The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: AugustWest on May 11, 2009, 06:41:25 pm
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Yeah.
Let's work on some new material. I got a lighter.
That Charley Smuckles. He is a hoot and a holler.
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=05112009
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If Charley Smuckles was really on the shizznit ball he'd be figuring out how to double bill this guy with the Roasted Beef.
OOOOOOOHHHHHHH SSSSHHHIIIIITTTTT
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This is amazing. "Ice-Face Trippa'". Genius. "SKELETON FINGA ON THA TRIGGA" "Balls in motion".
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Other than some amusing catchphrases (Noted above), my big take-away from this strip is that Onstad thinks rapping 18th century Welshmen are much funnier than I do.
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People think that rapping white dudes are hilarious, and they rarely are.
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This reminds me of... I don't remember the name... but wasn't there a Hasidic rapper for a while that all the Pabst-Blue-Ribbon phony trustfund WilliamsburgBrooklyn hipster bastards were going ga-ga over? And then when people found out that while, yeah, he was from a Hasidic family, he wasn't nearly as culturally isolated in his youth or naive as he was playing up and... when that went down, they all abandoned him because they never liked the music, they liked the concept of the performer just like the hipsters that should be hung from the neck until dead that they are?
Anyway, this reminds me of that guy.
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I would really honestly un-ironically like to see rap adaptations of epic poetry. It's all "The Exploits of Awesome Dudes", which is well within the established parameters of the medium. Thoughts?
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lfm-- the version I heard of that story was more along the lines of him deciding to stop being a rapper.
Unless there is more than one hasidic rapper?
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Perhaps there were multiple hasidic rappers, yeah.
It seems like the kind of ironic wacky zip-tang zany hipster idea that more than one person would toss out there.
Amish shoegaze act coming out next, I'm sure, talking about how they saw a girl while they were bailing hay and don't know how to talk to her.
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Shoegaze is completely dependent on electricity, you know this right?
Also, most (good?) shoegaze uses voices as instruments more than lyrics.
Also, there was only one hasidic rappers, just your fucked up way of viewing things you don't understand is destroying your outlook.
Do you know why it is called shoegaze? You have been harping on that a lot in your "jokes" recently. It is probably the most organic sub-genre name ever. It comes from people looking at their shoes (or pedals, cause they use a lot of them to make new and exciting (ten years ago) hipster noises). Just so you know. Also, the whole ten years ago thing. Maybe try to obsess with a newer thing you don't understand? Make the act more timely. Or put down the computer and listen to some GNR cassette bootlegs. Man, they rocked so hard.
Oh and fuck, that whole ten years ago thing? It was actually 20. I kind of will always think it is the year 2000 when estimating how long ago something was. At least music doesn't confuse me into hating people, though.
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I bet Amish people are super fit.
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Perhaps there were multiple hasidic rappers, yeah.
It seems like the kind of ironic wacky zip-tang zany hipster idea that more than one person would toss out there.
Yeah, them Jews never actually like to rap.
They're just all about playing their klezmer and showtunes, y'know, none of them would ever want to freestyle. Not those people.
Edit: More specifically what pisses me off is dominant-culture douchenozzles having no trouble at all assuming that members of their group, the dominant culture, can assimilate other subcultures fine and don't blink an eye at Eminem or the Beastie Boys* or any other apparently dominant-culture white rappers doing fine - that's just hip-hop entering the mainstream! But whoa-nellie, watch out if the "wrong" minority culture tries to appropriate from another minority - then it's just a hilarious novelty act. Latinos are allowed to perform hip-hop as long as half the band is black because, y'know, all them ghetto folks can stick together but Jews? Hell, them guys are practically crackers. But not quite, because we can see the distinctive markers so the conflation is high-larious as opposed to the dominant culture which of course has no distinctive markers because that's the baseline of "just people", right?
A dozen Brits sing a vaguely reggae-like song a white American (**) wrote for exotic flavour in the sixties and it's a "true classic of reggae". A Hasid embraces the symbolism and spirituality of Rastafari to interpret his Jewish beliefs and he's a comic-novelty act.
(*): The Beastie Boys are Jewish but are allowed to rap because they use stage names.
