For all their douchebagery, at least when Pitchfork posts something about a band there’s usually some hook: a new song, a live video, an interview, tour dates, etc. Apparently, though, when you’re a reclusive, highly successful band like Arcade Fire, it doesn’t take much to get in the music news.
What exactly is the point of this post?
Somehow these two headlines were running together in the news today. Poor John Travolta. It’s like his life is one big headfake:
Movie career: 1976 – 1980 cool, hip (Staying Alive ends this era) 1981 – 1993 (The looks who’s talking too years) (Pulp Fiction!) Cool again – (Broken Arrow, why!? Why!?) 1996 – current back in the sucker. Recently: Son dies in a tragic, freak accident, wife get’s pregnant at a miraculously old age, both of his dogs are run over and killed at the fucking airport.
I won’t be reporting from life’s field for a few days because I’m headed off into the great chasm otherwise known as the Delaware Water Gap. I’m going with a select group of guys whom I’ve known since before I had a driver’s license. These guys tend to favor less hiking, higher per capita beer consumption, and a generally laid back nature experience (small chainsaws and hatchets are almost always in the mix too; not the best idea given the beer part). I’m more of a can’t sit still for too long person who would rather hike 14 miles up something treacherously steep than lounge around and slug Red Bellies all day. Nowadays I try no to bitch and complain too much about the lack of exertion and activity in our trips and just chill out and appreciate the fact that I’m getting to spend time with rare, lifelong friends.
Ok, that’s some mildly sappy stuff. My vituperative edge will return next post. I promise.
I stumbled onto this video today.
Teddy Berr massive 50 meter Front Flip at Nine Knights from headbud on Vimeo.
High Fructose Corn Holing
Way back in the year 2000, before railing against high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was cool, I was reading about the history of the cloying viscous liquid in Eric Schlosser seminal book Fast Food Nation. More than debating how humans metabolize HFCS and whether it’s that much worse for us than real sugar, Schlosser used the story to show how inefficient (insofar as energy and resource intensiveness) and f’d up big agribusiness is. Thanks to a raft of monstrously large subsidies passed in the 60s (I think) corn became incredibly cheap; this also made HFCS cheap, really cheap. So cheap that it was an obvious replacement for regular sugar in a lot of our packaged foods. That kind of unnatural food selection is bad—this was the big point.
FFWD> 45 years and HFCS is in nearly half of the shit on grocery store shelves.
Lately, HFCS has found itself in the crosshairs of the we-take-no-responsibility for our actions and our bodies movement in America. It’s beginning to look like more people think HFCS is bad because it makes us fat, not because it’s highly processed. This is a problem. HFCS is not making us fat, calories are. Soft drinks and cookies sweetened with real sugar will make you just as fat as those with HFCS. There is not a single study that suggests otherwise.
The fact that people think it’s HFCS making us fat, and not consuming too much, is perfectly emblematic of how our culture is going off the rails.
For example, Google High Fructose Corn Syrup and you’ll find that many of the top results are coupled with key words relating to the controversial soda tax they’re trying to pass in New York State. Some people are suggesting that we won’t need a soda tax if they switch back to real sugar in our sweet drinks. This is utter nonsense to anyone with half a brain.
Even if it is lobbyists who are propagating this myth, more and more people are buying into the logic. I say let’s get rid of the corn subsidies; the Band-Aid has got to be ripped off sooner or later. But let’s not be mistaken, removing the HFCS from our food will likely have zero impact on our obesity epidemic.
2 quick nonessential observations;
I read today that Hollywood is apparently losing its appetite for overly plastic surgeried women. Fake boobs and taught lips are on their way out as casting directors begin to look for natural sag and those actors who rock what they’re born with. This made me think about all of the young, impossibly perfect women (and some men) who go out to LA and hack themselves to bits trying to achieve some kind of Barbian archetypal body. eg Heidi Montag. And now, like getting a tramp stamp of the Backstreet Boys in 1999, what they’ve done to their bodies, has gone out of style and they’re stuck with it. Serves them right.
#2 MGMT on SNL this past weekend. I think it’s awesome that MGMT decided to put out a slightly less accessible, stranger, basically, record for their follow-up to the hugely popular Oracular Spectacular. Congratulations is a ballsy 2nd record and should shake off some of the fans who would have surely led to MGMT playing sold out shows at Madison Square Garden within the next year.
Check out the rad song “Brian Eno” from their performance the other night
Since I’ve never actually seen a female Doorperson (insane) in NYC, I’m going to go ahead and use the standard Doormen/man nomenclature.
Anyhoo, apparently the union that most doormen are members of is not happy with the terms of something and is threatening to walk off their jobs. I think doormen in this city have a tough job; serving mostly self-important careless people has to be a taxing.
Consider the article in AM New York this morning about how you can get by while your doorman is on strike? WTF?! How to get by when your doorman is on strike? Um, how about take care of yourself, haul your own shit out of your car, get your own mail, and behave like every other functioning adult in this world. The sense of entitlement people have in this town is flabbergasting.
To demonstrate the sort of absurdity of the whole situation
Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Scott Stapp’s custom song he created for his beloved Florida Marlins. You can’t even make stuff like this up, people.
Life is full of mysterious ponderables. Like, why do so many people willingly work in dehumanizing offices that force them to use programs with names like PowerPoint and Excel; why doesn’t anyone every comment on my blog posts?
The greatest mysteries are obviously those that are most difficult to answer.
One thing that has perplexed me for years is why golf footwear is so persistently, so indescribably hideous? The shoes all have incredibly high insteps, thick soles, and impossibly long, beakish looking toes. You would really be hard pressed to make them any uglier. I can’t believe that Nike, or Adidas, or somebody hasn’t done a better job of incorporating good sneaker design into their golf shoes. Puma has made an admirable attempt, but like many Puma sneakers, they are clearly going after the Eurotrash. What? Germany has golfers, too.
There’s a huge gulf to be filled in American golf shoe design. I don’t see any options that would appeal to your average 18 year old golf nerd. For them, it must be a battle, and ultimate resignation, of choosing the option that is least ugly.
