This is the blog that the previous one was supposed to be : a quiet reflection of the weekend, why we exist, why cigarettes and sodas seem to replace sex as a major jonesing in my life now and why WalMart for me is the new mall, the new meatmarket, at which I windowshop gorgeous MILFs cruising down the aisles and wonder how sex with them would be, allowing my once powerful, insightful imagination to grab and go with it. My libido never catches up, so I don't mind so much anymore. Kind of the nebbish Mike Hammer with a fetish for fake tits and cigarette smoke. It is kinda ironic that Hammer was anti-literacy, when Mickey wrote him. Mickey said that Hammer ate at diners because he wasn't sure how to spell restaurant.
There are never enough quick to the point people anymore. We are too afraid to step on toes, figuratively speaking. It's like getting in an elevator and not pointing out the elephant who farts. Not just farts, but does a wet, sloppy, verrry smelly fart. The kind of fart that makes women pass out and men gag and vomit. Like week old curry drained through a sweaty pair of stockings and burned on a stove, under a pile of steaming cow manure. THAT kind of fart.
Music is at a lull. Noone these days can drive our hearts to overdrive and leave us panting and fainted on the floor, sweating a lake of pure adrendaline underneath us. There are bits and pieces, but no consistent wholes. As much as I hate to admit, Pearl Jam, for example, had a large number of top ten hits rotated off their first TWO albums. That's what I mean. I have seen smaller groups that encourage me and give me hope, but the larger, more well known groups sort of rotate and cause a pendulum swing that slows a bit lately. E am trying to find out how stupid and lame E truly am, not enjoying going out, but not feeling comfortable unless its in a record store or book store, because to me that is like a release, A Fortress Of Solitude [even though there are people there] and familiarity, which for me is very important right now. I read books that feed me challenging material, even if I take it in small bits. I realize that not only am I an American bastard [born to a genetic mother I will never know, even if we met] but E am also an ASSHOLE. E don't have all of the answers, even any or some. E sit at a job that is making me miserable and all I can do is envy those people who chose to travel, live life and do things that stop the loneliness and boredom. Life can get so boring, irritating and aggravating to those of us that need to understand that in order to make friends and be socialable, we must give up the hermit syndrome. To get out and do things, like walk. Just walking. One foot in front of the other. Small steps that lead to bigger steps.
Here is an article I saw on the web :
Top-secret blogger fired over postings
CIA contractor voiced her views about torture
By Dana Priest, Washington Post | July 22, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could access it.
Only people with top-secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community's classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications, CC for short, she opined in her online journal on such national security conundrums as stagflation, the war of ideas in the Middle East, and -- in her most popular post -- bad food in the CIA cafeteria.
But the hundreds of blog readers who responded to her irreverent entries with titles such as ``Morale Equals Food" won't be joining her ever again.
On July 13, after she posted her views on torture and the Geneva Conventions, her blog was taken down and her security badge was revoked. On Monday, Axsmith was terminated by her employer, BAE Systems, which was helping the CIA test software.
As a traveler in the classified blogosphere, Axsmith was not alone. Hundreds of blog posts appear on Intelink. The CIA says blogs and other electronic tools are used by people working on the same issue to exchange information and ideas.
Paul Gimigliano, CIA spokesman, declined to comment on Axsmith's case, but said the policy on blogs is that ``postings should relate directly to the official business of the author and readers of the site and that managers should be informed of online projects that use government resources. CIA expects contractors to do the work they are paid to do."
A BAE Systems spokesman declined to comment.
Axsmith, 42, said in an interview this week that she thinks of herself as the Erma Bombeck of the intel world, a ``generalist" writing about luncheon meat one day, the war on terrorism the next. She said she first posted her classified blog in May, and no one said a thing. When she asked, managers even agreed to give her the statistics on how many people were entering the site. Her column on food pulled in 890 readers, and people sent her reviews from other intelligence agency canteens.
The day of the last post, Axsmith said, after reading a newspaper report that the CIA would join the rest of the US government in according Geneva Conventions rights to prisoners, she posted her views on the subject.
It started, she said, with something like this: ``Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong."
And it continued, she added, with something like this: ``CC had the sad occasion to read interrogation transcripts in an assignment that should not be made public. And, let's just say, European lives were not saved." (That was a jab at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to Europe late last year when she defended US policy on secret detentions and interrogations.) A self-described ``opinionated loudmouth with a knack for writing a catchy headline," Axsmith also wrote how it was important to ``empower grunts and paper pushers" because, she explained in the interview, ``I'm a big believer in educating people at the bottom, and that's how you strengthen an infrastructure."
