Pink Champagne: Or why watching Jimmy Fallon inspired this post

We’re not your dad and moms blog so we don’t want to get too much into convincing anyone to like Van Morrison, or any music thats been difficult to enjoy because every chode on earth cites it as their favoritre. If anything, by writing this post, we are feeling comfortable with you as a readership by sharing this (almost) embarassing fact that we think Van Morrison is a pretty bad ass little person. But not for the reasons you think and thats not what this post is about.

Instead we got to thinking the other night while watching Van on Jimmy Fallon (yikes, poor guy) that anyone who is the source of having inspired Lester Bangs to write one of the most emotionally informed, intelligent, berserk, and touching pieces of writng we’ve ever read about why music matters, is okay in our book.

You can say to love the questions you have to love the answers which quicken the end of love that’s loved to love the awful inequality of human experience that loves to say we tower over these the lost that love to love the love that freedom could have been, the train to freedom, but we never get on, we’d rather wave generously walking away from those who are victims of themselves. But who is to say that someone who victimizes himself or herself is not as worthy of total compassion as the most down and out Third World orphan in a New Yorker magazine ad? Nah, better to step over the bodies, at least that gives them the respect they might have once deserved. where I love, in New York (not to make it more than it is, which is hard), everyone I know often steps over bodies which might well be dead or dying as a matter of course, without pain. and I wonder in what scheme it was originally conceived that such an action is showing human refuse the ultimate respect it deserves.

Take some time to read the rest
We can probably agree that noone cares about live albums of studio albums recorded 30 years after the originals and that if someone were to readress a group at Gettysburg, the context would get lost and the only coverage would be that of the local school newspapers.
Still here is the video of the song that was on Fallon and is the thrid track on Astral Weeks:

Some more stuff:
An interview with Morrisson when rock writing was fresh and was less of the self concious creep it is today
A good blog post about Bangs with a bunch of his content

Uncoolhunting: Baby Reborns

Yikes, our new uncool spot comes in the form of sweatered women necromancing with the dead babies( they’re called reborns, alright) they’ve never had. If life were some Disney film or strange British miniseries in which these dolls could talk, they would definitely beg to be disassembled.

A few quick observations:
–Using the adjective awesome to describe anything other than non-effecting feelings or other things you generally don’t give a shit about is fine. When used by old nannies in pink rayon shirts to describe their non-child in the next room it compounds the case for creepiness.
— We surveyed and discovered that if we were approached in a supermarket by a woman with a baby that appears more dead than fake our reaction would be less surprise excitement and more of a bottled-up, uncomfortable, freak out. This leads us to belive the couple in the doc are both a) senile (see sling) b) drunk (see sling) c) senile and drunk (see sling).

Is it us or have Craigslist users lost their umph?

It looks like after all the sex stings that have taken place using Craigslist recently, the cock-in-hand trollers have zipped up and took all that glory hole energy and moved its gravitational center into C.L.’s Rant’s And Raves universe. This, naturally, to the detriment of cyberspace.

What Is Going On?

Most of the posts seem like strange tone poems on topics only the author is aware of or notes scribbled down while dreaming: the effect is so bizarre that you wonder why a) these people don’t get their own blog b) if all the crazy homeless people we see at the library on the computers are the authors.
We guarantee that by spending time on any cities R&R section, you will feel a surge in personal self-esteem: you’re small dick syndrome subsides; educational incompetency falls by the wayside; your view on Global Issues will make you feel like you could debate with Chomsky.
Here are some of our favorites each featuring the staples of certifiable nuttery: anthropomorphism, fringe conservatism ( see cowardice), fabricated g-friend stories/sex fantasy.
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/rnr/1053043960.html
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/rnr/1052953838.html
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/rnr/1053116286.html
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/rnr/1052849717.html
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/rnr/1053121102.html

Good News: Our Readership Consists of Skinheads, Gays, And Retard-Hunters

We Love Diversity At Douchebag Danceoff– even if two of the groups most likely are hatemongers and the other is looking for cheesy fashion tips, or information about Honda Civics.

