fourfour

Passion, Pit

Just so you know what you're getting into, Pitbull (with the help of Akon) warns that he is not Mr. Right, but he can be Mr. Right Now. I think that is very polite! Here are some things that Mr. Right Now aka Mr. Worldwide will to do you (but, I'm guessing, only if you want):

- Make you his queen
- Love you "endless" [sic]
- Make sure your peach feels peachy
- Steal your heart
- Play night and day
- Unsnap your bra (with his teeth)
- Hit the spot (ding, ding, ding)
- Pop your clutch

Pitbull's sixth full-length, Planet Pit, is the most respectful bit of extended lewdness that I've ever experienced. His sexual prowess is based on how much pleasure he can provoke. After listening to him go on for an hour, I have no sense of this man's penis or even his own preferences because they are, per his on-record character, dependent on the taste of the woman he's inevitably trying to please. The wildest he gets is when he engages in the occasional threesome, but that's ultimately the product of an open mind ("Other girls want my girl, and I think that's cool"). He's so giving that he's practically a bottom. He makes me swoon.

I'm not the target audience for his come-ons, but his voice, the way purrs and then pinches into a scratch, is the sexiest in music today. It's the larynx's answer to squinting eyes. That it might flip into Spanish makes it even sexier. I do not mean to exoticize this Cuban American -- I only mean to say that his calculated seduction hits the spot, ding, ding, ding. (I do realize that his Lothario character could just be playing a character to woo women with counterfeit compassion.) That he surrounds himself with those prone to flights of fancy (Ne-Yo doing some sweet-booty crooning on the lovable "Give Me Everything," Marc Anthony going to freestyle levels of drama on "Rain Over Me," Chris Brown straining while delivering what amounts to a jingle on "International Love") is somewhat like a moderately attractive woman deliberately choosing homely friends -- maybe it's cheap, but the effect only makes him look better.

As a whole, Planet Pit is as ravishing as its star. It's mostly house with some outer genre flourishes (merengue, Beetle Juice among them), but its uncomplicated percussion designs remind me of '08 and '09, when house was just starting to penetrate pop music again, and sounded accordingly naive and tentative (instead of blowing you out with brick waveforms and crunching polyrhythms, as it does now all over Top 40 radio). Save some bongo fluttering, Pit's tracks star the stomp and the beats are as satisfying as really great 25-cent rubber balls you buy at the supermarket. (The sole freestyle oriented track, "Where Do We Go," which was unexpectedly, bizarrely produced by '90s house god Marc Kinchen, is excepted.) As opposed to so many other contemporary pop-house tracks, Pit doesn't belabor club talk (in fact, the only person to set such a scene explicitly is one of the guests on "Took My Love" -- Vein, perhaps?). That he is in the club is inevitable, either because he's been there for a while now or when you're having as great of a time as he is, the world is your club (and he has, per constant reminders, gone global).

Besides, Planet Pit is mostly about private matters, and I love the idea of house music as sex music. It's insistent and at a much more exciting tempo than, say, "You Are My Lady" (not that "You Are My Lady" isn't wonderful however you want to use it). It's also a way of making house more matter-of-fact than the bottle-service propaganda it so often tends to be. You don't have to mention the club to get played in one, and that Pitbull realizes that makes him sound smarter than so many of his contemporaries. Strange but true!

In last week's New York Times review, Jon Caramanica wrote that Planet Pit "suggests the full-fledged arrival of a new strain of hip-house." The thought crossed my mind, as well, although serious hip-house artists like those on DJ International were serious about hip-house and Pitbull is kind of a clown. Yes, his voice is great and many of his lines are impressively dumb clever ("Mami, you the Internet / And I'm lookin' for a download"), but he's having too much fun to settle down (god help you when he does and pukes out the "Airplanes" rip-off "Castle Made of Sand" alongside Kelly Rowland). Often lasting only as long as 8 bars and doing much of his own hyping ("Now go, stop, drop, pause..." he moans on the brilliantly literal "Pause"), he seems more like the best house music guest rapper of all time (my favs are those on "Finally" and "Too Blind to See It"). Or maybe he puts Snap, Black Box, Culture Beat, Captain Hollywood Project, et. al., to shame and emerges as the best Eurohouse rapper of all time. That would, after all, be pretty worldwide of him.

By the way while I'm taking music, my Beyoncé 4 review is up at the Village Voice now, and also I recently did a Q&A with Pete Hammond that was extremely enjoyable to conduct!

