Author Archives: Jorge Farah

About Jorge Farah

I am the opposite of Prince.

May 15, 2013

Treasures of BAFICI 2013: “Animals” by Marçal Forés

Film enthusiasts are familiar with the concept of “twin movies”– two or more films that share certain premise or plot elements with each other and, by dumb luck or sheer industry cynicism, happen to come out around the same time. In many instances, they’re the direct result of industrial espionage among competing studios, and are rushed through production and marketing in a scramble to get the film out to the world first. Here’s a list of several prominent examples throughout the years. And though this can produce interesting contrasting takes on source material (compare “Capote” to “Infamous”), it will more commonly result in shoddy hatchet jobs, barely holding together as narratives, unable to disguise their true nature as hacky cash grabs. It’s no coincidence that one of the twin films is almost always so much better than the other, and it tends to be painfully obvious which one was rushed through the pipeline.

Then there are films that share very little with each other aside from a single plot element, yet it’s one that’s so identifiable that the smaller film runs the risk of being written off as a throwaway ersatz. Such is the case with Seth McFarlane’s blockbuster comedy hit “Ted”, and its comparatively obscure Catalan counterpart, Marçal Forés’s “Animals”. Both films are tied together by virtue of a common component: our protagonists are accompanied by an anthropomorphic yellow teddy bear who can talk. And yet you’d be hard-pressed to find two other films, sharing such a colorful ingredient, that differ so violently from each other in terms of tone and execution. One is a shock-driven gross-out laugh-out-loud comedy, the other is an understated and introspective look at the hazy cloud of teenage confusion.

The Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival pretty much consumed my life for the entirety of April. I took up residence in the Village Recoleta Multiplex, where the festival was held this year (conveniently located a mere 4 blocks away from my home), and saw 3 or 4 movies a day– sometimes with friends, but mostly navigating in and out of screenings by myself. Getting someone else to agree to that level of commitment to a film festival is tough, especially when most of my friends are only casual festival enthusiasts, making sure to catch the “biggies” and maybe exploring the fringes once or twice. For me, it’s a bit of a pilgrimage. One that finds me invigorated and inspired, and walking back home every night at 1 AM feeling like I’m floating in thin air. It’s hard to explain, but by the nature of BAFICI, which puts together independent films from all corners of the world, you find the strangest treasures. “Animals” is one of those.

“Animals” is the story of a teenager living with his older brother in a Spanish mountain town (which gives the film its otherworldly, stunningly beautiful backdrop) and seemingly stuck in that awkward junction of childhood and adolescence. He’s a quiet, awkward kid who finds comfort in his music. He feels at odds with himself, fending off the romantic advances of his best friend, feeling unnerved and anxious about his own sexuality, and struggling with his relationship with a remnant from his childhood: a stuffed bear toy who, activated by his imagination, can talk and walk around by his own volition. This teddy bear, named Deerhoof (after the band), transitions from endearing “imaginary friend” to a kind of demonic Jiminy Cricket, tormenting our protagonist with his very presence, reminding him of his weaknesses and failures by virtue of just how much he needs him.

“Animals” is a beautiful and contemplative film that subverts the “teen movie” genre trope and reinvents it in its own image. It starts out as a very simple story about very complex characters and unveils masterfully into a layered, orchestral piece about confusion, doubt, and the dichotomy between the instinctual and the spiritual, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, stark silences and imaginary voices. It’s at times devastating, at times darkly humorous. And though it gets pretty out-there (as it does in a wonderfully executed climax that manages to feel Hitchcock-grandiose), it breathes confidently and never lets artifice and contrivances distract from the heart of the story. It’s an exploration of teenage doubt, and as such it is murky, at times confusing, and deeply emotional.

The soundtrack is outstanding, pulling together tracks from a number of indie and garage-rock bands from Spain and elsewhere. The soundtrack album can be streamed (and purchased in nifty vinyl) right here. Unfortunately, presumably due to the cost of acquiring all the rights, the vinyl doesn’t include all of the tracks in the album. This leaves off a few amazing songs that feature prominently in the movie, such as this gem by the A-Frames posted below:

“Animals” can be purchased on DVD via Amazon. Check it out.

2 comments | tags: animals, bafici, bandcamp, indie film, indie rock, marcal fores, movies, seth mcfarlane, spain, ted | posted in Movies, Music

May 2, 2013

Yesterday I Got So Old, I Felt Like I Could Die (Or: My Adolescent Denouement)

By Jorge Farah

This picture was taken 18 years ago.