In her job as a contractor at the CIA's software-development shop, Axsmith said that she conducted ``performance and stress testing" on computer programs and that as a computer engineer, she had nothing to do with interrogations. She said she did read some reports she thought were interrogation-related while performing her job as a trainer in one counterterrorism office.
Her opinion, Axsmith added, was based on newspaper reports of torture and waterboarding as an interrogation method .
``I thought it would be OK" to write about the Geneva Conventions, she said, ``because it's the policy."
In recounting the events of her last day as an Intelink blogger, Axsmith said she didn't hold up well when the corporate security officers grilled her, seized her badge, and put her in a frigid conference room. ``I'm shaking. I'm cold, staring at the wall," she recalled. ``And worse, people are using the room as a shortcut, so I have no dignity in this crisis."
She said BAE officials told her that the blog implied a specific knowledge of interrogations and that it worried ``the seventh floor" at CIA, where the offices of the director and his management team are.
She said she apologized right away and figured she would get reprimanded and her blog would be eliminated. She never dreamed she would be fired. Now, Axsmith said, ``I'm scared, terrified really" of being criminally prosecuted for unauthorized use of a government computer system, something one of the security officers mentioned to her.
Axsmith said she's proud of having taken her views public -- well, sort of. ``I know I hit the radar and it was amplified," she said. ``I think I've had an impact."
In the meantime, she's been thinking about Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer who successfully challenged the constitutionality of military tribunals at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Passed over for promotion, he told the Los Angeles Times , ``One thing that has been a great revelation for me is that you may love the military, but it doesn't necessarily love you."
``That's how I feel," Axsmith said . ``I love the CIA. I love the mission. I love the people. It's such a great place to work."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/22/top_secret_blogger_fired_over_postings/
This is not a link. You have to do it yourself. You have to actually travel a bit. So I am listening to David Sedaris on This American Life and beginning to work on page nine of a seven chaper novel I've been writing. I will finish it and hope it will sell. Who knows? If not, it's done. I have accomplished a work that was bigger than all the pent up procrastination that has blocked my creativity and imagination, like a dam. I hate watching life just stand there, the heat sufferable to all of us down here during this unbearable summer. It reminded me of the late 70s down here in Texas, when as a kid I ran into humid summers and high gas prices for service stations that actually were able to serve it [deja vu in 2006?] Onto another obituary, Jack Warden, an actor that endeared my heart in " The Verdict " , " ... And Justice For All " and " Twelve Angry Men " died in his 80s. Those actors I had hoped to write for someday are passing away, much like my youth and nostalgia. He was unappreciated, but his way of touching a tough guy with his wit and charm was nourishing in the years of Flavors Of The Year ... Emmy-winning actor Jack Warden dead at 85
By ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press WriterSat Jul 22, 3:57 AM ET
Jack Warden, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor who played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades, has died. He was 85.
Warden, who lived in Manhattan, died Wednesday at a hospital in New York, Sidney Pazoff, his longtime business manager, said in Los Angeles Friday.
"Everything gave out. Old age," Pazoff said. "He really had turned downhill in the past month; heart and then kidney and then all kinds of stuff."
Warden was nominated twice for supporting-actor Oscars in two Warren Beatty movies. He was nominated for his role as a businessman in 1975's "Shampoo" and the good-hearted football trainer in 1978's "Heaven Can Wait."
He won a supporting actor Emmy for his role as Chicago Bears coach George Halas in the 1971 made-for-TV movie "Brian's Song" and was twice nominated in the 1980s as leading actor in a comedy for his show "Crazy Like a Fox."
Warden, with his white hair, weathered face and gravelly voice, was in demand for character parts for decades.
In real life, the former boxer, deckhand and paratrooper was anything but a tough guy.
"Very gentle. Very dapper," Pazoff said. "Most of them (actors) are pretty true to the characters that they play. He was one who was not."
Warden was born John H. Lebzelter in 1920 in Newark, N.J. He was still in high school during the Depression when he tried his hand at professional boxing under his mother's maiden name of Costello.
He had 13 welterweight bouts in the Louisville area before joining the Navy, where he was sent to China and patrolled the Yangtze River.
He also had jobs as a nightclub bouncer, a lifeguard and a deckhand on an East River tugboat.
