Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor
Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.
The usual source of the quizzlets is once again sucking hind tit, self-admittedly using “leftover” questions this week – all of which I’ve answered before here on PITF. So I’m thinking up my own. It’s relevant, it’s hep, it’s seasonal and it’s interactive. Although it is late in the day, and many have you have already mentally checked out for the weekend, play along if you please. And if not, go pork a wreath.
Top Five Holiday Songs EVAH.
5. The Chipmunk Song – The Chipmunks: Human counterpart “Dave” encourages Alvin and the rest of his little rodent gang to wish for more peace and love, and less hula hoops, during the holiday season. It’s catchy, and ever so frigging creepy at the same time. Here’s a Flash parody that will immediately make you want to bathe.
4. Little Drummer Boy – David Bowie and Bing Crosby: On his yearly Christmas special in 1977, Bing asked Bowie, whom he’d never heard of but had been advised was big with ‘the kids’, to join him for this classic duet. Crosby died a month later, and nobody saw this until after his death which added to the already oozing sentimentality. Personally, I’m glad that Bing got one last chance to prove that he could entertain children just as well as he could beat them. I kid Bing. He was awesome.
3. Christmas in Hollis – Run DMC: During their 80s heyday, the guys put together this yuletide hip-hop single that was the first and last of its kind. Here’s the thing – it’s surprisingly a very, very good tune. I loved it as a kid, and it holds up well over time. I buy into the fact that Santa visits the hood as regularly as he does any other neighborhood. I don’t buy into the fact that collard greens should be served with Christmas dinner or that the pre-religious Run would have returned Santa’s wallet.
2. Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Dean Martin: If you know me, you know of my eternal love of Dino. That having been prefaced, this song could have easily been called I Know you Don’t Want to Fuck me, but it’s Really Frigging Cold Outside. Listen to Dean coax his ladyfriend into staying for “one cigarette more” due to the raging elements that await her outside. The raging erection is most definitely inside, and Dean’s going to be dammed if he lets his folly leave before there’s egg nog all over her green sweater. In all seriousness, this is a cute classic that I always pull out this time of year.
1. Fairytale of New York – The Pogues: I’ll say it – This is hands down the best Christmas song that has ever been written. Shane MacGowan and the late Kirsty MacColl trade sentiments and then jabs in a booze-soaked yuletide slugfest. Any song that can bring me to tears every year, which also rhymes ‘maggot’ with ‘faggot‘, has something just a little special going on. This year marks the 5th anniversary of Kirsty’s tragic death, and the single is being re-released with all proceeds going to her charity. There is also a documentary about the strange story behind the song airing on the BBC next week. The best of the best, this song will be featured on Radio Pye next week for the uninitiated.
Open the bomb bay doors, Mr. Oppenheimer. We’ve finally found him.
Without a couple of famous North End landmarks in the vicinity, this satellite photo of my neighborhood would be little more than a messy mess and the get mess crew. on the right you can clearly see the Old North Church. “One if by land…” and all that revolutionary jazz. On the top left, the old Brinks Building, now a hotly contested yuppie parking garage, is in effect.
“I’m from Roxbury the ‘Bury but not the fruit y’all – Don’t make me act like where I come from cause it’s bru-tal.” – Ed OG.
In honor of this senseless scene of local studio slaughter, I was inspired to feature a legendary Boston rap artist on Radio Pye today. As an aside, how many rappers have been shot or otherwise died in their recording studios at this point? 2Pac, Jam Master Jay, ODB… You hit the studio with the intention of laying down a few bizzangin’ tracks – and just end up laying down. 
Update: Here is an MP3 by the now permanently defunct, murdered Boston rap group, Graveside.
Ed OG and da Bulldogs’ seminal 1991 release “The Life of a Kid in the Ghetto” is beloved by any hip hop fan who attended high school in the Boston area that year. There’s your “Bugaboo”, your “I’m Different”, but the track everyone remembers, and which made it onto Yo! MTV Raps for a couple of weeks in March of that year, is the classic “I Got to Have it“.
Edo’s work was a great combination of social commentary, sexual adventure and bootie-shakin ‘ party jams. There isn’t a weak song on “Ghetto”, and the rough beats and heavy sampling are a time capsule of early 90s rap – or ‘the golden age’ as I like to call it. “There were no drug raids and driveby’s on “Life of a Kid in the Ghetto,” just episodes in the life of a young man who knew his calling.”
Edo is still kickin’, having recently and quietly released a great album with Pete Rock, and I recently read in a Boston music magazine that he’s hard at work recording with another Boston crew. He plays regularly at the Middle East and is even thinking about getting into politics in the future. Perhaps as a member of the Skinny Dip party. Time will tell – but this is a great song that I remember fondly and wanted to reintroduce to my small world.
“These days you have to look long and hard for such a charismatic and original freshman. In 1991, “Life of a Kid in the Ghetto” proved that between NY and LA, there were many places who had their own story to tell. In that regard, Ed repped the ‘Bury and Boston to the fullest.”
HTTP Protocol was introduced in 1990, making the internet as we know it officially 15 years old. A recent article on CNN lists their personal top ten internet moments – including WiFi, Google, Live8, Skype, Napster and others. There are some glaring omissions, however. Namely, the black sheep of the internet. That of which major media will not speak the name. You know, the good stuff. Like Catster.
In the interests of not making my subversive surfing habits public record, I invite you, the reader, to share some of your more disturbing WWW discoveries in the comments below. I just think that if we’re going to mark such an important anniversary, some light should be shone on where the real money is made, and where the real traffic ebbs and flows. Sure, NeoPets is a lot of fun, and has become an enormous success, but it does me absolutely no good when I’m drinking by myself on a Saturday night with a greasy container of coconut oil.
I’ll get the ball rolling with a few of my guilty favorites:
– Ogrish.com: People who work in law enforcement in China, Pakistan, Iraq and Brazil send in ridiculous crime scene photographs. Not for the faint of heart.
– RatherGood.com: I hope someone eventually gets this guy the mental help that he so desperately needs. But his Flash movies are absolutely hilarious.
– YouAintNoPicasso.com: Courtesy of Nate, this site is an amazing resource for getting obscure MP3s of ‘alternative’ bands. The webmaster will be locked away in a dank prison cell at any moment, so enjoy this copyright treachery while you can.
I will add some more later. Have to get going. Please contribute your own, and happy thwapping.