libxml2 > 2.6.32 and wordpress xmlrpc. Me and wordpress. More discussion here and here. The camel’s back is broken, I’m going to move to tumblr instead of maintaining wordpress. I nearly have a heart attack every time I have to untar a directory over an existing, working, installation. And why do they radically change the UI every single release??

… and other things I learned from an episode of Saved by the Bell

• Ed Alonzo wasn’t just the annoying guy that worked at their school’s cafe. He’s an actual magician. You can book him for parties. He’s also not the least memorable recurring character on the show (that would be Stacey Carosi). I hope he’s available for my 30th!
• I’m okay with a teacher asking Slater to the Sadie Hawkin’s dance. Especially after that incident at the ‘88 Olympics. And all those beauty pageants.
• Mr Balding on girls: “They all get headaches Mr Morris.”
• It’s okay to reference Fatal Attraction in day to day conversation. And River Phoenix.
• The Bon Jovi thing kind of blows my mind… but explains her tasseled jacket.
• I can cosign this brand of dramatic irony. Silly Zach.
• Slater “won” this round, even though he ultimately loses Kelly to Zach. If Yahoo groups are any measure of success — and they are — Slater is currently kicking Gosselaar’s ass.

This post was brought to you by insomnia

I wanted to pre-emptively hate on this new Flo Rida song (Round Round), but I kinda got into it after the 3rd or 4th listen.

Ordinarily I might say something like:
Producers, it’s 09. That “Hey!” shit is getting old. And unless you’re Mali Boi (who gets a pass¹ on cheesy samples), leave the fucking 80s alone! This song was already ruined by that scrubbing bubbles commercial! and Marilyn Manson! and a billion other things. Whine whine whine.

To be honest, I’ve been bad at judging some of these songs on first listen. I hated² on Live Your Life when I first heard it and then grew to love it. Fuck it, this song is catchy. And pseudo-sexual. Almost as catchy as Low or Elevator. Sample it one more time. That’s Kesha on the chorus. Anyone have a producer credit?

I was just thinking about Paul Verhoeven. Yay for sushi. Thank you Blue Ribbon Sushi for being open late and being delicious. Paul. Hollow Man, Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct, Total Recall, and let’s not forget about Showgirls. All that Basil Poledouris. And RoboCop! The scene where Boddicker dies was great (Spoiler!) RoboCop stabs him with a computer interface connector that is, for reasons never explained, a 10 inch metal spike. I anxiously await a future where it’s possible to be impaled while trying to charge an iPod. God help us if WirelessHD ever catches on, this wireless shit is softening our children.

And that lead me to thinking about RoboCop. The song. Again. It’s awful, a disservice to the name really. It manages to stand out on an album chock full of mediocrity. 808s suffers from a shtick that wears thin three tracks in then forces you to put up with it for another nine. There’s no progression or evolution in the production, the lyrics are b-b-bad and the autotune does nothing to mask the fact that dude can’t sing. It’s vaguely reminiscent of The New Danger in terms of WTFness. Or Love Below. Or Zo & Tigallo love the 80s. Did you listen to that Take on Me cover??? Mamas, please don’t let your rapper children try to become singers! And Ye (or his guest blogger) swore this wasn’t the final version. This final version is not better, robot hydraulic sound effect and all. Though it’s still better than the third RoboCop movie…

Yay, it’s vacation time. Tomorrow morning I head off to southeast Asia, specifically Singapore and various places in Thailand. It’s going to be great. I plan to be sick of roti by the time I get back. If I come back, there’s some possibility of a Brokedown Palace situation.

I love bass. I… I have two SVS subwoofers within 20 feet of each other in my apartment. This is the only reason I’m still listening to 808s and Heartbreak. I suspect that Welcome To Heartbreak and Love Lockdown are going to be the only songs to join Heartless in my 808s rotation. The rest of the album is meh to me.

Are any of these new breed of “backpack rappers” that the blogosphere is currently in love with going to be in any way successful? Does the average man on the streets care about Wale? or Asher Roth? Is sampling Sonic the Hedgehog an annoying gimmick?

Have a good week peoples.

Charles Hamilton, Asher Roth, B.o.B - Change Gone Come
Charles Hamilton - Brooklyn Girl

Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come
…

There’s a scene in Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna where the Lennie Small character is trying to devise a communication system with the little boy they’ve rescued in war-torn Italy. The little boy only speaks Italian (and maybe German, it’s not clear), and “Lennie” only speaks English, so Lennie’s trying to teach him to communicate by tapping on his shoulder. 1 tap for ‘yes’. 2 taps for ‘no’. 3 taps for ‘I’m sleepy’. And he keeps going. And this is funny, haha, because this is never going to work in practice.