In 1941, he joined the Merchant Marine. He served in the engine room as his ship made convoy runs to Europe.
"The constant bombings were nerve-racking below decks," he recalled.
He quit in 1942 and enlisted in the Army. He was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division but shortly before D-Day he broke his leg during a nighttime practice jump in Britain.
"They sent me back to the States," he recalled in a 1988 Associated Press interview. "I was in a hospital for nearly a year."
A fellow soldier who had been an actor gave him a play to read and he was hooked. He recovered enough to take part in the Battle of the Bulge and, after the war, went to New York to pursue an acting career.
He attended acting classes and did Tennessee Williams plays in repertory companies and moved on to appear in live TV shows such as the famed "Studio One."
During the 1950s his career flourished. Besides TV work, he appeared on Broadway in shows such as Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" and Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge."
He had small roles in 1953's Oscar-winning "From Here to Eternity" and the submarine thriller "Run Silent, Run Deep" but his breakthrough role was Juror No. 7, a salesman who wants a quick decision in a murder case, in 1957's "Twelve Angry Men."
Over the years he had a number of recurring or starring TV roles. He was a major in "The Wackiest Ship in the Army"; the coach on "Mr. Peepers"; a coach again on the small-screen version of "The Bad News Bears,"; detectives in "Asphalt Jungle," "N.Y.P.D." and "Jigsaw John"; and a private investigator in "Crazy Like a Fox."
His numerous big-screen roles included a news editor in 1976's "All the President's Men," Paul Newman's law partner in 1982's "The Verdict' and the president in the 1979 Peter Sellers movie "Being There."
His later roles came in Woody Allen's 1994 "Bullets Over Broadway"; Beatty's 1998 political satire "Bulworth" and the 2000 football movie "The Replacements."
Pazoff said Warden is survived by his longtime girlfriend, Marucha Hinds; estranged wife, Vanda; a son, Christopher; and two grandchildren.
_______________
Hollywood Vet Jack Warden Dies
By Joal RyanFri Jul 21, 8:02 PM ET
Football and Warren Beatty were very good to Jack Warden.
The character actor, who became a familiar face in the 1970s and 1980s on the strength of the gridiron tearjerker Brian's Song and the Beatty films Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait, died Wednesday at a New York hospital, his manager said Friday.
Warden was 85--"almost 86," business manager Sidney Pazoff noted, adding that the actor died of "old age, basically."
Something of a star, though not really a celebrity, Warden leaves behind a wealth of A-list credits: among them, All the President's Men, The Verdict and ...And Justice for All. As best the Internet Movie Database can tell, the stage-trained actor appeared in 153 movies and television shows from 1951 to 2000.
"He loved working," said Pazoff, who was associated with Warden for 27 years. "He read a lot of films that he didn't take. He really just liked to work."
Three times, Warden was nominated for an Emmy, winning once for keeping sentiments in check as Chicago Bears head coach George Halas in 1971's Brian's Song, the biopic about doomed running back Brian Piccolo.
Twice, Warden was nominated for an Oscar, earning Best Supporting Actor nods for 1975's Shampoo and 1978's Heaven Can Wait, in which football again figured prominently. (Warden played coach Max Corkle to Beatty's back-from-the-dead star player.)
From Halas to Max Corkle, Warden perfected the art of gruff. Other roles in which he growled (but didn't bite) were as Watergate-era Washington Post editor Harry Rosenfeld in All the President's Men, as washed-up attorney Paul Newman's last friend in The Verdict, and as a sanity-challenged judge in ...And Justice for All.
For those raised on 1980s TV, Warden likely is best known as hothead P.I. Harry Fox, who, in prime prime-time tradition, solved mysteries with his temperamental opposite and son (John Rubinstein) in Crazy Like a Fox. The show lasted two seasons on CBS, running from 1984-86, and prompting the 1987 made-for-TV movie Still Crazy Like a Fox.
In 1979, Warden was the baseball manager stand-in for the likewise gruff Walter Matthau in the short-lived TV sitcom version of The Bad News Bears, costarring the 7-year-old Corey Feldman.
Early film credits included 1953's From Here to Eternity, 1957's 12 Angry Men and 1959's The Sound and the Fury. Latter-day film credits included the Problem Child trilogy, 1998's Bulworth and 2000's The Replacements. Bulworth was another Beatty film; The Replacements, his last big-screen appearance, was another football film.
