Sarah Palin: The Speech: The Discussion

I'm throwing up this post to get some discussion going. Who here saw Sarah Palin's speech last night at the RNC? She really came out of the gate roaring, delivering a speech sure to rally the party faithful. After eight years of Dubbya I've forgotten that politicians are (usually) good orators, and no matter who wins at least we'll have people who'll be able to deliver rousing speeches. But what about Palin, what did you think?

My two cents: I'm a bit worried now. She's definitely a feisty one, and I can see her grabbing a hold of that "She's a soccer (well, hockey) mom just like me!" vote. She's definitely got that all-American mom with a dash of sexiness (dare I say 'MILF'?) thing going for her that just might appeal to women, though probably not those same women who were gunning for Hillary. I'm a bit disturbed by her nastiness though. In an election where one of the candidates appears to want to get away from the usual mud-slinging silly trite stuff of past elections (e.g. -"is he patriotic enough?"), here we've got a woman who looks like she's going to relish in the mud-slinging. A comment off of the Slate boards says it best:

"What we saw last night was the mainstreaming of Ann Coulter, the normalization of the principle that it isn't bile when it's spoken by a pretty woman. "

I won't vote for the McCain-Palin ticket not because I'm afraid of McCain keeping us in Iraq or what have you, but because A- McCain and Palin are pro-life (sorry, there's too many people in the world, we need to start making less of them) and B- In the past Palin has advocated the teaching of Creationism in the classroom (sorry, but I just can't take your opinions seriously if you believe in that).

What's your reaction?

In a world where movie announcers die...

If you didn't hear, yesterday Don LaFontaine died from complications due to a collapsed lung. Who's Don LaFontaine? He's the movie announcer most famous for any movie trailer that begins with "In a world where...". According to CBS news he's recorded more than 5,000 voiceovers for movie trailers and "hundreds of thousands of more commercials and other presentations." Hundreds of thousands, really?? Sounds a bit of an exaggeration to me.

Do You Have the Crazy?

Only a couple of weeks away from shooting my first narrative short, I have become increasing interested in studying recent independent films that look to be in the same style I want to shoot in. I came across this film, “The Signal,” about a year ago while watching trailers online, and was reasonably excited to see it. Of course, as many indie films, it was not playing in any location that was relatively near my location; so begins the long, enervating wait for the DVD release.

Long story short, I watched it last night and I liked what I saw.

The story breaks down like this: One night a weird signal interrupts all of the TV’s and phones and radios. The signal seems to interrupt synapses and brain wave patterns so that anyone who listens to or watches the signal for a period of time will start doing things that they normally wouldn’t do. And since this is a horror film, everybody starts slaughtering their fellow human beings on a massive scale. As my favorite line in the movie goes, “They just decided to start killing each other.”

There’s a little more to it than that, but I don’t want to get into individual characters and storylines. What I was looking for was story telling technique, editing, sound manipulation, the overall mise en scene of the production. What I got was a very similar feel to another one of my favorite indie films, “Primer.” You don’t have a grasp of what’s going on for the longest time, but the feelings and intensity of the characters just drew you in. And like “Primer”, it was shot as if you were there in the room with the characters. The signal was so strong when a TV was turned on that I had to turn the base down on my subwoofer because it was shaking things off of my desk. I was into it; I was along for the bloody ride.

I’ll revisit this again in a couple of months when I have a final cut of my short to show and we can see if I got what I set out to get.

5. Blur's The Great Escape (1995)

(Note: I have decided to continue posting the rest of my top ten list on my own, and this way Yoggoth can simply finish his list whenever he is up to it and there will be no pressure from me.)

To understand The Great Escape, one must understand Parklife.

Parklife is generally considered to be Blur's best album. But it's not. It looks like Blur's best album, it smells like Blur's best album, it tastes like Blur's best album, but it's not Blur's best album.

