NY NY 2016

Trust yourself, man.

This is probably going to be alright.

A year ...

... came and it went. Lions, lambs, etc.

NYRez: Be more courteous, be more competent, be more collaborative.

Kay Thx.
-Kay T

HEY WHAT'S GOOD...

...2014?

It's that new new. i meant to post about all of my favorite things before i up and left NYC and up and arrived in Chicago. i'm sorry, ok man? i'm sorry.

If you haven't noticed, or you're new, or you're not new and picking up on repeating themes in highly inconsistent bloggery just isn't your thing, i post my new year's resolution every year.

Hey kt, your randomly mentally generated resolution is:

There's room for improvement.

Ham and black-eyed peas and collared greens for you and yours and

-feliz año kevo
-->

amazing ...

... just when i think i can't do anything and that my productivity has been completely derailed and i think to myself "what the hell do i even believe in?" i manage to answer an e-mail.

the secret key to productivity turns out to be the thought "what the hell do i even believe in?"

you're welcome everybody.

-kevficient, yo

Why I should ...

... be happy more than I am sad.

I put this question to my little brother on Sunday. He gave me a list of five reasons:

1. "You keep meeting nice people and they keep coming into the family."
2. "You just adopted a nice dog and she likes you."
3. "Mommy and daddy love you."
4. "You still have fun with your friends, at least sometimes."
5. "You have food on your plate."

That's a really good list. I'm really glad he made it for me.

- kevbro

Questlove is someone I never thought much about...

...silly me.

"The other day I heard the new 2 Chainz record," says [Rich] Nichols [The Roots' longtime manager] in Mo' Meta Blues [Questlove's soon to be published memoi]. " And it's a fucking object lesson in thematic narrowness, one dumbass idea repeated over and over again. There's a song called 'Crack!' and then a song called 'Dope Peddler,' right next to each other. Then a little alter there's a song called 'I Luv Dem Strippers.' I'm not knocking 2 Chainz, but what kind of market elevates him like that, at the expense of everything else?"*

What a nice, articulate synopsis of one of the most problematic elements of popular hip-hop music. I think that is a book I would like to read.

It's still my birthday and I still don't know what to do.

-Twenty-kevin

* From Jenna Sauers, A Vibe Called Quest, in The Village Voice (2013).

This is a poem . . .

. . . composed entirely of quotes by one of my favorite professional basketball players (original here). At first I was just amused because, well, it's amusing. But then I read it a few times and now I can admit to myself that I think it's kind of beautiful. Maybe you will too:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion, by Jeff Parker (A Poem Assembled from Metta World Peace (aka Ron Artest) Quotes)

I don’t shake substitutions’ hands.
I lose my feet.
I’d like to thank my psychiatrist.

I felt something,
But I didn’t know it was an actual head.
I knew somebody suffered something at that point.
There were a lot of emotions in that game.
I can’t worry about that.

I have to try to get the ball.
Kobe passed me the ball.
Kobe never passed me the ball.
And I could hear Phil Jackson–
He’s the Zen master,
So you can just hear him in your head.
Saying, “Don’t shoot don’t shoot!”
And bam! I shot it.

I was lying down when I got hit with a liquid,
Ice and glass on my chest and on my face.
Nobody ever just threw anything at me
With the exception of a few times.

After that, it was self-defense.
I’ll take the blame for that. It’s my fault.
Stunned. So stunned. It’s stunning.
Erratic fire, erratic passion.

We maximize it by playing together,
Loving each other,
Caring for each other.
Kind of like the Care Bears.
You know the Care Bears?
They care for each other.

I partied in July hard.
You got to party.
You can’t just be a boring guy for 12 months, right?
You got to party hard in July.

Why are you staring at me, daughter?
Did you throw that?
Jack, you think we going to get in trouble?
Let me see
How I can answer your question
Without giving you a good quote.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I still think Ron Artest, who is now Metta World Peace, is a very good basketball player. I also think he is a very good, if troubled, person.

-kevin world peace

Dear ...

