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…

I lost count of how many days there actually were, what with that damn date line. This number seems about right if you’re willing to count travel and I guess I am. The trip before this day had been mostly about food, some shopping, and ignoring tourist attractions. I mean, we started this trip with Diana cupcake muling goods from Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery to Singapore. Do you know how difficult it is to resist eating the sassy pumpkin or pistachio when your only other alternative is “the chicken or the fish?” I haven’t shown that much resolve in years. We spent much of Singapore with the Mankansutra guide, eating several delicious things with little break in between. We also spent a lot of time in connected mega-malls, I’m pretty sure that it’s possible to cross the city entirely by mall, though that’s not as entertaining as watching terrorist-scare propaganda videos on the subway.

Anyway, fast forwarding a bit. We were supposed to go to Thailand next, you know, to eat more delicious things, and spend some time on the beach (where The Beach was filmed even!). But then that whole thing with the protesters taking over the Bangkok airport happened. We figured we could Amazing Race our way somewhere else in southeast Asia, so we purchased a flight to Bali scheduled to leave in an hour. Ran to the check in counter, and got laughed at by the airline agents, because, you know what? You need a visa to go to Indonesia, and guess what? You can’t get one without a return flight. Silly Americans! It turns out that on the Amazing Race the show pre-obtains visas, genius really. Determined not to be You Shall Know our Velocity’d out of our vacation, we quickly changed our flight and booked a return flight.

Yada yada. We’re in Bali. It’s the low season, probably because of the rain. We got a good deal on this outdoor villa thing with three bedrooms, outdoor showers, a private pool, and people that are waiting on us a little too hand and foot. Everything we’ve eaten has been not good. This is a little depressing, we would have eaten so well in Thailand!

This is what’s amusing. People in Bali apparently like to shout “Obama” in the direction of black folk. I’d heard that this was a thing, but to experience it up close was just amazing. I suppose I should have been insulted, but man was it funny. Take the feller on the right. He asked me where I was from, I said “New York!” and he says “Alright! Obama!” So I bought some corn from him, not too roasted please, and no butter. Street hawkers selling crappy t-shirts and sunglasses used it to get attention, “Obama! Sunglasses?” No thanks ma’am, the sun’s not out! And just regular folk too, “Hey Obama!” This is so much better than the quiet staring of the Singaporean folk. I think. I’m not sure.

Things to eat in Bali

1. The roast suckling pig at Ibu Oka. It’s delicioso, tender, with bits of cracklins. Yum.

Um, that’s it I guess. Mozaic was underwhelming, and bebek bengil is skippable. Streetside martabak manis is quite good. It’s fluffy and buttery and sweet. My favorite kind of thing really. Here’s a recipe.

Sleepy time.

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
…

and it happened during Casino Royale. The Daniel Craig Bond movie, not that other disaster. Specifically, during the first action sequence after the credits where Bond chases Sébastien Foucan through a construction site. I’m a fan of that parkour, those guys and gals are incredible! There are lots of good YouTube videos out there, and there’s always District B13. B13 is little more than an excuse for Raffaelli and Belle to run through streets and rooftops, but it’s all crazy enjoyable.

Anyway, I held off on getting a Blu-ray player for one main reason. It’s a little silly. For a long time, the most practical (supports BD-Live, upgradable, not too pricy, etc) player on the market was the Playstation 3. And the thing’s not stackable. I don’t play videogames enough to own something that demands that much vertical space. Now the DMP-BD35 from Panasonic is out, and I recently purchased one. It’s magic in a box. Technically I ended up with a BD55 due to a Circuit City mishap, but that’s another story. It’s even more magic in a box. It’s just so unreasonably high definition. I think this means I’d rather have physical media that’s gorgeous than blurry video on demand.

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!

This weekend one of my best friends, Henry, got married in Austin, TX. Jessica and Henry decided to have a small, but activity-filled wedding weekend for their immediate family and close friends. This is a recap.

Thursday: A red-blooded American bachelorin’

I land in Austin around 4:30pm and Matt picks me up from the airport. Since the wedding is Friday, we’ve decided that we need to have some sort of stag. The primary cast is going to be our high school friend group, that is: Me, Nima, Matt, Usman, and Henry. The plan is to drive to Round Rock, quickly say hi to my parents, pick up Nima (who lives in LA, and landed about an hour ago), meet Henry at Matt’s house, and get going. The wedding ceremony is at 8:30am Friday morning and Nima, recently certified for this purpose, is going to marry them. That gives us roughly 16 hours.

Halfway there, we get rear ended by a minivan. It turns out that the truck (Welcome to Texas!) behind her rear-ended her, causing her to run into our car. She (Amber, 19 years old, shoeless for who knows what reason, slightly overweight, and wearing a skirt that’s much too small) is pretty shaken up. Since the truck (Dale, 52 years old, balding, was attempting to meet his family at CiCi’s pizza) is sort of totaled, we have to call the cops and EMS and all that stuff. We spend about an hour filling out paperwork. Rant: Calling 911 when on a county barrier is a horrible experience. I don’t know what the hell county I’m in exactly, and aaargh.

Eventually we pick up Nima, drive back down to Matt’s house where we meet Henry, change, and head downtown to 219 west. 219 west is a sort of bar/lounge/American tapas place in the warehouse district. We order way too many things. I, in typical Dolapo fashion, start ordering shots for everyone. Then we head to The Belmont, which is a seemingly nice bar on 6th street with a gigantic roof deck.

At The Belmont, we make friends with our waitress (Rachel, 20-something, dyed blond hair, cute, boyfriend by the name of Jonathan) and proceed to drink crappy margaritas. We order more shots, dance with 30-somethings who want to know where they can score pills (Really, this happens to me way too often - the 30 year old thing, not the pills thing), order some shots for everyone near me, and then leave. It’s about 12:45am at this point, and the plan is to head to The Yellow Rose. The Yellow Rose has free wifi, but we’re going there because it’s a strip club. Besides, I don’t have my laptop. We can’t find a cab to take all five of us. Usman, foolishly confident that he can drive, drives me and him in Henry’s car. Matt, Henry, and Nima take the cab.

We buy Henry lots of dances and more drinks. At 2am, The Yellow Rose closes. We get in two cabs, headed for Kerbey Lane Cafe. Fact - if I’m in Austin, and I’m awake past 2am, it’s probably because I’m at Kerbey Lane Cafe. It’s possibly overrated, but I love the pancakes (and the queso, and the tortilla soup, and they serve Good Flow lemonade).

It would be unwise of me to speak in detail on what happens next, but includes:

• Leaving Kerbey Lane, not entirely of our own volition
• An angry Ghanaian cab driver, and correcting mistakes with a garden hose
• Trying to decide if we should leave the groom, possibly for dead, on Matt’s front lawn 3 hours before his wedding is scheduled to start
• Attempting to have a conversation about mamacitas and tejano music with Matt’s spanish-speaking and very inebriated neighbor
• Nima leaving lots of voicemails for Alice (26, went to high school with us, lives in LA, spent a weekend with the partychat crew in San Diego) about migas
• Henry’s head in a trash can

2 hours later we wake up for a day that’s scheduled to include: a wedding, paintballing in 104° weather, bbq, indoor rock climbing, a reception dinner, and another trip downtown.