You see, after successfully exploring his new Anglocentric bent on Modern Life Is Rubbish, Damon Albarn began thinking big. "I'll make the perfect panorama of English life as it is lived in the late 20th century!," I can see his pouty lips uttering. Just one problem: this "perfect panorama of English life" had very little to do with him. It was more about an idea than about his actual feelings. I mean, the critics are right. Parklife is terrific. But only to a point. It's tasteful, eclectic, and well-contructed, but there's something about it that strikes me as artificial and forced. And even though the record was a huge success, I think Albarn himself on some level sensed this. As he would say on "Country House," "I'm a professional cynic but my heart's not in it."

Enter The Great Escape. The Great Escape is Parklife Plus Damon Albarn's Actual Emotions. According to various sources, thanks to his newfound stardom, for the first time in his life, Albarn began occasionally experiencing what is known by some people as...depression! Of course, being Damon Albarn, it was more like "depression" in quotation marks, but let the man have his moods OK? His relationship with Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann was deteriorating in a sea of endless touring (and endless heroin usage, by her at least). A doctor's prescription of anti-depressants became the inspiration for "The Universal" and creative lines like "He's reading Balzac and knocking back Prozac."

The point is, despite his overflowing self-confidence, at heart Albarn, a child of the bohemian theatre crowd, knew that he would never be satisfied with the life of a shallow celebrity. But by the time of The Great Escape, he could see that he was dangerously close to becoming one. And so the satire he dispenses throughout the album isn't just his attempt to make fun of people, but also his attempt to distance himself from the hideously empty lifestyle that he knew he was this close to embracing.

The charm of the album, of course, is that he never explicitly comes out and says this; it's all implied. If Parklife was Damon Albarn's attempt to conform to an idea in his head, The Great Escape was Albarn realizing that he couldn't stand his own idea at all.

So The Great Escape is the sound a band trying to tear apart its image while still attempting to use it. I can picture Albarn twiddling his fingers, saying, "They want Britpop, hey? I'll give them Britpop!" So they decided to shit on Britpop without telling anybody first. The Great Escape is, in the words a literary critic once used to describe Steinbeck's Cannery Row, "a poison creampuff."

With its spidery guitar lines and comical Casio keyboard licks, the album opener "Stereotypes" doesn't sound like it's departing one iota from the classic Blur sound. Nor do the lyrics initially seem to be much of a departure, as Albarn paints a withering portrait of middle-class adultery:

The suburbs they are gleaming
They're a twinkle in her eye
She's been feeling frisky since her husband said goodbye
She wears a low-cut t-shirt
Runs a little B & B
She's most accomodating when she's in her lingerie
Wife swapping is your future
You know that it would suit ya

Not too much different from the horny pair in "End of a Century," right? It's like, "Come on, we all know these people, let's have a little laugh." But on the chorus the song begins to show its fangs:

Yes, they're Stereotypes
There must be more to life
All your life you're dreaming
And then you stop dreaming

When I first heard the song, I used to hear the line "All your life you're dreaming," and expect the next line to be something like, "And then all your dreams come true," or even something darker like "And then your dreams are dashed," But Albarn doesn't even suggest that level of self-awareness on the part of the couple. Instead they just stop dreaming. "Ground down by the stone," as Roger Waters might say. Unlike the frequently misguided but essentially well-meaning young Londoners on Parklife, the characters on The Great Escape are seriously lost. Albarn's mild bemusement has turned to genuine scorn...and it's liberating!

"Country House," track number two, is another deceptively desperate lament. "Oh, jolly, another goofy music hall shuffle a la Parklife's title track," the casual observer might conclude. But beneath all the pithy couplets and the foot-stomping, marching band-ish fade lies the portrait of a person who is barely making it through the day. Only on the third or fourth listen did I realize the backing vocals were chanting "Blow, blow me out/I am so sad I don't know why." Now this is a pop song!

The albums rolls on to the similarly "seemingly benign yet ultimately bleak" ballad "Best Days," with the soothingly ironic chorus:

Other people wouldn't like to hear you
If you said that
These are the best days
of our lives
And other people'd turn around and laugh at you
If you said that
These are the best days
of our lives

The implication being: if the peak of your life is this depressing, imagine the rest of it, buddy!