Everything Is Festival (+ me)

 

I'm going to be joining Everything Is Terrible and Cinefamily's Mondo Squad for a screening of a bunch of our videos in Los Angeles on Saturday at 8 (Cinefamily is located at 611 N Fairfax Avenue, which means nothing to me because I don't live in Los Angeles, but I will be there!). If you live in L.A., you should come. Even if you don't, you should fly to L.A. for the night because this will be the best thing that ever happened in a live setting (best thing since Andrew WK delivered a keynote speech at the festival just a few hours before us, that is). There's more info at the festival page, and the description of the show I'm taking part in is:

Cinefamily’s grabbing the zeitgeist by the nutsack and squeezing the video juice out of the YouTube for all of our viewing pleasure! Tonight we celebrate two of our favorite memes in the viral video world: “supercuts” and “trash compactors.” You know, like when TV Carnage cut together every “Gimmie your badge…and your gun” moment from every shitty cop movie ever made, or when FourFour did a mashup of every time someone said “I’m not here to make friends” on a reality TV show — that’s a “Supercut.” And when that anonymous editor compressed 120 minutes of Wicker Man Nic Cage insanity into a high-powered two-minute H-bomb of hilarity — that’s a “Trash Compactor.” This show features our favorite pre-existing classics in these two categories, and a group show bursting full of brand-new premieres by Everything Is Terrible, FourFour, Cinefamily’s own Mondo Squad, and more. I tube, you tube, we all tube for YouTube! Tonight’s show features a live appearance by online video mashup maven FourFour!

I'm a maven, guys. It feels spectacular. Buy your tickets and watch me bask.

6/24/11

Tonight, after my boyfriend (legally, my domestic partner) cooked a wonderful dinner whose centerpiece was black cod I purchased off Gilt Taste earlier this week, we had a disagreement that led to an argument that led to me saying things I took back within minutes while we both checked our Internet-powered electronic devices re: the New York Senate gay marriage vote. He told me that he previously told himself he'd break up with me if marriage were legalized and I deferred my right to make our love official (eight and a half years is official enough for me!), and I gave him some ultimatums of my own. We went on for a while and then agreed to disagree and/or revisit the subject and/or believe in possibility. And then we spent a long time kissing and embracing after we'd heard the measure had passed. On a political level, I've never been anti-gay marriage, but on a personal level, my opinion been so clear cut. I now see the practical reasons to get hitched (no inheritance tax!) and would say my position on it is evolving. I've never felt a need to have outsiders dignify my feelings, except for the outsider that matters most to me. If it makes him happy, it's worth doing. I expect to get over myself shortly.

Regardless, I rejoice for the masses. I didn't spend the night with my boyfriend, but my friend Nick. On the way over to his SoHo loft, my livery cab driver was freaking out about a bunch of cars on Delancey that were pulled over and apparently damaged. She was freaking out about their hoods being up and them being up on tire jacks, all, "Something happened," and I thought, "No shit, lady." She seemed to mean "happened" in the most  Happening sense of the word possible. I half expected her to draw some parallel between vehicular malfunction and the Senate's decision. I just figured there was something in the road that fucked up everyone's tires and thought little beyond that as I compulsively checked Twitter and tried to express my joy adequately (having others dignifying feelings is one thing; having them dignify your existence is quite another). She was going on about these cars and then freaking out because she thought hers was sloping down on the passenger's side (in the direction of the cars that were pulled over). In my head was, "#latinacabbieproblems." She even jumped out at an intersection to make sure her tire wasn't flat and I seriously wanted to say, "Don't you know that a revolution happened tonight, lady?" But whatever: concerns are relative. We all need something to think about. Both of our minds were full: mine with how wonderful the night would be and already was, and hers with fear that she'd have to cross back over the Williamsburg Bridge and risk running over the mysterious derailing substance. Occupation is occupation.

At my friend Nick's apartment, I spoke with his friend Agi about fragrance and we drank vodka and listened to my iPod (even though it has nothing to do with homosexuals, Beyoncé's "Countdown" was exuberant enough to be mood music). At one point Madonna's "Borderline" came on shuffle and because it's so MOR sounding (despite its production coming from a man I very much admire, Reggie Lucas) I would normally skip that track but tonight I thought, "You know what? No. Tonight is the night that you let Madonna play through." We left his apartment before the song ended.

We found ourselves at Eastern Bloc, where I finally met a Twitter acquaintance (one of the DJs, Jeff), who'd eventually play Sylvester and Patrick Cowley's "Do You Wanna Funk?" That song was written after Cowley was on the brink of AIDS death and resurrected miraculously for a moment, before finally succumbing to the disease. Even in the '80s, there was gay magic. I like to think that it rubbed off and reverberated and that without figures like our hi-NRG-making brothers, we wouldn't be where we are today. Sometimes, the presence of a historical event can make you glaze over history, but our revelry was aware. At least, mine was. Some kid who clearly was not hired by the establishment played on the stripper pole, using it as a brace as he sloppily walked up the wall. Any other night, it would have been annoying. Tonight, it just seemed like a natural response.

And then we went to Stonewall, to really feel history. Hours and hours after the decision was announced, the celebrating remained fervid.

 

The excitement was contagious, not that I would have been any less excited were it not. Gay meant gay meant happy. I talked to a boyfriend of Nick's friend about South Jersey for a while and then we all decided to go home because (and this is the gayest thing about my gay gay night), I had to get up early for a training session that I scheduled at 9 am deliberately to keep me from getting wild no matter what the decision would be. Legislature starts from within. (Incidentally, that training was part of a package, and was also purchased from Gilt.)