(**): Neil Diamond is also Jewish but he's allowed to write classics of reggae because his parents adopted an Anglo-sounding name.
Edit 2: I should probably get some sleep. But seriously, don't be a douchenozzle just because people aren't being your dominant culture. I mean, some of my best friends are douchenozzles, sure, but would you want your sister to marry one?
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So people were surprised by a Hasidic rapper pretending to be more Hasidic that he really was? This is new? Like we've never seen a performer who wasn't as country or as poor or as whatever when growing up as s/he sang about? Like there isn't a reason it's called 'performance'?
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My cat's breath smells like cat food.
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Ain't about the guy being Jewish, Ben, that bugs me insofar as the hipster posturing thing.
It's about the guy being of a particular subculture that's insanely cloistered unto itself... or the exaggerated idea of that then being sold as the reason you're supposed to like the performed material as opposed to the performed material itself. That's why the next logical comparison was the Amish.
Identity As Schtick drives me crazy. Some dude who happens to be Jewish or Islamic or Scientologist or Presbeterian or whatever rapping is not the point of what bothers me. Some dude saying "I was completely outside of the culture and now it is wacky and ca-razy that I am doing the thing that is popular in the mainstream and, oh, by the way, even though I have been performing in bars for five years, I am still completely naive to you world and definitely treat me like a circus freak and pay me more money"... that's what bugs me.
It's like that old SNL sketch "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" you know?
Yeah, dude was a caveman who got unfrozen but... in the intervening fifteen years, he got a law degree, got married, had some kids and clearly mastered all the subtleties of the modern world... but whenever it suits him to win a case or to get his cappuchino returned because there wasn't enough foam, he'll start talking about how he doesn't UNDERSTAND our modern world and he doesn't UNDERSTAND how the little men put on shows in the television box and...
It's bullshit. He's playing off people's stereotypes and ignorance to maintain a convenient pose that allows him to not actually have to try.
And bleh. Bleh and feh to that. Has nothing to do with what slightly different invisible bearded man your parents told you will have you tormented by monsters after you die if you touch your pee-pee and everything to do with how intellectually insulting the Fake Outsider - Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer schtick is.
I like the hell out of some Beastie Boys stuff. And Eminem's less misogynistic stuff is usually at least funny. And Neil Diamond performs in a genre of pop music that does not interest me no matter how well or poorly performed.
EDIT: to wombat's point, it was fine when Bronson Pinchot stole Andy Kaufman's schtick, watered it down for people on tractors and called it "Balki"... that's okay, that's how television works. But if he spent the rest of his life wandering around claiming to actually BE from an obscure Greek island and furthermore fifteen years later pretending to still be shocked that MacDonalds didn't sell sheep burgers, man, that crap would be annoying.
This is also why Yakov Smirnov needed to be hung from the neck until dead. I mean, the original premise of his comedy what lame enough but whatever, there's lots of lame standups out there. Ten years later, when he's living in a nice condo in a good part of town and is pissed to wait five minutes in line for coffee instead of three hours for a beet, man, that's when the dude absolutely needs new material.
See also Larry The Cable Guy never breaking character. Bullshit.
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I think the first use of the 'cat breath' comment was Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons. It just seems to have struck a chord with people. I think.
Can we get Cioran (sp?) to weigh in on this fake Hasidic rapper thing by the way? I just don't know what to think until that guy breaks it down for me.
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I think the first use of the 'cat breath' comment was Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons. It just seems to have struck a chord with people. I think.
It's as fine a non sequitur as you'll ever find.
http://www.snpp.net/episodes/1F17.html
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I love it when the drapery is pulled aside of a mystery.
No soap, radio!
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Ain't about the guy being Jewish, Ben, that bugs me insofar as the hipster posturing thing.
Because only hipsters do that. Certainly you wouldn't find mainstream hip-hop artists claiming to be hard and street while making money hand over fist from people who buy their records because of that pose. Or country singers. Or folk singers. Or hair-metal bands.
Has nothing to do with what slightly different invisible bearded man your parents told you will have you tormented by monsters after you die if you touch your pee-pee and everything to do with how intellectually insulting the Fake Outsider - Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer schtick is.
