ChristopherLynsey

Kanye dropped a new music video today for “Monster”, the wildly bizarre track from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, featuring Jay Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj and Bon Iver. Although the video leaked in December, this one is official, and some parts – like the Nicki Minaj bit –seem to have been changed.

The writer is a coward, a coward in the face of reality — and consequently he flees into the stable, plastic world of words. Socrates bemoaned writing because he considered it a bastardization of speech. You can go further and bemoan it because it is a bastardization of life itself.

Slavoj Zizek is a maniac and thinks the world is going end soon. Reminds me of Saint Paul, the guy who penned most of the New Testament. In 52 CE, Paul said the end of the world was near in his first letter to Thessalonians (see, 1 Thess 4:15-18). Never happened though.

Religion rules. We all know this. Because religion is obsessed with the rapture, the apocalypse. The end of all this day-to-day shit and the beginning of something supreme. Complete communication with others. Happiness. Love that wholly overcomes loneliness; a never-ending supply of virgins.

But, of course, with all this good comes a lot of bad too. Four Loko has been killing teens and hospitalizing people. And because it is easy to place the ban on the beverage, opposed to irresponsible consumers, legislators are moving to ban it. It’s bad-for-you-drink and it must go, they say.

Brian Eno is interviewed by Dick Flash of Pork Magazine about his new album Small Craft on a Milk Sea (Warp Records). Dick is kind of a pretentious dick to Eno but then again Dick is Eno. #ModernProblems

Jason Mickle is a fashion photographer and through him and an array of technologies (photoshop, lights, etc.) and people (makeup artists, assistants, etc.) he captures a portrait of Eric Lodwick. The photograph appears in a fashion magazine. From this removed standpoint Eric appears God-like, almost perfect.

“I look up from the phone when a shadow steps slowly out of the darkness and it’s such a dramatic moment — her beauty and my subsequent reaction to it — that I have to laugh, and she just stares at me smiling, maybe buzzed, maybe wasted.”

Behind her is a girl in repose, ready, relaxed, accepting, loving. The talking, the philosophizing, the complaints continue, this girl keeps blabbering, and maybe there is something to it.

Knight and Day has two principal characters: Roy Miller, (Tom, the Man, Cruise) and June Havens (Cameron, the thirty-seven-year-old, Diaz). Cruise is an American spy gone rouge. He has supernatural powers. Diaz is a blond mechanic.

On the subway, trying to decide whether or not to go. Decide to go because I have nothing else to do, why not? But ultimately really decide to go because I figure I could write something on it. Then change my mind thinking I don’t really have the wherewithal to write anything on it. Decide to just write the article right now on my Blackberry. I’m on the E, going uptown to my bank, going to cash some checks.

But perhaps the fundamental reason is the underlying philosophy of the show, which is carefully inoffensive and thoroughly populist. The contradictory title of the show reminds us of this reality. It’s a progressive (modern) sitcom about conservative stuff (viz., family). It’s the show for fans of both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.

Christofer Drew (birth name: Christopher Drew Ingle) was born on February 11, 1991 in Joplin, Missouri. At the age of fifteen, he dropped out of high school to pursue his music and art full-time. This decision led to problems at home and financial difficulties as well. But Drew made it work and by the time he was eighteen he had already been on several high-profile tours with the likes of Dashboard Confessional and Gym Class Heroes and won the MTV Woddie Award for best new artist…

For Jack, I am learning, English is almost like a second language. His primary language is a more fluid yet deliberate sonic-speak: Music, instrumentation –– drumming, playing guitar, sampling, clapping, scoring. That is where Jack is most himself, most comfortable, most articulate. “The music is weightless and when I sing so am I” he larks…

Melrose Place is constantly bringing us there. It’s riveting and titillating magic. Euripides would have loved it. It’s absurdist literature for fans of Nip / Tuck and Desperate Housewives. It’s dark humor with a lurid a cover of glam and dazzling dynamics.

The new Xiu Xiu music video “Dear God, I Hate Myself” is kind of like the art-school version of David Letterman’s extramarital confession. Or Lady Gaga for real monsters… It unveils what the mainstream constantly tries to veil: vulnerability, imperfection, and the (often) filthy grit of reality.

This is an album of strange pain. The cover artwork says so itself, just gaze into it: a blurry image of a naked woman tied up on a bed.