The Great Escape is, as far as I'm concerned, the best concept album of the '90s, in that it has a clear concept, every song actually addresses the concept, and every song explores the concept in a fresh and equally interesting manner. It's like fifteen different American Beautys with fifteen different Kevin Spaceys and Annette Benings. Who would've thought that boredom could be this much fun?

The album also gets a lot of mileage out of the juxtaposition between the band's cheerful musical style and the despondency of the characters Albarn chronicles. The sarcasm-fest makes the album's few sincere moments even more glorious, such as the gently orhcestrated "The Universal." The song begins quietly, as if it's floating in space:

This is the next century
Where the Universal's free
You can find it anywhere
Yes, the future's been sold
Every night we're gone
And to karaoke songs
How we like to sing along
Though the words are wrong

Then the orchestra explodes on the chorus:

It really, really, really could happen
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you
Well, just let them go

So what is it that "really, really, really could happen"? Happiness? Inner peace? The perfect universe? Take your pick. He goes on:

No-one here is alone
Satellite's in every home
Yes, the Universal's here
Here for everyone
Every paper that you read
Says tomorrow's your lucky day
Well, here's your lucky day

The way he sings "Well, here's you're lucky day," it's like he's throwing these people's complacency back in their faces. "Unless you get off your asses and lead a meaningful life, then you can take your lucky day and shove it!"

Another standout, and one of the only times the band's music is as bleak as the words, is Graham Coxon's spooky echo-laden guitar showcase "He Thought Of Cars," which sounds the great lost track from OK Computer, two years before OK Computer even came out (take that, Radiohead!):

Moscow's still red
The young man's dead
Gone to heaven instead
The evening news
Says he was confused

The motorways will all merge soon
Lottery winner buys the moon
They've come to save us
The space invaders

He thought of cars
And where
Where to drive them
Who to drive them with
There
There was no-one
No-one

Sometimes I wonder why Blur never caught on as well in the States as Oasis and Radiohead did, but sometimes I understand exactly why: their sound simply wasn't as heavy. You could also say that whereas most great rock bands seemingly compose their songs from the boundless ether, with Blur you definitely get the sense that they sat down and constructed their songs and put a lot of conscious effort into it. But they're such great craftsmen and the results are so well-layered that I really don't mind. "He Thought Of Cars," however, is (along with Parklife's "This Is A Low") one of their heaviest and most musically graceful tracks.

It's not a perfect album. Beholden as it was to the CD era, it's at least two songs too long. When first borrowed the album from the library, I taped it onto a 45-minute cassette side, and "Topman," "Mr. Robinson's Quango," and "Dan Abnormal" were the ones to go. "Topman" has grown on me a bit, but I wouldn't say it adds anything essential. "Mr. Robinson's Quango" sounds like a poor man's "Country House" (and I still for the life of me don't know what a quango is). And "Dan Abnormal," although a clever anagram of "Damon Albarn," interrupts the album's closing momentum and might have made a better B-side instead.

But the album is good where it counts: in the first songs and in the last songs. Indeed, the album sprints to the finish line with the last two tracks, where Blur finally hammer the nail into the Britpop coffin. "Entertain Me" is like the evil doppleganger of "Girls and Boys," where the giddiness is replaced by exhaustion:

The weekend is back
But so is he
Head to the floodlights
See the fraternity
They're waiting

I hear them up in the north
Down in the south
All that is spewing
Spewing out of his mouth

The song always makes me think of Jennifer Connelly at the end of Requiem For A Dream, reduced to humping a dildo on a slimy stage as the debauched businessmen cry for more, more, more! I also pick up a faint echo of "Here we are now, entertain us" - or am I crazy?