We Don't Care What You Look Like

We are happy to hear we were “nominated” for Blog of The Day. The last time we “Won” anything was at the hospitals kickball tournament.
We want to take a second to let our readership know they can feel as comfortable here as the woman in the above story does at the not-Walmart, you go girl!!! We’ve noticed a remarkable trend about our blog, thanks to the nifty WordPress stats app that is packaged with each blog.
According to the stats, the only people who are actually coming to our blog via google are Aryans looking for brothers, badly dressed homosexuals looking to find out how to get a Randy Jackson watch, and people who want to find out about MTV’s How’s Your News?
We were interested in the search results for HYN, which makes for the majority of searches: people typing in stuff like “retard + mtv”, “show with retards”, “retarded mtv” because they(kind of) remind us of the purpose of the post in the first place: MTV intentionally is promoting a show under the guise that they’re doing a social service but are, in fact, relying on their viewership of the show to come from stoned high-school kids looking for a laugh. The type who type stuff like “the mtv show with the retards.”
None-the-less, we’re happy to have you on board: keep searching for the huge media outlet and winding up here, even if its only for a second.

Retards and Skinheads

More Aryan, Randy, And Retards

Literary Map + Linguistic Note

We’re sick of Amazon’s algorithm for suggesting what books it thinks we would like; Good Reads reminds us of the apartment bookshelf of every friend we’ve ever had, including ourselves. The two reminders together equal into one large and bright post-it reminder with a genital(male or female) drawn on it in crayon letting us know that the job of large online institutions– these two connected immediately through a nifty but irritatingly transparent business agreement — is to deceive our little consumer souls that the info they’re selling is the only info out there. If deceit is too strong of a word, than trick is right on the mark.

We were happy to find literature-map, a lo-fi computer-sciencey** application that generates authors according to other authors you like. It is pure text and all information– we were surprised that when we clicked on an author, we weren’t redirected to an online bookstore.
The best part is these are authors we’ve never heard/read before, so we feel like we’ve taken ourselves out of the circular filter mentioned above and are finally using the internet for its resourcefulness.

**We’re aware this use of -ey is some type of nuanced vernacular that Rosy O’Donnell invented as a way to empower awkward, sexually frustrated, angry, overweight Catholic women. It draws the line in the sand, speaks cute through the beard stubble and respiratory problems. Still, we’re secure in our masculinity but our language command is sometimes weak.

Everytime we try to look young we only look like petterists

We were considering some spring clothes and realized every time we try to buy new gear, we’re really just shooting to turn back the clock, to shave off a few years without losing the emotional maturity: we want to look younger, cooler, and a little more carefree. But us adults fuck it up with big kid problems.
We’re either trying to desperately repress our childhood, so that when Nancy from work offers to have a cat-free night out, we don’t know how to dress for the situation:

What’s worse, and what we think we suffer from here at Douchebag Danceoff, is the piss-in-the-wind struggle of not being able to put our youth to sleep. We’re rewriting our life so that it sounds more exciting and we had more friends than we actually did. But youth is reserved for the young and every time we try to dress up for as something we think will recapture our childhood, we wind up looking like unappreciated child molesters.

We Look Like We're Riding The Dream Crush Express

From Keepa

Uncoolhunting: Websites About Achievements Made While On Drugs

We love websites that are devoted to drugs– they break the myth that drugs make people unambitious. We especially like the type of sites that discuss great feats achieved by people while on drugs. It’s almost as if by finding people out there who have contributed to society while using the same drug that has made the webmasters life fall apart, it justifies why it’s okay for the webmasters life to have fallen apart.

via SIR BACON

Here are some links to Doc Ellis’ story of pitching a no hitter on acid.
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To Do List: 2/21/09

TO DO LIST
1) Finish Reading Audacity of Hope( god I don’t want it to end)
2) DVR Gilmore Girls
2) Get recipe from Ronnie for that bacon weave thing we had at the last dinner party
4) Buy Bow tie and (or) turtleneck. (check bank first online to make sure I don’t overdraft. See if you can get rid of Hitler B-Day pin via online or does it have to be done in person)
5) Give another listen to the new Antony and Johnsons record to see if it’s grown on me; Listen to Hold Time.
5) Get ready for the big day!! (Have confidence, Jed, c-o-n-f-i-d-e-n-c-e. And not like that “oh yeah, my past as an Aryan Brother is dark but I’m okay now” Not like that, confidence like, “I think I’m the best librarian for this elementary-school-confidence.
6) Buy Visine– Read Hipster Runoff