I don’t actually remember this day, but I recognize the setting as my aunt’s old apartment in Bogotá. That also explains the hideous sweater– wearing something like that in the sweltering heat of my hometown Barranquilla would have resulted in a heatstroke. I liked visiting Bogotá because of silly things, like getting to wear sweaters. I also enjoyed exploring a city that was completely foreign to me, getting lost in its enormity and being in a state of constant discovery. Barranquilla, by comparison, felt flat and unexciting; though it isn’t a small town by most definitions, I felt like I had already traveled every inch of it by the time I was 6 (in reality, my understanding of the city was limited to the well-off neighborhoods, which resulted in an enormous shock when I got to travel the more destitute areas later in life). I also never felt like I really belonged in Barranquilla. It’s not an environment suitable for a chubby little butterball who was more content in the comforting cool of our nation’s capital.

This picture makes me laugh because everything about it falls so perfectly into the “hipster kid” stereotype– from the Cosby sweater to the pose to the ridiculous lamp and the delightfully retro keyboard wall decoration. Of course, at the time I was as far from a hipster as anyone could be– I was just an awkward little boy trying to strike an intimidating pose for a photo (and yes, of course, one could say that is the very essence of hipsterdom). I didn’t even know what “hip” was. I didn’t know much of anything.

A couple of weeks ago, I turned 26 years old. Twenty-six. This feels like even more of a hallmark than 25 ever did, since 26 feels like the indisputable thrust into adulthood. I am, officially, out of the ever-important 18-to-25-year-old demographic. This tells me that surveyors, entertainment executives and advertisement campaigns have stopped targeting me, and my opinion is a mere sidenote– of course, I wonder if someone with my particular set of interests was ever much of a concern for them, but it feels somewhat odd to be pushed out of that age bracket. I am, as per the definition of any governing body who ever stated an opinion on it, no longer a “youth”. I should feel glad. I’ve gone through a graduation of sorts. At this point in my life, with my 30s materializing for the first time in my line of vision, I’m supposed to have shed the last vestiges of adolescent awkwardness. The societal construct of adulthood, this idea that has been systematically hammered into my brain from childhood is… finally… setting… in. I’m becoming one of them.

WINNER OF THE 2012 20SB SEXIEST MALE BLOGGER AWARD

The hapless buffoon.

Truth be told, I’m in a bit of a panic. I am now as old as my father was when he and my mom manufactured me (which I choose to believe occurred in a laboratory, under sterile conditions). This is a sobering thought. I still feel very much like that awkward little kid in the picture at the top. I’m more aware of my age than ever before and yet I feel so pathetically unprepared to maneuver through even the smallest challenges that life tosses my way. And yes, I’ve somehow achieved a certain level of success, but I feel like I’m constantly winging it. Like this is all a big bluff, and at some point it’ll all come toppling down and my true nature as a bumbling manchild will be revealed to all those who made the horrible mistake of depositing their trust and confidence in me. How does that saying go? “You can fool all the people some of the time…”

Ten years ago, shortly after my 16th birthday, I made a discovery that would shake the foundations of what I understood music to be capable of on an emotional level: I listened to The Cure’s majestic 1989 album Disintegration. And I listened again. And again. And again. Up to the point where I had memorized every note six-string bass note, every echoed vocal, every chime. The songs spoke to me; these lush, sprawling pop songs that sounded like the orchestral backing to Puccini arias. Thick slabs of synthesizer over crashing drums and a positively liquid bass. This album dazzled me, and I connected with it emotionally in a way that I hadn’t really experienced before. It became a part of me.

When the announcement was made, a few months ago, that The Cure were returning to Argentina after 20+ years– and that they were playing the day after my 26th birthday– it felt like a no-brainer that it should be my birthday celebration. It felt poetic and apropos. It felt right.

I’ve seen my fair share of live shows over the years, but I never had an emotional reaction quite like what I experienced that night in River Plate stadium. I knew these songs like old friends, and since there were essentially no other Cure fans in my social circle in Barranquilla, they felt like secrets. Except for the obvious hits like “Just Like Heaven” and “Friday I’m in Love”, every song they played felt like the first time you actually say a secret out loud. All these years, those songs lived only in the confines of the space between my ears, and here I was listening to them being played for thousands of screaming fans. It felt like an affirmation. It felt like vindication. It felt like a triumph. A celebration, without the banality of one. A statement. We made it, and here we are.

The band played 42 songs– almost four hours worth of material. I was a wobbly mess at the end of it. An emotional wreck, but the good kind: the kind that can’t formulate sentences because he’s so overcome with love and joy and gratitude. I came home and I realized that my 26th birthday didn’t have to be a grim reminder of the passage of time. It didn’t have to be mortifying. It could serve to remind me of where I come from, where I am, what I’ve accomplished, and where I’m going. This new year finds me living a good life in a city I love, surrounded by a collection of wonderful friends that I use as pillars of strengths and shining beacons of life as I trudge, saltate, skip and march into the future. It finds me inspired, productive, ambitious. Not sated. Not tired. Not jaded. Alive.