... Dope Jams on Myrtle.

i'm sad to see you close even though i hardly even know you, man.

vinyl and
cds and
black magik

for always.

xo xo
-dope kev

2013 ...

... means it's time for the fourth post of the year.

Here's my resolution:

They can't hold you.

Auld lang syne,
-kevoasting with champagne

Love, ...

... and Duty, and Charity, and Patriotism

This is ...

... the best rap song I have heard in two years:

Damage

-kevo monche

Thought this was pretty important

Thanks for reading.

-kevmet

Envisioning utopia

Would the world be a better place ...

If Aerosmith ...

Had never existed?

Yes. i think so, yes.

A Blums

Just real quick.

I think I'm gonna go back in on this, even though I'm pretty sure I should have the real me on the internet LESS rather than MORE. I'm trying to be a legitimate business here.

 But whatever. To the rankings! (These are my top 3 of the year of what has been, for me, pretty limited listening).

1) Easily and by far Boys and Girls by the Alabama Shakes. I accidentally found some of their youtube videos last year by accident and now they're famous or something. Holy shit. So. Good.

 2) It's not unlikely that a mixtape will be in my top three each year in the foreseeable future. This year, it's an Untitled EP by Hodgy Beats. I don't really know anything about him. But the production is GOOOOOOOD.

 3) Recent discovery (ummm...and it was released in June 2008, but this is tops of MY year, not the world's year or...something), but man do I like Wagonwheel Blues by the War on Drugs. Rock and Roll's not dead. Or. Rock and Roll wasn't dead 4 years ago!

First time I've mentioned this on the internet, but I make a mix and send it by mail to people every year for free. If you want one, leave a comment and I'll send you one.

 Ruch Move
-Keverano

I can haz kebin meme?

-mr. kevin goes to washington

New Years 2012

Hey. It's been a while.

I have a resolution for 2012:

Calm down. Everything's probably ok.

That's it.
-kevinewyear

Stuck...

...on 202.

I started this thing as a log of travels.

Then I just sort of figured it was a way to inspire writing.

Then it took a turn for the youtube (read: worst).

Then I just sort of let it sit here, vacuum packed in the internet. The infinite echo-chamber. Someday someone will find it and fire me from my job.

I think i stopped writing primarily because i was too busy. By "busy" i don't know that i mean actually with too many things to do. Instead, my mind's eye tended to visualize all of the things i could be doing and i got freaked out and this went to the bottom of some totally nebulous to-do list (dig up the garden, buy a bookshelf, learn to write journal articles, finish the white paper you promised a professor in Georgia, bench press 200 pounds) of things that would never get done.

If it seems like a pretty dumb reason to abandon something that i was reasonably committed to, it is.

-kt

In an effort...

...to have my most recent letter to space not be weird and self-helpey:

My favorite song in a while.



whitelongsleeveoxford,
-ktee

Nothing easy...

...is worth doing.

Get up. Dust yourself off.

Tomorrow is day one.

-kt

Apparently, this...

...is how my uncle thinks I live.

I got this video from him in a Facebook message with the salutation "Big city nights kev!!!!"



To be fair, my life is mostly flying Vs, Japan, and girl butts.

Awesome.

-Kev Metal

P.S. 200 posts, WHAT!?!?

Been a month...

...and now it's 2011.

Later than usual, but:

Rezolushun:

More love, less fear.

So vague, it's kinda hard to follow through on. But I think I can do it. If you know me, you should help me.

Video plans for the newest of years:



luvs and luvs,
-kt

Holiday...

...party!

Well...not really. I'm in law school. The chrissmass present that they give you is a set of exams that last until 3 days before the stupid holiday. (I suppose they push right through Hanukkah, too...dicks).

Anyway, sorry I haven't been around much, but the Metanalytics tell me that no one really visits anyway, so whatevs.

GIFTGUIDE2010:


(Back in UMN, we celebrated Capitalism Day...I miss the old country)

What the hell is this thing? Can I drink what comes out of it?

What the hell is this thing and does it have an "intimate" setting?

What the hell is going on here and why don't I have one?

