I think this will be a fun night:

Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, Jonathan Ames, Starlee Kine, Rick Moody, Care Bears on Fire, and URLSHORTENINGSERVICEFORTWITTER.COM CEO DAVID REES.

November 17, 2009
7:00 PM
The Highline Ballroom
431 W 16th St
New York, NY 10011
between 9th and 10th Ave
(212) 414-5994

JesseEgan (1 month ago)
this is my joint, cam’ron came with some real, powerful shit on this one.

Mcstikman (1 month ago)
LOL I wish (my salary) was that much, after a whole year of hard work I got 32cents………32cents and she was like I’m giving you this much because I like you. I was like you must be kidding but lord knows I need it these bills never end 🙁

gwa56 (2 weeks ago)
How the hell is it possible to get 32cents a year? You need to change jobs or you need to tell that lady to start paying you more.

Mcstikman (2 weeks ago)
The 32cents was not my salary for the whole year if that’s what you’re thinking, it was my “christmas bonus” XD. 32cents increase on my hourly rate

gwa56 (2 weeks ago)
oh LMAO sorry 😀

jaystallest91 (1 week ago)
LMFAO!I thought you meant 32 cents was your yearly salary, I was thinking you worked in a counterfeit nike sweat shop or something lol. I feel your pain though, thats almost an insult…they could of atleast increased it by 50 cents. =)

Mcstikman (1 week ago)
Nope not a Nike sweat shop lol. I work for AMR (American Airlines/American Eagle).

Comment thread hall of fame?

Sloppy, major-key beats about economic anxiety … that’s hip-hop I can believe in my friends.

“7:00 AM … sheesh!”

I’m tempted to start blogging about politics. There’s so much going on in politics these days; wouldn’t it be great to have a web site that discussed it all — your one-stop shop for all political talk?

I could talk about:

1. Health
2. Health Care Debate
3. Political Processes That Are Going On In Washington
4. Warfare And Fighting
5. Cars And Trucks

Hmm … I might have to do this …

Readers are pushing back HARD against the article I linked to about “Is MGMT like the Goldman Sachs of music?”

Let’s address reader JC‘s concerns:

David Rees, I don’t write to blogs… until now because that quirky article about mgmt you linked to is just so…   

I can’t say I have a horse in this football game.  The “Kids” song was fine, but I have no idea where mgmt come from or why they have made this Leor man so mad.  But his reasons for being mad are kind of crazy.  As far as I can tell, those reasons are:

1.) Musicians who are private school educated and upper middle class are bad.  So David Bowie is bad.

Correct. David Bowie sucks. Who listens to him? “China Girl,” are you serious? With the ching-chong-ching melody? Oh wait, sorry, “Ziggy Stardust” is great … yeah right … who wants to hear songs about a transsexual spaceman? That makes no kind of sense … NEXT–

2.) Being a spoiled neo-hippie surfing in Malibu is bad.  Does that implicate Brian Wilson?  Or is it OK that he’s an OG hippie?  Why the hostility to coastal living?

Correct! Brian Wilson (singer of the Beach Boys) is HORRIBLE. I don’t care that his melodies are clever inversions of Bach minuets, or whatever musical trick he pulled 1,000 times to impress geeks. The Beach Boys suck. “No, you don’t understand how innovative they were. They used a theremin!” Please, a theremin? The dumbest musical instrument ever invented? An instrument so stupid, you don’t even have to touch it to make noise? And the noise it makes sounds like a woman who’s not a good singer. Who cares? I know they used a theremin in the theme to Star Trek … news flash: everything about that show sucked.

3.) Alternative rock is just like mainstream rock, but marketed to a different demographic.  Did we just figure that out?  Is this a music column?

There’s nothing to make fun of in refuting this point, so I’ll ignore it. NEXT–

4.) You can substitute “MGMT” for “Goldman Sachs” in a scary paragraph.  You can kind of do that with “high-fructose corn syrup” or “oxycontin” or “oxygen” too.

Point to JC; this made me laugh. NEXT–

5.) Post-modernity and not playing instruments are bad things.  So we shouldn’t listen to DJ Spooky or Girl Talk.

Reader JC, are you only now realizing that you shouldn’t listen to DJ Spooky and Girl Talk? Welcome to Grown-Up World, enjoy your stay. NEXT–

As far as I can tell, this all adds up to mean that good music comes from public school educated, politically conscious musicians from non-coastal areas who play their own instruments.  So I think The Roots are probably OK, though I’m not exactly sure where they went to school.

The Roots are not OK; they are the worst rap band of all time and I’m so glad they’re on the Jimmy Fallon show because it means everything on Earth is finally getting organized according to suckiness.

I’m totally down with this guy not liking mgmt because he thinks they suck.  Does he need to awkwardly force his dislike into a greater social commentary of our time?  He could have drawn a picture of Calvin peeing on them, and everybody would be happier.

Advantage JC. “Calvin peeing on them,” LOL. His points are well taken. The MGMT article is not a model of airtight argumentation, but it resonated with me (ooh, maybe I’m a theremin!).

Something about that group comes across as a little too skeevy, a little too “faux-primitive-raver-hippie-rich-kids,” a little too Dash Snow. (Dash Snow was a famous cocaine addict and ‘artist’ who was adored by underemployed young people living in curated squalor in New York City. Oh and by the way, he totally died when he overdosed on drugs. So yay for that.)

And that’s it for today’s installment of “I Am Secretly 80 Years Old!” Until next time, stay off my lawn.

This article made me TOL (Think Out Loud). As much I love “Kids,” I think I agree with this writer’s beskeeviment re: MGMT:

I completely understand the desire for escapism these days, but there’s something about the very essence of MGMT that irritates me to no end…. Most tunes I tend to play are devoid of the kind of narcissistic consumerism (more so as in to consume above any concept of capitalism) that MGMT propagates in their music. The fact that this band is somehow representative of an alternative to mainstream rock music is as ludicrous as the existence of AIG employee bonuses and the potential $23 billion in bonuses for folks at Goldman Sachs.

I’m down in Chapel Hill for a V.I.B. (Very Important Birthday) … anyway, look for me at the club with a bottle of bub tomorrow night … Polvo at the Cat’s Cradle* … make it rain on ’em … I’ll be shortening URLs for FREE all night!

(*Decided to suspend my boycott of non-Eddie-Watkins Polvo for 48 hours.)

Super-deep Chapel Hill-indie-rock trivia: Anybody know if Polvo is playing “Teen Dream” on this tour? That was always my jam.

Super-double-deep trivia: Any truth to the rumors that K-Ci and JoJo of Jodeci are joining Polvo tomorrow night for a “Cry For You/Thermal Treasure” medley? North Carolina supergroup, could this be happening???

Blog reader (and younger brother) PR asks a prickly question:

How do you feel about your employers at the wine store using tinyurl for their Twitter links and not urlshorteningservice…?

Yes, it’s true … my wine-store-owner friends aren’t using my amazing URL shortening service, even though the idea for it came to me while I WAS DRINKING WINE.

Looks like I’ll have to stage a URL-shortening-service intervention. These can be painful … but necessary.

(By the way, it’s going buck-wild at the shop right now. Thursday nights are off the chain! GET THAT WINE, PEOPLE!)

One of the shop owners knows about my love of twitter and my love of wine … he just forwarded me a hot rumor … twitter is coming out with their own wine … DEVELOPING …

Hi everyone … not to blow your minds, but I’m back at the wine shop!

Yes, it seems the owners won an award and must go cook food for an exclusive party to celebrate their wine-and-cooking-related expertise, and they have entrusted me with the store. And why not? After all, I am a great salesman: I treat each customer like they are my own flesh and bood; I know the main difference between red and white wine; I can press the right computer buttons to make the cash drawer open.

So come on down and let’s enjoy some wine-related financial transactions!!!