No Review: “A Kid Named Cudi”

We’re happy we heard Kid Cudi’s “A Kid Named Cudi” before we read the embarrassing account of him getting tasered last weekend in Phoenix during NBA All-Star weekend. It’s not that we would like his music less, we would just be distracted with the nattering image of someone so set on wearing his Jordans to a marketing event of Nike’s direct competitor that he was willing to get electrocuted. The image is so absurd that the mind struggles to mythologize: But Jordans aren’t Scotland and Kid Cudi isn’t Braveheart, so it plays like a Rodney Dangerfield bit instead. And though we really don’t care how artists act, “A Kid Named Cudi” is composed with such serious knowledge of music that a clownish act like that is hard to attribute to it’s creator. (Mental note: file under more proof that artists don’t imitate their art)

Our intention here at DB/DO is not to write reviews of music: there are so many people who do that already, some of them well (see blogroll). We entered a period two-or-so years ago where we began to feel old and believed this first part was based on the fact that we weren’t liking most of the music we were hearing. The electronic music coming out felt like a direct assault on the music we cherished for most of our early lives: it had no depth but the institutions that we thought would rally against it were becoming engulfed by it. We waited for someone to say that it was all shit, that a lot of cocaine use was going on in the circles that perpetrated it, and that it was all a mistake. At the same time, the bands who believed they were “making a statement” against this electro rise, were making music that intentionally sounded bad. And because a lot of people were starting to feel the same way that we did at the time, bands that now do not know how to tune their guitars are touring all around the country under ridiculously strange sobriquets– each night they play to a bunch of nihilistic shitheads who’ve added to the cultural collapse. The channels get flooded with gunk; there’s too much information; most of it sucks.

It wasn’t to recently that we had an awakening, a rebirth of our self-esteem: of our natural right to criticize and not like things. With this insight, we realized it wasn’t that we were getting old– we just hated most of the “indie” music that we were hearing. The bar on what was considered quality dropped substantially, coke or no coke. People with no knowledge of the canon that preceded them took the insecurity of being ignorant and turned it, rather transparently, into an assault on given canon. We praise musicians who “know their music” because not knowing is the accepted norm.

A Kid Named Codi pats the person who is feeling old on the back. Reaffirms that it isn’t you, that most music sucks out there and someone has to do something to save it. The careful usage of rare(r) R&B samples, which is now an old trick among even semi-literate producers, is not what separates Cudi from the other mix-tape DJ/Rappers out there. Cudi has given credit to the canon, has spent time exploring other genres in a way that most indie rock artists refuse to do. Band of Horses “The Funeral” serves as the skeletal system on “The Prayer”; Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” is playfully revamped into “50 Ways To Make a Record”.

Like a lot of people who make music a large part of their life, we have tendencies to define ourselves within strict guidelines that are unspoken and predominately bullshit. Hearing albums like Cudi makes us want to return to a pre-snob, pre-self important state : to schoolyards and Hot 97 on Friday nights and Beatles anthologies. To anything that was good that came our way with out made-up pretense blurring our vision.

Uncoolhunting: Oh No, Twice In One Week!!!

Has YouTube struck a deal with failed songwriters who now make educational music? A few days ago on their Featured Videos section there was the Presidential Rap ( we keep fucking up the rhyme at Truman). In “Twin Prime Conjecture” an Adam Carolla look-a-like does a bouncy dead-on Elvis Costello bit. And while we’re not sure if the comparison will get anything other than people deciding to never come back to this site, we’re so worried now about learningcore or edo becoming an interminable trend that our ability to write has been squelched. We think anything else worth saying was left as a simple message under the video:
From YouTube user kissmybuttdimple:

a true vision of hell…. this video makes me hate math…. and piano’s…..two things i used to really admire.

Our thoughts exactly.