A Spiderman mask with a good eye-hiding to vision-obscuring ratio.
(Read the review by Thomas Eliot, you can't miss with this one)

A trip to Korea

Drinks to make this pain in my head go away.
(That website is definitely about car engines...har)

Cat therapist! (Thanks to Havana)



You should really click on that picture up there to make it bigger and get a sense of just how awesome it is...

Happy Holidaaaaaays,
-kevitalism day.

just becoming...

...a string of videos that i think are amusing.

For this, i apologize. It is simply the product of no time and lots to do + a modest commitment to posting once a week. Without some kind of theme to drive writing, it gets pretty hard to think of precisely what might be entertaining/engaging.

But enough of that!

I think Eddie Murphy is pretty funny. And this is probably my favorite bit of what he's done. It was really hard to find, NBC's a bunch of jerks.



-k-e-v my landlord.

Techno...

...fail.

(I've grown generally opposed to the 'fail' phenomenon, mostly due to being around someone who hates it more than I do, but nothing else really gets at the heart of this situation as well as that turn-of-internet)

First, watch this for some context:



Great song. Totally catchy. Also quotable.

Another piece of vital information: my phone is a blackberry that is highly prone to pocket calls.

Now, the story.

Wednesday night, I was sending text messages to a friend about the fact that I was drinking a whiskey that she used to drink a lot of, Old Crow. Basically, I sent her a text-toast.

She replied that she had long-since stopped drinking Old Crow and had moved on to drinking Bulleit, which is a respectable, if bourgie, choice.

In my mind, there was only one obvious retort. (See: video).

I slept whiskey-well that night...fast forward to the next morning.

Did the normal get up, walk dogs, walk to the train, hate everything on the train, walk to school thing, and right before I entered the building I thought it would be good to turn the ringer off on my phone (avoiding classroom embarrassment).

This is what I saw:



...plus ~14 of the same messages that there's not room on the screen of a phone to display.

"Abuelito" is my grandfather. He is a)very old, b) not really that tech savvy, and c)not totally English proficient.

God I hope he doesn't have a plan that lets him get text messages.

Oh you fancy, huh?

-pockev calls

This is just to say...

...I have eaten
the Cheetos
that were on
the kitchen shelf

and which
you were probably
saving
to eat while watching tv shows
on the internet.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so crunchy
and so covered in
powdered cheese

-kevin kevlos williams

Man...

...this is awesome.


Cee Lo Green - Fuck You
Uploaded by Warner-Music. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

I was going to just post something about fuck Williamsburg, but what a waste of cyberspace.

Cee-Lo is so...so...baller.

-kevlogreen

PS. Fuck Williamsburg.

On cloud....

...9.

Just met Dolores Huerta and shook her hand and said thank you for everything you've ever done for people.



I've never met anyone who radiated kindness and strength like that.

In the midst of a lot of reasons to feel tired and mean, i feel very happy.

Choosing not to skip class for this would've been stupid.

-kevntent (for now)

Just when i thought my obsession...

...with Katy Perry's 'Hot and Cold' was over.

This happens:



Aigghhhh...why won't Katy Perry just let me live my life1?!?!

-kevmo

ps. for related (jawesome) content, see: the first video i ever embedded

First of all....

...The Saint Paul Saints are awesome.

Minor league baseball is awesome.

At some point, The Saints were owned by Bill Murray...awesome! Scroll down a little ways, he is also apparently the team psychologist (thanks to laura for giving me the tip and thereby rendering my life a tad more complete.

Second of all, this is mostly just an excuse to post this video clip.



I fucking love Bill Murray.

-kevin and cigarettes

Sometimes you see weird shit...

...on the Manhattan bridge.

And sometimes bizarre things are happening, too.

I bike across the Manhattan bridge at least twice a day, most days. Today, I was wearing a backpack that brought my body weight up from 165 lbs to 210 lbs. I don't think that's healthy. That's neither here nor there.

