Stephanie Street

Exciting music news! A new BLACK KEYS album is in the works, called “Attack & Release”. As if that weren’t exciting enough, DANGERMOUSE IS PRODUCING. This could seriously be one of the most interesting releases of the year. I can. not. wait. (not that anyone else i know cares at all. but I’M PSYCHED.) Don’t know exactly when the album is coming out, BUT they are coming to Terminal 5 in May. sick nasty.

On a related note, there is another gobit of music news that i know a TON of people will be psyched for: new gnarls barkley album! Entitled “The Odd Couple” (how cute!), it will be released in April. According to Billboard.com, there’s some kind of viral campaign going on where they’re distributing one of the songs for free. I have yet to find said song. Shitty viral campaign for sure. Though Billboard could just be full of shit. As a friend of mine so eloquently put it the other day: “fuck Billboard.”

If you find it, post it below please.

Hipsters crack me up. Absolutely crack me up. The clothes (apparently, male hipsters don’t feel comfortable unless their balls are starved for circulation), the ironic detachment (“we are so witty and don’t even have to try”), the musical elitism (“pitchfork is my bible.” uuuuugh.)…but what cracks me up even more is all the non-hipster discourse ABOUT hipsters. a lot of people have really violent reactions to the mere mention of hipsters. oh lord, they make some people SO MAD. and this reaction isn’t even to anything in particular, it’s the simple existence of hipsters that really PISSES PEOPLE OFF. i mean, i see the point. time out magazine did a great cover story a few months ago about how hipsters are killing cool in new york. on the flip side of that, talking about a group of people “killing cool” is one of the most self-important and pretentious statements regarding the social landscape i can think of.

anyway, this hipster backlash has now worked its way into music, with Armor for Sleep’s song, ever-so-creatively titled “Williamsburg”. the song is essentially an anti-ode to hipsters. a scathing hate letter to the subculture of fedoras and tight pants and sharp reparte. below you will find the lyrics to this song, along with my own commentary interspersed in there in parenthetical statements.

Hold your own jacket please
I’m not in the mood (hipsters are too cool to be nice)
Millions of trains under the ground
This city was the blueprint for hell (now, i can’t tell if they are saying that they actually think hell was BASED ON one of the greatest cities in the world all because of a few stupid brooklynites, or that these hipsters, despite the fact that they cling to their williamsburg address like their life depended on it, really actually hate this place. or they say they hate it to keep up their ironic detachment.)

Passed out, sleeping at your party
Dream of leaving in the morning
You will all die in Williamsburg
Too hip to even clean your nose out (huh???)
Your grave is pulling at your pants now
You will all die in Williamsburg (can you say anger problem?)

Bored again
Watching the rats
Eat all your food
At least you’ll be used to
The place you’ll be soon
This city was the blueprint for hell
(get it? cause hipsters live in hell and are going to hell! eternal damnation for all hipsters!!!!)

Passed out, sleeping at your party
Dream of leaving in the morning
You will all die in Williamsburg
Too hip to even clean your nose out
Your grave is pulling at your pants now
You will all die in Williamsburg

Do you know how obvious you are?
You were born in New Hampshire but you say you’re from the O.C. (yea, these guys are from suburban new jersey, and they sound like they’re from the O.C. wahhhh wahhhh wahhhhhhhhhh.)
Brooklyn’s a death bed
For clones of the same kid
Stuck in the party
That was lame to begin with
Yeah, yeah lame to begin with (shit, if that’s not the hipster mentality, then i don’t know what is.)

At least you’ll be used to
The place you’ll be
This city was the blueprint for hell
Passed out, sleeping at your party
Dream of leaving in the morning
You will all die in Williamsburg
Too hip to even clean your nose out
Your grave is pulling at your pants now
You will all die in Williamsburg

You will all die
(yea yea yea, ok we GET IT.)

hey now, be nice. hipsters are people too, ya know. or are they? do hipsters even exist anymore?

ok, so one or more of the following things is going on in this song:
-these guys really really hate hipsters and wanted to vent their rage.
-they want to attract all of those people who have all that rage against hipsters.
-they tried to build a following in williamsburg, but they sound so fucking whiny and mainstream they got booed off stage and from that point on vowed NEVER TO GO BACK.
-it is actually an attempt to, by cutting down hipsters and tapping into their detachment and nihilism, to get them to embrace Armor for Sleep. (“they TOTALLY get us!”)

oh, this is all way too post-modern(??) for me to bear. my head’s starting to hurt.

i will leave you with this: i’m not embarassed to say that, despite everything i’ve said, i do kind of dig this song. hey, at least it’s got some fucking energy.

