In Which Michael Cera Maintains The Complex Eroticism of The Original

The iTunes Playlist: Michael Cera

Michael Cera’s revolutionary performance as George Michael Bluth in the WP show Arrested Development will live with us forever. We disdain his meek Juno identity and prefer the strong, masculine George Michael who hooks up with cousins and loves Quicken.

If we can get Michael Cera to comment on this post, I will have achieved one of my three major life goals, the other two largely being based around the Wii edition of Mario Kart.

Enjoy Michael Cera’s tremendous celebrity playlist, as posted on iTunes.

“Toy Computer” – Jim Guthrie (mp3)

Please help me make Jim Guthrie rich.

In Which We Are All White People Now

Persian-Pakistanis Drive Like This

by Danish Aziz

When I first saw Stuff White People Like yesterday morning I had two reactions – I had a nice laugh and then I got queasy with the thought of all the horrible blog posts that would sprout up on the Internet in response once the site truly went viral.

Based on my Gchat conversations and the comments on my Facebook posted item, what we’ll see are two reactions. Some people will say “this is just stuff yuppies like” and then feel very proud of themselves for making this observation. Yes, more than just white people enjoy biking, coffee, breakfast, and driving Prii.

While I fully admit to being guilty of several of the site’s pondered products and pastimes (40-70% of the current front page in fact), unlike a good chunk of people who do/buy/think these things I have a sense of humor about the pretentiousness that surrounds it. However, let’s admit that some of the stuff SWPL satirizes is incredibly deserving. The site’s commentary would still be funny if it were called Stuff Yuppies Like.

In Which One Candidate Passes Into The Netherworld There Is Only One Way To Compare The Three

Barack/Hillary/John

by Claire Howorth

My favorite parlor game/salve for stilted conversation, assuming the company doesn’t include young children or my grandmother, is Marry/Fuck/Kill (or its plethora of less fatal-sounding variations).

To play, simply name three people, assign each a fate, and optionally explain why.

Any old triumvirate will do. Reese Witherspoon, Angelina Jolie, Britney Spears? Mario Batali, Jean-Luc Godard, Kim Jong Il? Your mother, your father, your dog?

How would the top three democratic candidates fare in a choice of hitching, humping, or homicide?

In Which We Draft Out The Election And Somebody Owes Me a Porsche If Fred Thompson Wins

As campaign week rolls on, it’s time for

Draft Day

by Alex Carnevale

Because I am both cruel and unusual, I made Danish and Becca draft presidential candidates against me for cash prizes and rough sex. We’re trying to predict who will win here, and the candidates are weighted in our minds based on the likelihood of winning the nomination and presidency, or being on the ticket as Vice President.

Points structure:

1 point for each of the following

-picking the president
-picking the vice president
-picking the republican presidential candidate
-picking the republican vice presidential candidate
-picking the democratic presidential candidate
-picking the democratic vice presidential candidate

1. Barack Obama (Alex)

Maureen Dowd has been totally on fire lately with the trademark meanness and you realize why she won a Pulitzer a million years ago:

But he notes that Obama’s abandonment by his African father at the age of 2 marked him. “Much of the excitement that surrounds him comes from the perception that he is only lightly tethered to race,” Steele writes. “Yet the very arc of his life — from Hawaii to the South Side of Chicago — has been shaped by an often conscious resolve to ‘belong’ irrefutably to the black identity.” (Obama wrote that he dropped a white girlfriend partly because of her race.)

Where I come from, the dropping of a white girlfriend is celebrated.

Karl Rove on Barack. When Karl Rove starts writing hit pieces on you, that’s when you know you have political power.

 2. Hillary Clinton (Becca)

In Which The Third Part of Our Top Twenty Albums of the Year For Your Edutainment

Catch up on the first two installments of our countdown here and here.

The Top 20 Albums of 2007

Part Three: Every Step Is Moving Me Up

“This Is How We Walk On the Moon” – Arthur Russell (mp3)

by Danish Aziz & Alex Carnevale & Will Hubbard

10. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, 100 Days 100 Nights

The most fun you can have without laughing, Sharon was born the same year as my parents, but has a much better voice than either of them. Still, 100 Days 100 Nights sounds like a record from before even Sharon was born.

Read more about Sharon here.

Jones’ backing band was hired to play with one of the top Billboard artists of the year:

“[Industry executives] always told me I didn’t have the look, you know?” Jones sighed. “They told me I was too dark-skinned, too short, you know, too fat. And then once I got past 25, they told me I was too old. So when I was left out of [Amy Winehouse’s album], I thought, ‘That’s OK.’ But it was good — wasn’t weird, it was great. The Dap-Kings were doing some stuff; it’s great that there’s demand for them. But I was still thinking, ‘Get your own band!’ ”

What sets this particular album apart?

“Something’s Changed” – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (mp3)

Has blues horns, blues guitar, blues voice, why does it feel so good?

“I’m Not Gonna Cry” – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (mp3)

One funky guitar line later, you don’t even remember what crying is.

“100 Days, 100 Nights” – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings (mp3)

The call-response section vaults this one up to classic status. It’s really rare that you could dance to a song and have some kind of relations during it as well. This is the bridge SJ and the Dap-Kings have crossed.

– A.C.

“Let Them Knock” – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings (mp3)

“Nobody’s Baby” – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings (mp3)

9. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha

When I was just a litle boy I threw away all of my action toys while I became obsessed with apparitions…

You’ve been playing with innovative musician Martin Dosh lately – how has he pushed your musical boundaries?

Andrew: We’ve only just started touring together and we’re really starting to challenge each other to mix it up every night and try new things. Right now it’s at a very cool stage of collaboration. He does similar things to what I do like looping where he makes his own drums and kind of mixes himself onstage and does a sort of collage.

“Self-Torture” – Andrew Bird (mp3)

“Heretics” – Andrew Bird (mp3)

A lot of [my] songs have a big leap, like there’s two strains going on. In this case, it’s my current state of mind, and then the mind completely wanders to a whole different universe, and I see how one might have something to say about the other. I was imagining this real-estate agent out on the Russian steppes. “Offering views of exiting empires, such breathtaking views of Scythian empires.” I’ve always been fascinated by these obscure corners of history. I sit there and look at maps of the ancient world, where there’s so many of these fantastical names, tribes that you know nothing about. The Visigoths, the Gauls. And of course, the Huns. And they’re always at the edges of the empires—they’re shown as an arrow piercing into this empire. When I was in eighth grade, I got particularly fascinated by the Scythian empire, because they were a little bit lesser-known. And that became my thing. My identity in eighth grade was connected to the Scythians. So I resurrected them through this song.

Music prodigy Andrew Bird keeps hope alive for popular prodigies like Molly Lambert, Margot Tenenbaum, and Deep Blue. Unlike most anal studio musicians, Bird excels in the live setting. He has a flair for the dramatic, whether it be the elaborate Badalamenti-style intro to “Self-Torture” or the jarring, wild opening to “Dark Matter.” Even found sound is heard in the aural wilderness of Bird’s brave new world. On “Yawny at the Apocalypse”, the langorous, lush instrumental close to Armchair Apocrypha, Bird has settled down into an orgasm that belies any notion of age of genre, relying completely on beauty to make meaning. It’s an astonishing balancing act for one of the most exciting young musicians of this period.

– A.C.