Whew

OK, so now that I've spent way too long working on that song list and Jessie has gone to bed I just have to take a moment and say...(see title)

Lost two Assistant Managers this week. To say that I'm working a lot is an understatement. The last five days I've worked over 50 hours and the end is not yet in sight. This week will be much of the same with Memorial Weekend coming up. It's funny though, because I'm not FREAKING out like maybe I should be. In the end sometimes you have to tear things apart in order to make it right, and that's what is happening. I'm happy with the new direction of the store and I know that I, nay we, will be better for it. Maybe this means that I am really starting to come into may own as a store manager. That makes me feel proud. However, once again, the week is not over....

This Took Way Too Long....

Soundtrack to your life:

What you do here is rack the depths of your cd/tape/vinyl/ipod collection or brain and come up with what you consider to be an awesome tune that you could see playing in the background at these stages of life.. hope you have fun with this, i look forward to seeing the soundtrack of your lives :)

•Opening credits: Stuck Between Stations- The Hold Steady
•Waking up: Morning Lullabye- Ingrid Michaelson
•Average day: The Crane Wife- The Decemberists
•First date: The First Five Times- Stars
•Falling in love: Snowbirds and Townies- Further Seems Forever
•Love scene: Table For Glasses- Jimmy Eat World
•Fight scene: Leave (Get Out)- JoJo
•Breaking up: August In Bethany- The Juliana Theory
•Getting back together: I Know I Know- Tegan and Sarah
•Secret love: Hallelujah- Jeff Buckley
•Life's okay: Bottom of the Barrel- Amos Lee
•Mental breakdown: Cold Water- Damien Rice
•Driving: You Can Have It All- Yo La Tengo
•Learning a lesson: A Better Son/Daughter- Rilo Kiley
•Deep thought: Passing Afternoon- Iron and Wine
•Flashback: {Untitled Track} (4) - Sigur Ros
•Partying: D.U.I.- Har Mar Superstar
•Happy dance: Just Like Heaven- The Cure
•Regreting: These Days- Jackson Browne
•Long night alone: Raining In Baltimore- Counting Crows
•Death scene: I Will Follow You Into the Dark- Death Cab For Cutie
•Closing credits: Philosophy- Ben Folds Five

For My Health

Since nobody's looking right now I'm blogging for my own sanity. Actually, I'm sure that Jess still checks up every once in a while...but...still....

No talk of work. No talk of dogs. Just talk.

I need to start playing piano more. I don't really know what happened to me, but I've completely stopped. I used to like to...now I have found too many excuses to not do it. It's funny how I work in a music store, got a music degree, but hardly call myself musical anymore. Hell, even in the car I just listen to sports talk radio. I should be in a band again. Mike Langhoff, the old drummer of Johnnyrook, wants to start a studio side project with me. I told him I would...but will I? Will I find some stupid excuse to not do it? Maybe.

My mom called this morning. I didn't call her back. Why do I do that?

I think about Haiti a lot still. I keep hearing about refugees that are trying to get over here in small boats and the toils that come along with that. I want to take a boat back over. If I could drop everything I would start sailing the opposite direction. I dream about the place probably twice a month. Vivid dreams. Dreams where I'm back at Wings of Hope. The kids remember me, I speak fluent creole and somehow I feel complete again. Maybe someday I'll convince Jessie to join me in dropping everything and we'll just go. If you ever call the phone and all it says is "We did it", well, we did it.

Thinking of church literally makes me sick to my stomach and twists me in knots. I think I really despise the Christian community. I wonder sometimes if that's a sin. I still believe with all my heart, and it's not like the church has scarred me beyond repair (maybe my college did that job)...I just don't relate. At all. Not even to "hip" churches I'm supposed to relate to. I still think I'm a devoted Christian...however, I get scared sometimes. If you ever read this Brad- call me.

I know it's been a while but this is too good....

Ironically, he looks cold.