Today, I saw three things that made me shake my head. Two of them made me smile. See if you can you guess them in a 'how well do i know kevin?' pop quiz:

A/ Family of tourists collectively ride into the oncoming biker lane in order to get into the frame of a photo being taken by dad, who has dismounted from his bike in the middle of the lane designated for bikers going in my direction.

B/ Guy has dismounted from his bicycle to scale the railing between the bike lane and the place where the train runs to smoke a J and stare into the Hudson.

C/ Man is huffing and puffing on a mountain bike pulling his baby in a Burley trailer. Closer inspection reveals that his baby is actually a small dog. Even closer inspection reveals that the dog is having a fucking awesome time.

If I knew how to put letters upside-down on blogger, I would post the answers below, newspaper-jumble-style.

Miss you bunches,
-kevley

5 musical performers...

...that changed my life in the last two years.

So, repeat thought from last week, law school makes it difficult to devote any brainergy at all to thinking, let alone what thoughts might be blog-worthy. And I refuse to make my blog about the life of a "1L" and what it takes to survive. Naw, that ain't me.

A while ago, I thought a little bit about whether and how my taste in music has evolved since I left college. I feel like a lot of people apex during those 3-6 years because there's downtime to think about shit like how you might broaden your musical horizons. More recently, discovery hasn't happened so often, but I feel like when it does, I've come across something important.

List (some with little qualifiers, some with no qualifiers. I am pressed for time, yo).

1)Bo Diddley. (Probably him most of any of them. Dude changed everything about music for me and for the world.)
2) Lil Wayne. (Knew he was good, didn't know how good. Still remember his songs with Birdman from middle school before I knew who he was. The link is non-representative of what I love about him, but it's weird and awesome. Better)
3) The Mountain Goats. (So prolific that even though I've loved him since early in college, every new/old song with new/old lyrics I listen to speaks to me in incredible ways. His new stuff is less big for me, but there's so much old stuff that I'll be listening and learning for some time to come, I think. He's also hilarious.)
4) Dabrye (Shake your ass.)
5) Flat Duo Jets (Thanks, Athens.)

Hopefully someone reading this listens to something from the list and likes it. Even if that doesn't happen, I can be happy knowing that music still matters to me.

-kevolved

I know...

...kinda lame, but law school takes up a lot of time!

From Muggsy Bogues' Twitter:

"You know what's not cool? Confederate flags. You know what is cool? Horses."

Fucking. Profound. (Seriously, the man's statement resonated with my own feelings on both of those things).

Here's a picture of Mr. Bogues with Manute Bol (coincidentally, also an awesome guy):



aaaaand, here's a picture of horses from when I went to England.




Horses are cool.
-kevsy

P.S. Keep an eye out for a new post on my other blog Brooklyn Consumed.

Commentary on bureacracy...

...from 1886:

"The story of Ivan Ilyich's life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore the most terrible.
"He had been a member of the Cort of Justice and died at the age of forty-five. He was the son of an official whose career in Petersburg in various ministries and departments had been such as leads men to positions from which, by reason of their long service and the official rank they have attained, they cannot be discharged, although it is obvious that they are unfit to perform any useful duty, and for whom, therefore, posts are created, which though fictitious carry salaries from six to ten thousand roubles that are not fictitious and on which they go on living to an advanced age."*

(I was going to put a political cartoon up above it, but I just realized I've never like political cartoons all that much)

What a terrifying thing to find in a short story. What's more terrifying? That this is a real staple of human productivity. The list of examples is staggering. The process of dealing with it is soul-crushing.

-kev-rock-racy

*From: Tolstoy, Leo (1886). The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Penguin Red Classic edition, 2006


PS. My sister is a beautiful bride if such a thing ever was.

A couple of things America...

...got right: absurdity, and obliviousness to that absurdity.

BEHOLD!



Holy shit that is ridiculous. And hilarious. And we are all schmucks.

I can't believe that was actually on tv,
-keverican revolution

some facts....

...about lizards. More specifically, facts about short-horned lizards (check that dude out...so majestique!)

Yesterday, my truck was towed and impounded. The people at the impound were jerks. I was bored and hot and sad because they wanted lots of money to give me my truck back. I didn't know what to do.

