fourfour

The best thing that ever happened in the history of things happening

I swear, this isn't becoming a video blog, but this is too amazing not to share. Slutmachine uploaded to YouTube this fucking unbelievable red-carpet footage of Elizabeth Taylor that ran on Friday's Entertainment Tonight (read her Jezebel post on it here). Liz answers the question that's on everyone's mind: will she be getting married for the ninth time? (Admit it: you've stayed up entire nights wondering.) Do yourself a favor and watch till the very end. The magic happens during the last second. This shit is so viral, it gave me herpes.

I have always wondered what would happen if Edith Bunker fused with Mo Sizlack ("Whaaaa!?"). And now I know. And now I'm complete.

Update: Holy shit, now she's howling.

Good times and things

This is about 15 minutes of pure splendor: Amy Sedaris' appearance on Tuesday's episode of The Martha Stewart Show. Amy is a very funny woman but her true talent is her ability to openly mock and simultaneously charm a person. My favorite moment occurs when Martha asks Amy about the smoked cheese she's adding to her demonstration cheeseball. You can hear Amy quietly say, "Don't judge me," while Martha is going on about not liking smoked cheese. It's subtle, but so so brilliant.

Also, the way her face falls after Martha tells her, "You're very gullible, Amy," makes me crack up. Jerri Blank will never die as long as Amy Sedaris is making talk-show appearances.

(Note: The videos have been long deleted from YouTube, but here, at least, is Segment 1.)

Winston vs. the string

Spoiler: the string wins.

(Download)

God forbid he lift a paw, you know?

Busted-up, broke-down models

(Image courtesey Jonno and his Flickr.)

So, I have to admit that I was dreading this. The past four months have been blissfully recap-free in these parts, and the vacation of sorts more than made up for the hit my traffic took as a result. I worried about getting back into these recaps -- had I lost my touch? Did I even have anything to say about this show anymore? Was I still willing devote all the time that these recaps recaps?

I still wasn't sure as I watched the opening of the admittedly awesome Cycle 9 premiere of ANTM on Wednesday. And then, my destiny became clear. There was no turning back. See, just a few minutes in, there it was, smiling at me:

Ah. This image is so comforting, it's as though I'm reentering the womb...through Tyra's arm.

It feels so good to be back.

will.i...like?

Is it freaking anyone else the fuck out that will.i.am samples maybe the greatest, but not at all mainstream, electrohouse track of our time, M.A.N.D.Y. vs. Booka Shade's 2005 song "Body Language," on his album Songs About Girls? (For your comparing pleasure, here's will's track, "Get Your Money" and here's "Body Language.") He's turning to the Germans that no one of his ilk cares about! That's so Afrika Bambaataa of him! I can't be sure if my freak-out is of the the-world-is-ending-and-it's-freaking-me-out variety or this-is-my-happening-and-it-freaks-me-out variety.

...But I'm leaning toward the latter. On first listen, Songs About Girls is fucking amazing. Ugh. I can't believe that I not only can tolerate but am totally digging a record by a member of the Black Eyed Peas virtually in its entirety. I never thought I'd feel this way. I know will's a Ferg-enabler, so he's at least slightly wicked, but yeah: I'm kinda blown away. A full review may be coming. In the meantime, listen to the track above and take pleasure in the fact that hip-house lives! I know I am.

In case you need reminding...

...ANTM recaps will be up on Mondays. Duh.

If you wanna be rude about it, we can be rude about it, Cracker Wack. If you don't get that stank look off your face, I'll wipe it off with my secret weapon. Its name is Tuesday.

Bitch, don't tempt me.

(But really: how great was that episode? And it was just a stupid semi-finals show. If I don't see this show for a while, I forget just how deep my love is for it. ANTM is like the televised equivalent of my grandma.)