Then comes the album closer, the electronic ballad "Yuko and Hiro," which apparently takes place in a sterile Japanese office building and is also completely, 100%, just plain weird:

This is my work place
And these are the people
I work with
Yuko and Hiro
We work together

We work for the company
That looks to the future
We work hard to please them
They will protect us

I never see you
We're never together
I'll love you forever

As the synths gurgle and the secretaries chant in Japanese, you can't help but say to yourself, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the sound of Britpop dying."

It was just as well. Once (What's The Story) Morning Glory buried The Great Escape in the dust, Blur licked their wounds, abandoned any pretense of Britpop, and repositioned themselves as just yer average indie-rock band with their 1997 self-titled release (famous for the perennial sports anthem "Song 2"). I think at the time it was the smart move to make, but in retrospect it was also kind of a cop-out. It's like if one of the candidates in a hotly-contested election simply decides to call it quits so that he/she can focus on his/her own personal life. On the one hand, you're thinking, "Good for you, politics is nasty." But on the other hand...you wanted to witness a fair fight! Who cares if Damon Albarn finally found his "soul"? You know what I say? I say there was more of his soul in The Great Escape than there ever was in Blur, 13, or (dare I mention it) Think Tank, because The Great Escape is where, if you look closely enough, you can catch him secretly slipping soul into the cracks of a relatively shallow pop movement - and getting away with it.

Number 4: Bioshock - "Welcome to Rapture" (2k Games, 2007)

The number 4 spot on my list belongs to the opening of last year's critically acclaimed Bioshock. The game takes place in the city of Rapture, an art deco underwater city built as an objectivist utopia by a megalomaniac of a man named Andrew Ryan (a sort of play-on-words/anagram for Ayn Rand). You play as a man simply named 'Jack', who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in the 1940's mid-Atlantic ocean.

Bioshock is a fascinating game because the game tasks you with hunting down and killing 'Big Daddies' - giant 'men' (we never get to glimpse who or what is inside) encased in oversized old-fashioned diving suits. You need to get rid of these Big Daddies because they protect the Little Sisters, small girls who walk around and harvest a material named 'Adam' from the dead bodies strewn around Rapture. You see, upon Jack's arrival you learn that something has gone horrible amiss in Rapture, leaving most of its citizens dead or so drugged-up that they've become ravenous killers. What you learn is that in this "anything goes" objectivist society, a new sort of drug/genetic modification was developed, called 'Plasmids', which gave its users phenomenal powers over the elements, allowing for such things as shooting electricity from one's hands, or the ability to turn water into ice. But something went wrong. It's a bit of a conceit, but is well implemented in the story. Plus it allows for some great old-fashioned advertising, like the old cigarette commercials from the '50's that look so silly and antiquated nowadays.

When you finally get to one of these Little Sisters you are presented with a choice, you can either choose to 'harvest' them, taking all the Adam they've accumulated but killing the Little Sister in the process, or you can choose to save them, removing the leech thing from their backs and returning them to normal, but sacrificing the precious Adam in the process. The first time you are confronted with this option it can be almost terrifying as you see a little girl looking at you in fear with the two options laid out in front of you. It seems that most people are unable to kill the little sister the first time, opting to save her instead.

The game also has one of the greatest twists in modern gaming, and in perhaps all of gaming. I don't want to divulge what it is here, but it's a great example of the reader-response school of literary criticism and really leaves the player to question what their role is in playing a videogame. I honestly felt that my trust hadn't been so much betrayed by the characters in the game, but that it was the actual game makers themselves who had betrayed me. I wish I could say more.

In the "Welcome to Rapture" segment we, as Jack, wake up from the plane crash to find ourselves floating in the water with the ruins of the plane crash around us. Water has never looked so damn good in a game. The fact that you don't have any sort of display at this point leaves a lot of people sitting there for a few minutes not realizing that the game has started. You swim a short way and see some sort of lighthouse protruding from the water nearby. You swim over to it and upon opening the front door are greeted with the statue of a scowling man holding a giant banner that reads: "No Gods or King, only Man". A short trip down the stairs brings you to the bathysphere (a giant diving bell). Upon pulling the lever the bathysphere closes and you are plunged underwater to begin your journey. Giant art-deco statues, straight from the cover of an Ayn Rand novel, appear outside holding signs which say how many fathoms deep you are. A movie screen pops up and a small "Welcome" movie begins to play. You are greeted by the voice of Andrew Ryan, who sounds something like Orson Welles, and he delivers his manifesto for why he built Rapture in one of gaming's great speeches:

