Scattershot (life music cars phones culture)

Many of you are too new to the web to remember, but I INVENTED THIS SH##! The return of the bullet point blog, fool!

- As you may have noted, I was home alone part of the weekend, and within 36 hours, I basically degenerated into savagery (albeit observant savagery). I ate microwaved frozen food, I sat for hours on end in a leather recliner with a laptop, entertaining me and accepting the movement of my fingers. Bananas. The family's back and I'll enjoy a return to food that's cooked and sleeping before 2AM. Well, mostly (a new baby will keep you up with those night time feedings, y'all) ...

- If you haven't copped it yet, Janelle Monae is on freaking fire right now. Her singles "Cold War" and (even more impressively) "Tightrope" with Big Boi from Outkast ... unmitigated heat. Crazy, crazy, fire and eruptions of flames, yo. Wow. I pointed out links when they hit over on my linkroll but I haven't checked to see if they're still available. If you can catch her stuff, do, she's amazing.

- While we're on the subject of music, is anybody in the game doing it like Trey Songz right now? Between his monster smash "Say Ahh" (which I could imagine being so hot at the club ... you know, back when I used to rock clubs) and his relentless reign of remixes and releases online (he's all over the blogs like Wordpress ... more on that in a few moments) just won't let up. I like his voice -- he has a nice range that comprises both masculine lower frequencies while working through some bright tenor notes -- and despite his saddening propensity for using a certain racial slur, he's quite talented musically. Well, okay, when he said, "Imma beat ya body like a congo," he should have gone for "bongo" to make the rhyme work, since Congo is a country and conga doesn't rhyme. A minor quibble -- his Jasmine Sullivan response was hot (not as hot as The-Dream's remix, another great modern hitmaker, but I digress), I was rockin' his "Absolute Heat" freestyle while I did late night dishes this last weekend ... great stuff.

- Also crazy is Cypress Hill's "Armada Latina" with Mr. J-Lo Marc Anthony and the patron saint of clubbing, Pitbull. Catchy as hell chorus, rockin' beat, solid lyrics (what I can understand of 'em anyway, sorry, I took French in school) ... I can imagine going to my old favorite Thursday night gig at Sully's, saving this to be the last song ... and watching mutha####as go crazy. Perfect for any party-motivated crowd with at least 25% Latinos in attendance.

- Moving from music to motoring, my wife's tooling around in a brand new car I got for her. She used to push this reliable 1999 Honda Civic coupe, but that two door action wasn't the business for two kids. So we put our plan together and worked it out like Beyonce, Jurassic 5 or Jack LaLanne (and yes, I showed my age on that one, whatever -- I'm thirty-seven years old, dawg, come on). I won't show you her exact model because she has enough stalkers in the world, but here's an idea of what her new whip looks like ...

"... ain't a thang, got the whip game mastered ..."

... and she's very happy with it. A happy wife makes a happy something or other, so I'm happy too.

Although, from my own perspective, I like an actual trunk. I'll stick with American sedans ... especially after I'm hearing something about foreign cars not being as reliable as people say ...

- Yes, that was a cheap shot. I'm not proud of it.

- ... okay, yes, I am.

- One foreign thing I am happy to buy will be a cell phone. On Friday night, I plan to order myself a Nokia N900 (unless you'd like to get it for me, hmmmm?) and plunge myself into comprehending a Linux phone. I've talked about it before and finally the gods of finance and timing are aligning to give me digital nirvana. Yes, I'm buying it full price, unlocked, just like I did with my dearly departed Treo 680. I'll be reporting more on how that works out as it goes -- yes, I have a feeling vlogging is coming from The Operative Network. No promises!

- In "stuff I found and just love" news, if you're not in some way forced to silently nod at The Impossible Cool then I don't know what the heck is wrong with you. Dude, check Sidney Poitier. Peep the pimpin' from your man man from Scotland, Sean Connery. How many times will you see a photo of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. playing pool with some old cats like he was a hustler? You've gotta feel the J.D. Saligner quote at least! Yes, the "older" buttons being on the left is counterintuitive and the site smacks of the Church of the 20th Century's fixation on booze and smoking ... STILL!

I have a gang more to do, but I'm trying to moderate the length of these things because I'm told my largely US-based audience can't stay focused on one thing for more than hey there's a penny, cool ... wait, what were we talking about?

Playing (Music): "Eenie Meenie" by Sean Kingston ... what, don't judge me! I don't need your pity!

Blog Fu: Iron Monkey

The Hundred and Four* will, among many other purposes, serve as an information clearinghouse. The ancient art of blog-fu helps with that, practiced by many but mastered by few, and which I practiced for years aggregating content for CBR's Comic Reel column (now run by the illustrious and praiseworthy Erik Amaya, who I did my best to train in the Sith ways).

Let us begin with a quote from the brilliant but cancelled TV show Kings (much beloved of Entertainment Weekly's Marc Bernardin)** ...

Jessie Shepherd: "People with destinies, things don't go well for them. They die old and unhappy, or young and unfinished."

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin:

- Let's start with some news about living in the future. Like what? How about a computer that can read lips, which is a wonderful advance for all the Big Brother/Dick Cheney wet dreams of capturing information that wants to be free?

Not far enough for you? How about scientists creating a star right here on earth? Yes, that sounds outlandishly unsafe, but that's probably part of the appeal. Kind of a Venkman and Spengler sort of thing, doncha think?***

Why there's even practice for a mission to Mars, because so many of us are desperate to get away from this potentially godforsaken rock that people are lining up to take a ride even close to space? Perhaps they can see the writing on the wall about how it will all end**** and are trying to plan ahead like a macro-scale game of Civilization 2. Hard to say.

