Gotta get down on Friday, amiright?

In a lighter departure from my last post (regarding the rapacious cash-grab that is digital distribution), I thought I'd post a few tasty jams. After all, everybody's looking forward to the weekend, weekend.

Bag Raiders - Turbo Love (Original Mix) [YouTube link - download link soon]

Wolfgang Gartner - Undertaker (Krafty Kuts Re-dub)

Fucked

I know net neutrality is old news, but it infuriates me more and more. In the last few years, technology has leapt farther than I would have imagined. Merely 6 years ago, the Wii was just a twinkle in Reggie Fils-Amie's evil cyborg eye. PS3 wasn't even close to release. In these inhuman, nigh ancient times, playing DivX movies on the big screen required ingenuity and a smattering of elbow grease - to the point where actually paying for this sort of content on a VOD service was reasonable, I mean, unless you wanted to watch The Departed on my 15" Dell laptop. Nowadays, if you know where to look, absolutely everything is free and open. But tons of people are still paying out the ass for content that should be absolutely free - or at least streaming unlimited-ly, Netflix style. But a ridiculous amount of effort has been made on the part of Apple, Time Warner, and Comcast to monetize what should be free.

The fight over net neutrality is the latest turd nugget to be added to this gigantic crock of shit. If you're not familiar with net neutrality, it basically states that an ISP can't decide which sites / services have speedy transfers. Basically, Time Warner could extort a website into paying some kind of fee that guarantees that its transfer speeds won't be artificially diminished. The implications of a lack of net neutrality are obviously nauseating, more so when you note that the Republicans, champions of big business, are fighting tooth and nail to overturn the FCC's recent rulings that the net should be neutral. Not to mention that in North Carolina, a ruling was recently made that it was unfair to giant conglomerates for smaller cable companies to charge less for better service. Not to mention Fox demanding that TWC pull channels from its new streaming iPad app. Not to even mention that even though I pay Hulu $7 a month for the fucking privilege, I can't watch Archer or Community on my PS3. And I thought I was entitled to watch all the programs I pay to see. How naive of me.

These issues are a daily, relentless mindfuck for me. Why am I, the end-user, the ultimate bad guy for only wanting to pay once for for my music, movies, and TV? This kind of bullshit is so tragically far from uncommon, that I can't say it shocks me any more. The total transparency and remorselessness of it all- that's the real fucking shocker. At least when I was a kid they pretended to be looking out for me.

Nobody Cares about Your Junior Year Abroad

If you went abroad, you're probably thinking, hey guy, nobody cares about your stupid fucking blog either. Well, fuck you.

There are really two possible scenarios in which somebody is talking about their year abroad: they are either talking to someone who didn't go abroad, or are talking to someone who did go abroad. Right?

If the former: The person you're talking to doesn't care, isn't absorbing the information, and most likely now thinks you're a douchetard. Nobody (probably not even your parents) wants to hear about how you can't stand the chinese food in New York City because nobody serves this one dish you used to eat, like, all the time when you were backpacking through the Cantonese countryside.

If the latter: The person you're talking to may be smiling and nodding, with an occasional "oh wow, that sounds amazing!", but he / she is really just thinking about their own time abroad, and is simply waiting for you to shut your mouth so they can launch into their counterpoint about how the clubs in Italy are like totally amazing and make it, like, not even fun to go out in America anymore.

Keep it to yourself, you cosmopolitan asshole.

I was thinking about buying an iPad because I love to read all the time, but then again that seems like an awfully expensive thing to leave next to the toilet.

While you think about that, here are two sweet summer jams.

Yuksek & Chromeo - So Down

Whitenoize & Discotech - Burnin'

Jonga jonga to you all. After a harrowing stint in a peruvian prison, the writing staff is back: the jams are back, the comedy are back, the hammy whamjammers are back, a whole malignant tuba are back on you, coming full force with relentless, spine crushing grooves and memorable hooks.

Upon our safe return, we were embroiled with one thinking: never again. Never again the screams, screeching of steel on steel, bitter cold Andean wind whistling through cruel steel bars. Never again shall our readers be left to fend for themselves, listening to crappy music, because it sounds exactly like all of those things.

Kidda - Under the Sun (Herve Remix)

More On Comedies

i think that the answer to why the apatowian raunch comedy genre has been so lame recently is that the writers, producers, and directors have gotten famous/successful enough to wave off their editors, and they are making things that are way too long. here is a list of pretty funny movies from the last few years and their respective runtimes:

old school - 91 min

anchorman - 94 min

role models - 99 min

hot tub time machine - 99 min

get him to the greek - 109 min

pineapple express - 111 min

forgetting sarah marshall - 111 min

superbad - 113 min

knocked up - 129 min

funny people - 146 min

now, take another look at that list. if you had to rank those movies from "funniest" to "least funny" wouldn't the order be almost exactly the same? i mean, maybe you drop get him to the greek a couple slots (haven't seen it yet) and bump anchorman over old school, but other than that, isnt it about the same?

shakespeare once said "brevity is the soul of wit." apparently, hollywood has forgotten this, as they continue to release these bloated comedies with their even more bloated "unrated editions" that just have more of the jokes that aren't funny and were cut for a reason.

by contrast, i've been very impressed with the quality of comedy writing on television. from network shows like glee, modern family, and how i met your mother, to cable shows like always sunny or south park, to premium shows like eastbound and down or party down, the writing is pithy, funny, and tight. i think that by having to adhere to a 22 or 28 minute timeframe, the writers have a much better understanding that they need to be funny quickly.

this has been an extremely long post for one that is all about how things need to be short (on a comedy website, no less!) so i'll cut it off now, but here's a little reward for your reading efforts:

Milkman - Lactose and THC (whole album)