Anyway in the spirit of the new year here is my best of 2008 list. Actually it won't be in list form. Oh, and I reserve the right to use any year.
Comic strip of the year: Rocky. I think I've mentioned it before on here as a favorite for reading practice. I'm sure I'm violating any number of copyright laws by posting these examples here, but if you are about to prosecute... Just tell me and I'll remove them forthwith:
I didn't bother to fully decipher the first one but he's in Norway promoting his new book (the material for the strip is derived from his real life experiences mostly, and he is Swedish) and complaining about his fans and then later he's on the toilet and a fan sticks his hand under the stall to get an autograph. The second quite comical romp occurs at an in store book signing again on his book tour in Norway. A child (with the Norwegian flag on his hat and shirt) asks very politely in Norwegian for an autograph in a notebook and Rocky's Norwegian handler tells the kid to piss off cause Rocky is only signing "Rocky" books or "Rocky" magazines. The little kid runs away crying in Norwegian (Wæææ!). Rocky says "Yeah, yeah, run and buy the damn book for $600 and then get your ass to the end of the line, you all have oil here so you can fucking afford it!" Then a smoking hot teenage bitch (female dog!) asks if he can sign her shirt and his handler starts to say "he's only signing..." when Rocky lunges over the table and grabs the bitches shirt and says "These are my fans!!! They made me who I am today!!" Then the Norwegian handler says sarcastically "Sexually frustrated geek with hubris...?" Get it? HAHAHAHA!!! It's interesting because he often writes in different languages, showcasing the national propensity for multilinguality.
Anyway, next up on my "BeSt oF 2008!!!!" list: Michael Jackson: Thriller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)
Do yourself a favor and read that. It was nothing short of a musical revolution. The Beatles (self-admittedly) put white faces on black music and cashed in, becoming what many consider the greatest musical act of the century. Elvis before them. FINALLY a black person was truly cashing in on his own music and not just being used as a means to a financial end for some bald fat sweaty white dudes who couldn't dance their way out of a wet paper sack. To think that only a little over 20 years ago MTV were scared to give a black person primetime exposure and had to be threatened before they would play his videos at all. MTV!! WTF?? Do they even have white people on there anymore? (I kid, I kid, I wouldn't know anway, I can't remember the last time I watched it)
In other 2008 music news, be sure to check out: "Give it away" by RHCP. The fact that that song pushed them into uber-stardom completely blows my mind. The song is nuts! Go back and listen to it again and ask yourself if you could ever have predicted that song would be a hit. If I had to guess before it became popular I would have said: "No way, it sounds retarded!" Retarded awesome! Radio stations refused to play it because it had "no melody". Seriously the song is awesome but in a completely idiosyncratic way. Maybe that's why people went crazy for it.
D.J. Shadow "Endtroducing". If you haven't heard it you suck. The first album EVER created entirely from samples of other people's music. FIRST EVER. Everybody does it now. Perpetually imitated, rarely equaled.
Favorite blog of the past few years: TOKYO DAMAGE REPORT.
www.hellodamage.com/tdr
I visit this site with damn near religiosity. I think it has all the mainstream appeal of Gorgoroth (oh, another good thing that actually is from this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avnsgYvHPK8&feature=channel
watch TILL THE END, you won't regret it, and if you like it watch the other 4 parts) but if you are interested in Japanese culture and/or metal and/or have a little knowledge of either you will hopefully find the blog hilarious. Schultz is an absolute crazy looking GENIUS.
Coolest milieu of the year: Late '70s Miami cocaine culture, BEFORE the cuban/colombian wars. The amount of money made in the span of time and adjusted for inflation... Well I guess the current run of Ponzi scheme, sub-prime loan, and general regular workin' dude rapists probably have it beat by a long shot, but WHO HAD THE DISCO CLUBS?!?!?! HUH???? That's right. Plus it built a city, and DIDN'T ruin the worldwide economy, so it had that going for it!
I guess thats enough of that for now. My daily three hours of "me" time have dwindled to 30 minutes.
PEACE
No comments:
Post a Comment