I’ve never been a huge football fan. (Although i distinctly remember being 5 years old and crying when the giants lost some random game. so maybe i’ve always had it in me.) but thanks to living with Jesse for the better part of this football season, i’ve come to embrace the new york giants all over again.

so, lazy sunday afternoon/evening, i spent about 6 hours today watching football (oh lord), and while i’ve never felt confident enough to really meaningfully enter into any conversation about football, i feel that the time i put in on sunday allows me to at least make a few comments on the giants and the sport in general. here goes:

-football players are big and tough and they WON’T LET YOU FORGET IT: players get into another’s face, pushing someone when they were already down, chest bumping, cursing, MANLY endzone dancing…ay ay ay, all that testosterone is a little more than i can take. (though, by the end, it did make me want to tackle something/someone.)

-brandon jacobs is a BEAST. every time he would make a run, i was just stunned at how fast he could move. he is HUGE. i don’t care how big and tough these other guys are, having brandon jacobs run through you has really really got to hurt.

-playing football in an outdoor stadium in green bay, wisconsin is one of the most retarded things i can think of. the apparent absurdity of this could certainly be explained by my first point. and yea yea, talk all you want about the legends of lambeau field and the frozen tundra and vince lombardi and testaments to strength and athleticism and blah blah blah, but people: built a fucking roof!! no one WANTS to play in single digit/negative number temperatures. well, maybe the packers do, cause they’re kind of used to it, but it sure as hell didn’t help them on sunday. aaaaand the giants go to the SUPER BOWL!! woo hooooo!

-i started getting into the giants around the middle of the season. i attribute their newfound success to my newfound fandom. you’re welcome, new york.

I don’t understand some people.

Imagine you’re at a bar or a club or a lounge or something. and the dj is just killin it. the room is alive. i’m not talking like “nn-t-nn-t-nn-t” house techno bullshit. music that injects generally good vibes into the atmosphere. it’s lively. it’s energetic. but not TOO energetic (after all, it’s 11:30, entirely too early to peak.) it has an underlying groove that is absolutely irresistible. this music soaks the air with all of its delicious beats and melodies, and you’re a little bit torn between continuing the conversation you’re engaged in and just sitting back and immersing yourself in the music. if it were the soundtrack to a scene in a movie, it just might be the soundtrack for the tightest party ever. a party whose attendants are rich but don’t flaunt it, hot but don’t know it, old enough to know better, but still young enough not to care, drunk but fairly lucid…oh yea, and everyone’s in their underwear. and there’s lots and lots of foam. but i digress…

Ok, so you’re imagining this bar with this music. Now imagine yourself in this bar with this music. Are you moving? Foot tapping? Hips swaying? Head nodding? are you full-on dancing? If you’re not doing any of the above, I just don’t understand you. i mean, even when there’s kind of mediocre music playing, as long as it’s got a beat and/or groove, i can’t help it! have to have to have to move.

I’m reminded of the scene in “Dazed and Confused” where Adam Goldberg is talking about how he wants to abandon his goal of becoming a lawyer, pointing to the fact that he, in the end, really doesn’t like people that much, and doesn’t much want to help them. His friend asking him what he wants to do instead. “I wanna DANCE!”, Goldberg replies. One of the funnier moments in a very funny movie, but also important (?) for a few reasons. First, it definitely speaks to the reality check that so many young people face as they enter into the real world. What we say we want, what we think we want, what we want in theory, so often just ends up disappointing. We romanticize the future. We project what we would want in an ideal world, and we say to ourselves, “this is what it’s going to be like. it’s going to be perfect and i’m going to be doing this until the unforseeable future.” and then we begin our lives in the real world. and sometimes we find out that what we’re actually getting into is, in fact, quite different from what we had imagined. disillusionment hits. it’s a hell of a lot easier to dream something than to actually live it. (why do i keep digressing like this??)