In the last month I’ve been to a shitload of shows (The Hives, Hot Chip, Black Keys, Pearl Jam, Crystal Castles, Toro y Moi, Regina Spektor, The Cure), I saw 32 films from the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (found several treasures I’ll be posting about soon) and I’ve laughed harder and more frequently than I ever have in my life. If this really is the death of my adolescence, I’m glad I gave it a proper send-off. If this really is the arrival of true adulthood, I’m glad I gave it a proper welcome. I’m ready for whatever life’s capricious whimsy decides to throw my way.

But first, let’s hear that glorious opening synthline again.

11 comments | tags: adulthood, bafici, birthday, disintegration, the cure | posted in Music

April 11, 2013

Festival Love: Five Wonderfully Bizarre Love Stories I Found at BAFICI

By Jorge Farah

The Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (“Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente“– heretofore BAFICI) is a tradition that rolls along every April, usually coinciding with my birthday, and exists for 10 days as a glorious smattering of cinematic ferocity, unhinged creativity and relentless strangeness. It features selections from all corners of the globe– everything from staunchly DIY guerrilla filmmaking, to ethereal esoteric fare, to the askew approaches being documented at the fringes of conventional filmmaking. It’s a yearly tradition that has become very dear to my heart in the time I’ve lived in Buenos Aires, a 10-day pilgrimage that finds me devouring a ridiculous amount of movies I wouldn’t ever have been exposed to otherwise.

True to the very nature of “independent film festivals”, there is as much junk as there are gems scattered about the intimidatingly long itinerary every year, and I’ve seen my share of self-indulgent drivel. But even then, I’m being exposed to a vision that I wouldn’t have stumbled across in a million years, and I’m glad for the experience. It’s one of the reasons I love the festival: I never really know what I’m about to walk into, whose world I’m going to inhabit for the next 90 minutes or so. Every year I watch between 15 and 35 films during the festival’s 10 days. Many of these movies have stayed with me and become favorites: I’ve already written about gems I’ve discovered through the festival, like Je Suis un No Man’s Land, The Devil and Daniel Johnston and Do It Again. The festival is littered with treasures.

It stands to reason, then, that a festival that celebrates offbeat and unusual storytelling, would feature so many offbeat and unusual love stories. And in the six years I’ve attended the festival, I’ve come across a number of powerful films that could be qualified as love stories– love stories that defy convention, both diegetically and in presentation. In honor of the festival kicking off today, here’s a list of five bizarre love stories I’ve been introduced to via BAFICI over the years.

“I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK”

The “redheaded stepchild” of Park Chan-wook’s filmography, this unique romantic comedy lacks the visceral thrill of films like “Oldboy” or “Thirst” and is instead a fragile little movie about imperfect human connections and mental illness. Set in a mental institution, this is an absolutely charming (and beautifully shot) film that rolls placidly along without any of the heavy dramatic oomph of the director’s more renowned work. Still, it’s a lovely movie– hilarious and moving in equal measure, and even though I’m familiar with the director’s work, I doubt I’d have stumbled upon this had it not been showing at BAFICI.

“Zoo”

This movie is a tough sell. I’ve tried to explain it to friends without feeling like a degenerate. How do you separate a documentary’s execution to its subject matter? How do you explain to someone that– sure, this may be a documentary about a man who was literally fucked to death by a horse, and his group of creepy friends who’d get together in a farm to have sex with farm animals– but it’s also a beautiful, contemplative, subdued piece of art? How do you get past their faces– the initial shock that, depending on my relationship to the individual, can eventually turn into either profound repulsion and disdain or genuine concern about my mental health? It’s hard to explain this film to others without coming across as a gigantic weirdo. The fact that I’m even classifying it as a “love story” is probably cause for concern, but that’s what it is. I don’t know. Just watch the thing.

“Fleurs du mal”

A much better movie than its cheesy poster suggests. This is a gorgeous film about those curveballs that life throws you, the detours which you take and the threads that keep you tethered to your home, even while in a land far far away. It’s the story of two stragglers from disparate backgrounds finding sanctuary in each other. The film is loaded with political turmoil, and framed by the 2009 Iranian election– thus, it uses social media as a storytelling device, and parts of the story are relayed to the audience via Tweets and Facebook posts. It’s a film about culture clash, about dissent, about longing.

“The Day of Ants in the Sky”

A classic love story told in the world of Yakuza hitmen. This tragically obscure Japanese movie is often laugh-out-loud hilarious, occasionally ponderous and profound, completely unpredictable and thrilling– it navigates the comedy, drama and thriller genres expertly. It’s also strangely moving, for a film with so much murder in it.

