SONG OF THE DAY
Best. Girlfriend. Ever.

Don't be jealous, guy. Just buy them yourself and pretend someone got them as a Ccchhhhhhanukah gift for you. It's called pathetic, er, acting.


Oh, and to all the haters that say toys are straightupferkids, I respond with a heartfelt, NON-IRONIC, 80's cover. Ain't no way to come back from that.
The kids call it a "zing."

Youth Group - "Forever Young"

What's that?
Yeah, I got this too.

SONG OF THE DAY



I am writing an article on [insert feigned enthusiasm here] BLOC PARTY! WHOO!
Now, Arye, that's not nice.
No, "not nice" would be saying that Bloc Party is "ugly, inside and out" and that I would sue them "just for fun."
You're confused. That's not mean. That's childish.
Oh, okay. True.

Anyway, Mark drops by every now and again and delivers a sweet little gift to us. This gift is called "filesharing" and it's "okay" if you're a "music journalist." Got it? No one else can exchange these special gifts and if you do, you're a criminal.
And ugly inside and out.

I am truly clued into the music community but it astounds me on a daily basis that there are still bands out there that I'm not aware of.
Yes, you did just witness a moment of humility. Grab it like a lightning bug, put it in a jar and keep it for prosperity. Just warning you though, unless you make holes in the lid, it's gonna die.
Uzi & Ari is a band that Mark and I want you to know about. Good on ya, Mark. You can drop by and "file share" any time...if you know what I mean.
And I think you do.

Uzi & Ari - "Don't Back Out"

BBS PINUP GALLERY

To coincide with Gawker's newly launched Pinup Gallery, BBS is getting in on the all-male action by posting the pinup below. Granted, I look slightly learning-disabled and it is by no means a flattering pic (but then again, when you look as Jewy as I do, not many of them are) but if you can't laugh at yourself, then why not have everyone laugh at you on on a high-traffic website.



Step 1: Print photo out. In color, for accuracy. In black and white, if you want to be "arty."
Step 2: Open your office supplies drawer.
Step 3: Take out tape; duct, masking, electric, or whatever.
Step 4: Hold Arye pinup to the wall.
Step 5: Rip pieces of tape; duct, masking, electric or whatever. Yes, Scotch tape is good too.
Step 6: Tape Arye to your wall.
Step 7: Stare at Arye a) longingly, b) pity him because, well, let's be honest, he looks really Corky in this pic, c) ask yourself what he's wearing right now (FYI: jeans and a black T shirt), d) what beer is Arye drinking in this picture because it doesn't look like the regular, cheap domestic beer he usually drinks, the cheap bastard, or e) wonder aloud whether someone this Jewish-looking should be allowed to wear flannel. I mean, isn't flannel like for the Gentiles?
Step 8. Take it down a couple of days later because you're not getting any work done knowing that Arye is staring at you like that and frankly, it's creeping you out.

Optional: Your local Kinko's or Staples will blow the First BBS Pinup up for you if you'd like yours poster-size, or even larger (why restrict yourself with a poster-size? Have you heard of wall-to-wall?). While there is a charge for this service, they may look at the picture and feel bad enough for the photo's subject and do it for free. Don't be surprised if the girl behind the counter puts her hand on yours and reassures you that everything is going to be all right. Nod and say, thank you.

Write Gawker at tips@gawker.com and tell them that you demand more flattering shots of Arye Dworken on their website. Tell them you want them posted now. Oh, but also tell them he's not doing any topless shots. He won't do 'em. It's in his contract.

SONG OF THE DAY



Our interaction is limited. I don't take it personally. You're shy. I get it.
I rarely hear from you and when I do, it's not always a Happy Chanukah. But it's cool. This is the nature of the Internet; simultaneously making the world smaller and larger.

So when I received a text from Naomi, I was pleased to note that she had a song suggestion for BBS.

And, wow [wiping tear from cheek], you and I are celebrating BBS's first reader-requested SOTheD!

The actual text read: "Track of the day: Leap Year, by +/-"

I shant point out that BBS doesn't do "Tracks" per se, but rather, we do "Songs." Nevertheless, it warms my over-worked, under-paid heart to know that I finally got a request. Interaction is always encouraged! Now whether you like the song or not, the onus of the selection is not on me. It's on Naomi. I take the onus-day off. Tuesday, December 19th is officially 100% Onus-free.

Plus Minus - "Leap Year"

BONUS VIDEO:
Plus Minus - "Steal The Blueprints"


[Call To Action, Activity II: Write Naomi at nomirena@yahoo.com and wish her a belated Happy Birthday. Yeah, it's late, but what are you going to do? You're a total flake but she understands]
[File Under, Holiday Annoyance/Marketing Genius: During my off nights, I'm an elf]

SONG AND ARTICLE! OF THE DAY



Please enjoy my article on blog-buzz favorite North Carolina's Annuals in the Independent Weekly here.

