way that we live our lives based on new advancements by people; whether these are technological progressions, or advancements in ideology.

Google Art Project

And Google does it again. Google street view for museums.

Google Art Project

Song of the Day (2.2.2011)

Iron Maiden - "Hallowed be thy Name"

(as appearing in Toy Machine's Welcome to Hell- classic skate video)



And just because:

Incredible: The Skin Gun

This is truly amazing. This is a spray gun that literally uses a person's own stem cells to duplicate healthy cells to repair the skin. Everyone opposed to stem cell research should view this.

An Esteemed Brand of Socialism

What makes the NFL so great? According to Bill Maher it's the same thing that is threatening the core values of America, socialism. How is this possible? How did this happen? Socialism in my NFL? No way.

Gaming the Game

Jonah Lehrer has posted a fascinating piece in Wired on Canadian, Mohan Srivastava. Srivastava, an MIT and Stanford schooled statistician, became intrigued after receiving some Tic-Tac-Toe scratchoff lottery tickets as a gift. While most of us would've shucked off the latex layer without thinking twice, Mohan looked at the tickets and pondered how they were created. How could rolls and rolls of tickets be printed so that they appear to be completely randomized without being random?

Thoughts of cracking the game filled his head, and passing a petrol station without stopping to pick up a few more tickets became impossible. The game was calling him. After a short period- a few hours- of studying the tickets Srivastava was convinced he had it. Best of all it didn't require a single scratch of the ticket, and it was simple enough to teach his 8 year-old daughter. Impossible. He was dumbfounded that a multi-billion dollar industry could put out a game that was so flawed, but there it was true. He had cracked it with 90%+accuracy.

Zach Wahls Defends the Family

This week Iowa took steps to amend the state constitution to make it so that they can refuse to acknowledge gay marriage/ civil unions.

19 year-old Zach Wahls is an engineering student and son of two women. He took the opportunity to speak to the Iowa House Committee, and proved in just over three minutes the misdirection of those in charge. Who exactly are the politicians trying to protect? Bravo!

Snowmageddon

SNOMG!! The Midwest is supposed to walloped by a "historic" snowstorm tonight. Old Man Winter is supposed to be bringing it to the tune of 10-15", so bundle up, drive safely (or not at all), and remember "Don't Eat That Yellow Snow".

UPDATE: As usual the forecast was mostly hype. The 15" predicted was closer to 4". Way to go guys.