Born John Lebzelter on Sept. 18, 1920, Warden served in the U.S. Navy and Army, pulling a stint in the latter during World War II. He began his acting career in New York in the 1940s.
When Warden finally stopped acting in Hollywood in 2000, it was by "his choice," Pazoff said. ... Mickey Spillane
1918-
pseudonym of Frank Morrison Spillane
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American thriller writer, master of the "hard boiled" style peppered with sex and sadism. Spillane is best known for his private detective Mike Hammer, who appeared in his first published book I, THE JURY in 1947. The hardback edition did not sell well, but the paperback became a worldwide bestseller. With the character of Hammer, the most chauvinist avenger among classical private eyes, Spillane created a dark counterpart to the knightly Philip Marlowe.
"The biggest part of the joke is the punch line, so the biggest part of a book should be the punch line, the ending. People don't read a book to get to the middle; they read a book to get to the end and hope that the ending justifies all the time they spent reading it. So what I do is, I get my ending and, knowing what my ending is going to be, then I write to the end and have the fun of knowing where I'm going but not how I'm going to get there."
(Spillane in Speaking of Murder, ed. by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, 1998)
Mickey Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a bartender. In his youth he read such writers as Alexandre Dumas and Anthony Hope, and was fascinated by comic books. He briefly attended Fort Hays State College in Kansas, but dropped out, moved back to New York, and began his writing career in the mid-1930s. Spillane's first stories were published mostly in comic books and pulp magazines. He developed the character Mike Danger, a private detective, and wrote for Captain America, Captain Marvel, and The Human Torch. During WW II Spillane worked as a flying instructor for the U.S. Army Air Force. He met and married his first wife, Mary Ann Pearce, in 1945; they had four children. He achieved the rank of captain by the time he left the service, and returned with his young wife to New York in 1946.
"Spillane writes with speed, and the rough-hewn poetry of his narrator creates a fantasy city, a New York of myth and dream, populated by the same character types as those found in the work of Daly, Hammett, and Chandler - good girls, black widows, thugs, frustrated cops, gang lords, corrupt society leaders - but delivered with a unique fever-dream fervour."
(Max Allan Collins in Mystery & Suspence Writers, vol. 2, ed. by Robin W. Winks, 1998)
I, the Jury was written in only nine days, but it became such success that Spillane quickly produced six more Hammer novels, five of them published between 1950 and 1952. "Crime novels are a good way to make money," Spillane once stated. The sixth, THE TWISTED THING, did not appear until 1966. The world of Mike Hammer includes his secretary Velda, a dark-haired beauty, who is the tough soul mate of Mike, and Captain Pat Chambers of the New York Police Department. In the first novel Hammer investigates the brutal murder of his best friend. In the end the beautiful but bad Charlotte Manning performs a strip tease in order to dissuade Hammer from killing her. When he shoots her, Manning asks, "How c-could you?" and he replies, "It was easy" - one of the most famous last lines in popular fiction.
In VENGEANCE IS MINE! (1950) Hammer is tormented by the memory of Charlotte and vows never to kill another woman, until a murderous doppelganger of her is revealed to be a transvestite. The theme of crime and punishment - Hammer acting as the tool of some primitive God - continues in the following novels. Spillane himself posed for the dust wrapper photographs of Hammer novels and starred in the film version of THE GIRL HUNTERS (1963). In KISS ME DEADLY (1952) a beautiful woman, Berga Torn, clad only in a trench coat, stops Hammer's sports car on a lonely road. She has escaped from a sanatorium, where a Dr. Soberin referred her. However, her chasers beat Hammer, and torture and kill her. Hammer starts to investigate the case, Velda is kidnapped by the Mob but Hammer rescues her. He finds out that Lily Carver is Soberin's mistress and has used him to get a metal box containing $2 million in heroin. Hammer gets his revenge - he kills her - but is left in a burning house, trying to get away from the flames. The novel started Spillane's nine-year silence as a novelist. The hiatus ended with THE DEEP, a story of a tough guy, who returns to his old neighbourhood - revealing in the novels denouement that he has become a cop.
"Why should one of the most popular authors of the twentieth century need defending? Easy, as Mike Hammer might say: his subject matter and his approach were so hard-hitting, so individual, that Spillane repelled the more proper and staid among the Literary Establishment (and the Establishment in general, including Dr. Frederic Wertham and Parents Magazine and other unpointed arbiters of public morality.). And it has taken time, and changing mores - plus the natural PR knack of Spillane himself, with such disarming tactics as funny self-parody beer commercials and the writing of award-winning children's books - to give him his rightful place as the living giant among mystery writers."
