Kleenex/No Homo

I’ve got a few minutes to spare so I figured I’d share a little daily dirt with you guys, since my new article is going up today. Forgive me for shitting out a “reader mail” article, but there are mitigating factors: first of all, I’m graduating this Friday, so things are a little busy for me. No, I’m not actually a doctor, you retard (yet). Second, the e-mails are hilarious, trust me. Funnier than anything I could have written.

This ain’t some faggot music blog, but since people ask me nonstop what I listen to, I’ll just bullshit about music for a little while. Don’t worry, I’m not going to post a big “these are my favorite bands” list or a fucking Audioscrobbler link, because that’s just bullshit. I’ll just talk about what I’m listening to today.

I downloaded some great movie themes the other night. I’m not too big into movie themes, I always associate them with nerdy dudes who listen to nothing but orchestral movie soundtracks (which is one step above those fucking losers who listen to video game music). But even so, I felt like listening to some cool old movie themes, so I swallowed my pride and downloaded Anton Karas’s awesome zither theme from The Third Man, which is a solid classic. Check it out. Also, I got Vangelis’s theme from Chariots of Fire, which made me feel like running in slow motion on the beach… SO I DID! (I have a lot of free time). I got Henry Mancini’s theme from Love Story, too, which is undoubtedly awesome but a little over-familiar by now. Nowadays, nerds know it because it was sampled in that Immortal Technique song “Dance with the Devil,” which is overrated but decent. Probably the best movie theme I downloaded was the theme song from that old Sidney Poitier joint To Sir With Love. Now THAT is a fucking great song. It’s sung by a teenage girl and it’s got this sort of creepy hot-for-teacher reverse-pedophilia edge to it. But if you’re Sidney Poitier in a sharp 60s mod suit, you’ve got teenage schoolgirls grinding your junk twenty four hours a day anyway, so it’s nothing to you.

Today I’ve been incessantly listening to Rock Coast Blues by Country Joe and the Fish. I think I can scientifically prove that it has the best guitar riff of all time. The shit is pretty keen for dorky old hippie music. I caught Barry Melton (AKA The Fish) playing at a bar in San Francisco a few months ago, and he’s still a pretty awesome guitarist but he lost the simplicity and economy that made him so special to begin with, and now he plays a lot of fast jerk-off solos that just depress me. Part of the problem is that he’s playing blues now instead of psychedelic rock, and electric blues is an artistic black hole.

I wrote a thing making fun of PM Dawn (remember them? crappy new-age bullshit hip hop) for the Weekly Dig (a paper in Boston) a while ago and I downloaded some PM Dawn songs for reference, and they’re making me nervous by being just a little bit too rad. Especially the one that samples Spandau Ballet. Spandau Ballet is just a little too easy to listen to in the first place, so when you add in some dopey bullshit hip hop it turns kind of suspiciously awesome. Speaking of downloading shit, my friend just told me he has 26 gigabytes of Dr. Who episodes. Isn’t it surreal when you see that exact turning point where your friend isn’t your friend anymore because he turned into a giant square?

Have you seen that new Juelz Santana joint making the rounds on MTV2? Most of Santana’s raps are thoroughly embarrassing, but this single is catchy enough to propel it into the range of “not hilarious.” That’s not to say there aren’t a few embarrassing/hilarious moments. He manages to squeeze in a “no homo,” even. I wonder if rappers have to pay royalties to Cam’ron whenever they say “no homo.” Uh oh, I wonder if I have to pay him royalties for printing it on the Internet. The track’s called “Mic Check,” but I can’t find a copy of it on Soulseek without some retard DJ shouting over it.

That reminds me… apparently if you write a book and use the word “Kleenex” to generically mean “tissues,” Kleenex will write you an angry letter telling you to cut it out. That’s pretty fucking lame, Kleenex. Also, think about it: they must employ a guy who reads every book looking for the word “Kleenex” and then firing off a letter to offenders. So, the point is, Cam’ron probably employs a guy who reads the entire internet making sure nobody says “no homo.”

– Dr. David Thorpe (@Arr)