What does this have to do with anything? The iPhone 2.1 OS update came out last week. It’s great, it fixes a bunch of bugs, it’s the second coming. My favorite feature on paper is triple-click on the mic/remote to rewind. 1 click for play/pause. 2 clicks for fast forward. 3 clicks for rewind. I was so excited when I read about this. I get obsessed with tracks and need to hear them over and over again.

For example,

The track Money on The Game’s new album. Lyrically, it’s typical Game dreck. Unnecessary name dropping, metaphors that make no sense, and pretending that the west coast is still relevant. I mean, the track starts with the lyrics

Kanye told me that Jesus walks in 0-4
but I grew up around impalas and drug lords
Welcome to Los Angeles, palm trees and drug stores
All we know is rocks and presidents like Mount Rushmore

and it goes on like that for 5 minutes. But one does not listen to Game for lyrical content, one listens to Game because he has a great ear for beats and flows really well. The production… it’s got this catchy loop of Betty Wright singing “money… over money.” There’s an overlapping guitar sample. This is one of the better Cool and Dre productions in recent memory. The Game manages to sort of stay on topic and weaves the chorus around the Betty Wright sample. I love it. I wish I could the say the same about you tracks 7, 8, and 9.

My dexterity sucks. Here’s what happens when I try to rewind using the iPhone remote.

1. Clicked too slowly - oops, pause then play.
2. Clicked too slowly - oops, skip track, pause.
3. Clicked perfectly - rewinds to the beginning of the current track. But I wanted to listen to the previous track

Smash! I’m never going to be able to pull off the sometimes 6 clicks it takes to get this to work correctly. I’m not upset, I love this feature. Combining the microphone and the remote was genius, and this makes it even easier to use the iPhone as an iPod while it’s in your pocket. I just wish I could pull off rewind more successfully. I swear I don’t have the rum fits!

There will be no references to the file format in this here post.

Next week

I’m going to the Toronto International Film Festival next week. I’m excited for several reasons — going on a mini-vacation, seeing a bunch of movies, hanging out with strangers, and being in a city I only lived in for a year. My friend Mollie, who works in “the industry” thinks it’s weird for “regular people” to go to film festivals. She may be right, I have no idea. I decided to do the out of town ticket selection and get the 10 ticket package just so I’d have some guarantees. Five days ago they sent me this large packet with a movie guide and somewhat complicated instructions that I was then supposed to send back the next day. There are approximately a bajillion movies showing, but I sort of narrowed it down to 50-ish and then chose 20-ish as primaries and alternates. I didn’t get all my primaries but mayhaps I’ll see them anyway. Some of these I don’t remember selecting but they do appeared to be dog-eared in the movie guide book. My current schedule:

• The Brothers Bloom - I really enjoyed Brick and Mark Ruffalo makes my loins tingle.
• Slumdog Millionaire - I think Boyle can be a bit hit or miss but that kid is so cute. A Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? If that isn’t a formula for… something, I don’t know what is.
• Control Alt Delete - I’m hoping this one ends with his girlfriend coming to terms with his addiction to internet porn.
• Goodbye Solo - Because I’m still mad at myself for not seeing Man Push Cart. Also, I enjoy tears.
• Pride and Glory - Wasn’t this supposed to come out a while ago? Anyway, yeah!
• The Dungeon Masters - A documentary about dungeons and dragons players should be entertaining. I will go in expecting to laugh, but at some point realize that they are people too.
• The Wrestler - Say what you will about The Fountain… actually don’t, because I really liked it. Aronofsky is > your life.
• RocknRolla - I’m crazy skeptical about a new Guy Ritchie gangster movie… but Thandie Newton!
• Miracle at St. Anna - Because I’m secretly trying to figure out which film will have the most black people in attendance.
• Chocolate - Because I literally couldn’t keep myself from jumping up and down during Ong Bak, and omg in Tom Yum Goong Tony Jaa has an elephant thrown at him, and I’ll be seeing this at midnight, and hopefully in a theater full of action movie fans, and omg this will be awesome.

While we’re here

Fuck talking bout the recession, the shit’s depressing

The Recession drops tomorrow, I hope you’re ready. Jeezy is the Michael Phelps of hip hop.

The black and white USDA flags in this video are kinda hot

In this issue of samples I just picked up on even though I’ve listened to both songs a million times…

Rza - A Day to God is 1000 Years
Nina Simone - I Loves You Porgy (I assume this specific recording of this song)

It’s subtle I guess, but my mind is blown!