Was just enjoying a nip of the lovely 18 year old Glenlivet my grandma got me for Christmas and cycling through some photos of the year that was 2008. Feeling oddly nostalgic and should probably go to bed, but thought I’d share this one, which reminds me that I need to do everything in my power to get back to Utah to shred this spring. The shot is from one of my greatest skiing days ever at Brighton. If you zoom in, I am smiling like an absolute idiot. But how could I not?

National “Top 10 List” Month is almost over, and there’s been no shortage of ways to listen back nostalgically (or perhaps not?) on the year that was 2008. Everyone from All Hip Hop to New York Magazine and NPR has ranked its favorite mixtapes, and DJs like Semtex and Mick Boogie have dropped their requisite year-end mixes. I won’t make you listen to mine, mostly because I can’t be bothered to upload a playlist. But what I do want to share with you is the second annual “United States of Pop” track from mash-up artiste DJ Earworm. Basically, he takes the Top 25 hits of the year from Billboard and mixes them up into a single track. He also puts together a visual clips using the music videos. Check it out below. Is there any greater testament to the homogeneity of modern pop? The top 25 is dominated completely by “urban acts” and semi-hot women with ok voices (only Mariah Carey has a great voice). And seeing a there is nothing personal about any of these tracks, it’s not suprising that they are so interchangeable. Even the videos don’t feel jarring when they’re interspersed.

Keep documenting history Earworm, for better or for worse. And by the way: has anyone seen a Skillz “Rap Up” yet this year??

What is Christmas? It’s a little robin red-breast, petrified by the wind. It’s an orphan in a blanket being helped into a shed. It’s a snowman whose nose-carrot has been stolen and subsequently eaten by a gypsy thief.

Merry Christmas, players! Enjoy the day chilling with family, watching the Celtics crush the Lakers, eating Chinese food at the movies, or doing whatever it is you do. I’ll see you on the flip.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

I’ve got a weak spot for R&B, and my love for R. Kelly lets you know that I don’t mind a little silliness mixed in with my “grown and sexy.” If his debut single “Too Many Patrons” is anything to go by, I have high hopes for up-and-comer LeMarvin. Forget that his name makes him sound like a Frankenstein’s monster of Lemar, Marvin Gay, and Marvin the Martian (sort of describes his music pretty well, for that matter), and forget that the chorus sounds somewhat like “Love in This Club.” The homemade video is hilarious and the song is nice theme music for the holiday season. Too many eggnogs…

Around this time of year, various blogs and publications like to present interesting personalities and tastemakers with questions about their thoughts on various aspects of the year that has passed. Since I am neither of those things, the only person who asks me questions is my brother. Check out my answers to his “Year in Review” queries after the jump. Happy holidays and thanks for reading!

Like most things in life, writing online has its ups and downs. On the one hand, it’s undeniably narcissistic and the pay is crap. On the other hand, it’s kind of cool to have you have a ton of stuff you’ve written scattered all over the Web. From time to time, I grant myself the indulgence of doing a little self-Googling and checking out some of the sites I’ve been involved with in years past. Today was such a day, and I came across this gem, which I thought I’d share.

Let me set the scene first: I was interviewing Redman at Def Jam’s corporate offices in Midtown. I was late for my “day job” as a coach for a middle-school lacrosse team, so I had a backpack and lax stick in tow. The assistant who brought me in was probably thinking, “Who is this enormous clown!?” As soon as Red came into the room, he immediately closed the door behind him, stuffed some spare promotional t-shirts under it, and rolled a huge blunt and started smoking. I saw no other option but to start the interview! From the get go he was incredibly engaging, animated, and hilarious—it was just sort of surreal as I sat there watching him rant and (as I noticed when I played back the tape) answering all his rhetorical questions.

Anyway, toward the end of the interview it was clear that the ganja had begun to take its toll a bit and Red was entering his own world. This became most evident when I asked him about his memories of the infamous MTV Cribs episode, and he came out with the following answer. It still cracks me up to this day.

