I can’t get over how much I dig this music video.

Music videos tread a thin line, depending on two major factors - their artist, and production level. If they’re entirely story based, then they have a tendency to be under-produced, half-baked, and generally speaking, weak. Music videos that are entirely story-based are expensive. The advantage is that they manage to thoroughly capture what the artist is trying to lyrically or musically convey.

The other extreme is entirely performance-based. While it suffers the same quality issue due to expenses, it’s easier to capture the image and frame you’d like since you don’t have to worry about as many factors as you do with a fiction-based narrative. Depending on the editing pacing, you can throw in shit shots with the awesome shots and no one could tell the difference without breaking it down. The disadvantage is you only get to see one side of the artist - the energy-based, live-ish aspect of what they perform like; what their stage presence is about.

The middle-child of these two are the half-sies - the videos that are half performance, half story. What inevitably ends up happening is a clear choice between the production qualities of either side. They drop more money on the story, or the performance, and that makes sense. That’s an artistic choice you have to make, 90% of the time.

What I like so much about this video is that, to me, it pulls off the best of both worlds while managing to stay strictly in the performance-video realm.

I don’t know Macklemore well. What I do know is he’s proud of the home he’s in, he doesn’t take himself seriously to the point that he’s above other people or his fans, his lyrics have a clear and obvious meaning to him and he does what he does with a purpose. (I personally think that) This, artistically, is represented in this video.

It’s easy to brush it off as an artist who has a lot of money dropping it on a silly video. A camel? A ship? A brass ensemble playing on a roof? Rapping your set on a trailer filled with livingroom-esque furnishings on the back of a classic truck on the backdrop of midwest America? Sure, you can look at those things and think that Macklemore is getting cocky and spending money superfluously.

I don’t believe that, though.

While this isn’t a piece of alternative, deep-thinking, high-brow cinema, where every single little detail matters, this is a great example of an artist who has a clear vision and his values and musical morals are represented through the video. He’s with his fans on a boat, having a blast - simultaneously giving a huge 5-7 second screen time to a (what I assume to be) local break dancer. In the middle of an indistinguishable city doing a set. Using a camel because it’s ridiculous and eye-catching; visually surprising. A brass ensemble on the roof to the backdrop of the city he probably hired them from. Rapping on a trailer filled with at-home-furniture because no matter where he goes, he brings his home with him.

And at the end? Hoisting the flag on a huge, nationally-known landmark to show he’s proud of where he’s from.

I respect that.
I love this music video.

This is me.
Introducing Roger, Howard’s temporary replacement. 

Taken by a lovely photographer I met the other day at the show. If I knew where her photography was online, I’d source it. Until then, you’ll need to take my word.

/edit: Found her! Or… she found me.
Check out here work here. 

The main theme to The Social Network.
I wasn’t sure I’d recognize it, that is, until it kicked in around the first piano note. For some reason, it’s so distinct.
This album’s awesome just to play in the background and forget about it. Good work music. Good music in general.

Hand Covers Bruise | Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Happy (nearly) New Years, mothafuckas.

Music for this evening:
All the music with over 100 hits on iTunes.
Gonna be a good night.

Shake Me Like a Monkey | Dave Matthews Band

practicing 

Because I’m bored as hell and procrastinating, this is my playlist for when I want to beat the shit outta my hands in a drum practice.
I use Mike Mangini sticks (the heaviest motherfuckers in the world) for as long as I can. Generally speaking, I don’t want to live by the time the set’s done. For that reason, this playlist is called Punishment.

1. Water, by Hands - warm up. (5:22)
2. Sick Sad Little World, by Incubus - right hand. (6:23)
3. Accidents, by Alexisonfire - left hand. (4:09)
4. Dog’s Blood, by Alexisonfire - both, and right foot. (5:58)
5. Dead Seeds, by Lamb of God [don’t make fun] - for both feet. (3:41)
6. Anna Molly, by Incubus. (3:47)
7. Frak the Gods, by Periphery. I can never cover it well. (3:31)
8. Testify, by RatM. (3:30)
9. Wormholes, by Volumes. (5:33)
10. Shake me Like a Monkey, by Dave Matthews Band. By this point, I’m starting to lose it. (4:01)
11. Jimi Thing, the Central Park Concert, by DMB. (16:39)
12. Avalance, by Cloudkicker. Need a break at this point. (5:15)
13. Two Step, the Central Park Concert, by DMB. My hands are shaking more than Michael J. Fox on crack. (18:57)
14. Warehouse, the Central Park Concert, by DMB. (9:41)
15. Alligator Blood, by Bring me the Horizon. Say what you will, but he’s a good drummer. (4:32)
16. Vision, by Bring me the Horizon. (4:09)
17. Fire, by Jimi Hendrix. (2:45 - thank god)
18. Icarus Lives!, the first recording, by Periphery. Thank god for 1/4 note rhythms. (3:30)
19. Centennial, by Tokyo Police Club. (1:54)
20. A Seafarer’s Knot, by Fair to Midland. (4:02)
21. Sweet#Hart, by Closure in Moscow. (4:05)
22. Autumn Insomnia Session, by the Flashbulb. Never played this nearly correctly, and I don’t think anyone can, honestly. (3:25)
23. Disconnect and Apply, by Dead Letter Circus. (3:04)
24. Themata, by Karnivool. Ending song, sometimes can’t finish it. Want to die, on occasion. (5:40)

All in all, it’s a little over 2 hours of practicing.

Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he’s done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads “a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world.” But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers’ social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.

As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets.

What may much more alarming to Occupy Wall Street organizers is that while Ryan was monitoring September17discuss, he was forwarding interesting email threads to contacts at the NYPD and FBI, including special agent Jordan T. Loyd, a member of the FBI’s New York-based cyber security team

Hold the fuck up.

Why are you people getting angry that he snitched, but you love Julian Assange? You all love a website dedicated to the act of globally posting whistle-blowing secrets about international companies, so how is this any different?

“Well Peter, these are people who are just rallying against a cause, they’re not doing any harm.”

2 problems with that argument:

1) If you’re going to compare an international company to the people trying to run Occupy Wallstreet, then they’re both being snitched on for something, by someone else, for someone else’s goal. The argument “if the companies have nothing to hide, why are the hiding it?” runs true for the Occupy movement. “If the people running Occupy have nothing illegal to hide, why are they hiding it?”

2) You can’t say that without knowing the context. Why is it you chose to believe the secrets WikiLeaks posts without knowing the context? You’re willing to shit yourselves over Collateral Murder, not knowing the complete back story behind it? What if they had reason to believe those two Reuters employees were major terrorists? What if they thought those were the two people they’ve been hunting for months? -Yet you hate it when people work against you in the exact same way - posting information without context for others to read.

This is absolutely and completely hypocritical.

(Source: sarahlee310)