Everything this person has written for TUNETHEPROLETARIAT

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Breaking little boys’ hearts

Written by

David Bazan – Harmless Sparks/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Daytrotter)

I remember my first joke in college. We were paired up, two by two, to help us find a friends among our fellow freshmen and to complete a scavenger hunt. I looked at my partner, some 25-year-old guido named Tony. “Oh man, I feel all nervous, like I’m on a blind date. Like gays must feel when they meet their new roommates.” I’m pretty sure crickets had invaded that hallway and chose exactly that moment to chirp. Tony coughed and looked out the window. I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. “Well, uh, shall we start?” I stuttered, looking at the list of shit we were looking for. Friendship wasn’t explicitly on the list, but I knew I’d failed to find that.

I remember my second joke in college. Navigating my tray down the cafeteria hallway, I reached the soft drink station. I overflowed the short cup with Sierra Mist bubbles and foam, the excess spilling down my wrist. Then, because half had poured out, I overflowed it again. I glanced over at the security guard watching me. “I got a scholarship for spilling Sierra Mist,” I deadpanned. He chuckled.

Beaming, I strolled into the dining hall. Looking over the full tables, I recognized no one. I sat down next to strangers who gave me a disgusted look and ignored me. My beef quesadilla tasted burnt and my drink flat.

[Buy Bazan shit.]

Posted on December 14, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

News clippings from across America

Written by

Iron & Wine – Walking Far From Home

1. Utah – According to my sources (idle gossip from my friend Jon), Mormons have a practice called “floating.” Pre-married couples will strip, penetrate, but then just hold each other instead of using friction to induce orgasms. It’s how they avoid sex before marriage without avoiding sex before marriage. Allegedly, the couple then can discuss religion and their relationship, with the penis “floating” in the vaginal cavity. Back when I was a kid, when we wanted to skirt the line, we just blew each other.

2. Texas – In the Lone Star State, it is still legal to smoke in bars. After driving two days straight, my brother texted me the address of Page Pub and had me meet him there (he is the second one I’ve visited on this trip to direct me to a bar before his or her home). On the tables, turned upside down, sat little black ashtrays. My eyes lit up. I’m not much of a smoker – whenever I run out of (now-illegal) cloves, I generally go several months without before I find some more – but smoking in bars is nostalgic for me. When I was first starting, sneaking off to dive bars to escape the frigid Michigan cold and judgmental roommates, I would tap out my ash next to a glass of beer or onto the floor at shitty local-band concerts. My brother’s friend Richard handed me a Marlboro Red. I hate Reds and I hate most non-clove cigarettes, but this one tasted like the frozen air in Michigan, my visible breath and the smoke escaping my mouth in one dense plume.

3. Tennessee – People in Murfreesboro actually say “y’all.” I mean, you figure the stereotype is based in reality; you assume people in Canada might say “eh?” slightly more on average than Americans. But it’s still startling when the waitress has a thick Southern accent and sing-songs, “Y’all come back now” as you bluster out the door. The expression is so tied to insults about illiteracy and inbreeding that I guess I didn’t really believe people used it any more.

I don’t think I’ll come back after all.

[Buy the single.]

Posted on December 11, 2010 - Tunes - 4 Comments » Share

Give a fuck about your lifestyle

Written by

Kid Cudi – Mojo So Dope

Grabbing a plastic garbage bag full of my clothes, I slung my laptop bag over my other shoulder, only to have it slide off and smash into the grooved cement floor of the downtown Los Angeles parking garage. Up in my friend’s apartment, my computer slowly coughed its way toward death and a complete Windows reinstall, wiping out several years of meticulously collected and organized mp3s.

Half is backed up on several hundred CDs in two gigantic binders on the passenger seat of my car. Half isn’t.

Homeless, with no specific career ideas in mind and an empty iTunes folder, I guess now’s as good a time as ever to start over fresh.

I think maybe I’ll listen exclusively to mellow rap. I think maybe I’ll pick up a nickname. I think I’ll get a tattoo.

Yeah, definitely the tattoo part.

[Buy.]

Posted on December 6, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

There’s nothing out here

Written by

[Buy Wolf Parade albums so that you may tenderly stroke their covers, weeping while the band enters an indefinite hiatus.]

Posted on December 2, 2010 - Videos - No Comments » Share

What’s worse – the pain or the hangover? (take two)

Written by

Kanye West – Dark Fantasy

You don’t get the privacy necessary to masturbate much when friend-hopping, spending nights on the couches or air-mattresses in friends’ busy living rooms. So it’s been a while for me, and all of the sudden mundane shit is starting to look real sexy – movie posters, sixes who pass me on the street, Internet ads.

“That waitress has some truly impressive cleavage,” I tell my friend Sigh in a nondescript sports bar.

“Stop staring at her,” she says.

I look at my drink. I watch the TV. I inspect the far wall.

A man comes over and hands the waitress five folders with about eight credit cards sticking out of them. I look over to try to figure out why he has so many bills.

“Quit staring.”

“I wasn’t! I was looking at the bills.”

“Whatever, just stop.”

“Whatever, fuck you.”

