"I'm honestly trying. I act like I'm here. It's really hard to care. For there's a thin line between your wit, and your whining."

New Music Tuesday

Now, here's where I would tell you all about the sheer amazingness that is Aimee Allen's new album, A Little Happiness, which was released today after a slight delay. The key word there is would. As in, I would tell you had the workers at Best Buy #307 not been complete morons and had their bosses above them know how to run a store.

Suffice to say, their website said it would be at the store, their website still says that it's at the store, but, apparently, everybody in the Joliet metro area had rushed out to buy an album from an artist that, when brought up to every worker in the store, only I had heard about and I was out of luck. Though, they said they'll probably get more in, probably this week.

*Insert Jerk-off Hand Gesture Here*

Whatever guys. I'm an expert when it comes to working retail and I'm well versed in the get the hell away from me, I've got my own problems to deal with answers. I will get the CD by the end of the week though, it's the principle of the matter now.

So, in its stead, I bring you another great, albeit completely different, album, By the Throat by Eyedea & Abilities.

Purchase:
Fifth Element, iTunes, Amazon

This is rap, thrown down over crunching guitars, which are then taken to a turntable to be intricately scratched. It's a welcomed relief from auto-tune, excessive sampling, and anything else that one would consider main stream crap. It's also a welcomed, and slightly strange, divergence from their last album, E&A.

What once relied on home-made beats and traditional hip-hop instrumentation, is now experimenting with the piano, guitars, and an amount of distortion that could make Jack White orgasm. And, that's only half of what these guys do. The other half, the lyrics, are a dramatic departure as well.

When one would listen to E&A he could gather the belief that Eyedea knew exactly what he was better than everybody else in the whole wide world at and was left with the knowledge, not that he may be right, but that he was absolutely right about it. He made damn sure to let the world know that he was the best, but in a way that didn't make him seem cocky or douche-ish, but, instead, confident and refreshing.

On By the Throat, however, his lyrics have taken on a more personal and emotional touch, balancing the two in a way that will, now and forever, make every whiny new emo band sound impossibly more whiny. Now, he's less concerned with making everyone know what he does and more concerned with how he feels about topics ranging from heartbreak, to fame, to gun violence and, the most peculiar, doubt. One more refreshing departure from the shallow topics that have inundated mainstream rap for many years.

Because of the combination of both Eyedea and Abilities, the album doesn't ever seem to drag. When Eyedea stops rapping you become engrossed with what Abilities is going to with the turntables next and when he quiets it down, Eyedea picks right back up with a rhyme that you're going to need the lyrics sheets to follow, not because it's hard to understand, but because he throws a lot at you in a short amount of time. Which actually leads to the one minor detraction of this album; Some of the songs seem to end a little prematurely, and only slightly in the way that leaves you wanting more.

Below are some tracks that I must recommend for legally downloading if this sounds interesting to you, however I feel you'd only be cheating yourself if you didn't go out and get this album. It really works well when listened to as a whole.

Go Get:

Spin Cycle/Junk/Smile/By the Throat

For Free:

This Story

I can't keep doing this. I can't keep on believing that my head will, one day, finally break through this damn brick wall.

"What it is, is a sickness, what it is, is regret. And, I may be dying, but I'm not dead yet."

Aside from the title, we're taking a break from music and taking a trip to the movies. When? I don't have any idea because the movie doesn't have a release date yet, but it does have a trailer. Oh. And it has a title, The Slammin' Salmon and it was made by the same people who brought you Super Troopers and Beerfest, a.k.a. Broken Lizard. They also made Club Dread, but I, apparently, was one of, maybe, four people who actually enjoyed that film.


The plot revolves around a one night contest between the staff (played by the Broken Lizard crew, Cobie Smulders and April Bowlby) and laid down by the Yakuza-indebted, former heavy weight boxing champion and current owner/boss, "Slammin" Cleon Salmon (Michael Clark Duncan). The winner receives $10,000 and the loser, for the sake of argument, dies by excessive ass beating (getting in the ring with Cleon).

What follows is sure to be utter insanity as the staff must deal, not only, with themselves and their own problems, but also with the uncommonly insane restaurant problems (most notably the Lone Diner). Everything is sure to come unglued and then go downhill as the hours pass by and each member of the staff does whatever it takes to avoid having to get into the ring with their boss, The Slammin' Salmon.

Coming up next is the trailer, it is a red band trailer, so, you know, viewer discretion is being advised.

I'd say that I'm taking some time to take stock of what it is that I am, and should be, doing, but it's all semantics. Really. I could just as easily say that I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on and it would all be the honest truth.

