heat + serve

contoured toothbrush scares me. looking more like a fashion statement than dental hygiene implement, it undoubtedly cleans your teeth better by being all topographical and shit. it's probably very handy if you couldn’t flick your wrist because you just had surgery or something.

i’ve been waiting for the downtown 6 for a while the other day when a train, jammed with people, finally pulled in. trying to ease the crush, the conductor announced over the crackling pa that “another train is directly behind this one.” where else could that train be?

hard as it was to follow her breast exam/cop-a-feel stunt, tyra banks pulled off another sublime media moment by going undercover as - *gasp* - a fat woman. nevermind that “nutty professor” shit was pee-laid even when eddie murphy was funny, she actually had the nerve to bitch about the four hours make-up session she had to “endure”. let’s see, i get to sit on my ass while people fuss over me, and i get paid for it; and your point is?

i love it when i visit a small town (for me, that means non-coastal) and my host takes me to a chinese restaurant. it is really a very sweet gesture, as if to say, “i know you’re homesick being out here in the boonies.” over the years, i’ve stopped taking offense and started appreciating them for what they are: well-intentioned but uninformed, certainly not malicious. this awareness eased me through many of these occasions, including one particularly memorable evening at a benihana knock-off in kansas city.

i was late meeting mark in koreatown. by the time i got there, it was obvious there had been some drama. i found mark and asked what happened. “i didn’t see it myself but some guy told me a guy with a knife got shot by a cop” he said.

“i asked him why and he said because the guy was ‘fucking stupid’”.

speaking of koreatown, i was given a promotional “family size” can of oxfoot soup after eating at one of those bbq joints on 32nd street several years ago. it still sits on my bookshelf, waiting for the day when the mood hits me to do as instructed on the label and “remove floating fat…heat and serve.”

indie eletronic heart-throb and paul simon-wannabe erland oye is no hoof-eatin' cowboy, but his cover of lee hazelwood’s “no train to stockholm” (total lee!, astralwerks, 2002) is both fitting and revealing. similar cultural mash-up can be found on dub syndicate’s “stoned immaculate” (stoned immaculate, on-u sound, 1992). spiced with a jim morrison sample, it is a strange but expected headtrip from adrian sherwood and posse. on the other side of the world, pizzicato five served up their own multicultural flavor with the quasi-old school rave-up “sweet soul review” (made in the usa, matador/readymade, 1994) and opened doors for their equally quirky and stylish compatriots fantastic plastic machine and cibo matto.

rob ray and ron boggs find relief from their jingles work in the exotic sounds of m’lumbo, their nyc-based band known for its smart, eclectic, and often humorous approach to music (i signed them for a compilation in the late 90s). their take on the “i love lucy” theme (life after death, maitre’d, 1994) is a wild and brilliant ride, all recorded live. more mainstream but no less eager to push boundaries are detroit’s platinum pied pipers. “no worries”, taken from the duo’s “triple p” album released earlier this year on ubiquity, is a taste of their sci-fi hip-soul sound, with added seasoning by fellow intergalactic traveler and occasional j-dilla collaborator steve spacek. a student of cool soul grooves, spacek would probably appreciate the retro vibe of the inner thumb, an one-off studio band assembled by soundtrack producer ricardo tubbs for the 1972 b-flick “soul ecstasy”. no print of the movie is known to have survived but the soundtrack was resurrected by emperor norton in 1999.

Posted by cellpharmer at November 30, 2005 04:18 PM