This would be more convincing if you had managed to get through one post replying to a rant about cultural appropriation and dominant-vs-minority culture relationships without being a complete asshole about how self-righteous an atheist you can be and how self-evidently stupid anyone who isn't an atheist is just because the dominant and minority cultures involved have strongly associated religions. Or are you claiming you would be so self-righteously smarmy about how superior your own subculture is if the minority culture I was ranting from the viewpoint of was non-religious - racial or nonreligious ethnic?
(Subnote: There is no such thing as a nonreligious ethnic subculture, or was not until very, very recently. My grandparents were from Poland, but because they subscribed to a religion other than Roman Catholicism they were not considered a part of the Polish-American culture when they arrived in America.)
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Because only hipsters do that. Certainly you wouldn't find mainstream hip-hop artists claiming to be hard and street while making money hand over fist from people who buy their records because of that pose. Or country singers. Or folk singers. Or hair-metal bands.
Exactly, I mean, how is this Hasidic rapper any different from say, Bob Dylan? Although, I guess that's a bad example because if he's even a little bit Hasidic he's more authentic than Bob Dylan spending his life wandering around pretending to be an old timey American folksinger.
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Man, the douche nozzles are wide open and spraying all over this thread.
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The Douche Nozzles are a totally fake band that only a hipster would like. I can't believe you listen to them. Stop trying so hard.
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Sure, the Douche Nozzles pretend they are so authentic and real, when we know that they all grew up as drinking fountains and water pistols and were never any kind of nozzle or douche dispenser at all. But what does it matter as long as you like their music?
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I'll admit that I liked their post twat-core phase, but their 'progression' towards hippy hardcore showed them up to be no better than a third-rate dead Welsh cat freestyle. Err...err.......actually.
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Well, I mean, at least I'm consistent there, wombat.
I don't think I've ever hidden the fact that I consider Bob Dylan basically the phoniest entertainer... you know, who some people actually take seriously, discounting hotel hieresses who record pop tracks and people from Disney Channel shows and such... of all the entertainers alive in my lifetime. And then probably Bruce Springsteen, the poor man's Bruce Springsteen, second, and Billy Joel, the metrosexual man's Bruce Springsteen third and John Cougar Mallowmar Charlestonchew Zagnut Dipthong Shapoopie Melloncamp, the massive head injury man's Bruce Springsteen fourth.
I'm probably a dick about a few things but God help me, I'm consistent.
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Yeah, dude was a caveman who got unfrozen but... in the intervening fifteen years, he got a law degree, got married, had some kids and clearly mastered all the subtleties of the modern world... but whenever it suits him to win a case or to get his cappuchino returned because there wasn't enough foam, he'll start talking about how he doesn't UNDERSTAND our modern world and he doesn't UNDERSTAND how the little men put on shows in the television box and...
It's bullshit. He's playing off people's stereotypes and ignorance to maintain a convenient pose that allows him to not actually have to try.
Yeah, that's pretty horrible.
"I don't get any of that stuff you kids listen to, I'm just a guy from a small town who grew up listening to his dad's Pink Floyd albums. God help me, I try, but I just can't understand this modern stuff for the life of me. What do you call it? Shoegaze-core?"
(sorry.)
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Turns out Robert De Niro was never an early 20th century Mafia boss.
I'm really not interested in authenticity in art. Isn't it more about whether someone is skilled in his craft? I don't like Bob Dylan because his personality or whatever schtick he's donning strikes a chord with me, I like him because he's a talented songwriter and has made some great records. I also like some of the narratives he's produced. I really don't care whether they are based on personal experience or entirely made up. You call him phony, I ask so what?
I don't know anything about Hasidic rapper exhibit A, but I can say that I would enjoy him he if was talented. Whether he uses his background as a novelty, and whether it attracts people to like him ironically, is really of no consequence to me. And on the subject of rap, I think Eminem has become so successful because he's been able to successfully appropriate elements of mainstream rap, namely misogyny, violence, and violent sexuality. He's made race a nonissue. The Beastie Boys are most popular originally among frat boys and now probably among the same PBR-swizzling audience who liked the Jewish guy. They are certainly mainstream but my friends who listen to a lot of mainstream gangster rap don't tend to listen to the Beastie Boys. Eminem and the Beastie Boys also happen to be talented at what they do. Rap is a bit of a different animal. I imagine that no one would blink an eye at a talented Hasidic jazz musician, but I could be wrong.