Then, i remembered i had the internet on my phone. I still didn't know what to do. The cursor just sat there in the phone Google search box. Then, i knew what i wanted to type. This is what i typed:

'facts about lizards'

This is what i learned about horned lizards (from onlinemathlearning.com- Amazing animal facts):

"Can horned lizards spit blood out of their eyes?

Yes, at least four varieties of horned lizard do spit blood out of their eyes as a message for predators to back off! When threatened, a horned lizard has a detailed escape plan. First, it runs and stops suddenly, trying to confuse the predator. If that doesn’t work, its next line of defense is to puff up its body and show off its spiny scales. As a last resort, the lizard will increase the blood pressure in its head until small blood vessels in its eyes rupture. This causes blood to squirt out in a stream that can carry for up to three feet. The blood confuses the predator and tastes really bad, too—or at least canines and felines seem to think so.

The horned lizard is popularly called a "horned toad," "horny toad", or "horned frog," but it is neither a toad nor a frog. The names come from the lizard's rounded body and blunt snout, which make it resemble a toad or frog (see the picture above). The spines on its back and sides are made from modified scales, whereas the horns on the heads are true horns with a bony core.

The horned lizards have other ways of avoiding predation besides shooting blood. Their coloration generally serves as camouflage. When threatened, their first defense is to remain still and hope to avoid detection. If approached too closely, they generally run in short bursts and stop abruptly to confuse the predator's visual acuity. If this fails, they puff up their body to cause its spiny scales to protrude, making it appear larger and more difficult to swallow."

Look at this video!



First, the lizard's like, "MMMMMM...ants in slo-mo!" Then, this fox gets all up in his shit. And the lizard's like, "Get off me fox!" And then he gets all crazy and squirts blood on him.

Lizards are badass.

-horned kevin

cartoons,...

...i like them better than pretty much anything else i could watch.

I also really like reading comics.

My reasons are pretty simple. First and foremost, I remain pretty childish. I still enjoy the shows from Nickelodeon that were created and aired in the early an mid-90s. My best friends and I watched cartoons that were intended for 11 year-olds well through high school. I also liked the wildly popular "Adult Swim" lineup, but not as much. I guess i just never stopped liking weird non sequiturs and absurd exaggerations?

My second reason is more substantive. I believe that at their best, cartoons are more expansive in their presentations. Animated television shows, movies, and video games come directly from the minds of their creators and illustrators. Even in "direct" representation of life around us, where cartoons simply give us the stories of people, cartoon television, movies and comics can materialize fantasies and emotions, making life more vivid. In less traditional illustrations of life (my favorite!) we might get an insight into the lives of aliens, personified objects, or animals as people.



Removing the limitation of simply capturing and then potentially manipulating the world around us gives people who create cartoons near unlimited potential in exploding the realm of possibility in storytelling. Their only limitations are what they might be able to fathom and then channel through their hands or their computer machines (again, my preference is hand drawn as I feel like computer illustrators have a tendency to strive toward 'life-like' instead of away from it).

In terms of storytelling, regardless of who they are intended for, cartoons are most often created by adults. As a result, audiences either get adult takes on reminiscences of their own childhoods/adolescences, animated representations of adulthood (see: Rocko, above), or stuff so removed from anything we've ever seen or heard that it could only drawn. This in and of itself should remove the 'cartoons are for kids' stigma.

This Scrooge McDuck comic from (from Videogum) sums up a lot of what i mean about imagination and stories.



You can read the whole comic here.

For a lot of people, the move Inception seems to represent an incredible example of innovation in the 'heist' concept, where dreams might be a place to commit theft given the weakness of the victim in a dream state. Still, making this idea stick in the 'real world' didn't happen until 2010, and when it finally happened, it was wildly popular.

Amazingly, this idea was printed and distributed to children in the 1950's. Even the 'kick' concept, if not directly ripped off from the comic, was already done:

.