('Mecca Spillane' by Max Allan Collins, in The Big Book of Noir, 1998)
Spillane has revealed that he finishes his texts in two weeks and does not revise anything he has written. Although critics have tried to belittle the author's achievements, Spillane has defenders such as Ayn Rand, who has said, "Spillane gives me the feeling of hearing a military band in a public park." To his critics Spillane has answered, "but it's good garbage." On a list complied in 1967 of all the best-selling books published in America between 1895 and 1965, seven of the top twenty-nine were written by Spillane. Especially during the height of anti-Communist paranoia, Hammer's unyielding, patriotic character comforted many American readers.
Between 1953 and 1961 Spillane stopped writing full-length novels after conversion to the Jehovah's Witnesses, and between 1973 and 1989 for sixteen years, when he advertised Miller Lite beer. In 1962 Spillane brought Hammer back with THE GIRL HUNTERS, in which the hero is still haunted by the memory of Charlotte. The book was followed by four more titles. He returned again in 1970 with KILLING MAN. Spillane's only other series character, Tiger Mann, was inspired by the James Bond boom. The character is first introduced in the novel DAY OF THE GUN (1964). In his longest and most ambitious piece, THE ERECTION SET, Spillane follows in the footsteps of Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace.
In 1983 Spillane married Jane Rodgers Johnson, a former Miss South Carolina twenty-eight years his junior. In 1995 the Mystery Writers of America finally presented him with the Grand Master award. In the mid-1990s Spillane returned to comic books by co-creating a futuristic Mike Danger. Although he did not do the comic-book script writing, Spillane completed a draft of a Mike Danger science fiction novel. Spillane has also written two books for children. Most of Spillane's short fiction was produced in the 1950s and published in Manhunt and such men's magazines as Cavalier and Male.
The unbeatable Hammer has survived right up to the 1990s, outliving William Crane, Philip Marlowe, Mike Shayne, and Lew Archer. In BLACK ALLEY (1996) he wakes up from a coma and tracks down a missing $89 billion. Times have changed, and Spillane reveals his tough-guy's fondness for Wagner (1813-1883), the anti-semitic German opera composer, whose music contains unnecessary Nazi connotations. Today, however, Wagner's music is almost unreservedly accepted without political overtones. In an interview at the age of 83, Spillane mentioned that he still writes and has finished a couple of adventure stories. The last novel about Hammer in under work.
See also: "Hard-boiled" mystery writers: Horace McCoy, Raymond Chandler, Jonathan Latimer, Dashiell Hammett. - As a romantic hero who has taken the law in his own hand, Mike Hammer comes from the same literary tradition as Leslie Charteris' Simon Templar alias The Saint. Spillane's role model was Carroll John Daly, whose hard-hitting detective was Race Williams. Daly was innovative writer and his use of the first-person style influenced Spillane.
For further reading: One Lonely Knight: Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer by Max Allan Collins (1984); Murder in the Millions by J. Keneth Van Dover (1984); The American Private Eye by David Geherin (1985); Speaking of Murder, ed. by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg (1998) - In 1962 Spillane portrayed his own detective character Hammer in the film The Girl Hunters. Other films: Ring of Fear (1953), Colombo series (1973), Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1956-58, starring Darren McGavin, scriptwriter was Bill S. Ballinger among others); Mickey Spillane's Margin for Murder (1981, starring Kevin Dobson), Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: Murder Me, Murder You (1983, starring Stacy Keach), The Return of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1987), The New Mike Hammer (1987). - The writer himself was not satisfied with the actors playing Hammer, except his own performance. According to Spillane, Kiss Me Deadly "stank", and Stacey Keach is a good actor, but "he doesn't know how to wear a hat.
Selected works:
* I, THE JURY, 1947 - film 1953, dir. by Harry Essex, starring Biff Elliot; film 1982, dir. by Richard T. Heffron, starring Armand Assante
* MY GUN IS QUICK, 1950 - film 1957, dir. by Phil Victor, starring Robert Bray
* VENGEANCE IS MINE, 1950
* THE BIG KILL, 1951
* THE LONG WAIT, 1951
* ONE LONELY NIGHT, 1952
* KISS ME, DEADLY, 1952 - film 1955, dir. by Robert Aldrich, starring Ralph Meeker. In the film version, Hammer is "just a punk, motivated only by a narcissistic opportunism. When his assistance is sought by the police, he can only reply, "What's in it for me?" He assaults everyone, caring little for age, gender, and nationality, and its significant that his abuse of the faithful Velda (Maxine Cooper), a caring, sensitive woman, parallels the abuse of Lily (Gaby Rogers) by Dr. Soberin (Allen Dekker)." (from Novels into Film by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, 1999)
* THE DEEP, 1961
* THE GIRL HUNTERS, 1962 - film 1963, dir. by Ray Rowland
* ME, HOOD! 1963
* RETURN OF THE HOOD, 1964
* THE FLIER, 1964
* DAY OF THE GUNS, 1964
* BLOODY SUNRISE, 1965
* THE SNAKE, 1965
* KILLER MINE, 1965 (novelettes)
* THE TWISTED THING, 1966, Mike Hammer
* THE DEATH DEALERS, 1966
* THE DELTA FACTOR, 1967
* THE BY-PASS CONTROL, 1967, Tiger Mann
* THE BODY LOVERS, 1967
* THE TOUGH GUYS, 1969
* SURVIVAL... ZERO, 1970
* DELTA FACTOR, 1970
* THE ERECTION SET, 1972
* THE MICKEY SPILLANE OMNIBUS, 1973
* THE LAST COP OUT, 1973
* VINTAGE SPILLANE, 1974
* THE DAY THE SEA ROLLED BACK, 1980 (juvenile)
* THE SHIP THAT NEVER WAS, 1982 (juvenile)
* MICKEY SPILLANE'S MIKE HAMMER: THE COMIC STRIP, 1982-84
* TOMORROW I DIE, 1984
* THE KILLING MAN, 1989
* BLACK ALLEY, 1996
* ed.: VENGEANCE IN HERS, 1997 (with Max Allan Collins)
* ed.: GOLDEN AGE OF MARVEL COMICS, 1998
* ed.: PRIVATE EYES, 1998 (with Max Allan Collins)
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This biography was written by Petri Liukkonen.
http://www.biblion.com/litweb/biogs/spillane_mickey.html
... Now, to respond to
30. Dire Straits
Money For Nothing
What better place to start than with the chant, "I want my MTV"? Additionally, this video captures the essence of 80s music videos -- you got the band playing in the worst of the decade's fashion, you got crappy, skittish animation, you got the one (just one) hot chick, and you even got some computer generated animation, a la Tron. Even with all those handicaps, we still get a great video.
29. Busta Rhymes
Woo Hah! I Got You All in Check
The classic Busta Rhymes video: Busta, with his crazy flow over an other-wordly beat, in costumes and sets representing every color in the rainbow...all shot through the fish-eye lens. This video happens to be my favorite of that set of videos. Busta returns on the list later just once more, but I think he is best rapper in videos, hands down.
28. Wu-Tang Clan
Triumph
The ultimate posse cut. A few things you have to love about the video: the profile photo of the late Ol' Dirty Bastard; the sound clip of bees censoring cure words; Raekwon's sweater vest; and that little dance that Method Man does. Just goes to show humor can be found anywhere.
27. Kanye West
Through the Wire
Simply a very clever video, particularly for a debut. This is also the last recorded instance of 'Ye being grounded at all.
26. Missy Elliott
The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
I'm not sure what it is exactly about this video that is so appealing...it's just a little off on everything. Dancing in a garbage bag while wearing a diamond-studded bicycle helmet? Only Missy. The studder, spasm dancing? Only Missy. She's up there with Busta in the Rap Video All-Stars.
25. Rage Against the Machine
Guerilla Radio
I love Rage videos. It's anti-propaganda propaganda greatness. Go communism.
24. The Roots
What They Do
If you are unfamiliar with the rap video genre, this video is the most comprehensive introduction to it -- albeit with heavy sarcasm and parody. Being condescending has never looked and sounded so smooth.
After you watch this, I suggest you list your favorite cliches. My top three were (1) the token white model, (2) running from what?, and (3) "no logos in the shot" shot.
23. Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg
Dre Day
Out of all the dis-record/video combos, this one is my favorite. Seriously, you have to love the "Sleazy-E" performance. By the way, "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" also deserves honorable mention among my favorite videos...hell, all those Snoop-Dre combos do.
22. Fiona Apple
Criminal
Fiona's delivery for the video is incredibly on point and capturing. Just a great (and certainly memorable) performance...nothing more necessary to say than that.