"Misogynistic, like a lean-back cholo, flipping switches."

The never ending search for free music that isn't wont to suck brings us (via time machine) to The Grammar Club and their album Bremelanotide.

We're sticking with the nerd theme with this nerd-core release and that basically means; White guys rapping nerd-centric lyrics over beats that are positively out of the realm of those actually creating them. And, while that may be true, what with a whole song centering around a professional wrestling career, these guys add a neat little twist to the mix, melody.

As in, Shael Riley can actually sing. (For proof, see Alternate Ending, the obligatory slow song of the album, but no less nerdy as it revolves around DVDs.) Though, at times, with the rapping, singing, beats, and riffs, the album can conjure up memories of Linkin Park (who?) and on such occasions it tends to send a shiver up my spine. Luckily, thanks to the complete lack of screaming and viciously somber emo(tive) lyrics, these moments are few and far between, and, if the drunken, collegiate memories of the rap-rock heydays cause you to wet your bed in a nightmare induced furor, rest easy my friend, for this album is nothing like that.

As stated above, the singer can sing, Beefy can rap, the beats are fantastic, and the rock aspect is used perfectly and only adds another great level to the songs. The best part (and the part the least like those rap-rockers) is the whole album is actually free. That's the part you all love to hear, because that usually means that no record companies are involved and you can finally lie to all your friends that you have a good, diverse taste in music.

You. Yeah, you. You're a liar.

Click here to download Bremelanotide

!Bonus! (More Free Music)

The Adventures of Beef Thompson: Private Dick

The Adventures of Beef Thompson: In Space

forkbomb - The Ballad of Stacy Pia (Hell Yeahs Cover)

forkbomb - Brownie Points

For more information: Internet search engines can point you to plenty of remixes involving these artists. Use them.

You tell me this and this and this, and you tell me to try, try, try and all I can do is stare, and wonder why all your words suddenly start with "T".

"Milky Way and Micro-Cosmic Paranoia"

... and we're back.

In photo news and due to my lack of posting, I bring you advertisements disguised as presents. It's a couple desktops, one blue, one red (I'm currently using the blue one), for you to download and use for yourself. It helps grow the brand in a way that makes your stuff look cooler, or, to put it another way, works just like a designer label... only I'm not charging an arm and leg for it. It's also my way of letting you know that my artwork is soon to be more prevalent on this site and it will be up for sale alongside my book as soon as I figure out the best way to go about it. So, until then, enjoy these:

To download simply click on the one you want and when the next page pops up, right click and select Save As... and remember where you stick it. They're both jpeg images, I know, they should be png but, screw that. They're supposed to be desktops and, for most people, that's the format they get switched to. Oh, and they're widescreen, so, 4:3 users, sorry.

In video news:

To those of you who've may have heard, my dad was half Scottish and half Italian, so, the running joke was that he looked like a mixture between Sean Connery and Super Mario (the mustache didn't help). On top of that, Italian jokes are all the rage nowadays and I hear them all the time because of him. That's why I immediately thought of him when I saw this video of the Italian Anti-Defamation League's protest of Super Mario Galaxy 2 at this years E3 expo. My heart beats full of pride.

See also: There Will be Brawl

In music news:

I bought a record. An actual 7" piece of vinyl, hand-cut down from a 10" which allows for edges full of fun, and by fun, I mean jagged slivers and by edges, I mean, edges. It's not round, it's square, but it still plays.

MySpace

Anyways, it's from a band called Farewell Continental and they're a side project from members of various Minneapolis bands, most importantly Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack. It's a far slower production than that band is known for and it's a perfect outfit for his voice to shine, especially when it's competing against the equally beautiful, female voice of the other lead singer. It's probably not for everybody, but it's only a 4-song EP so it's not a huge financial commitment to legally download the album, in either standard or lossless editions, from the Paper + Plastick store.

Me? No. I'm not sure about anything. From a to z, wine and zombies, I'm not sure how I feel about any of it.

"I'm in trouble. I'm always in trouble."

Scratch that; I am trouble.

So, while I was being troublesome on the internets here, I came across a band that I've really grown to like in the 20 or so minutes that I've been listening to them. They call themselves I Fight Dragons and their EP is entitled Cool Is Just a Number.

Purchase: CD or iTunes

Or, instead of shelling out your hard-earned cash, you can, for a limited time, simply visit their myspace, join their mailing list, and magically a link to a free digital copy of the album shows up in your inbox. Therefore, even if they had happened to suck, at least they'd still be cool.