To sum up, it strikes me that the most innovative storytelling, at least in the realm of fantastic cinema and television, is drawn. Unfortunately, animation doesn't sell like live action film or animation that's supposed to get really, really close to mimicking live action (see: the suck that was Avatar). I don't know why cartoons can't be marketed more effectively to adults. For me, Batman the Animated Series, a highly acclaimed Batman cartoon that appeared on the Fox Network while I was in elementary school was nearly as dark and just as compelling as the more recent and wildly popular Batman films. A feature-length cartoon, however, would never have been marketed so heavily nor as popular in theaters. The same is true of the new Scott Pilgrim movie, which, volume-length aside, is very unlikely to do justice to the original books. Nonetheless, it gets huge billing, television, internet, and print ads, a big name in Michael Cera, and probably (relatively) big box office numbers.

Me, i'd prefer it were a cartoon. Shit, i wish everything was a cartoon.

-kevillustrated

Czech...

...new wave.

Cinema.

I don't have any idea how I got to it, but I did, and it is magnificent.



I need to see the whole thing now. Supposedly, it is just as good as what these 4 minutes.

-kevimkrasky (1966)

oh my god...

...look at that fucking hipster.

Still hot. Still bored.

But I was in the uber-snotty hi-brow online music site The Brooklyn Vegan.

I was pictured here (scroll down about halfway).

I'll save you the trouble:



In a hilarious turn of events, I didn't actually get to see either Cap'n Jazz or Lightning Bolt play. I heard that they were both awesome.

Double dang,
-kevyn vegan

Slow, slow, slow...

...heat.

Felt like it was the right time to right.

With the summer's advance and a lack of a job or a school or a goal-oriented hobby, i've got much less to do, much less to describe. Perhaps coming here so early was a bad plan.

The frisbee thing worked out. So that's good, yeah?

I'm reading some things I've been meaning to read for a long time, but that usually tends to work out such that they take a while to finish. By the time i've finished 1/5 of what i meant to, it's time to do other things. Right now, i'm in the middle of the of Sinclair's "The Jungle." It's a great book. It's also a bad choice for having a kind of saddude (read: subdued) time in the city.

Last, we went and saw "Inception". It was great, except that Leonardo DiCaprio appears to have agreed to act in a movie with the same plot, 50 years later, plus Matrix fight scenes, minus socially uncomfortable subjects (mental illness) as another movie he starred in (Shutter Island), which was released in January. The one that came out first was better.

I'm really hoping that things and the blog pick up soon.

Until then, here i am.

-kevdog days of summer.

PS! Some of you will be getting presents soon!

Small time Kansas newspaper...

...wins Field Medal for Mathematics!!!!

The Manhattan Mercury, which has illuminated my hometown for decades with insightful news and analysis, has stepped up its game by drawing only the most important elements of current events and condensing them down to their most essential elements in a simple, summative equation. The veracity of simple calculation has never been so staggering.



Truly, a momentous day in word economy.

me+internet=yeah,
-kevin trouble

Commodify...

...your everything.

Ah, to walk the line between wearing/doing/buying cool things and not being a schmuck whose non-paid vocation is to make some rich jerks even richer by buying stuff that makes you feel like you're so different from those jerks.

I've always been a little wary of a few companies, but some stuff i'm finding out is totally out-of-the-blue-gotchasuckers!-type weird and scary. Like, while i've never worn Vans, i always thought that Vans was a benign skating company (like Adio or whatever) whose whole thing was "we make skateboard shoes and clothes for teenagers, sometimes you can buy them in the mall." More recently, lowtop Keds-looking Vans shoes seem to be the thing to wear, especially in New York. This doesn't seem skater-ey, but still, who can blame a company for branching out when a cultural fad (skating) becomes less of a big thing.

Turns out that it was never about skating. Vans is a company whose premise is manufacturing goods that fit well on people interested in bucking trends and living outside the norm. They make goods for people looking to voice their distinctiveness by purchasing stuff. Its goal is not a new one, but it's one that I've never seen so clearly articulated in a corporate charter.

