Young Barack Obama, I'm all for it

It's been a while since I've written anything on here, but after seeing a couple Obama speeches on CNN today while caulking in hotel rooms (my preferred way to describe my current job, since pronounced out loud it might lead you to believe I were a gigolo) I've gotten more and more excited about our next president. (Jeb's not counting the votes this time, right?) My feelings have come in waves: believing in the possibility of true change, then thinking Obama will be just another centrist Democrat, then back to hope, where I stand now. Hearing him affirm that every young person should be able to afford college, that health care should not be denied for the seriously ill, sent goosebumps down my back. These rights should really go without saying, and the fact that believing in them gets you called a radical in this country is disgusting, but if a majority of the American voters feel agree with Obama's platform enough to cast their ballots for him, maybe I'm not so radical after all.
The New Yorker recently featured a clever piece by Hendrik Hertzberg highlighting the absurdity of the Republicans' calling out of Obama as a socialist. Also on that magazine's website, George Packer quotes Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" which in turn quotes economist Warren Buffet, which I will in turn quote here in its entirety:
They have this idea that it’s “their money” and they deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don’t factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do. Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner. But I was lucky enough to be born into a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing—and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.
Packer closes with, "What this suggests isn’t socialism, but wisdom."
Ironically enough, that "hope" image I used up there came (via a Google image search) from a horrendously designed, poorly punctuated site which paints He With the Evil Middle Name of Hussain as a socialist, pointing to the revolutionary imagery as proof. Check it out for a laff.
I leave you with a video of Lil' Wayne and Juelz Santana's version of Nas and Jay-Z's "Black Republican," theoretically because it contains the line I named this entry for, but mostly because it's a hella tight song.

Now GO VOTE!!!! Yes on 1A, 2 and 5! No on 4, 6, and 8!

Evangelicals (the good kind)

Don't know too much about these guys, but I know I like 'em. Thought it was a chick singing at first but their Myspace reveals a strict dudefest. And the video is the good kind of low-budget; a B-movie horror throwback that fits the music quite nicely. If you listen to the video without watching it, the screams only heighten the song's intense mood.

The stuff of nightmares

Imagine seeing this dude pull up next to you at the intersection of Mack and Valley Hi. You glance back and the driver looks completely normal again. My friend Mike saw a half-man/half-lion driving when he was about 12 and we still crack up about it. You know, to hide the terror.

New Nas video: Wow.

More of a short film, really, soundtracked by "Y'all My Niggas" from his new untitled album, which I've yet to hear in its entirety. Nasir riffs on the ramifications of that infamous word he almost titled the album before sampling Master of missing the point Bill O'Reilly and closing things out with a screed expanding the boundaries of oppression.
This underlines how frustrating it can be to be a Nas fan: He'll drop something amazing like this, but his output is so uneven after a Shakespeare-level debut at age 20. I've been listening to his second album It Was Written in the car lately and the lyrics are still there, but outside of a few bangers, the production leaves you flat. Bangers i.e. the Lauryn Hill-assisted "If I Ruled the World":

Nasty is flirting with the Puff Daddy Times Squarification of hip-hop in the video, which became insufferable but was pretty fresh in 1996, and his lyrics, while touching on materialism (like you wouldn't have some jet skis if you ran the world), got a discussion of prison abolition on mainstream radio, just as he'll hopefully do now with an honest dialogue on race and class. Thanks Nas. (Thanks also to Sound Verite')

Lil' Wayne is for the children

This is a great piece of writing by David Ramsey in the Oxford American about his experience as a middle- and high school teacher in post-Katrina New Orleans and how it all comes back to Weezy F.

Friday Jamzz

It's Friday, man, you ain't got no (real) job; you ain't got shit to do; you two microbrews deep at 2 PM; you finna bust out a bike cruise in the mildly ghetto neighborhood you grew up in and then tear it up in some b-ball later, but peep some fresh jams first, son.

Adek Dark's: Rap Français Trés Fresh

When I was in Paris this past winter, the friend I was staying with took me to an informal reunion of people she went to middle-school with, held at a neighborhood hookah bar/tea room in the suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine. It was a potentially awkward situation, considering that I don't speak French and most of them spoke only very basic English, but some of the friends were really friendly and made the effort to engage me in conversation. I talked at length with un mec named Marc, mostly about hip-hop. We exchanged emails and he said he'd send me some French hip-hop tracks, but never mentioned that he himself did music.
When he emailed me, I was surprised that the mp3 attached was by him. And even more surprising it was really good! I have basically no idea what he's saying (one line I did understand imagines "Obesity in Sudan, famine in America"), but he sounds awesome saying it. Dark's (I don't get the apostrophe either) mentioned his admiration of Jay-Z and Kanye West, and "Alchimiste," with production by the Soulchildren, sounds like it could be from a French version of The Blueprint.
He's supposed to send me some more stuff, which I'll be sure to share, but for now check out "Alchimiste" and a well-recorded live YouTube video from 2005 with a dude called Barbak le Demoniak.

Eugene Mirman: Who is Sarah Palin?

She'll show those moose who's boss, that's for sure!

Fare 'n' balunst

This is wonderful. If you hadn't heard, anyone who dares to criticize Sarah Palin is a sexist! Just ask such noted feminists and beacons for equal rights as Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove.

Obama is going on The O'Reilly Factor tonight, and while it will surely be an unproductive affair that only legitimizes the blowhard as some sort of actual journalist, you can bet I'll tune in, probably at the gym where I can make my rage at the teevee into something productive.
In related news, the night of her speech was the first time I realized that her name is pronounced "pale in," which renders the puns "Palindromes" and "Just Palin Around" technically incorrect, but no less funny. Quick, someone start one called "Palin Comparison"!

Mediocrity's greatest hits

There are actually a couple decent individual songs on this Ultimate Alt Rawk Comp, but can you imagine paying money for it? Why not just set your time machine for 2003 and listen to any buttrock radio station in the country?
Making it through the commercial was hard enough; I can only imagine the discs themselves are on heavy rotation at Guantanamo.