Fortunately, they don't suck, but their music leads me to believe that they might not actually be cool. It's pop and it's rock, it's got it's good times and it's bad times, it's got grooves and it's catchy as hell, what with it's loud drums, driving guitars, and numerous NES samples. Yes. Yes. My friends, it is Nerd Rock.

But, like I said, it's catchy as hell and that's more than enough to give this disc a chance. Once you get past the 14-second intro, the next three and three-quarter songs are similar to most anything you'd hear on rock/pop radio, except, you know, showcasing actual talent and musicianship. That leaves you at the end of track 5, No One Likes Superman Anymore, and it's complete 180, somber turn with the lyrics;

'Cause no one wants to know the man who stands for things we've outgrown
He's too noble and too blind

Yeah. Caught me off my guard too. It definitely made the disc a win for me and the last track, With You, is a very sweet ballad... with numerous NES samples. In the end, the music is quirky and a joy to listen to, but when you top it off with a singer who can actually carry a tune (And, not an auto-tune, Spirit) it makes for a package that is very easy to recommend.

See also: Motion City Soundtrack

Post brought to you with the help of Second Wave Music: Chicago's Best Unsigned and Independent Music. Highlights include:

Athens (Who put on a fantastic and incredibly deafening show at Chicago St. this past Saturday)

Calvin Marty and the Sunken Ship

Jessica Sonner

The Rikters

And a special mention for Triumph and Parade who are some former classmates whose current practice space is next door to my house.

Yeah. You wish you were me and you can be, I'm selling myself cheap these days.

When it gets like this, like this right here, the only sense I'll have is the sense of touch.

"Can't they just pick and choose, to see what's best?"

This will be the second time I've mentioned this city and the second time after I took a trip there, but I have an idea. One along the lines of Baconnaise, one they can have... for a price.

Bourbonnais, IL shall henceforth be known not as Bearbonnais, but instead as the birthplace for the idea of the greatest condiment to ever satisfy both the connoisseur crowd and the alcoholic crowd - Bourbonnaise.

It damn near writes itself. But, don't be mistaken, I am talking about a fully alcoholic, 21 and over to purchase, no eating and driving type of spread here. This is an idea that can not be pansified or watered-down, it must be made and released in all of its full glory, and constructed with only the finest bourbons.

It'll be the greatest idea ever, until the great Swine-Cirrhosis epidemic of 2012, but we'll just blame the city for that, it's their damn fault for spawning this stupid idea in the first place.

The sun shined upon me for the first time in months and everything basked in the most beautiful red to ever grace mortal eyes.

"For $7.50, this drink better s**k and f**k me!"

I have a question; What do you think is going on in this picture here?

The problem with the answer is, besides the fact that I don't know it, the book that it comes from doesn't explain it either. It's from something called a tract, this one entitled No Fear and it's published by Chick Publications, a company working with Protestant fundamentalists. And, if you take it with a grain of salt, it's got to be about one the funniest pamphlets on suicide that I've ever read.

But, not the funniest thing I've ever read... not by a long shot.

That's because they've made other ones, on other topics, ranging from homosexuality to Halloween to the Catholic church or "Great Whore" as they like to call it. Each one I come across, with the plot holes, historical inaccuracies, and outright lies, proves to be more entertaining than the last and now, thanks to the magic of the Internet and chick.com (Who clearly aren't in on the joke) I can now provide you with links to not only some of my favorites ones, but every one they've ever made.

Oh. Yes. Every. Damn. One.

Happy Hour: Drinking, heart conditions, and why you should always send a dying woman's young daughter into seedy bars to find her daddy, especially when the dying woman is dying.

Are Roman Catholics Christians?: A lesson on the Catholic Church and how it's Anti-American, related to those evil ancient Egyptians and teaches us that, in one sentence, we don't know how long purgatory lasts, and in the next, learn that Popes have been there for centuries.

Boo!: "@!!!**! I forgot my chainsaw!" Makes a lot less sense when it's Satan talking, and he's wearing a Jack-o-Lantern on his head, and has a pet snake on a leash. Yeah. It's about Halloween.

Hard Times (Adapted for Black Audiences): I guess that means racist cartoons and very little reading. Also see: The True Path (Adapted Especially for Native American Readers)

Baby Talk: Starts with redneck wife beating and ends in an argument about abortion, probably wrote itself.

One day these things will be collector items, so, make sure to keep your eyes open anytime you visit a store that a Protestant fundamentalist would shop at. (Actually, that probably narrows it down to just Wal*Mart.)