From the prospectus of a new company called "Vans" in the early 90's:

"the Company has developed a strong brand image which the Company believes represents the individualistic and outdoor lifestyle of its target customer base. The VANS brand image coincides with what the Company believes is a fundamental shift in the attitudes and lifestyles of young people worldwide, characterized by the rapid growth and acceptance of alternative, outdoor sports and the desire to lead an individualistic, contemporary lifestyle.

The company's success is largely dependent on its ability to anticipate the rapidly changing fashion tastes of its customers and to provide merchandise that appeals to their preferences in a timely manner."*

Apparently it's not just a company for skating. It's a company for youthful rebels. For everyone who wants to show their solidarity with other 'individuals'. And i'm sure that this language pervades the internal corporate documents of hundreds of companies, dozens that I like...

I don't like that the approach i'm taking here is only troubling and not constructive or proactive. It's a problem I have with the book that the quote is taken from as well.

*From: Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler. Edited by Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland . ISBN 0-393-31673-4

Sometimes we all need....

...a box to hide inside of.



...just a small box. Maybe a rug came in it. Maybe it's full of bubble wrap.

Things haven't been the greatest around here. Money problems, mostly. I think most people have those sometimes or a lot. And on the tops of all that pile of money problems sometimes people just don't feel that good. And I don't feel that good.

But I !dew! have an apartment in the summer. And I've got some very good mixes of music (thanks frunds). And a yellow cat.

I guess I'm really not short much except maybe some bubble wrap. I could probly find some bubble wrap somewheres.

Hot time, summer in the summer.
-lovin kevful

BONO! TINY!

My feelings on country music...

...are pretty simple.

Mostly, i like it.

Especially if it was made in the late-eighties through mid-nineties. These songs are what i cut my musical teeth on. I used to listen to the top-10 at ten-type program on Manhattan, KS' "Hot Country," B104.7 religiously. I would actually call in pretty often. I won a Clay Walker cd one time.

At that point, i felt it was probably going to be one of the greatest moments of my life.

Because of three 14-hour road trips i took along the east coast recently in a truck with loaded with things (pictures later), with a broken tape player i had to listen to radio. Lots and lots of radio. In some parts of rural Virginia, it was only country music. I was totally alright with that.

I definitely thought I was totally alright with that. As it turns out, sometimes I don't like country music. I made a computer drawing about the pretty clear line that separates good from bad country music, in my opinion:



Pretty simple.

I like most everything Allen Jackson has ever recorded. He sings about the country. And simple folks. And drinking by rivers and then later trying to have sex with girls. And sometimes about Mercury automobiles.

Things that pretty much guarantee I won't like a country music song:

Singing about killing someone like you've done it and think other people should too.
Singing about the life of fame that country music has brought you and how tough it is.
T-shirts, short skirts, and creepy boy-stalking.
Autotune.

Thank you, Allen Jackson, for being awesome at country music.

-hot country, kev 104.7

I was birthed...

...today 24 and some-odd or maybe no-odd days ago.

Fuck. 24 definitely seems to be that line you draw where you're an adult now. At least that's what the Manhattannites (big kind, not small kind) I met the other night seem to think about it. They say that you can tell the difference between the ambitious, naive new New Yorkers and the old ones by gauging which ones seem older than 24.

I am not supposed to be young and stupid any more. That went way way way way way too fast. I want to be young and stupid so bad. So bad.

Aaaanyway:



That was my celebration song.

I love you.

-kevune 18th 2010.

P.s.

New York...

...state of mind.

Yeah. Lame title (thanks, Nas). But that shit has become REAL.

Signed a lease on an apartment. It's small. And expensive. BUT.

It has a huuuuge yard. Which is RAD.

It's down the street from a place that has a $3.50 falafel sandwich. And some banks. And something called the 'pillow cafe'.

It would appear I will be able to access both morning and night drinks. FAB, RIGHT?

Thought I would post some pictures of it. They are below.







Finally. Shoutout to Will, Jeff, Devin, and Melissa for making "suckin dick and cleaning house" this year's "kickin ass and taking names."

Also shoutout to them for pointing out that 'shoutouts' are even something I can do. SHOUTOUT.

