for those about to rock

pj's

the pajamas i got for christmas are in a packaging that calls them a "men's sleepwear set".

wrong. they're pajamas.

posted by jomilkman @ 11:06 PM 0 comments

there's a story

about david ortiz that has always moved me.

what got me to thinking on ortiz was a recent globe feature i read about his charity work. i haven't thought much about the red sox in general since they started coming undone last season.

try as i might, the best i could do with the razor sharp internet research instincts i've honed on the job was to find what i THINK is a pretty accurate account of the events surrounding that story, the core of which which i feel i originally learned about on a post-game tv interview.

the spot-on particulars are probably unimportant. at the very least, you could find a comfy home for the story in that area that shitty sportwriters allude to clumsily (and which i'll try to lay out explicitly here, albeit even more clumsily), placing it somewhere on the crossroads where history remembered and myth believed in the heart tango with one another.

what i think was important about the story is contained in this piece of the account i've referenced above:

"But whenever I think of David Ortiz, I think first not of his great homers or his many clutch hits(although they spring quickly to mind as well) or his gap-toothed grin but of the stories his teammates told after the 2004 comeback against the Yankees--that Papi had seen fans in tears in the stands the night before during the Yankees' 19-8 Game 3 rout, and remembered the fans' heartbreak in 2003, and it had touched him enough to comment to teammates that he wanted to find a way to turn things around, even if he had to do it by himself."

i feel i remember it a little differently, though this account doesn't seem to mess with essential details; it just might've missed one. i believe those tears -- the ones that are important to the story, anyways -- were shed on the cheeks of one red sox fan ortiz happened to notice in the stands at yankee stadium in the immediate aftermath of game 7 of the 2003 alcs.

i think it was a woman, not that the detail is objectively important. in spite of the damon-mania that would've made her unremarkable (yes, pink red sox hats, ok?), i think it just struck me somehow at the time that it was "her" tears ... perhaps it jostled some definitive sense of classic chivalry in my mind. anyways, it's that gender distinction that makes me think i probably have my memory right.

so. just, the bond. just, the sense that there was a pact that pure, elemental empathy asserted into existence.

ortiz found his fire in her eyes. that's the important part. that's what i want to think (and think i CAN think) he tapped into when he surveyed the disasterous scene after game 3 of the 2004 alcs, the memory flaring to life like the chunky embers of fireplace logs shedding ash to reveal that there's more to burn.

fuck this. i'll will it to happen. if the others fail, i will still make sure we succeed.

maybe the late inning heroics that papi engineered to do just that, leading his team on to an unprecedented 4 game comeback sweep against their historical rivals, had more to do with the fact that he's a record-breaking hitter. maybe it's more that he has fate on speed dial.

whatever the case, the truth lies somewhere on that crossroads of sports and what it is to be human, and everyone is free to lay claim on a spot of that generous interpretive turf.

and, being human, i'll go and chalk it up to the latter.

posted by jomilkman @ 11:04 PM 0 comments

beating me to the holiday party punch

ka went and wrote a post that tackled a holiday theme that i had wanted to write on and tagged all the arguments that i had been plotting out for it in my head.

i had regretted not putting down the post when it was still especially topical, but i think the coincidence here alone is enough to refer you to ka's post, not mention the fact that i think that she happens to be an excellent writer and that this is an excellent piece of writing.

posted by jomilkman @ 12:26 PM 0 comments

the godfather

i'll leave the wide-scope tributes that rightfully encompass brown's long, storied career in the capable hands of the folks that are more familiar than i with the man and his staggering output.

i do know that if it weren't for james brown, i wouldn't be playing or enjoying the guitar nearly as much or with anywhere near the same approach as i do now, nor would i be listening to music in the same way, with ear and body attuned to the almighty groove. his resonance in pop music specifically and pop culture generally was and is absolutely seismic.

thanks so much, jb.

posted by jomilkman @ 9:16 AM 1 comments

everyone should watch and enjoy trump taking rosie o'donnell apart

here's the background story, if you need it.


here's an unrelated video of rosie and some despicable behavior if you need help getting pumped to watch trump destroy her:



and here's trump administering the brilliant coup de grace i speak of:

posted by jomilkman @ 2:18 PM 0 comments

and back to hating pitchfork, in spite of the fact that i will continue to link to them and enjoy a lot of the writing on their page

here we have an entry from pitchfork's top 50 albums of 2006 feature.

bear in mind that, you know, a 'best of' list like this ought to maybe go out of its way to posit, ESPECIALLY for the sake of those who haven't heard some of the entries, why out of the thousands of albums released in a year, readers owe it to themselves to get cozy with the elite selection staffers whittled it down to. you'd think that'd probably apply even more so in the case of an album that's glaringly, uh, recognizable among the bargain bin nuggets enumerated. i guess you'd be wrong.