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Speaking as someone who has played Renaissance music on painstaking copies of original instruments, sung Balkan folk songs in the original languages, danced allegedly ancient dance traditions with bells on my legs and waving hankies... you know the thing about authenticity is that it's really boring, right? Or so I conclude from the very small number of people who did these things with me and the only slightly larger number of people who came to watch us do them.
There's a good reason that performers borrow stuff and make it into something different.
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I hope that was for the intentional funny, but even unintentional, me laughs.
CAN'D for catching that.
By the by, I'd never call myself an atheist. A hopeful agnostic, maybe.
I have nothing against the individual personal quest toward a higher reality. I don't see much evidence for it but I'd love to find some.
However, organized religion, oh yes. A crutch that we've convinced ourselves we need when all along we could walk and run. The shackles on mankind since before we left the caves that limit a potential that would otherwise only be limited by our mayfly lifespans. Basic source of most of the pain and injustice in the world. Would that I would with a wave of my hand, I'd blast the concept to rags and atoms. Worst force in all of human history.
But the idea of a higher power, the individual unfettered search for it without it turning into some asshole's fuck*ng pyramid scheme, I have nothing against it at all.
Not much evidence toward it but I like the idea.
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I gotta hand it to you LFM, you're consistent.
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What does that have to do with hating artists for their fans though? I mean, I agree with all that, but that is only like 1/4 of the issue.
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For what it's worth, I assume the "Hasidic rapper" to whom LFM referred to lo those many pages ago is Matisyahu, who I suppose is technically a rapper but his music sounds more reggae-like to me. At any rate, though Matisyahu does currently subscribe to Hasidism, he was raised in a Reconstruction Jewish family (which, if Wikipedia is to be believed -- about any of this, since it's my source not only for Matisyahu's background but also this information about different forms of Judaism -- is actually considered heretical by Orthodox Jews). His conversion came later in life, sometime after his teenage years (which were spent first following Phish on tour, then later he spent a semester in Israel before wrapping up his high school career at some wilderness retreat in Oregon). Given that Wikipedia knows this, I assume that he has made no effort to deceive fans, potential or otherwise, regarding his past. I can't speak to his popularity among the "Pabst-Blue-Ribbon phony trustfund WilliamsburgBrooklyn hipster bastards" now or in the past, but (to reuse my all-too-common refrain) if Wikipedia is to be believed he continues to perform and record music, presumably in spite of his popularity or lack thereof among the aforementioned.
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Well shit, if Wikipedia can't be believed, then man, what the hell can.
Edit: Don't judge me by my blogroll, but there's a good discussion (http://volokh.com/posts/1242098183.shtml) about Wikipedia over at The Volokh Conspiracy.
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he is not the guy I was thinking of.
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he is not the guy I was thinking of.
Good, 'cause that Matisyahu record was bangin'. (I've taken my tongue out of my cheek for this post. I really thought that was a quality record).
GIGGY GIGGY YO! or whatever he says at the end.
JAI HO!!!! Damn, maybe the Pussycat Dolls aren't as genuinely south Asian as I originally thought though.
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By the by, I am not at all opposed to the idea of a guy being typecast or being at one kind of thing or whatever.
But when all that is "good" or "interesting" about your work is a fradulent construction of your public identity and how that interacts with your work, that sucks.
If you are great at playing a mobster, that's awesome.
If you are a terrible actor but you get a lot of mob roles because you lie that you were a part of the Black Hand in your small times, you are terrible.
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Would this be a bad time to mention that I've only been coming here ironically?
The worst part is I think Bobby beat me to it by like 2 years.
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Are we talking about Curly Oxide (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=268)?
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I have nothing against the individual personal quest toward a higher reality. I don't see much evidence for it but I'd love to find some.