-kevinewyorkcityerwhatevs

A few...

...things from the internet.

1) If you have a blog, you should read the comments. If there are comments to read, you should click on them to find out who is commenting, especially if you don't know them. Someone named "Crazy World" thinks that I write things that are funny to read.

This is their blog.

It is my favorite thing on the internet ever.

2) Dear America,
You are so fucked up and weird.
love,
-kevin

3) I went to Denver to present at a conference and see my mama this weekend. While the conference and its receptions complete with free drinks were sweet, I got to go to Denver's May 1st immigrants' rights march. I always forget how much going to marches makes me want to be a better person. They make me want to be a better person so much it hurts. I took some photos, and these are my favorites. I'll probably put the rest up some other time.






soaking up all the normaltown afore i'm about not be here anymore,
-kevmal

Popopopo...

...popopopo-ker face.

There's a lot going on right now, not much to write about. I feel a little bit like someone put me in a small capsule capable of traveling great speeds (think smartcar if you attached like 6 million bottle rockets or one enormous bottle rocket to the back of it) pressed the go button and told me i wouldn't have to do anything until i got where i was going. So i sat in the tiny little space, waiting and watching where i went. And things happened and i guess i did something to make them happen but i just watched them happen and sometimes i thought about doing different things but i didn't do anything different and my brain feels very strange in that way that is associated with going so fast that time skews a little bit (think post-plane ride) and so now i just feel tired and maybe kind of helpless and a little confused about how i got to where i am.

Yeah. So that was mostly just so i could post this next thing without feeling like it was my only reason for getting on the brog. Because i know who reads this thing, i know that i already watched it with half of you. This is mostly for my sister, though, so it's all good.

Here you are, d.


Man i like that guy.

rg. slpy.

-kevjectile

A quick word on...

...Frank's Red Hot Wing Sauce



Made some fried chicken last night. It was...pretty good. Nice texture, served at the right temperature, breading stayed on. Unfortunately, it came up wayyyy short on flavor. Chalk it up to inadequate marination and not enough seasoning. Checked the fridge, no ketchup, no quality barbecue sauce, no dry seasoning that could do it. Clearly I'm DOOMED, right?

Not to be, friends.

Turns out we had some Frank's Red Hot that was left by my old awesome roommate whose husband loves chicken wings. We put that shit on the fried chicken and BAM! TASTE. SENSATION. Today, I mixed it accidentally with some bizarre salad dressing i made this week out of beer and mayonnaise. TASTE. SENSATION. These events alone probably wouldn't normally be enough reason for me to devote an entire twenty minutes to writing a blog post lauding a chicken wing sauce.

The fact that they play this ad on my favorite hip-hop station definitely is.



It's definitely better on the radio. Still, you get the idea of why i might have grown to love this hot sauce product so quickly.

I put that shit on everything.

-kev's red hot

It's a week for...

...masters.

I guess i'm officially one. A 'master' of international affairs. Whatever the fuck that means. Technically, it means i defended a thesis last thursday and i'll get a degree conferred upon me in May that indicates that i'm qualified to...well, to do something. Not sure what yet.

I also took my dad to see the Masters Golf Tournament. It's not something i would do for myself. But he likes golf. Look how much he likes golf!:



We saw tiger woods.



My dad tried to give him a fist bump. Tiger was having none of it.



Here i am with Vijay Singh. I think Vijay Singh is a good golfer.



Really, as pro golf tournaments go, this one was pretty awesome (admittedly, I've never seen any other pro golf tournaments). I saw a bunch of good golfers up close, i got to hang out with my dad, the weather was nice, the beer was cheap. There was one thing missing, though.

Shingo Katayama. He may have overtaken some other guys as my favorite pro golfer ever.



You'll notice that this is the one foto pulled from the internet.

This is because even though we made a frantic effort to find one very awesome Japanese guy in one very tiny cowboy hat, our mission was not accomplished.

His cowboy hat is so tiny!

-kevgusta

p.s. I'm moving to new york city.

I'm...

...pregnant.

April Fools.

-kevster