Thanks!

Annuals - "Bleary Eyed"

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO



A couple of months back, Jason Fortuny, a 30-year old Kirkland, Washington computer programmer decided to play a prank. He posted a personal ad on Craigslist, a classifieds website, posing as a 27-year old female looking for a consensual sexual experience involving violence and subversiveness.

Within 24 hours, Fortuny, or the woman he was posing as, received nearly 150 responses, some included pictures (the classified requested photos), personal phone numbers, email addresses and the real names of the responders. Fortuney therein decided it would be funny to post all of this information online. And that's when it went from being prank to a disaster.

From the Wired blog:

Fortuny, whose MySpace profile says he likes to "push people's buttons" then posted all the photos and correspondence on what may be the web's lamest wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Judging from the comments in his LiveJournal page, Fortuny seems not to realize or pretends not to realize that his prank may cost people their jobs and possibly, their marriages (if you really want to see the pics and original ad, click on the first link in that post).

He also doesn't seem to get that he's opened himself up to huge civil lawsuits under Washington law.

These aren't prominent people, there weren't breaking the law and there's no news value in posting their identifying information. There'd hardly be any value in posting the stuff even with the information removed and faces blurred on the photos, but there might be some -- if only as a warning to naive people.

And I hope Fortuny does get sued.

At first I thought of this "prank" as frat boy boorishness, but its worse than that.

It's sociopathic.

My sympathies to the guys who responded and take note -- any of you out there -- anything you divulge over email can come back to haunt you, even when divulging that information is illegal.

If you want to respond to personal ads on the internet, use a non-work address and be discreet until you are certain you can trust the other person.

And, just a note about people who say they "like to push other people's buttons" and who are prone to writing things like "See, I get away with everything I do because I understand how the system works. You sit there frustrated and bitter at people like me because, try as you might, you just can't get past yourself. And you can't see how it's possible to be like me, and that just eats you up inside."

People like that aren't charming or funny.

They're narcissistic sociopaths. In this case, a narcissistic sociopath who doesn't yet realize he needs a good lawyer.

While I am by no means condoning deviant behavior and infidelity, I still find myself despising Fortuny and sympathising the responders. Despite his warped and backhanded valiant efforts as a moralist, Fortuny is nothing more than a mean-spirited child. The mentally deformed and scarred personality has been through a great deal himself and perhaps saw this as an opportunity to gain notoriety but as a result, ruined the lives of many.

But I have yet to explain why this bothers me so. Craigslist issues and the potential deconstruction of cybertrust aside, Fortuny represents everything ugly about the Internet: the detached anonymity, the antipathy of distance, the maliciousness spawned by boredom, but it's the inability to regret his actions that saddens me the most. The subhead of his blog reads "getting away with everything you can only dream of," his livejournal picture shows the smug prankster raising his middle finger. On his MySpace page, he lists Anydy Kauffman as one of the people he would like to meet. In his own warped mind, Fortuny saw this as brilliance, a new level of cyber-comedy.

Even worse, Fortuny has inspired a copycat; Michael Crook, a New York state resident, with a reprehensible past has done the same thing but with worse repercussions (i.e., divorce, job loss, publicly sullying reputations beyond repair, exposing deeply personal information to the masses). Crook not only posted the names of the responders, but he actively investigated their lives digging up social security numbers and deeply personal information. Again, a new level of low.

And while Fortuny's deviant humor is problematic, it never quite dabbles in Holocaust revisionism. On Crook's blog, he writes the following post entitled "I like this guy":

Tuesday, December 12, 2006, 10:09 PM - News
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's President, is a pretty cool guy.

Why?

Because he says that jews will soon be wiped out.

I respect anyone who has that as a goal.

After all, any religion that whines about a supposed "holocaust" needs to end.

Common sense dictates that that the holocaust never happened. Race heroes like David Duke have proven that the gas chambers were never used to kill jews.

But it's okay..whenever there's trouble, a jew just yells "hellllp! Anti-semitism", and the world comes running.

Crook is also the creator of ForsakeTheTroops.com, a "controversial" website featuring poorly written content like the essay Our Troops: Paid Too Much. Crook's poisoned mind created the site with the sole intention of offending visitors to the extent that the offended would purchase the URL just so they can take it down. And astonishingly, it worked. ForsakeTheTroops.info now reads, "This hateful site has been purchased and removed." It's no coincidence that Crook's official website features the subhead, "It might sound harsh but it IS all about the money."

Fortuny and Crook are both sick individuals with incredible misplaced anger, one just happens to be more original than the other. But surely this is something people of their respective levels of depravity already know--these men are no strangers to self-loathing.

I can only ask myself why these stories are occupying so much mental space right now. I guess it's the same reason why nearly a month after the Michael Richards incident, I still feel uncomfortable watching Seinfeld. Being exposed to the ugliest part of the human soul is truly sobering, a painful reminder of the awful things we're capable of. Or maybe the saddest part is that just recently, in the past couple of months, there was Fortuny which begot Crook and I'm pretty sure that in the not-so distant future, there will be others...