Waiting for tonight

To get you ready for tonight's cycle premiere of ANTM, I've compiled a greatest-hits package of sorts after the jump: it's a big cluster of some of my favorite animated gifs I've made over the cycles. On my own and via some help (thanks to Erin and Caitlin), I've noticed a few sites have made big posts of gifs that I've taken and I have to say that a sea of mugging Tyras all on one page is pretty fucking hypnotizing. So, to reclaim what I've essentially taken from television, I thought I'd compile my own. Call it a wall of motion. Call it my art. Call it the extent of my accomplishment in my 28 years on earth.

Going over my files, I found the first Tyra gif I ever made in a folder simply titled "Tyra gif." To think that there was a day when there was just one!

And now, grabbing frames from DVD and threading them together is practically second nature to me. I've evolved so much as a person! Thank you, ANTM!

Keep in mind that there are tons of gifs below, so the page is going to take a while to load. Hit the jump an then go do something productive. I suggest flossing. Seriously, it's important and there's no worse smell on earth than plaque breath. You don't want people to think you have a rotting corpse in your mouth when you talk to them, do you?

Getting in the way of what I'm feeling

"Can you please write something positive?" my sister asked me on the phone last week. "Everything's asshole this, hate that, annoying this, douchebag that." While I would have loved get all Treach on her ass and spit, "Say something positive? Well positive ain't where I live," at her, I can't really refute what she's saying. It's true -- I've been grumpy lately. The only cliché I find more reliably truthful than "the grass is always greener" is "when it rains, it pours," so please forgive my recent shitstorm.

Alternately, if you have emotional cavities, please forgive me for the torrent of sweet nothings I'm about to unleash for the new Alicia Keys single, "No One." This song makes my balls tingle the same way that a roller coaster does. I haven't been as obsessed with an R&B song since Ne-Yo's "Because of You," and that's probably no coincidence (more on this in a sec). While I've never doubted her talent, I've always found Alicia to be somewhat overrated. Yes, she can play the piano and write songs, but I feel like early on, she was pegged as a virtuoso, while the reality is that generally what comes from her hands has the hypnotic stasis of played scales. Her voice is strong but ultimately plain-jane, and her songs tend to glide from the middle of the road into a ditch ("adult"-minded shit like "Diary" or "A Woman's Worth" is so boring, it practically puts itself to sleep). She's had plenty of great singles, don't get me wrong ("Girlfriend," "You Don't Know My Name," "If I Ain't Got You") -- I just would warn anyone to not believe the hype.

Until now, probably. Her trajectory sort of reminds me of Kate Bush's -- of course, Kate's weirder and more self-consciously arty (after all, she doesn't have to answer to the inherently trite foundation of the soul tradition), but she turned in two rather laconic albums (The Kick Inside and Lionheart), before revealing her most crucial strength as an artist -- production. It was with her third album, 1980's Never For Ever, that Kate blazed the path she'd follow to musical genius and, with any luck, Alicia will follow modified suit when As I Am drops Nov. 13. "No One" gives all indication that it will, as Keys (joined behind the boards by perma-partner Krucial, as well as Dirty Harry) is, for maybe the first time, banking on nuance via her song's production.

"No One" could have been any one of Keys songs without its details. If it were missing Keys' near-crazed vocals, if it were missing the analog keyboard that worms in during the chorus, if it were missing that 4/4 stomp, it'd be just another fluffy Keys track I'd flip past on the radio. Thank god it isn't. I can't be totally sure, but I believe that Alicia wrote "No One" in a range that's just above her own, so that virtually every note she sings is strained (a trick used by Ike Turner on Tina -- he was a sadist, Alicia's a masochist). Her dirtied-up passion alone could sell the song -- her reggae-like bellowing is part "No Woman, No Cry," part Mary J. in Ghostface's "All That I Got Is You" (check the bridge at 2:44 and try not to weep at the fact that Blige's singing wasn't used for the video). A classier joint might have placed strings (or even horns) in the place of that analog keyboard I mentioned -- it's extremely Stevie Wonder of her to consciously choose the synthesized over the organic. There's something politely fuck-you about her force of electronics upon her audience. Fuck me, too.