But really, the point that I ACTUALLY want to make about this scene is that I can’t even count the times when I’ve felt the same thing. I just wanted to DANCE. i guess it’s a little different because Adam Goldberg is talking about dancing to make a living–though aren’t there jobs for people to dance at clubs (not THAT kind of dancing. dirty dirty minds…) anyway, when you’re in one of these moods, one of the MOST frustrating things is to not be able to. This feeling came over me on Saturday night, at a lounge that became increasingly more packed as the night went on. 12:00 (?) rolls around and we can’t really move. and all my friends and i want to do is start a dance party. but there’s no. fucking. room. (though the birthday boy did find room, incidentally. i believe someone has pictures of his one-man dance party as a matter of fact. would love to get my hands on those.)

 so shortly after that i put my foot down and brought a few friends down the street to one of my favorite grimy dance spots and dance dance dance danced. (80’s dance rock is SUPER.) until i realized that no one i was with was dancing nearly as much as i was, so i got a little bit embarassed and wanted to sit down.

but still, my appetite was (temporarily) sated. for maybe the next day or so.

p.s. i don’t understand relativity either. i mean, i guess i get the general principle, but explain this to me: i did very very very little today. and it FLEW by. last week, when i was pretty much busy all the time all week, felt eternal. i guess it’s all the blog posting/reading, facebook stalking, and scrabulous playing i did.

 seriously, someone please destroy the internet before it destroys me.

I lied. I had really really planned on writing out a whole schpiel about Christmas and the benefits of gift-giving and how despite the downsides of the over-commericalization of Christmas, it has in many respects transformed the holiday from an honoring of the birthday (on the wrong day, I might add) of the birth of a certain group of people’s Lord and Savior into a universally accepted and celebrated day of well-wishing, family, food, warm and fuzzy sentiment, the occasional familial spat, and yes…presents. Complain all you want about materialism and greediness. When you do it right, Christmas is really really lovely.

 But the Christmas music has (finally) stopped, and I guess I will have to save my extended rant against ranters until next December. Instead, I wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR with a virtual hug and kiss (after all, if you are reading this, you are GREAT) and a quick overview of the most enjoyable/funny/typical memories that made up what I can only describe as the TIGHTEST NYE EVER. ‘08 what what.

 At the pregame:

-Love was in the air. There was so much hugging and cheek-kissing and big goofy grinning going on pre-midnight that at some points I had to pull away from everyone to take a deep breath and tell myself, “yes, these are actually my friends and look at how much we love each other.” As if that wasn’t enough, a very good friend of mine got ENGAGED. ho. ly. shit.

-We are so classy: Jagerbombs all around! As if that weren’t bad (awesome?) enough, by Jagerbombs, I really mean pouring red bull into a solo cup, then quickly pouring glugs of Jager into them, and chug-chug-chugging away. (Shot glasses get in the way.)

-Flasks of vodka make good ice packs: I stepped into the oven door. Ouch! Ovens get hot! A friend of mine gave me her ice-cold flask of vodka out of the freezer to cool it down (“if that ain’t love then i don’t know what love is”)

 Out out out:

-The NY club business is sooooo cool and exclusive: The club my friends and I went to after the pregame was, if i do say so myself, baaaaallin. I knew this immediately because the bouncer would only let in as many people as left at one time. And very few people were leaving at 12:30. Which means that everyone was having a BITCHIN’ time listening to the same 10 songs over and over again. Everyone in line was scrambling to push to the front. Not because it was freezing outside and people were bored. No no no, my friend. It’s because the energy and vibes coming from the club were absolutely palpable. Everyone wanted a taste!

-Assgrab-and-run is the new ding-dong ditch: Not 5 minutes after I walked in the door of said club, I felt a nice little squeeze on my tushie. I spun my head around expecting to see a friend chuckling. Instead, I saw some guy’s back. Running away. Literally, running away from me. I could have sworn we were all older than 15 years old. No?

-Coolest bathrooms EVER (this time, I’m serious.): the stall doors were one-way mirrors. I could see out into the bathroom from the stall, but on the other side all you could see was a mirror. Pretty much the entire time I was in a stall, I was watching some girl fix her hair, check herself up and down. You know, making sure her tits were in place correctly and she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth and shit like that. This went on for a good two or three minutes. As funny as the look on her face would have been, I didn’t have the heart to open the door while she was primping. I can only imagine the kind of shit people in those stalls have witnessed.

-Common misconception: dance skills improve as level of drunkenness rises. This is patently FALSE. Truth: PERCEPTION of dance skills improve as level of drunkenness rises. Which I guess, if both parties are drunk, is pretty much the same thing. But once you realize and can accept that, “I can’t dance, I’m not not drunk enough” is NO LONGER an excuse. Remember that, people.

-I like spooning.

So happy 2008 everybody. Here’s hoping that this year will be filled with just as much celebrity and/or government scandal as the last, and that your New Years’ Resolutions stay resolved. (38 hours and counting…woo hooo!)