3.30.2010

south africa and new york are like the same place



I watched this art21 episode about William Kentridge and dude is Theman Jones. "Best known for animated films based on charcoal drawings, he also works in prints, books, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts." he goes in on the effects of apartheid and colonialism in the neatest way i've certainly encountered! yay for art! yippie! he has an exhibit at the MOMA until may 17 and I'm hyped.com to go. anyone wanna take me on a date? sometimes i'm pretty. i can definitely look pretty if you want me to. i'll look pretty for William Kentridge. and for you.

3.29.2010

yes, today, i'm in a hole




It's raining in New York City today and i feel like I'm in a number of sad french films though I'm not even in France, I'm on 24th st. so, guess what am i? a poser. that's a vintage word. Also vintage are many of the verrrrry pleasurable photographs on my besties new blog called are you in a hole. check it out. maybe you'll like it so much that you'll offer to fly me to France as a consolation so i can be in my sad, slow and rainy french film. Gonna go listen to Elliott Smith and cry now. really. i am. no. actually i probably won't. but this is the internet so you can't see me. MUAHAHAHAHA.

3.24.2010

tegan and sara love a remix. i love tegan and sara.




So Tegan and Sara get down with a remix i guess. im mad excited for the ra ra riot, VHS or Beta and Four Tet. That's just me tho. above video is the original. do whatever you want. i'm not telling you to watch it. but if you don't i'll get dem alligator tears.

comes out mar 30 and the remix EP track listing is as follows:
1.Alligator (Holy F**k remix) 2. Alligator (Passion Pit remix) 3. Alligator (Toro y Moi remix) 4. Alligator (VHS or Beta remix) 5. Alligator (Doveman remix) 6. Alligator (Four Tet remix) 7. Alligator (Murge remix) 8. Alligator (Ra Ra Riot remix) 9. Alligator (Automatic Panic remix) 10. Alligator (Hi-Deaf remix) 11. Alligator (Dave Sitek remix) 12. Alligator (Sara's Original Demo Version) Bonus Club Tracks: 13. Alligator (Morgan Page remix) 14. Alligator (Kevin St. Croix remix) 15. Alligator (Mad Decent remix) 16. Alligator (Josh Harris remix) 17. Alligator (Hamel remix)

3.22.2010

this might make sense. it's an experiment.



= HEALTHCARE!!!!!!!! YAYYYY! BEARS!!!! HEARTS!!!! STARS!!!! OBAMA!!!! MUFFINS!!! muffins? muffin tops? nobody will have muffin tops anymore with the better healthcare we just got! actually nobody will have cancer! obama cured cancer!!!!!!!!!!!

3.11.2010

people like me, i play tetetotete for another site


check it. me. i wrote an article about band cubic zirconia for glorious noise.

3.10.2010

french movies make me SO excited

one of the films playing at this year's Rendez-vous With French Cinema festival that started mar. 11th and ends the 21st at lincoln center, ifc and bam. I will most likely see ANY french movie. someone, anyone go in with me? I can't go to films alone. I have social anxiety, the kind of social anxiety where you need to be around people all the time.
*follow the links for a full lineup of the films playing at each locale. lincoln center is the spot that's really going in hard on the festival.

3.03.2010

if you want to go in on good music there is a music blog that i approve of.



This is a good song that i found on a good music blog that everyone in the world should look at because it is good. god is good. god is dead. i am nietzsche. SO, (above) Jens Lekman and the chick from The XX have a song together. And maybe a baby. I'm their baby. I'm your baby. Though i DO like the blog I disagree with their assessment of Jens Lekman, i think he's precioso and makes me happy like belle and sebastian did when i was 15. anyway, listen/watch the song above and check out the blog: i guess i'm floating

*sorry about that Lens Lekman bit...i thought that looked wrong. but i was distracted, i was being told a story about crackhouses in LA by a regular at the bar. GOOD REASON for an edit?