because i'm bitter that i can't write for pitchfork, and generally miffed on a more puerile level that i don't get paid to write anymore, and because it's my blog and i'll go ahead and pitch the damn fork here myself if i so please, i sprinkled outraged, invective commentary throughout in bold, angry italics.

on that note, this is also worth bearing in mind: i'm not taking apart the album in question. my opinion in that regard is inconsequential. my aim here's to back up a claim i made in an earlier post about how the positive appraisals in pitchfork tend to be weak, and so this is essentially nothing more than criticism of a piece of writing's failure to fulfill an expository obligation that it bears, being a piece of criticism itself. take the jt loving/bashing to the boards if you like.

on with the show:

25: Justin TimberlakeFutureSex/LoveSounds[Jive]

Justin Timberlake has a powerful, serpentine voice, but it's not suited for superhuman r&b pyrotechnics. It has a soft, timorous vulnerability [granted, from what i've listened to. we'll see if this is assumed to be an inherent good because it implicitly recalls michael jackson], a lost-little-boy quality [cute]. When he sings about heartbreak, he sounds like he wants to crawl into a hole and die. When he sings about dancing, he sounds like he's seeing nightclub lights for the first time. When he sings about pimping, he sounds like a kid playing dress-up [oops, the mj comparison alone proves inadequate. clearly, david bowie would be apropos, too. jt explores the many facets of a doe-eyed fish-out-of-water in a dangerously sexy adult word. cute]. But here, Timbaland takes that voice and traps it in a hall of mirror-balls, surrounding it with glistening strings, dizzy sci-fi synths, and itchy funk guitars [STOP THE PRESSES!!! you mean this album contains the same kind of ear candy featured on every dance record released in the past 30 some-odd years? oh, do tell!]. The result is a disco album both dazzling in its technical trickery [how? as a result of those innovative synths and entirely unexpected funk guitars?] and enormously satisfying in its emotional sweep [ah, yes, the whole fish-out-of-water thing is undeniably compelling stuff. gotcha]. If an album this ambitiously weird [again, from where does this observation follow?] can be one of the year's biggest sellers [because it's 'weird'? or is it perhaps actually in spite of whether it's weird or not, as the artist happens to already be insanely popular with the buying public, and the album would've sold just as well if jt had sung the whole thing with an organ grinder backing him up?], we're in good shape [read: not just a transparent concession to music that people have actually heard of, which we'll make every now and then as a token gesture to prove that at heart, we're unbiased purists in our love of all music. it may be popular, but it's also WEIRD, so, as you can see, we haven't actually cashed in our indie cred. you can go ahead and sleep peacefully, dear reader]. --Tom Breihan

posted by jomilkman @ 9:21 AM 1 comments

so proud

just found out that the staff over at salon.com made honorable mention of "delancey", one of my brother's band's songs, in this feature (click refesh a couple of times to bypass any advertising/log-in snags).

it might not mean so much to people that don't know justin when i say this, but i'm completely overwhelmed sometimes when i hear what he's capable of when he opens himself up sonically, particularly when it comes to how purely powerful his vocal cadences are, and how smart, focused and effective the arrangements he writes prove to be, as becomes especially clear with amy and ellen throwing down the rhythm muscle.

to have such a well-trafficked site as salon recognize them is a great achievement. stop by the jumping bomb girls myspace site to give more of their music a listen, especially if you happen to have a taste for good power pop.

posted by jomilkman @ 11:33 AM 1 comments

jinx

someone removed the red splotches from the ubercrombie billboard not 24 hours after i posted about them. shame on you.

posted by jomilkman @ 9:07 AM 1 comments

first, a little more credit where it is due

major, major props to whoever shot the big ubercrombie and bitch advertisement above the porter square t station with paintballs, covering the offensive monument to soulless, fascist fashion (faschion?) with red blotches. i can now smile as i return that vacant-eyed model's gaze on my way to work.

posted by jomilkman @ 8:53 AM 0 comments

flu fighter

so the flu's had me on the ropes for the past couple of weeks, which up until today has effectively derailed any aspirations i've had for writing, and really most any activity that would require my assuming an upright position for more than a couple of minutes.

but time marches on, and i'm as tenacious as a raging bull, and i've got a simmering fever for blogging and a stockpile of new material to have it at with.

credit where it is due, first: thanks to my beautiful girlfriend, briana, for caring for me in ways that even my worry wart mom would've approved of, had i been posessed with the RECKLESS impulse to inform her of my sickness in the first place, and a vigorous, phlegm-free shout-out to my housemates, who admirably did NOT insist that i wear a containment suit for the times i ventured out from my fortress of sickitude.

posted by jomilkman @ 8:40 AM 4 comments