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(03/29/07 4:00am)
The first time I saw the ballot for Best of Penn '07, the nominations sent me in a tizzy. That Econ professor earns a nod for "allegedly" bludgeoning his wife to death? Philly Diner gets two while that vagina girl on YouTube (Whatsername Lamb?) just one? And 34th Street nominates itself as a "loved (but really hated) subculture"? C'mon. No one hates Street.
(11/16/06 5:00am)
Jay-Z famously rapped on Kanye West's College Dropout that he's "not a businessman" but a "business, man." Cocksure, of course, but kind of an insightful self-examination. The Jay-Z brand includes a triumphant recording career, a clothing line, a record label, Roc-A-Fella, and Def Jam Records, of which he is CEO. Like Diddy, Jay-Z's an unusually canny self-marketer - some say to the detriment of the other Def Jam artists he fails to properly publicize.
(11/02/06 5:00am)
During the 2004 election, The Daily Pennsylvanian polled students for their presidential picks. A mere 19 percent of students said they intended to vote for George W. Bush. It's reminiscent of an analogy Jon Stewart once used to put Dick Cheney's approval ratings in perspective: more dentists advise you don't chew sugarfree gum (one in five) than Penn students approved of George W. Bush in 2004. And compared to his 2006 popularity, Bush in 2004 was practically the Egyptian sun god Ra.
(10/12/06 4:00am)
Columbia! The gem of the ocean / The home of the brave and the free, / The shrine of each patriot's devotion, / A world offers homage to thee!
(10/12/06 4:00am)
A little factoid, if you will: Penn considers students who take three courses full-time.
(09/28/06 4:00am)
One night last spring, my ex-roommate called Greek Lady at 2 a.m. to order delivery. Probably a buffalo chicken cheese steak (because it's ridiculous). For the first time all school year, they knew him without even asking. Whoever answered the phone said that our house had ordered Greek Lady delivery more than 100 times during the school year. We lived one block away.
(09/21/06 4:00am)
The first time I heard of Gabe Oppenheim's story on Stephen Glass - this week's cover story - was in a writing course we took together. The assignment's page limit was 12, and when they were due, the class did a go-around saying what each person wrote on. It was Gabe's turn.
(09/14/06 4:00am)
A scene in the endearingly obnoxious 2002 movie, The Rules of Attraction, shows a small college's "End of the World" party, and the background tunage is the Rapture's "Out of the Races and onto the Tracks." Shindigs that feature burning wicker men as their main attraction are usually fodder for that Wicca guy you met once (and never again). But with that kind of booty-shakin' song playing in the background, you'd be a fool not to go. It's an amazingly cool scene, and I bet James Van Der Beek, the movie's star, would agree.
(04/13/06 4:00am)
Ingredients:
(04/06/06 4:00am)
Much of the hype surrounding the Flaming Lips' long-in-the-works 12th album jumped on frontman Wayne Coyne's murmurs about "more guitars." The Oklahoma City veterans' last two albums, 1999's brilliant The Soft Bulletin and 2002's kinda brilliant Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, eschewed the band's tattered punk threads for heady, orchestrated prog. As a result, "more guitars" sounded something like a return to the Lips of old.
(11/03/05 5:00am)
We killed them. We cut them up, and we had one last show where we had little children dressed up as yetis. Yeah, we had to kill them."
(10/20/05 4:00am)
It's about 2 a.m. during the last night of N.S.O., and I'm walking home with my roommate. As we pass the dueling tampons on Locust, these two freshman ruffians cross our path and call us names. Nothing particularly insulting, like "ass-hat," though. Generic names -- "Tom Smith," "David Jones." My roommate and I want to go to McDonald's. I flip the belligerents off and walk towards my favorite Golden Arches.
(10/20/05 4:00am)
MF Doom and DJ Danger Mouse are so hung up on gimmickry that to call The Mouse and the Mask a "concept album" comes almost as an afterthought. The former broke through last year with Madvillainy, his collaboration with shit-hot producer Madlib, on which he played a comic book villain. Several months later he released his second solo album, Mm... Food, where every song actually was about food. His partner in crime, Danger Mouse, started an Internet firestorm in early 2004 with The Grey Album, a collision between Jay-Z's Black Album and the Beatles' White Album. Since then he's produced the cartoonish Gorillaz' "feel good" album of 2005, Demon Days.
(09/29/05 4:00am)
The album is the half-baked offspring of recycled ideas and hasty creation. The band toured for most of 2004 and 2005, writing and recording the new record whenever they could squeeze in studio time. It shows -- most of these songs either ride a latent hook to the close ("You're the Reason I'm Leaving") or overindulge in angular, Gang of Four-style guitar work (first single "Do You Want To"). By rushing to get an album's worth of material out, Franz Ferdinand already runs the risk of turning unique concepts into predictable party tricks.
(07/28/05 4:00am)
Just as with movies, the end of any given year generally sees the most anticipated releases in music, and for the rest of 2005 a plethora of fervently awaited albums will be released on a fairly consistent schedule. The pack isn't narrowed into any particular genre either -- indie favorites, hip hop icons and aging stars all have records slated for shipment this fall. Let's try and sort through the pack.
(07/21/05 4:00am)
The Harry Potter phenomenon is against the writing of this review. Ardent fans of J.K. Rowling's enterprise cannot bear to hear a word of what goes on in the novel without having read it themselves. Be assured, this review will not divulge any spoilers, but will, regrettably, discuss the plot. To shame, I know; but it shouldn't matter anyway--you've read the book already, haven't you?
(07/14/05 4:00am)
"Show me a guy who does not like to drink or like women and I'll kiss your ass."
(07/07/05 4:00am)
Elvis Costello once famously said "writing about music is like dancing about architecture -- it's a really stupid thing to want to do." While music writers like myself try to push that quote to the farthest reaches of memory, its summoning seemed inevitable watching this weekend's Live 8 concert in Philadelphia. Perhaps Costello was making a bit of a metaphorical leap; after all, he's written quite extensively on popular music.
(06/30/05 4:00am)
When this writer was buying Common's Be from Tower Records, the attendant felt the need to say "this is a good little album. You know why?"
(06/30/05 4:00am)
While 2005 hasn't (yet) seen the usual universally-blown records of recent years (see Outkast, the Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand), it has actually proven to be a consistently better year for great new albums than either 2003 or 2004. Some hyped artists have finally reached their potential, others have refused to give up after several strong records while many seem poised to be the next pop sensation. 2005 has birthed instant classics in alt-country, dance, hip hop, indie, lit-rock, reggae, prog, and Zep-throwback. All have worn the trademark of cutting-edge music in the new millennium ? slicing and dicing styles, throwing in dabs of the avant-garde and honing it all down into a unique, fresh sound. Here are some of the best.