"I'm Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question:
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?
No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor.
No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God.
No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.
I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...
Rapture.
A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

After this little movie you are greeted with the city of Rapture before you. An art-deco masterpiece entirely underwater, like something out of Jules-Verne. My favorite part is the giant humpback whale slowly swimming between the massive skyscrapers. Soon you enter Rapture and find that something terrible has occured.

There's no specific endpoint to the beginning of the game, but for this piece I'll say it's when you get knocked out and see a Big Daddy/Little Sister slowly trudging past you, with the Big Daddy sounding like some sort of whale. This level is not only a great introduction to the game, but it effectively introduces you to combat, plasmids, and how to use your environment around you. I could go on about this game, but I'll stop for now. I highly recommend watching the intro to the game, you can find it here.

Nice Speech

Here is a transcript of Obama's speech. He emphasized the differences between his positions and McCain's:

"Now, I don't believe that Sen. McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy -- give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is that you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. You're on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You're on your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps -- even if you don't have boots. You are on your own."

Obama also undercut the tired LIBERAL/CONSERVATIVE shouting match by explaining how his proposals are actually very centrist:

"It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves -- protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and science and technology."

That sounds like capitalism with personal and social responsibility as necessary elements. Not an overly LIBERAL position, in the cable talk show sense of the word. It'll be interesting to see McCain's response. Obama had Clinton(s) as the model of successful a centrist Democrat. McCain has...Bush? No, no, I think what he's really asking himself these days is - What would Nixon do?

Paul, er - Steve Jobs is Dead!

In case you missed it, yesterday someone at Bloomberg news was updating the obituary for Steve Jobs - yes, they keep planned obituaries on file in case big name people die - and accidentaly hit 'publish'. Whoops.
For a brief moment there everyone thought Steve Jobs had died. But we can all rest easy and put our iPod earbuds back in ears as it's just not true. Hit the link to see the rather lengthy pre-obit Bloomberg published.

Number 5: Doom - "Hangar" (id Software, 1993)

Well, looks like Yoggoth was right on this one. For the number 5 spot on my list of best first levels I've chosen the first level of Doom. A lot has been said about Doom. Though Wolfenstein was the first real first-person-shooter (also created by id Software) it was Doom that really grabbed people's attention and introduced them to the genre. Seeing everything from the eyes of the protagonist was a first for many people. But what really made Doom famous was its use of gore and violence. For its time it was an incredibly good looking game, and the blood, well, we thought it looked so damn real!!

I remember the first time I saw Doom I was blow away. Was this real? Could I really just walk around shooting zombies and other creatures, watching them keel over in disgusting death animations uttering a dying moan as I pumped another round into my shotgun?? Would I get in trouble for playing this game??? For it's time it was an extremely violent game. This was back in the era when Bart Simpson uttering "Eat my shorts" was pushing the limits and offending Barbara Bush. No one had seen a game quite like this before.

In terms of the actual level "Hangar" it's a great little introduction to the game. You start out with the wimpy pistol but in no time you get the shotgun, a highly effective weapon which also produced some of the more grisly death animations. Fighting through a small group of gun wielding zombies the player is soon introduced to the fireball-spitting Imps. An experienced Doom player can get through this level in under thirty seconds, but there's a surprising amount of depth if you take your time. There's a couple of secrets to be found, including access to the outside courtyard. This also makes this level the perfect level for the introduction of the "Deathmatch" mode.