SONG OF THE DAY



From The Organ website:

"We are sad to announce that we're breaking up. We want to thank our friends, fans, and family for all the support you gave to us. Thank you.

Shelby, Jenny, Katie, Debora, and Shmoo."

Now, presumably, your first reaction is, what is The Organ?
It's a good question. I'm glad you asked it.

In 1994, the all-female Canadian quintet released Grab That Gun one of the more criminally ignored records in recent memory. Lead singer Katie Sketch (a Marc Jacobs model) suffers from a heavy case of the Morrisseys and the band could easily be the Cure.

I was fortunate enough to see the Organ perform in Austin, Texas during this past year's SXSW Festival and I was enamored with their collective stage presence. For two years, I've been looking forward to a follow-up record and sadly, now we'll never hear it.

...Unless they get back together.

The Organ - "Memorize The City"

[Call To Action, Activity I: Write the Organ at writetheorgan@gmail.com and tell them that an Organ is no good unless it's working. Just ask Bob Dole.]

SONG OF THE DAY



The Song Of The Day hasn't been around in awhile and, well, it took a tune like "Rest Of Your Life" to bring it back. Less Than Jake recorded one of the year's best songs. True dat. I ain't messin'.

Less Than Jake - "Rest Of Your Life"

**Ed. note: When Shana saw the SOTheD, she said, "Less Than Jake...? Wha? Seriously?"
Yes, Shana, seriously.**

IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL...



A kid jumps into a pool but suddenly realizes he can’t swim. So he calls out to the bearded, robed lifeguard who, rather than jumping into the pool, miraculously splits the water into two. The astounded child, now sitting on the dry pool floor, realizes that he’s just witnessed a miracle and thanks the lifeguard, or “Jesus,” as the boy calls him, for saving his life. The disgruntled lifeguard informs the child that his name is “Moses, not Jesus” and then, as punishment, closes the water on top of the child causing him to drown.
This is comedy.

The disturbing anecdote I’ve just relayed does not involve real people but actually employs plastic action figures. And the clip is just one of the many hyper-violent animated skits you’ll find on the Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken (the aforementioned was actually an exclusive web outtake available to all Internet savvy users, regardless of age). The fifteen-minute program, which airs on Sunday late nights during the Adult Swim programming block, is just one of the many shows that gives stoners an excuse to break out the good stuff. It is the ultimate culmination of juvenile humor, home to every fart, vomit, and sex joke you can imagine and, well, I’m a fan. I mean, where else can you watch Anne Frank portrayed by a plastic Hillary Duff?
That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

Recently, shows like Robot Chicken and the likeminded Assy McGee, Metalocalypse, and Frisky Dingo, among others, have turned rape and murder into the ultimate punchline. This obviously makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Just this past week on a repeat of the Seth Green-produced Chicken, you could see a parody of the old Snuggle fabric softener commercial in which a suburban man takes a fluffy, soft teddy bear into the bathroom and forces himself on it. Funny, right? A man violently raping a teddy bear? Or how about that skit from a few weeks ago where plastic children killed their plastic parents, or when other plastic children were mauled by plastic wild animals?

There's intelligent and subversive humor to be found elsewhere on Adult Swim—after all, there is a happy medium. Harvey Birdman, for example, is witty and smart without being bloodthirsty. Perfect Hair Forever was irreverent and stoner-friendly without condoning a weekly shower of guts. And when I look over the roster of past shows, I can't help consider that as both time progresses and Adult Swim gets older, there's a strong gravitation towards gratuitous violence. Granted the station was responsible enough to label their nightly programming block as "adult" right there in the title, but why does "adult" have to become synonymous with "tortuous pain"?

Perhaps this is the new culture. With the recent influx of hyper-violent movies like Black Christmas and Saw 4 on the way, maybe we’re truly becoming desensitized. Or is it that our constant exposure to war imagery is even seeping into our animated entertainment? But as we pass the bong along, we should ask ourselves if the lines between escapism and reality are blurring dangerously.

Ultimately, though, violence doesn't bother me as much as its use as a punchline does. A horror movie delivers gruesome death but we're prepared for it. That’s what we get in exchange for the price of admission. The juxtaposition of animation and violence, however, is jarring and disturbing instead of entertaining. Watching the progressive destruction of imagery that we generally associate with childhood and youth must somehow damage our fondest memories.

I don't know, Seth. You can tell me to lighten up but then I think about how our insatiable need for new and evolving entertainment will only inspire even bloodier shows in the future. In the meantime, though, I do know that it makes me incredible uncomfortable to see such a blatant disregard for life, animated or otherwise. And I never thought I would say this to anyone, but I implore you to stick to the fart jokes.