(Yes, she was underage at the time she shot the video, and yes that makes the video more appealing. And yes, I'm probably wrong for that. But you are too.)
21. D-12
Purple Hills
If you are going to make an anthem for drug abuse, the video better be as silly as this one. Eminem dancing around in a catcus costume certainly qualifies as silly. Of course by the time you get to Bizzare dressed in a tank top and smiley face boxer shorts while flirting with a pair of midgets, you're doing that little covering-your-face-from-the-sun dance too. Lost in the wierdness of the video is its convincing ability -- watching it definately makes me feel like wanting to get fucked up.
20. Van Halen
Right Now
No one would think a video set to a synth-driven 80s-styled power rock song would have staying power, but this video does. Why? Who doesn't love random facts and ideas presented consectutively without cohesion? That's the way of the Internet generation. Right now -- for the impatient.
19. Gorillaz
Clint Eastwood
All of the Gorillaz' music videos are visually appealing, but none of the other ones have Del the Funky Homosapien animated as an overgrown smurf. I also prefer the Gorillaz with a darker presentation than I do the uptempo, higher feel of "Feel Good Inc." and "Dare" (though those are good as well).
18. Nas
One Mic
Nas at his finest -- a clever concept for a song with fantastic delivery. The video does the song justice, and by the strength of that alone, this video is one of my favorites.
17. Radiohead
No Surprises
Radiohead videos are as bare bones and modest as videos come, and that approach works best for their easier listens, such as "No Surprises." Or maybe Thom Yorke's face is so awkward looking that you can't look away from it. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with his eye? It was noticable before, but the video gives it a stage and a spotlight.
16. Pharcyde
Passing Me By
I'm never able to explain who the Pharcyde are whenever I recommend them to someone; "Passing Me By" certainly does a better job of doing so. They are a witty group, with a great sense of humor which is usually self-depreciating. Who else would be able to claim that they "used to sport a shag" with a straight face? Awesome, understated video. Great song.
15. Eminem
My Name Is
Speaking of self-depreciating...the base-head with hairy palms and a failing grade in English. Any number of Eminem videos could have made the list, from the funny ("Without Me," "Guilty Conscience") to the serious, darker ones ("Stan," "The Way I Am"). Of course, neither of those videos can boast the fact that they have Gheroghe Muresan playing as a puppet master. These sort of little things really separate the good from the memorable.
14. Beck
The New Pollution
Like many of the others on the list, you can pick any one Beck's videos and deem it worthy of making your favorite video list. I don't know...I just really love the idea of making an ode to several decades worth of pop culture. The dances, the fashion, even the advertising -- all get their due in this video. I really ought to take up listening to him again.
13. 2Pac featuring Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman
California Love
This song and video is the reason why I can throw up the "West Side" sign after I drink half a liter of vodka and pass out. Chris Tucker, George Clinton, Dre, Pac...it's Mad Max with an all-black cast. You also have to understand this video was the first production of the 2Pac-Death Row alliance. Dre producing for Pac was a bombshell at the time. Understandably too...who doesn't love this song?
12. The Smashing Pumpkins
Tonight, Tonight
If I were to attempt to describe this video in one phrase, I'd...quit. If I were to try again, I'd say to think of The Wizard of Oz crossed with Titanic set in space and the depths of the ocean. It's really just a wonderful video...one needs to know no more than that.
11. Public Enemy
Fight the Power
P.E.'s most memorable and powerful song/video anthem. Only a group like P.E. could generate an impromptu political march like the one captured in this clip. The best part of the video: the crowd's reaction to the unforgettable line, "Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me / he's a straight-up racist, the sucka was simple and plain / motherfuck him and John Wayne" with Mr. F's (Flavor Flav) stare into the camera. I remember when I played this song for my sophomore English class...same stare, same reaction.
(By the way, there was in fact a time when Flavor Flav's antics meant something more than embarassment and personal gain. After watching this video, you will understand why so many people object to that bullshit on VH1.)
10. Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody
Really, no top 10 is complete without this song, seemingly no matter the subject. Best karakoe songs? It's a top 10. Best song incorporated in a movie? Wayne's World revived this song. Best leotard worn by a male vocalist? Freddie Mercury's got you there too. Music video? Put it on there.
9. Outkast
B.O.B.