Doom popularized Deathmatch mode for thousands of kids across the country. It seemed so revolutionary at the time - instead of shooting the monsters, you connected up two or more computers and shot your friends! The introduction of Deathmatch helped lay the groundwork for the online deathmatches that you can play today in hundreds of games, from Counterstrike to Call of Duty to Halo. In fact in most games today some sort of "multiplayer" mode is practically mandatory. But there was nothing like it at the time. In fact, once you got a taste for fragging your friends it could be hard to go back to the normal game. For all these reasons, this is why "Hangar" from Doom takes number 5. To take a look at actual gameplay footage click here.

Adventures In Rap #7: "The Show"/"La-Di-Da-Di"

So in my effort to tackle the history of rap as thoroughly as possible, to make sure that I'd heard every last droplet of worthwhile early rap ever released, I gave a listen to Street Jams: Hip-Hop From The Top, Vol. 1-4. While I'd already heard many of the tracks elsewhere (Sugarhill Gang, Run-D.M.C., etc.), there were several I had not. And several I may never need to hear again. I probably could have lived without Full Force's "Alice, I Want You Just For Me," The Fat Boys' "All You Can Eat," Fresh Gordon's "Gordy's Groove," Spyder-D's "Buckwheat's Beat" (yes, that Buckwheat), and Word Of Mouth's "King Kut (Featuring D.J. Cheese)," most of which are about on the level of Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster Mash." While from a historical perspective these songs are fascinating, from a musical and lyrical perspective they leave a little to be desired.

At some point rappers must have realized that you can have the greatest lyrics in the world but if your beat stinks it doesn't matter, and that, by the same token, you can have the slightest lyrics on the face of the earth but if your beat rocks, then no one cares. At this stage the discussion probably went about as far as "Hey, let's just put Drum Machine Pattern #16 and some synth riffs on there and let's go to Chuck E. Cheese."

But Street Jams was not a total wash, thanks to the inclusion of what is possibly the most quoted single in the history of hip-hop: Doug E. Fresh & the Get Fresh Crew's "The Show"/"La-Di-Da-Di." Amid the plethora of Saturday morning cartoon rejects, "The Show" and "La-Di-Da-Di"stood out like a sore thumb.

First of all, the music isn't total crap. "The Show" has a slinky, jazzy, spacious beat that grooves along with a rich layer of non-dated echo (as well as a comical keyboard riff which occasionally slips into the Inspector Gadget theme tune!). What really sets Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick apart from their 1985 brethren is the level of playfulness, irony, theatricality, and whimsy that they employ. They know how to be silly and yet not give the impression that they're constantly winking at you. They manage to be goofy without sounding like sell-outs. They're simply just...better.

First of all, you've got Doug E. Fresh, "The Human Beatbox," whose beatboxing isn't just amusing as a novelty but is actually filled with ingenious little details and split-second gags. Still, I don't know just how much human beatboxing I could take by itself. That's where Slick Rick comes in.

Slick Rick is possibly the greatest rapper of all time. Maybe in one sense at least. Not as a profound voice of human expression, perhaps, but just as a pure rapper. Whereas most rappers, before and since, have tried to come off as aggressive, Slick Rick is mellow. Every "mellow" rapper who's followed, from Snoop Dogg to Andre 3000 to Shock G to Das EFX, probably owes a little debt to Slick Rick. Some of the mellowness is probably unintentional: Since he spent a good portion of his childhood in England, he has a slight British accent that makes his phrasing even more distinctive than it already is. He elongates, he exaggerates, he plays around with words to create a surreal effect. He is the shit.

Together, Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick have a rapport that is unstoppable. Doug E. Fresh raps a line while Slick Rick makes a little throwaway joke in the background. Their absurdity is well-structured and logical. It's like the two class clowns, whom everybody knows are way funnier than the rest of the kids, getting up in front of the chalkboard and just goofing around for minutes and nobody minding. Like on the opening of "The Show":

Slick Rick:
Excuse me Doug E. Fresh...

Doug E. Fresh:
Yes!

Slick Rick:
Have you ever seen a show with fellows on the mic
With one million rhymes that don’t come out right?

