Amoeblog > Tag > stephen malkmus

(Wherein I meow.)

Posted by Job O Brother, June 14, 2011 10:17am | Post a Comment

Assholes.

Sometimes my cats are so cute, it annoys me. Especially if they’re being passively cute – you know, just laying in a sunbeam, exposing their bellies – not even trying, but so effwording adorable it just pisses me off and makes me want to stomp them.

It reminds me of when you see a girl who’s so fine, she almost becomes a villain. Like she’s doing it just to torment you. Like, wow you are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen you asshole.

Is there anyone out there with technical know-how who lives in LA that can help me put together my podcast? You must be house-broken, not say mean things about diet Coke, know how to record and broadcast a podcast, and never trick me into getting addicted to heroin (please).

I’m drinking kiefer and listening to Lil’ Kim. Don’t take it personally.

I’m concerned, a teeny bit, about the phenomena of cute cats on the Internet. Increasingly, I’m seeing how the no-fail excitement of kitty-cams and what-not is impacting, not only the World Wide Web, but TV commercials as well. Word is out, and cat footage has gone viral on our screens like AIDS on the prettiest boys of 1984.

Now I’m listening to Jayne County and the Electric Chairs. I’m out of kiefer, so I’m drinking coffee.

(In which we wonder why one bothers... Hmph!)

Posted by Job O Brother, July 12, 2010 02:34pm | Comments (1)

"Social Security barely covers my cost of living and Diabetes has ruined my sense of freedom and vitality!"

I’m grumpy. Not hella grumpy, mind you, just regular grumpy. I suppose it’s from a week of drinking booze and eating varieties of delicious, weird, snack food that Trader Joe’s is always inventing, getting you hooked on, then discontinuing. (“Dark chocolate covered, rosemary-seasoned aspirin, anyone?”)

SOUNDTRACK SERIES #5

Posted by Job O Brother, May 2, 2010 12:46pm | Post a Comment

Directions: Imagine Mr. Brother living another day, as always, with music playing. Whether it’s one of his trusty iPods, or his home stereo, or working the soundtracks section of Amoeba Music Hollywood, Mr. Brother is eating, sonically, with the mouths of his ears.

To simulate this experience, as you read the below story of a day lived, you will be given certain music clips to play. These are inserted to provide you with the same tunes Job was hearing as he was doing what you’ll be reading.

For example, while he was writing the above directions, he was listening to this:

The boyfriend and I need a lamp. Not just any lamp – something that can complete his “reading nook” in the prominent corner of our living room. It must be a lamp that won’t be diminished by our awesome Italian chair (roughly the size of my last apartment) which it will stand behind, be powerful enough to provide the boyfriend with the amount of light he likes in order to read (roughly the brightness of two suns) and, in general, should be hella rad.

So, every Sunday for the past month, he and I have set out into the deliciously temperatured* but cruelly trafficked land of Los Angeles. Armed with my trusty iPod, which I plug into his car – a Lexus with a capacity for smarts exceeding most high school students – its music gives me the fortitude to face another shopping day.

Best of a Rapid Decade: One per year plus a few too good to not mention...

Posted by J. Mark Beaver, January 6, 2010 04:00pm | Comments (2)

In recently trying to fill in a friend on what I'd spent the last year or two listening to, I realized that my personal taste tends to gravitate towards some element of either Folk form (any hint of hill-folk finger-pickin' or Ozark/Appalachian melancholy and I'm in), Psychedelia or the tendency to extend a theme for a good long jam (a category in which I include a lot of the Jazz that I like), or just a great, funky groove.

With those qualifiers in place, the following is a year by year review of the last decade which somehow got past me with out noticing it. I mean, really?!! 2010?!!! I didn't see it coming:

2000: Album of the Year

Air's enjoyable and wacky Moon Safari had been on the decks for a couple years before they contracted for the soundtrack to Sofia Coppolla's Virgin Suicides. The resultant score is absolutely sublime and marked the French electronauts as contenders to watch.

For myself, it was the defining sound of the millennium's new year.

Shelby Lynne released a killer country-soul gem, I Am Shelby Lynne, that echoed early material from the likes of Bonnie Raitt. Thinking that it was a brilliant debut from a talented 32yo unknown, I was eventually shocked to find that it was her 6th album. I listened to it for months.

(Wherein winter records receive writings.)

Posted by Job O Brother, December 16, 2008 11:32am | Comments (1)

It’s finally chilly in Hollywood. I mean, I still have my French windows open wide, but it’s about as cold as it ever gets, with breezes blowing from my hometown in the north, Nevada City, where loved ones are covered in white blankets of snow. (That’s a metaphor – probably very few of them have bed-sheets constructed of crystalline water ice.)

My friends in Nevada City, Jaime, Alison and Dan made a snowman. I don’t get that pleasure here. I suppose I could make a clumps-of-dying-grass-cigarette-butts-and-dog-feces man, but who has that kind of time? I have a blog to write!

Here's a picture of the snowman my friends made.
The best part will be watching him slowly melt over the next couple weeks.

My choices in music are always influenced by weather. When it’s hot city in the summertime, I’ll gravitate towards artists such as Stephen Malkmus, Thin Lizzy, or Sly & The Family Stone. If it’s a rainy day, you can bet some Siouxsie & The Banshees will be trilling from my stereo. I look out the window and see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse trampling the Hills with all the fury of Heaven and Hell as they take the stage for a final battle in which every human soul will come to greet its eternal home in either the awesome glory of the Almighty God or the foul depths of Hell as lorded over by the king of wickedness, Satan, and more often than not I’ll play a little Burt Bacharach. Because it’s always a good time for a little Burt.