Sigh rests her head on the tip of her glass of whiskey ginger. It’s early but we’ve been day-drinking. “Fuck you right back,” she murmurs.

At another friend’s apartment, I watched Brief Interviews with Hideous Men while he was at work. (“Don’t watch any pay-per-view,” he told me when showing me how to set up the netflix. “My wife will think it’s me.”)

The movie hit me pretty hard. I left the exit music on as I scrubbed some dishes, thinking about the movie. My face contorted and my eyes blurred over a bit. Everyone in it had a creepy fetish or some dark secret (“judge me, bitch”). What was mine?

I’m still not really sure. I’m pretty vanilla when it comes to sexy times. But I imagine if I were one of the men interviewed I’d talk about a semi-frequent desire. I want to bring my special ladyfriend on a vacation to a tropical island. We’d lay out by the pool, her bikini scandalously revealing, and I’d lift my sunglasses to watch drops of pool water trickle down her stomach. ‘That’s mine,’ I’d think with pride. ‘That belongs to me.’ Then I’d smile smugly at the people walking past.

That’s chauvinistic, I think. The whole ownership idea. But I wouldn’t marry her or anything, I’d decide she was a bit too dim-witted for me and cut it off shortly after that holiday.

“Stop staring,” Sigh repeats, her head still bowed, her eyes still closed.

[You should probably buy My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.]

Posted on November 27, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

What’s worse – the pain or the hangover?

Written by

Kanye West – Dark Fantasy

What happens to toenails after we discard them? I once found a toenail in a loaf of bread; I couldn’t eat wheat for a month.

So that’s one accounted for, but what about the rest?

Happy Thanksgiving!

[You should probably buy My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.]

Posted on November 26, 2010 - Tunes - 4 Comments » Share

I’m not afraid of running away

Written by

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Breakdown

I’m homeless.

Friday morning at 8 I shoved all my shit in the back of a Civic and drove away, pushing off from the curb and merging into the tide of traffic washing down Interstate 5.

After fourteen hours at the wheel I sailed into San Fran and coasted to a stop next to an apartment in the lower Haight with a window 10 feet above the sidewalk. Noah Davis poked his head out of the open window and said, “That you?”

Four inches of Johnny Walker, two beers, one cigarette, and a peaceful sleep on his surprisingly comfy red couch later, I was back in the Civic, aching from too much time hunched over in my car and not enough sleep over the past week.

The drive down to Monterey is a rough one. Sheets of rain raking across my windshield didn’t help matters, and midway through my 20 minute stint on the winding CA-17 I began to feel nauseous.

But eventually, 17 dumps into CA-1 at the coast, the sun glistens off the ocean, foamy waves caress the shore, and I slide my shades on. I may be homeless, but I’m still stylin’.

[Buy stuff.]

Posted on November 21, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

You only need songs when you’re young.

Written by

Stars – The Last Song Ever Written

My vision of the far future is tainted by tacky television shows. So when I try to imagine the world in 100 years, pretending this actually was the last song humanity came up with, I see people in those silver jumpsuits. They’re in a museum, all sleek lines and dust-free.

One of them sporting a Win Butler haircut approaches a pair of Sennheisers hanging on a stand. A holographic message pops up explaining the background of the song and band. The kid apprehensively puts the headphones on and the song begins.

For a while the embarrassingly self-referential and meta lyrics distract him, but then syrup voices sing “la la la la la” and somewhere under that half-shaved haircut, pleasure censors in his brain flick on in places they’ve never lighted before.

[Buy The Five Ghosts.]

Posted on November 15, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Please be well

Written by

happiness

Silver Mt. Zion, Tra-La-La Band – Horses In The Sky (Live)

I worked for eight and a quarter an hour, doing bullshit work, but I didn’t mind it much because for the first time in my life I didn’t have homework. Every afternoon I would come home to my subleased apartment and plop myself down on the vomit brown loveseat I’d inherited when the Burks’ grandmother had died, and I would put on a record.

I vacuumed, but the house was dirty. Particles of dust would swirl in the rays of sunlight splayed by the window slats.

I would push my shoes and socks off, rubbing my feet together and scratching between my toes.

“What are you doing?” my roommate would demand when he got back from law school. “You’re  just sitting there, existing!”

And it was glorious. The sunlight would fade against the far wall and my feet would chill in the open breeze. Eventually I would put on shoes again and leave my room to interact with humans. But for those moments alone in the swirls dust of my room and with the records idly spinning on the turntable, well, those are the moments I want back.

[Buy.]

Posted on November 10, 2010 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

Put it to the back of your mind

Written by

Phil Selway – By Some Miracle

Phil Selway, Radiohead’s drummer, is whispering, hushed and lush, about secrets. Here are some of mine:

– I last shit my pants aged 23.
– I once handed the majority of my savings in the form of a wad of cash to a teenage boy in Myanmar.
– I’m not sure love is a necessary ingredient of a successful marriage.
– I once went four months without masturbating.
– I think I believe in a god.
– I would like to spend a weekend or two high on vicodin.

[Buy Familial.]

Posted on November 4, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »