Friday Random 10: Jersey Shore Edition

Last night marked the debut of one of the television season’s most anticipated shows, the regrettable “Jersey Shore” on MTV. Basically the premise of this show is to follow a group of the stupidest guidos on the planet as they dog-paddle through their shallow existence at a certain outpost in New Jersey — official maligned home state of Pax Arcana.

I did not see the premiere episode last night, but I checked up with Gawker’s live-blog-in-the-comments to get an appraisal of the event. I got as far as this:

DID HE JUST PUNCH A GIRL IN THE FUCKING FACE?!

Some critics say “Jersey Shore” is anti-Italian, since it glorifies the worst stereotypes of young Italian-American culture. I partly agree, since I know several meatball slurpers — our own Perry Ellis is one! — who do not ritualistically cruise around with spiked hair and oversized sunglasses and punch girls in the fucking face. On the other hand, holy SHIT you should have seen my high school. Just filled with knuckledragging ziti weiners like this. Christ almighty, I’ll take a pugnacious newsboy hat-wearing Boston mook moron any day of the week over these greasy bastards. No offense, Perry.

The songs:

Walls in Time — Bob Mould
Two Times Blue — Debbie Harry
Fame Throwa — Pavement
One PM Again — Yo La Tengo
Pink Turns To Blue — Husker Du
Get Older — Dan Deacon
XMas Curtain — My Morning Jacket
Lucifer’s Jigsaw — Jaydiohead
Baltimore — Steven Malkmus and the Jicks
Big Love — Broken Social Scene Presents… Kevin Drew

Bonus Video:

Fake Empire / It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop — Frightened Rabbit

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: You can’t overestimate Gerry Callahan

Father Scott

On my delicious nine-minute commute this morning, I got to hear the dulcet tones of Gerry Callahan say the following on EEI (paraphrased):

“You can’t overestimate the importance of the return of Brett Favre to Green Bay.”

Oh, Gerry, Gerry, Gerry. I’m afraid you don’t know me well. Watch how I overestimate this:

I say the return of Brett Favre to Lambeau Field is 12 times more significant than the invention of the cotton gin. Lewis and Clark trekking west? Bitches. Genocide in Africa? I wouldn’t bother myself with such trifles when I can spend my mental energy on imagining what the 650 lb. McCarthy couple thinks about some old guy throwing around a leather ball for three hours.

Am I being petty? Of course. But this is one annoying verbal tick that needs to go away. I don’t just mean in sports. News, politics, finance, whatever. Just say it’s interesting, or this means more to Wisconsinites than the local grocery stores’ buy 12 wheels of cheese get one half-off sale (OK, that’s also and overestimation.) You can always overestimate stuff and always sound stupid.

Like, for instance, you’re at a conference for work but have a tickle in your throat so you stay in your hotel room the whole time, but then stay up late tweeting about the World Series. In that case, you’re probably overestimating the effect of your sickness. Either that or you’re just a disgrace to your Viking ancestry.

UPDATE: Related: Via @Adam_Schefter on Twitter: True Factoid: What was “Minnesota Avenue” in Green Bay was officially renamed this week “Aaron Rodgers Drive.” That’s pretty awesome.

The songs:

I And Love And You, The Avett Bros.
Gimme a Sign, Ryan Adams
Pennyroyal Tea, Nirvana
Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
A Fond Farewell, Elliott Smith
Faithfull, Pearl Jam
Made You Look, Nas
Gone Gone — NYC, Conor Oberst
Sunlight, Harlem Shakes
Play Your Part (pt. 1), Girl Talk

Bonus video:

Friday Random 10: Abbey Road Edition

Pax Arcana

Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the iconic photograph of John, Paul, George, and Ringo crossing Abbey Road. The picture was used as the album art on the Abbey Road album, and is a living reminder that British people have always walked in single file. No one knows why.

If Paul McCartney were alive today, I’d ask him about the final words to the album, in which he sings “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Because it seems to me the more love you make, the sleepier you get. Just sayin’.

The Songs:

God Save the Queen — Sex Pistols
You Really Got Me — The Kinks
Broken Face — The Pixies
Sound of Silver — LCD Soundsystem
Take the Fifth — Spoon
Atlas — Battles
Because — The Beatles
Labrythnian Pomp — Of Montreal
Dreamer — Tiny Vipers
Point and Shoot — Yo La Tengo

Bonus Video:

Ring of Fire — Ray Charles (Live on the Johnny Cash Show)

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: Excuses, excuses edition

Pax Arcana

Sorry for the extreme paucity of highbrow musings lately. There are several reasons for this. The first is that the radiant and scrupulous Mrs. Pax Arcana and I are in the process of painting our house — the only human activity that goes from “exciting” and “fun” to “suicidally excruciating” faster than being governor of California.

The second is that my laptop caught a case of the fizzles yesterday, so until my technical team can replace it I’m stuck with a loaner that I believe was crafted out of discarded braces, watch batteries and graham crackers. Shit is slow.

It’s not that I don’t want to provide you with a hot tub full of greasy, sexy blogging. Trust me — I want to slather your body parts in stories of racist Philadelphians, men in tiny boats, gas station exposés, grand optical illusions, the greatest baseball game ever played, anachronistic uniform components, impish impulses, and the New York Times’ hilarious warning against eating raw cookie dough.

It’s just that I can’t right now.

So let’s skip ahead to the songs:

Listening to Otis Redding During Christmas — Okkervil River
A-Punk — Vampire Weekend
The Funeral — Band of Horses
Another Man’s Done Gone — Wilco
In the Garage — Weezer
Pot Kettle Black — Wilco
That Time — Regina Spektor
Born to Run — Bruce Springsteen
Punch Drunk — Bush Tetras
Song #1 — Fugazi

Bonus Video:

Land of the Freak — King Khan and the Shrines (Live)

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: Michael Jackson Edition

Pax Arcana

As is so often the case at times of great upheaval, the world now looks to me to make sense of the death of Michael Jackson.

Very well.

Michael Jackson was the capstone of a line of cultural touchstones who bridged the gap between “white” and “black” music. Like Elvis, Otis Redding, and Smokey Robinson before him, Michael Jackson had the uniqe gift of extreme cultural synthesis — fusing elements of many different musical styles into an art form that rose above description and categorization. For a 15 year period from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, Michael Jackson was the transcendent human of his age and likely the last megastar of the music world.

Also, he wanted to put his wiener in your children.

The songs:

Dig Your Grave — Modest Mouse
The Swell Season — Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Car Radio (Different) — Spoon
Suck My Kiss — Red Hot Chilipeppers
Chesley’s Little Wrists — Pavement
Boot on the Seat — The Donkeys
Golden Age — TV on the Radio
Do What You Gotta Do — Okkervil River
Saltwater — Beach House
Mango Pickle Down River — M.I.A.

Bonus video:

I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (Too Stop Now) (Otis Redding cover) — Cat Power

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: Couch Potato Edition

Pax Arcana

It’s well-documented that Americans are the corpulentest bastards on the planet, each of us requiring a small army of Malaysian porters to tote our belongings as we wheeze our way back to the buffet line at Sizzler.

Many blame our sedentary lifestyle. We drive everywhere, we hate the outdoors, and who has time for exercise when there’s so much intrigue on CSI: Miami tonight?

Not me. I blame my fucking couch. That thing is so comfortable there is practically no escape from its velvety embrace.

That’s why I’m buying all my furniture from Ferran Lajara from this point forward. According to his Web site, Lajara’s furniture designs are aimed at creating a unidirectional relationship between the object the objectionable indirect object subject predicate. Actually I got lost in the description. Here — you try:

Active furniture is a collection of three objects which try to keep users physically active by creating new relationships object-user-user-object. These new relationships are not unidirectional anymore – relationships in which users are the ones who demand from the object and the object obeys. The pieces of furniture in this collection do anything but facilitate what users want. They force users to perform a physical action in order to make them function. These actions keep users active.

The bottom line is that Lajara’s furniture makes you work. Like the lamp pictured above, which only lights up when standing up straight but doesn’t come with a base — so you have to hold it up yourself. Or a desk with drawers on the wrong side to make you stand up every time you need a paper clip.

Frankly I think it’s a good thing when your furniture challenges you. Like that time the ottoman wanted to arm wrestle me for my Red Sox tickets. “You don’t even have any arms, you fucking retarded ottoman!” I yelled at him. Then I realized I never had Red Sox tickets and I was high on Schnapps and Hydrocodone.

You win this round, ottoman.

The songs:

Naomi — Neutral Milk Hotel
Was it You? — Spoon
Reservations — Spoon
My Family’s Role in the World Revolution — Beirut
Your Big Hands — Jolie Holland
Lenin — Arcade Fire
No Christmas While I’m Talking — The Walkmen
No, Not Now — Hot Hot Heat
You Really Got a Hold on Me — She & Him
The Heartbreak Rides — AC Newman

Bonus Video:

Mexican Wine (Live) — Fountains of Wayne

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: Three Wolf Moon Edition

Pax Arcana

Often people ask me, “Pax — how am I to understand the Internet, when it is ever so vast and so frightfully arranged in a series of blind corners and funhouse mirrors?” And I say “Stop talking like a queer.”

I then expand on my point to say that the beauty of the Internet exists not in comprehension of the whole of it — but rather in those moments of perfect happenstance, when the unlikeliest of candidates rise to the top of the giant ocean of information and enjoy a few blissful moments of propulsion at the crest of a powerful wave. Examples of these seredipitous moments are too many to list, but to illustrate a recent example, let’s consider the story of the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the T-shirt pictured at right has currently — and inexplicably — become the focus of attention for many snarky Internet types, who have taken to posting amusing comments about the shirt on Amazon.com. For example:

The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called meth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him. — B.Govern

Of course the attention is more than just a meme. The Three Wolf Moon T-shirt is currently the top-selling item of apparel on Amazon, according to the company. Meanwhile, my line of backless cardigans for men remains mired near the bottom. Won’t you people ever get with the times?

The songs:

Good Morning Good Morning — The Beatles
Crawled Out of the Sea — Laura Marling
Here We Are — Patrick Park
Nomenclature — Andrew Bird
The Island — The Decemberists
OK Oyot System — Extra Golden
The Best Thing — Ivy
Halfway Home — TV on the Radio
Ashamed — Deertick
Cracks in the Causeway — Oxford Collapse

Bonus video:

Souled Out!!! — Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: Honest Pint Edition

Pax Arcana

Last year we wrote about the growing scourge of “falsies,” which are basically 14 ounce beer glasses made to look like pints so bars can charge you for a full beer without giving you one. Obviously this is abhorrent behavior and the most deceptive use of glass since my college roommates tricked me into crashing through a sliding door by dressing up like robots and chasing me around the living room.

The beer hotties agree — a full mug is a thing of beauty

Lawmakers in Oregon agreed with our hardline stance, recently passing House Bill 3122 — also known as the “Honest Pint Act.” The law would reward bars that serve full 16 ounce pints with stickers that prove they serve an honest pint.

I don’t know what they do with the stickers. Probably put them on their skateboards like I do.

The songs:

Was it You? — Spoon
Kick Out the Jams — Bad Brains with Henry Rollins
Last Call — Outkast
Strange Times — The Black Keys
Blank Slate — The National
The Avalanche — Sufjan Stevens
Helpless — Sugar
Ndiawoulou — Orchestra Baobob
Street Spirit (Fade Out) — Radiohead
My Little Japanese Cigarette Case — Spoon

Bonus Video:

Auto-tune the news #3 — Because this one is an epic masterpiece of boundless ambition… on thin ice

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: Ballpark Beer Edition

Pax Arcana

When I lived in Colorado, I thought the fact that they didn’t serve Coors beer at Coors Field (only Budweiser products) was the most preposterous beer-related ballpark reality.

Not any more. According to New Stadium Insider (via With Leather), the new Yankee Stadium features coolers labeled — and I’m not shitting you — Retro Beer, from which the friendly service hands will be glad to serve you up a PBR, Schlitz, Schaeffer, or Ballantine’s for just $9.

Check it:

We have officially reached the point where cheap beer — drunk casually by hipsters partly for ironic purposes and partly because it’s so cheap — has been reinvented as a $9 commodity at $85 billion brand new stadium (Ed. Note — This figure may be off).

That sound you just heard was Perry Ellis crapping out a boulder.

The songs:

Sons & Daughters — The Decemberists
Metal School — Spoon
Idioteque — Radiohead
Witness Blues — A.A. Bondy
It’s a Wonderful Life — The Real Tuesday Weld
You Are the Blood — Sufjan Stevens
Fitter Happier — Radiohead
Challengers — The New Pornographers
Guitar — CAKE
Who’s Laughing — Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

Bonus Video:

Hurt Feelings — Flight of the Conchords

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Friday Random 10: Sudoku Edition

Pax Arcana

According to USA Today (helllllllooooo business travelers!), a computer science professor at Winthrop University says he’s perfected a fool-proof guide to solving Sudoku puzzles.

If you’re not familiar with Sudoku, imagine staring a grid divided into three rows and three columns that are themselves subdivided into three rows and three columns. Some of the boxes have numbers in them. You’re supposed to figure out where other numbers go. Sounds boring, huh? IT IS! But at least professor J.F. Crook says you’re guaranteed to solve the puzzle while you slowly go insane.

Here are those steps, according to McPaper:

• Scan the puzzle for any “forced” numbers in blank squares within the 3-by-3 boxes, ones in which there are enough surrounding numbers filled in that it could be only one number.

• Mark up the rest of the puzzle, noting in the open squares every possible number that might occupy the square.

• After you’ve marked up the puzzle, look at the number combinations row by row, column by column and interior box by box. If one number stands out as unique in that row, column or box, it belongs in the square in which you’ve written it.

• Repeat this search until only one of the numbers you’ve written in each of the squares is left. It will be the right number.

• Frame your completed puzzle and hang it above your Mensa certificate to demonstrate your superior mental acuity.

OK I made that last one up.

The songs:

Thru the Eyes of Ruby — Smashing Pumpkins
Let it Ride — Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
Sandy Feat — High Places
Gang Bang Suicide — Broken Social Scene Presents… Kevin Drew
Elq Milq — Black Moth Super Rainbow + The Octopus Project
The Happy Song — Otis Redding
Go On, Say It — Blind Pilot
Hurricane Jane — Black Kids
Peacocks — The Mountain Goats
You Don’t Miss Your Water — Otis Redding

Bonus Video:

North American Scum — LCD Soundsystem (Live at Later…)

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.