And then there's that 4/4 beat, the love of my life. It's so insane how present it's become again, and loathe as I am to admit it, I have Justin Timberlake (via Timbaland) to thank. Not that I was really there, but it feels like the '70s again, when disco was so pervasive that everything slow and fast had that 4/4 stomp. Songs like "No One" and Ne-Yo's "Because of You" serve as the downtempo counterpoints to the candy-house trend that Justin's "SexyBack" set and Timbaland's "The Way I Are" and Britney's "Gimme More" have continued. Alicia's and Ne-Yo's tracks are the "It Ain't No Big Thing"s and "I Just Want To Be Your Everything"s of their day. I'm absolutely tickled that house, or some weird approximation of it, is on the comeback trail and I'm almost stupefied that it's coming at us from multiple angles. House is a feeling and it's gushing right now.

And so am I. Alicia isn't changing society with her message or anything ("It will only get better," "People keep talking / They can say what they like," hmmm...where have I heard such sentiments before? Oh yeah. EVERYWHERE.), though the R&B world would be a better place if it were full of the passion and gentle weirdness that Alicia exhibits here. She sells her clichés like R&B's going out of business. I feel lucky to be a consumer.

Winston is annoying

Below is a little slice of Winston's life. It's also the story of my life. I know that this may somewhat undermine his cuteness (or his cute-ugliness), but whatever. The truth needs to be said: I live with a brat.

(Download)

Winston mostly cries like this when he's hungry, i.e. ALWAYS. But you know what the best thing about this video is? When I was putting it together, Winston was attempting to sleep next to me on the couch, but he kept waking up, hearing his own crying and the pre-meal sounds present in the clips I was editing. Ha! Now he knows how annoying he is. I mean, I'm sure he forgot immediately, but the moment of justice was worth it.

Voting no

I love how Kanye West and 50 Cent have structured this whole album-release-date competition as an election. There's a debate, grassroots campaigning and an unending amount of mudslinging from both sides. That speaks so much to their respective characters. I mean, seriously, what kind of person would effectively compare himself to a politician? I hate them both for wasting my fucking time: announcing "We're both assholes!" would have gotten the point across all the same.

The thing is, they are politicians. They're both power-binging for the sake of power-binging (because their unending lyrical braggadocio isn't going to change anyone's world but their own). Neither would ever take a stance that could hurt their respective futures (even Kanye's bravest moment, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," found him just stating the obvious). Neither would rock the boat musically, either -- Kanye's Graduation is more electronic than his past work (he calls it the "future of rap music," which means that rap is just catching up to Daft Punk circa '01 and/or the vintage-synth-having, Michael Jackson-sporting '80s. He's calling hip-hop retarded, OK?). 50's Curtis is occasionally softer than usual. Either side's new material isn't shocking or particularly fantastic. They'll both lie to your face (Kanye's done with MTV? 50's quitting when he inevitably loses this silly marketing scheme? Now they both just called you retarded.) These two men are slimy, slimy people who gleefully substitute savvy for conviction every chance they get. They have nothing to say except for that which has a chance of grabbing your attention. Choosing one would be like choosing the lesser of two evils. Of course, you could buy Ani DiFranco (here, Dennis Kucinich, obviously) or, I don't know, Kenny Chesney (who's...Christ...uh, Larry Craig?). Go ahead, throw your vote away.

At least this is an election that you can avoid entirely and sleep at night knowing that you didn't have some indirect hand in flushing the world down the toilet. Yeah, you'll end up living through the presence of 50 and Kanye, but you'd have to anyway if you pay attention to pop culture. The only thing that's going to come out of this is that one massive ego will expand -- the other (the loser's [50's]), will just stay where it is, as this will be such an easy thing to forget once it's over (it is, after all, based in pop music). My point is: you can't change things here. The rich get richer and louder and louder. You're powerless, and while I tend to think that this is true even in the grander scheme of things (democracy be damned), you can thank 50 and Kanye for reminding you of it all over again. See? I told you they were assholes.