Kids running with Andre 3000 through purple grass and green streets. Big Boi jumping Caddies to get to the top of an 18-wheeler. And a strippers pole. Yes, this video does in fact have it all. Go ahead...try not to dance.
8. Jamiroquai
Virtural Insanity
The best video ever to incorporate conveyor belts, no contest. If that's not enough to get you to follow the link, forget it.
(The pose-striking part is pretty fun too.)
7. Chris Rock
No Sex in the Champagne Room
Things you can't help but laugh at: Chris Rock's face at the strip club; Chris Rock's impersonation of Coolio; a picture of cornbread; Gerald Levert just killing the chorus; the horoscope pictures. Where is Chris Rock nowadays?
6. Busta Rhymes
Dangerous
This video always makes me wonder (1) how would I look through a fish-eye lens, (2) how would I look in a shiny suit, and (3) how would I look if I were white? I'm guessing the answers are, respectively, (1) not good, (2) not good, and (3) not good.
Anyway, the video is funny as hell.
5. Peter Gabriel
Sledgehammer
Arguably the best music video of all time, and I couldn't even begin to explain why. It's really just Peter Gabriel subjected to a bunch of random backgrounds and morphs to stop-go camera work and clay animation. And it's pretty fucking awesome.
Quick aside: there are so many parts of the video that can be your favorite moment, but I'm going to go with the dancing turkeys. Again, not sure why.
4. Beastie Boys
Sabotage
Is there anything this video lacks? It's Reno 911 without the gayness. It's got fake mustaches that only Anchorman can rival. Aviator glasses of the size that rivals those of coke dealers and poker players.
(You had to know the Beasties were going to be mentioned sooner or later.)
3. Pink Floyd
Another Brick in the Wall
The video is actually part of a bigger production by the Floyd -- a full length motion picture based on their album, The Wall. I don't think there is any other video that captures my visualization of high school...all education before college really, with the exception of G/T in elementry school. "No dark sarcasm in the classroom," indeed.
Seriously, a very good video for its time, and I can say that without any Floyd-bias at all.
2. Pearl Jam
Do The Evolution
I was caught trying to decide between which of two Pearl Jam videos to post -- "Do the Evoluton" or "Jeremy." Both are powerful depictions to great songs, the former having gained major critical acclaim at its release. "Do the Evolution" is just a little more disturbing, a little more intellectual, a little more powerful for me. Take the time to watch both.
1. The Notorious B.I.G. featuring Puff Daddy and Mase
Mo Money Mo Problems
I'm not going to apologize for this pick. In fact, I'm sorry I didn't put more videos from the mid 90's Bad Boy era. "Hypotize," "Been Around the World," "Feel So Good," "Flava In Ya Ear." All of those -- love them. Yes, it's the bubble lens, the shiny suits, Hype Williams direction, and Fuzzy Badfeet. ... Okay now here is my 30 favorite videos :
1. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
2. (The)Pleasure Principle - Janet Jackson
3. Kick, Push - Lupe Fiasco
4. BOB - OutKast
5. Land Of Confustion - Genesis
6. All three versions of Jesus Walks - Kanye West
7. Without Me - Eminem
8. California Love - Tupac Shakur, feat. Dr Dre
9. Lovely - Bubba Sparxxx
10. When Doves Cry - Prince
11. Dare - Gorrilaz, feat. Shaun Rhyder
12. Clint Eastwood - Gorrilaz, feat. Del The Homosaphien
13. Girls, Girls, Girls - Jay Z
14. Changes - Tupac Shakur
15. AC/DC - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
16. What We Do - The Roots
17. Hurt - Johnny Cash
18. Closer - Nine Inch Nails
19. Devil's Haircut - Beck
20. Sabotage - Beastie Boys
21. Ch-Ch-Check It Out - Beastie Boys
22. I'm Your Boogeyman - White Zombie
23. Dragula - Rob Zombie
24. Never Gonna Stop [Red, Red Groovy] - Rob Zombie
25. Army Of Me - Bjork
26. Virtual Insanity - Jamiroquai
27. Do The Evolution - Pearl Jam
28. Crosstown Traffic - Jimi Hendrix
29. Legs - ZZ Top OR Breathe - Fabolous
and 30. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Now since that is in the can, its time to wrap this blog up. Be sure to check out THE DEVIL'S MISCHIEF, ZAC CRAIN'S WEBSITE, PIKHASSO, PICNIC & TAHITI and all the other things I recommend, to keep ya challenged. Till next time, trust only in your mind.
dr phibes
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