This is why "This Is Why I'm Hot" is hot: Because it's hot. There are of course other reasons the breakout single from Mims, a Washington Heights rapper who intends to carry New York hip-hop on his back and restore us to glory, is hot. It ascended to number one on Billboard's Hot 100, for example, and topped iTunes' singles chart as well. But consider these other, purer, more intangible reasons why it's hot, best explained by Mims himself over the course of the song. Where appropriate, we will back him up with visual aids.

The most amazing line in "This Is Why I'm Hot"—and, even at this early a juncture, quite possibly the most amazing line of any song to see release in 2007—is "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't 'cause you not." Brutal and unassailable in its simplicity. Consider the reasoning, first, of just "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly":




Mims is hot because he's fly. But it raises the question: Does being hot guarantee one's being fly? "You ain't 'cause you not" would seem to clear that up:




It would appear that fly and hot are interchangable. If you are one, you are both; if you aren't at least one, you are neither.


If you find completely overlapping Venn diagrams visually unhelpful, consider this tautology:



If that's a bit pretentious, then maybe a blunt flowchart works best:



The other remarkable, oft-quoted line in "This Is Why I'm Hot" is "I could sell a mil' sayin' nothin' on a track." Critics gibe that "This Is Why I'm Hot" proves precisely that; others muse on what Mims would sell if he deigned to actually say something on a track. Would he sell less than a mil'? Exactly a mil', as when he said nothing? Or a great deal more than a mil'? The song does not elaborate.

In any event, note that he can do those things, not will, which suggests he might not. As these claims and predictions are speculative, there are more possible outcomes; it seems reasonable to assert that Mims can't sell more than a mil' sayin' nothin'. Though we would love to see him try.



Sonically, the most entertaining part of "This Is Why I'm Hot" is the first verse, in which Mims underscores his hotness by touting his skill at adapting to regional styles, as the slow, minimal, eerie beat morphs beneath him, sampling both "Nuthin' But a G Thang" and "Jesus Walks." In the Dirty Dirty (South) he makes the ladies bounce. He slows it down in the Midwest per their preference. He does it the Cali way in L.A., and in Chi, in addition to adeptly moving the crowds from side to side, everyone loves his fashion sense. (If you enjoy nothing else about "This Is Why I'm Hot," acknowledge the rakish, immensely appealing way Mims says the word attire.)

Our quarrel lies with "If you need it hyphy/I take it to the Bay," an homage to the Oakland–San Francisco Bay Area's relentlessly knuckleheaded and sorta wonderful hyphy movement, with its proclivities for going dumb, making thizz faces, ghost-riding the whip, etc. (Yahdidabooboo.) But unlike Mims's other geographical shout-outs, that's all he says here—"I take it to the Bay/'Frisco to Sac-town/They do it e'y'day." First of all, no one calls it "Frisco" except rhyme-starved rappers, and the only worthwhile MCs living anywhere near Sacramento are in prison. But even worse, there's no style adjustment here—he just takes it to the Bay. This is wholly insufficient for hotness—several entities that take it to the Bay do not qualify:



The song's other two verses are a relative letdown—Mims can get chopped birds by the flock, he's got money in the bag, he coordinates his outfits, he compels you to Google the word guap, people tend to like how he records, he's into big spendin', bah. He does intimate that we will find him "with different women" that we personally have "never had," which is awfully gentlemanly of him, really. Since we're feeling charitable we'll assume all of Mims's women are hot; with regard to our own conquests, it's best to be honest with ourselves.



Though a fantastic song, "This Is Why I'm Hot" verily reeks of Skee-Lo. It's so distinctive and goofy that no follow-up could possibly do it justice. But even if Mims is not built for endurance, he has given us an invaluable gift nonetheless—reclaiming and re-energizing the word hot after years of abuse. Plumbing one's memory (with a bit of Internet aid) reveals how even reputable musicians have overused the "I'm hot like _____" construction. Behold:



Yes. Mere mortals are hot like other people or things; having ascended to a higher plane, Mims is hot like Mims. It doesn't get hotter than that.