- Let's move on. Remember Friendster? Few people do.***** The numbers seem to indicate that MySpace is learning some hard lessons about obsolescence. Sure, 70 million users is far from chicken feed, but trends being what they are ... in my own limited experience, I'm seeing more young people return to or adhere to MySpace (judging from the customers at bars where I host karaoke -- more on that in a bit******) whereas more adults in their late 20s and onwards are Facebooking it up. Twitter? It plays by no rules I've seen (with its tools for power users, artists using it as an alternative revenue stream and even ways to share music, plus everybody knows I love Twitpic), and in my own idiosyncratic experiences, has kept the annoying outages to a dull roar.

Anyway, Rupert Murdoch-powered MySpace soon afterwards announced a big staffing cut, which makes MySpace look like a wounded elephant. Only important because our virtual homes are becoming more of where we spend our lives and interact, so looking at the management becomes relevant for a grasp of the zeitgeist. Developing ...

- Speaking of battling multi-million dollar companies, Google is ready to get into the OS game and Micro$oft strikes back with a web-based, free Office option. Whaaaat? It's all true.

Google's hippie PR and egalitarian image belies a corporate juggernaut, but one far less obvious and mean-spirited in its rapaciousness than the rowdies in Redmond. As a lifelong Mac evangelist*******, any attack on the House that Gates Built, Stole and Oppressed His Way Into******** gets a cheer from me, and this fight is a battle for the way people think digitally, so it's surely worth keeping an eye on.

- Fnord.

- What else is up? Well, of course that Philadelphia swimming pool incident proved that, Obama or not, plus le change, plus le meme chose (or as Talib Kweli once said, "conditions in the hood don't change with the president"). Racism? Discrimination? Prejudice? Alive and well even far from the fields of Dixie. One has to look no farther than the Inglewood police department (which, fun fact, is in a predominantly Black city, ha ha, funny old life) to see that in action every single day. Thanks to Boston's Dart Adams for the heads up on that.

- Don't think about escaping into music, pal. Not when those bastards at the RIAA wanna fine a 32-year-old single mother eighty thousand dollars a song for downloading. What's the total on that? Brace yourself -- one point nine two millon US freaking dollars. That had to be typed out so it'd be clear that the number of zeroes wasn't a typo. On a daily basis, you can see LAPD cops running red lights sans sirens or not using hands free devices to speak on cell phones as they drive. But they have more guns than you. Bend over and relax your muscles, it's easier that way.

- To quote the erstwhile Blade, "bu-bu-bu-but wait, it gets worse!" In "fan fiction goes horribly, horribly wrong" news, Eli Stone visionary and Green Lantern scriptwriter Marc Guggenheim is -- wait for it -- writing a new comic book for Dynamite Entertainment -- brace yourself -- based on Galactica 1980.

Get up off the floor. Yes, you read that correctly. This is really happening. Yes, someone thinks this is a good idea. Spirit help us all, yes, someone will probably buy this. What's next, a comic book adaptation of Hell Comes to Frogtown by Robert Kirkman? Listen, people -- some things just need to die. I know we all love the nostalgia wave ... well, some of us. Anyway, some things don't need to come back.

If Guggenheim creates a work of such awe-inspiring wonder that Eisner Awards will cloud around it like a butterfly crown,********* I will let Marc Guggenheim punch me in the stomach. Chances are, this is a catastrophically bad idea, even in the hands of a writer as skilled as this one. Oy.

- "Damn, Hannibal, you're awfully negative!" Actually, no I'm not. I have a beautiful pregnant wife and an adorable, brilliant stepdaughter. I have a job where I make good money and I'm good at it. I even recently closed a deal to bring one of my novels to life as a comic book and possibly an animated project as well. Despite a lot more gray hairs than I ever expected and quite possibly being clinically insane, I am essentially fine and dandy.********** The rest of you seem to be almost irreparably f***ed up. Don't blame me as I hold up a mirror to your lunacy.

How do I illustrate the new wonder of me, the one that makes so many so sick to see me so fly that NASA calls me for directions? I do it by sharing love, with all of you. How do I do that? With karaoke Skeletor drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon (thanks to Robot 6 for that one). I give you the opposite of gangsta. With you I share the statistics of red shirts, give you a peek at the awesomeness of a Death Star grill and let you know about the world's largest air sex competition.

I'm a giver. It's not my fault so many of you are cuckoo for crack-o-puffs.

In the end, who should you blame? I believe this*********** closes the book on that discussion.

Behave.

Or else.

FOOTNOTES:

* = Yes, I will bold the name everywhere. That's consistency of style. Learn it, live it, love it.

** = It's kind of scary how gay he is for that show.

*** = Yes, Ghostbusters 3 is happening, and you probably can't do anything to stop it. I'm sorry. Well, I would be, if I cared. Maybe.

**** = Would you have preferred accelerated heat death instead?

***** = Go on, Google "love" and "friendster." It's sad.

****** = Maybe not today. Maybe not even on this blog. But soon.

******* = My 15" Macbook Pro is called, by virtually everyone who knows it, "the precious."

******** = Please don't forget that the entire Windows OS is stolen from an early build of Mac OS, and then bloatwared to death. After Microsoft Word 5.1, that company hasn't done a single thing right.

********* = Like that call back to Kings? That's how you do it. However, whenever I see the show, I think in my brain, "have you ever seen a kingdom with a butter fly crown? Rulin' is a habit, get like me ..." Hm ... maybe I shouldn't tell people these things.

********** = Si se puede. Universal paradigm shift. Choose joy. Patent pending.

*********** = Anedge hirak Michael Joseph Jackson.