3.02.2010

john mayer is really smart and really cool and really loves black women




In a recent interview with Playboy Magazine, (which I had the joy of finding behind my bar one Tuesday afternoon last week) John Mayer is quoted as having some sort of “nigger pass” in the black music circuit. Everyone is in conniptions over Mayer’s use of the word “nigger,” which, yeah, bad word John, tisk tisk. But the media’s coverage of John Mayer’s (what I’ll be the first to coin as) “Niggergate” rebukes him for using the word, as though the meaning behind the whole comment wasn’t the actual problem; but my ni##ers the content of his comments issss the problem! So, my initial thought was to pass it off with the ol’ this cracker-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-saying-pass. I laughed to myself, "instead of normal famous people problems like delusions of more grandeur he apparently has delusions of transcending race!" But as I kept reading the interview and then later when I read other interviews with him about his apparent premier guitar ability, I began to understand that he is very aware of the history of Blues and at least partially understands his racial location within the musical genre. But then I realized he might not understand he isn’t made of the stuff but has learned to make a vanilla, pop-culture reproduction of the stuff. We know he certainly does not have the sophistication of someone like filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard who infuses the quote “What has been called classic blues was the result of more diverse sociological and musical influences” from (formerly known) Leroi Jones’s book Blues People into his film. But we do know Mayer is in the very least equipped with the historical proverbial building blocks to understanding the role of race and racism in the history of Blues.


Dare I say, his ass should have known better? Yeah, I’m going to hold him accountable, because nobody else seems to be doing it. I feel like me and this dude, Jon Caramanica, who wrote a piece in the New York Times today are the only people confused by everyone’s ease regarding Mayer’s behavior. Mayer is fully aware that hegemony delivered his white ass (as opposed to an African American with the same talent) to superstardom. So I’m just a little confused to whty ?uestlove and all these other important black artists are writing Mayer’s comments off as a silly misstep. As I understand it, the image he has constructed for himself is that of the reckless musician rocker-dude that says what he means and means what he says whenever he wants to say it. So let’s just call a spade a spade (he's a racist fool) and stop pretending like Mayer’s body is a wonderland (cause it's not).


In his apology on twitter (twitter, great) he says, “I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock. I don’t have the stomach for it.” So he seems to be humbled, to have felt genuinely sorry (yeah, right) for his Niggergate gaffe. But in his apology, there is no acknowledgement of the content of his interview as being the problem. Who CARES about "nigger" when you have a whole glut of other offensive shit you said after “nigger”? He doesn’t think to ask forgiveness from the black music community (both living and dead) that he has taken and taken and taken from. Rather it is (cowardly at best) stab at reestablishing his image as the fringe but “good” white guy who just wants to play “his” music for the masses who love his proclivity for romantic love ballads or his tunes of passivity, waiting for brighter, more equitable days. But is Mayer really waiting on the world to change? It doesn’t seem like he wants to change much in the way his racial privilege. In fact he’s being a pretty active participant in the reinforcement that white people can dominate a historically black craft and do it with arrogance and without concern.


Arrogant and unconcerned John Mayer was also asked in the Playboy interview: “Do black women throw themselves at you?” to which he replied that he didn’t really think of it, calling his penis a white supremacist, comparing it to David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan. Is he serious? He’s been obsessed with a music made by the blood, sweat and tears of a whole bunch of black women and he hasn’t thought about having sex with them? Oh, heya liar! He really gave himself the moniker David Duke. Is he insane? This is too easy.


Dear David Duke AKA John Mayer,

I can’t wait for the world to change so I can hit you over the head with your stupid fucking guitar and never have to hear you play another ridiculous song because you’ll be singing songs of actual pain and suffering. You’ll be singing “oh I can’t wait for the world to go back to the way it was when this black woman that will never have sex with me wasn’t kicking my ass.” Yeah those are lyrics I can’t wait to rock out to.


Cordially,

Tete