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Reader's Tips

Here's a list of great things online, many of them pointed out to me by friends and readers; I’ll update as I get them together.

Really fine mp3 site that’s truly eclectic but soul driven, with classics from Change, Ella Fitzgerald and De La Soul as well as startlingly good remixes and mash-ups: dilate.choonz

If you’re in need of some funky fresh lyrics to put you in the spirit check out eight fantastic old school hip hop video.

It would be unfair to Daniel Craig and Clive Owen to enter Scottish rugby player Sean Lamont into their little competition; follow the link to see him from the front and do make sure your boss isn’t standing behind you. Always a good idea to assume our links are NSFW as that’s just how we roll here at meerkat. Thanks to omg.

Pete Wentz interviews Robert Smith and they discuss South Park. Entertainment Weekly did it but Stereogum extracts the meaty pulp.

In a neat coincidence Esquire's music critic Andy Lager’s weekly podcast features lullaby versions of Cure songs.

Colt Brennan, U of HI star quarterback. I have really got to start getting into ESPN2. Thanks to Kenneth in the 212.

Been Around The World..

..or something. Here’s an unplanned assortment of stuff online that I think is worth sharing. I’m just going to keep posting here as they come to me.

Choire Sicha has a smart piece about old v. new media and some popular misconceptions about what it all means to the TV networks and massive traditional news outlets on his blog.

It’s killing me to be away from New York during the Rossellini film and TV retrospective and poster exhibit at MOMA. Manohla Dargis wrote eloquently about it in The Times. I read this online, either reinforcing or undermining Choire’s thesis, too coffee-deprived to know which right now. Dargis has a wonderful passage on the essence of neo-realism: “...directors like Rossellini and De Sica do not, to paraphrase the critic André Bazin, simply deck out a formal story with touches of reality, as if reality were bits of tinsel. Instead, the offer fragments of reality that retain all of its mystery and ambiguity and whose meaning we piece together, much as the characters do. Others put reality, Bazin writes, “in a cage to teach her to talk, but De Sica talks with her, and it is the true language of reality that we hear, the word that cannot be denied, that only love can utter.””

Revisit some Pauline Kael, just for fun.

Pointed piece at Hello Waffles about body image fascism.

I want to lunlock the secrets of how photographer Nathaniel Welch uses flash so brilliantly. Via [gayya kuyusu]

Web Stuff

Gayya Kuyusu is not your average male skin-fest, highlighting instead an array of fashion and high art photographers illustrated with some severely cool selects. Like this shot here I wish I’d taken by Felix Lahrer.

The New York Times has a key piece on the digital versus film debate in relation to the Walker Evans show with enormous, luxurious digital prints at the UBS Gallery.

Crazy-ass white boy Solomon Cortes is an Early Prince-like one man electro-soul band, complete with a kooky ‘Vienna 1763’ fictional bio. Pretty tight stuff, especially ‘Pink Lipstick’ which is the ‘Nasty Girl 06’ ’Sexy Back’ was trying for.

Good Things

Soul Shower is one of my favorite sites-this blogger from the Soulful Midwest writes about classic R & B with passion and mad knowledge and as though it’s as relevant now as it was in 1974, which for some of us is quite true. He also provides downloads of cuts so choice you will not believe your ears, often taken from rich buttery vinyl. Let the analog love soothe your soul.

Wired reports on the book Pleasurable Kingdom which asserts that animals experience the same hedonistic urges, bacchanalian catharsis and-I’m assuming-morning after regret as humans. Anyone who’s ever seen this classic footage of animals getting plastered knows that much like big pimpin' celebs they’re just like us.

Laura Kightlinger’s merciless new show The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman is spot-on in its portrayal of the madness that is life struggling to Make It in Los Angeles. It’s jogged my memories of living there, bumming rides from friends, hustling to break into The Biz and completely losing my mind, all while somehow still managing to have a hell of a lot of fun. Kightlinger is appalled and amused by the pretensions of L.A. in equal parts which is really the way to go when dealing with what Joni Mitchell called the City of the Fallen Angels. I’m putting this up there as a worthy successor to the dark, cracked worlds of both The Comeback and Arrested Development. Minor Accomplishments airs Friday at 11 p.m. on IFC and again on Sundays at the same time.

"I Coulda Bought A Cheap Cadillac For What I've Spent On This Dog!"

As anyone who bothers to eavesdrop knows, the cast members of the crazy and mixed up show we call New York City run their absurd, obscene and beautiful dialogue in public constantly.  Overheard in New York collects some of the more choice items. The headline is a a tidbit I heard last night.

Elsewhere Valerie Cherish is resuscitated for an interview, and Rob Corddry correctly identifies a nine year old Israeli girl as the worst pen pal ever.

Web Goodies 1

Daily Show lunatic genius stud Rob Cordry really knows his iPod, proving yet again that all the best people are obsessive about music.

A negative review of Tan Lines, a movie about an alienated gay Australian surfer that whose producer declined to grant me an interview when I was down there. But man, I’m so your audience! I’m still going to see it-even if it's wretched it's still gonna hit all my sweet spots.

Quotation Of The Day from the NYT: “What happens in Estonia stays in Estonia”: from a spokesman for Hillary Rodham Clinton when asked if she had been in a drinking contest with John McCain.

Justin Timberlake’s new video sucks because he doesn’t dance, which is where his much-hyped sexiness really derives its power. Instead he tries to smolder but lands on frowny and confused, and the glossy commercial "luxurious" texture of the film has been tired since David Fincher did it in the early 90s, not that that’s stopped anyone from dry-humping the style until it's raw and meaningless. Also the opening shot of the Barcelona tram may be the most the most scandalously misguided reference to an Antonioni movie ever. Skip the frantically edited, botched Bourne and put that three and half minutes towards reviewing the truly stylish existential thriller The Passenger, but get ready to slow your metabolism down to sleeping shark level.

And here's a three minute slice of pure heaven from Love Unlimited and Sooooooul Train, complete with a make-believe phone call by lead singer Glodean James to the song's producer and her future husband Barry White.