Doug E. Fresh:
They bite

Slick Rick:
They’re never right

Doug E. Fresh:
That’s not polite

Slick Rick:
Am I lying?

Doug E. Fresh:
No, you’re quite right

And so on. I also love Slick Rick's only full verse in "The Show":

Slick Rick:
Well, here’s a little something that needs to be heard
Doug, I was walking downtown

Doug E. Fresh:
Word Rick

Slick Rick:
Word
All along, no one to be with
Step on the D-train, 205th
I saw a pretty girl

Doug E. Fresh:
So

Slick Rick:
So I sat beside her
Then she went rrrr, like she was Tony the Tiger
I said, oh darn, there's been a mistake
Honey, my name’s Slick Rick, not frosty flakes!

Now, although "The Show" was the A-side and the official hit (it peaked at #4 R&B), "La-Di-Da-Di," the B-side, is in some ways even better, and has been even more influential. Here is only a partial list of songs that have sampled "La-Di-Da-Di," just off the top of my head: The Beastie Boys' "Hold It Now, Hit It," Snoop Dogg's "Lodi Dodi," The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize," Das EFX's "Jussumen," De La Soul's "My Brother's A Basehead"...and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Gone are the cheesy keyboard riffs of "The Show." This time around, Doug E. Fresh is the music! Slick Rick takes center stage for a charmingly raunchy tale including the usage of Oil Of Olay, Johnson's Baby Powder, and Polo Cologne for God's sakes. The interplay between Slick Rick as the storyteller and Doug E. Fresh as the sort of Greek Chorus is delightful, like something out of a puppet show or a campfire skit.

At one point an exchange goes like this:

Slick Rick:
Then I dilly

Doug E. Fresh:
dally

Slick Rick:
I ran through a

Doug E. Fresh:
alley

Slick Rick:
I bumped into this homegirl named

Doug E. Fresh:
Sally

Slick Rick:
from the

Doug E. Fresh:
valley

I also love:

Slick Rick:
I woke up around ten o’clock in the morning
I gave myself a stretch up, a morning yawn and
Went to the bathroom to wash up
Put some soap on my face and my hand upon a cup, said
Mirror mirror on the wall
Who is the top choice of them all
There was a rumble dumble, five minutes it lasted
The mirror said

Doug E. Fresh:
“You are you conceited bastard!”

And finally, lest anyone mistake this for some sort of crossover rap, the song goes out with an R-rated bang:

Slick Rick:
And on and on and on she kept on
The bitch been around before my mother’s born
I said, “cheer up!” I gave her a kiss
I said, “you can’t have me I’m too young for you miss”
She said, “No you’re not,” then she starts crying
I says, “I’m nineteen”, she says

Doug E. Fresh:
“Stop lying!”

Slick Rick:
I says, “I am — go ask my mother
And with your wrinkled pussy, I can’t be your luverrrrrr!”

The words of a true artist.

Zrbo Presents: Top 5 "First Levels" of Videogames

As you probably know I'm a connoisseur of videogames. There's a certain enjoyment that comes with playing a game that can't be found through film or music. Especially when a game is new, there's nothing like getting home, ripping off the plastic and popping the disc/cartridge/floppy disc in and firing up that game for the first time, taking in the graphics, the music, and, most importantly, the gameplay.

The following posts will highlight those opening moments of videogames. More specifically I'll be looking at those great first levels of videogames. The top 5 "first levels" I've chosen are ones I believe effectively teach the player the basics of gameplay, give the players a taste of what the game is about and what's to come, and in cases where the game has a story to tell, introduce players to the story and leave them wanting more.

This list is not meant as a nostalgia trip, though you may find a whiff of it here and there. Also, my knowledge of videogames is not nearly complete and there would practically be no way for anyone to have played every single game out there, so please excuse me if "your favorite game" didn't make the list. The following list is composed of games that I have played, though that was not necessarily a criteria of mine. I hope you enjoy what's to come, and I'll try to make it as easy to read as I can for the non-gamers out there. Lad-, er, gentlemen, the top 5 first levels of videogames...