We have a saying in Brazil (YES I PULLED THAT CARD): "You're trying to find horns on a hoss's head". There is no such evidence and there will never be. That's why it takes faith. Which you have or you don't. So you might as well stop looking for it. YOU'RE WELCOME.
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(Most holy of fucks, not again...)
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By the by, I'd never call myself an atheist. A hopeful agnostic, maybe.
The term I was thinking of was "arrogant asshole who feels the need to denigrate other people's beliefs on the assumption that they can only possibly be the result of unexamined brainwashing in a conversation that tangentially brushes against the subject", but, y'know. Fine line.
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You know I'm not really a wombat, right? I just play one on the internet. My family's not even marsupial-American.
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marsupial-American.
I put a tiny can of Dr. Pepper in your pouch for that one.
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I'm thinking Wombat needs to change her signature. We no longer resemble the Algonquin Round Table (if we ever did) and Nabubrush hasn't been around here in a year or more.
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and Nabubrush hasn't been around here in a year or more.
It's a memorial!
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We sig to remember, we sig to forget.
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Speaking as someone who has played Renaissance music on painstaking copies of original instruments, sung Balkan folk songs in the original languages, danced allegedly ancient dance traditions with bells on my legs and waving hankies...
Pictures!
(sorry for being late to the party - I was in Disneyland)
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You were in Disneyland, YOU should have pictures.
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Sorry, but this has much higher potential for awesome:
danced allegedly ancient dance traditions with bells on my legs and waving hankies
Much higher than pictures of Disneyland ever could, unless you're a furry. Nice try, wombat.
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Youall totally missed the point of that post, it was that all that stuff is boring.
Also, they had not invented digital cameras yet, so, dream on.
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I managed to work the phrase "it bozazzles the ganoggin" into a conversation this weekend.
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And that is worthy of a tiny can of Dr Pepper.
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A dozen Brits sing a vaguely reggae-like song a white American (**) wrote for exotic flavour in the sixties and it's a "true classic of reggae".
UB40, which has black members, was not covering the Neil Diamond song, they were covering the Jamaican singer Tony Tribe's version of the Diamond song. That album is a set of covers of Jamaican records, some of them covers themselves, that UB40 loved in their youth: ska, rocksteady, and skinhead reggae. An authentic homage to some brilliant music.
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovhuKZPNGSU&fmt=18 You're welcome.)
I know everyone caught the fact that Padraig's moguls dropped, i.e. he became a man, when he began to imitate a black rapper. Look deeper though: this is more than the standard "white guy raps and it's funny" or "olde Englyshe culture was so uptyghte" joke. It's clear from the other strips in this arc, and the wedding strips, that Onstad's depicting a Welsh culture that is just as rich and worthy of respect as the hip hop. What's the wider point? Just as neither Ray nor Beef alone could have won the GOF, neither Brit nor Jamaican, nor Welshcat, nor African-American is an island any longer. Power and freedom, not to mention many good jokes, arise from their coming together in peace and breaking the rules. And Onstad is doing a service by provoking the Auseinandersetzung with race and culture seen on this thread. I'd suggest though that discussion be motivated by desire for truth, not ill will.
However, organized religion, oh yes. A crutch that we've convinced ourselves we need when all along we could walk and run. The shackles on mankind since before we left the caves that limit a potential that would otherwise only be limited by our mayfly lifespans. Basic source of most of the pain and injustice in the world. Would that I would with a wave of my hand, I'd blast the concept to rags and atoms. Worst force in all of human history.
Can you walk and run? Is your potential limited? If so, by what? If not, how did you liberate it?
It's not "religion" that's the worst force is it? The worst force in all of human history has many names but "religion" is not one of them. How about "obsessive, mechanical thinking fuelled by hatred"? The Tridentine Mass and the word "God" do not create obsessive thinking, nor do they destroy it. Nor does cynicism, which is itself a manifestation of such thinking.
There is no such evidence and there will never be. That's why it takes faith. Which you have or you don't. So you might as well stop looking for it.
The kernel of truth in this claim is: There is something outside of thinking.
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The kernel of truth in this claim is: There is something outside of thinking.
Should we change your name to Kant?
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more like can't amirite