We took a taxi to Nick's and then I was by myself, once again trying to dam my happy tears in the back of a cab and once again failing. Sometimes I'll have a cab drop me off about an avenue block away from my apartment in Williamsburg because I'll want to listen to one last song for the night. It's queer, but that's me. I got out minutes away from my place, I pressed PLAY on my phone and again was met with "Borderline." Again, I decided to let it ride out. As I put my key in the door to my building, the song ended. How perfect, I thought. Perfect on top of perfect, even.

Bobby and Whitney, doing it themselves

 

As a followup to yesterday's Whitney Houston pride post, here's some vintage raw interview footage of Bobby and Whitney on one of his birthdays. As far as I know, this footage has never before been shown in its entirety. As far as the content goes, they are so flippant and aggressive! Not to mention passionate about black history! It's easy to look at this stuff and think, "Path to destruction," if in fact you feel these people are now destroyed, but I love how spontaneous and devil-may-care-about-media-training they are. They didn't need anyone but themselves to make an interview work. How many celebrities can you say that about today?

"I Wanna Go" video review hakiu

Rock of Love girl hair,
Kelly MacNamara eyes:
Brit's "I Wanna Go"

(OK, that's not much of a review. Nor will this be: I like the video because of the Half-Baked references and because it's not Weekend At Britney's III. If she's propped up, you can barely tell!)

Your pride is NOT her pride

 

My favorite Whitney is defensive Whitney (Nippy has bite!), and so I love this clip from her 1999 MTV All Access special that someone truly wonderful recently put in my hands. In it, John Norris asks her about her performance at New York's pride festivities in 1999 and, in light of the longstanding rumors about Whitney's own sexuality, she immediately differentiates her pride (for being a mother and a wife and a daughter and a sister and a lover and a friend) from gay pride. OK! We get it! You are everything in the world aside from gay, Whitney!

Her tone is otherwise of reciprocal appreciation. The footage of her freaking out on house remixes of "It's Not Right But It's Okay" and "Heartbreak Hotel" in front of a throng of rapturous gays is hilarious. The best supporting performance award goes to her non-supporting belt.

Happy Pride, whatever it is that you're proud of.

Winston + an iPad

 

Our years of attempting to confront Winston with himself have been fruitless -- he looks away when his own image is thrust at him by mirror, and he's never responded to anything on screen...until he was introduced to an iPad. Letting animals see themselves for the first time is obviously what technology is all about.

Some bonus shots of Winston posing by the 'Pad are below.

You should read Wifey

When I was a child devouring Judy Blume's catalog, I remember seeing Wifey on my mom's bookshelf and being forbidden from reading it when I expressed completist interest in it. I vowed one day to read it and promptly forgot about that for years and years until recently. (Similarly, I still haven't seen the explicit strip club scene of Flashdance -- despite having seen that movie dozens of times, all my viewings took place in the early days of VHS while accompanied by an adult, who'd promptly cover my eyes whenever the...well, whenever whatever happened happened. I can't be sure because, again, I haven't seen it.)

Anyway, I did finally read Wifey and I urge anyone who's looking for a trashy beach read this summer to do the same. You will read it in five minutes and laugh the entire way through. Sexually unsatisfied yuppies in the suburbs say the darnest things! Blume wisely keeps the most outlandish bits confined to her character's dialogue (no-fault omniscience sometimes feels like a cheat, but here it just feels like the best way to tell a story about ridiculous people). She also doesn't let anyone off easy for their poor judgment. I love the way she writes with giant spaces for you to fill in (the fact that she doesn't get bogged down in description influenced me profoundly, for better or worse). It's so easy to read and never feels condescending. Also, the book is about a housewife who gets turned out after seeing a guy jump off a motorcycle in front of her house and jerk off (to completion!). (A starred-and-striped helmet is involved!) What's not to love?

Anyway, the best way I can advocate for picking this up without giving too much away is to list you some of my favorite sentences (and in some irresistible cases, my favorite sentence pairs). Here is your warning: they are naughty...or at least, that's the idea. This book is a product of a time when women talking about and being proactive in their search for sexual satisfaction could still be shocking. I know that things aren't perfect now, but girl talk about sex is now a channel in the cable box of our pop culture. That is to say that this book is largely divorced from the context that made it happen/shocking (/important?), and so taking sentences even further out of context only seems right.

Deniece Williams is amazing

The other night, while watching Deniece Williams' Unsung episode, I started tweeting shots from it, and then all of a sudden there were way too many to tweet so I'm putting them in a post. Don't get me wrong, I love Niecy -- if having a good voice qualifies a person as brilliant, she is a genius. Also, there was recent footage of her falling offstage and then getting back up and performing! What a pro! However, the woman's eye makeup and nails alone could have made her a legend. Un. Real. And seeing it in HD only emphasized that. She was made for 1080p; clearly ahead of her time.

You can click on all of these (except the gif) to make them bigger. You'll probably want to do that:

New favorite thing alert

 

This is from the HBO doc Bobby Fischer: Against the World. The kid's smackdown on the interviewer's creepiness is graceful and effortless. Bravo.