Now, let’s go back to the MTV “Cribs” episode, because a lot of people rate that as the best 15 minutes of television ever. How do you feel about that being one of your greatest legacies?

The way I look at it is like… First of all, Gilla House. Gilla House means over-the-top. Gilla. Short for guerrilla, just didn’t want to use guerrilla. Gilla! Like, “Is that gilla enough?” Gilla means like, say for instance you do paintings. You’re showing people your paintings, like, “See this one’s nice, but I don’t really like that one. But this one… I don’t really like this one either.” Gilla is like, why have those two in there? Why not take the time to make those two dope and have a full dope package? And over-the-top. That’s basically what gilla is: Over-the-top. And, um… I forgot the question.

No part of my question had anything to do with Gilla House! And even if it had, the analogy is insane. To date, the best answer I’ve ever received in an interview.

Read the rest here.

Sorry I’m late!

When I was visiting my mom in DC recently and we went to the Wizards-Hawks game, I was struck (as I often am at NBA games) by the huge amount of enthusiasm shown by the crowd for everything but the actual game. In some ways, I get it. The game is long and you’ve got to pay attention to what’s going on, while the little interludes during timeouts are short enough to get excited about. Oh look, a boy of about 9 trying to make a free throw! A spaniel catching frisbees! An utterly insane mascot throwing down 360 tomahawks off a trampoline!

A lot of the people at stadiums are not necessarily huge fans, but rather groups of kids, women with their husbands, corporate guests, and so on. So, in effect, you get the same phenomenon that’s seen in houses around the country during the Super Bowl: everyone mills around chatting while the game is on but then rushes into the TV room and hisses at everyone to be quiet during the commercials.

I have no real problem with this, other than the fact that I feel bad for the players. When I lived in Boston, this feeling was especially acute because there was such a tangible sense that basketball was not king in Beantown and the Celtics weren’t the Red Sox/Patriots (people seem to have changed their tune a bit now though). So it always pissed me off when the largest applause of the whole night was for a Pats player eating popcorn on the Jumbotron. Meanwhile, no one could give a shit about the guys actually playing sports in front of them!

In these dark days (I’m talking globally, not personally—this isn’t a cry for help!), I enjoy spinning a few tracks each morning that really make me laugh like a bastard, and no band does it for me quite like The Broviet Union. Perhaps that’s because the band members are literally some of my best friends. But if I were judging each song on its merits, I’d probably still listen to all of them. The world has been waiting for a faux-pop punk band that replaces stupid-ass stories of teenage angst and “crushes” with real stories about prowling the LA night for handjobs and playing Rock Paper Scissors with chicks to try to get them to sleep with you. The world has also been waiting for a song consisting exclusively of palindromes.

Anyway, I’ve had the great honor of joining these bros onstage a few time for a little backup singing on a track called “Scatalogical Man,” and let’s just say if you ever get a chance to see them live, it will probably be in a student union or ski lodge-themed bar. And what can you expect? Here for your enjoyment is an acoustic version of a song called “So-Cal” party. Hit the jump for a rather touching rendition of R. Kelly’s Gotham City, and make sure you keep your ear out for the Broviet in 2009.

I must have watched too many rap videos in my day, because when I saw the URL hoodthong.com, I imagined something more along the lines of a Trina shoot in King magazine. But even though I think this sartorial monstrosity is actually some sort of “contemporary art” hoax, I have to admit it’s a topic worthy of analysis. Is there room for the hood thong on the runways of Milan? Would Heidi Klum greet it with an icy  Auf Weidersehen or would she love it?

In my mind, there is a conflict of functionality as the hood is designed to cover up and trap in heat, where as the thong is designed to open things up and let the buttocks breath (for hygenic purposes). It also seems as though the hood thong acts like a haute couture chastity belt, which is a bit distressing. But hey, if Uggs happened so could this…what do you guys think?