“The Ballad of Genesis & Lady Jaye”

genesisladyjaye

Marie Losier’s lovingly-crafted documentary about the life of Genesis P-Orridge– of the legendary avant-garde group Throbbing Gristle, an influential figure from the early English industrial music scene– and her unusual relationship with her partner Lady Jaye, goes beyond the hagiographic/”rock-doc” waters it could have easily stalled in, and instead becomes one of the most powerful depictions of love in the history of film. It captures the feverish nature of their mutual obsession and their quest to becoming a single pandrogynous entity by means of plastic surgery– looking more and more like each other with each surgical intervention. The film could easily be a farcical freak-show but it’s instead a poignant story about the identities we assume, how we define ourselves, and how we let love define us.

2 comments | tags: bafici, ballad of genesis and lady jaye, day of ants in the sky, film festival, fleurs du mal, genesis p-orridge, love, marie losier, park chan-wook, throbbing gristle, zoo | posted in Movies

April 8, 2013

Everyist Blogcast: Filmmaker Danny O’Malley

By Jorge Farah

In today’s installment of the sporadically-updated podcast portion of Every-ist and Every-ism, we have a guest! This is very exciting for me, as my desultory prattling into the abyss that is the Internet was starting to make me feel like something of a misanthrope– or, at the very least, a secluded shut-in, muttering excitedly about jazz albums, shunning any form of human contact. As a despairingly social person, this feels like a betrayal to my very nature, and so I’m going to try and get more people from my life (and its immediate surroundings) to legitimize my folly in audio form.

Today we get to talk to filmmaker, musician, gearhead, synthesizer enthusiast, Jesus facsimile and all-around awesome dude, Danny O’Malley. Danny is my kinda guy: a lover of music and film in equal measure, a purveyor of creativity and art that can move, inspire and transform. He has shot bands like The National and The Decemberists, was deeply involved in Matt Sharp’s absurdly ambitious project with The Rentals, “Songs About Time”, and was recently nominated for a Grammy for his work on the Tegan and Sara film “Get Along”. He was kind enough to share the experience with us, as well as shoot the shit about music, movies, Tegan and Sara fans, the ridiculousness of the internet and the dichotomy of the Grammys.

Just a quick word about the recording: I performed this interview while incapacitated in my bed (not from an alcoholic bender, as is often the case, but a medical procedure– more on that later) and only had access to a shitty headset, so the audio from my end is a bit on the tinny, buzzy side. Don’t despair: your tinnitus isn’t acting up, it’s just my crummy 10-dollar headset.

Listen to our conversation by clicking the embedded player below:

Check out Danny O’Malley’s site here!
Purchase “Get Along” here or stream it on Netflix here.

8 comments | tags: danny omalley, friends, get along, interview, john hughes, podcast, tegan and sara, the rentals, wes anderson | posted in Interview, Movies, Music, Podcast

March 28, 2013

Everyist Top 10 Albums Of The 2000s: #6. Yo La Tengo- “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out”

By Jorge Farah

Picking up from where we left off on this countdown of favorite records from the last decade. Something that’s become increasingly clearer to me as I look back on the albums from 2000-2010 is that it was such a fantastic fucking decade for music. There’s a certain generational guilt that dictates we should sanctify and idolize decades past, as if the absolute best, most important, most imaginative, most earth-shatteringly revolutionary work was already pumped out by these near-mythological creatures from a nebulous past that was somehow better, and everything since has been diminishing returns. Staunch advocates for the 1960s will scoff disdainfully if you mention a latter-day gem in the same breath as one of the albums our culture has deified– your “Sgt. Peppers”s, your “Highway 61″s, your “Pet Sounds”s. These great albums have reached such a level of devotion, and are held in such high regard, that it’s a wonder why music didn’t just stop, put on its hat, pick up its coat and declare “welp, my work here is done. I have clearly peaked”, swiftly closing up shop and leaving humanity to chase its next cultural whimsy.

Well, this particular countdown is as much of an opportunity for me to gush about some of my favorite records as it is about sticking up for a decade that has, in conversations about music history, continuously gotten the short end of the stick– derided as derivative, pretentious, too self-aware for its own good. It’s a decade of musical output where the rules had already been set, broken, reinvented and broken again– where the world was too vast to be politically relevant, too grounded to be psychedelic, too dour to be fun, too lighthearted to be dour. So the song craftsmen and performers of the decade turned elsewhere, towards the semitones. High dynamic range. The punk ethos of the 1970s was brought to its full, actual realization in the democratization of music production and distribution, and all these strange combinations of colors arose from the smoking embers of the toppled regime. In light of this, the outliers from the old years start making more sense, suddenly and harmoniously fitting in with the rest of the puzzle pieces.

Yo La Tengo’s “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out” is one of those turn-of-the-century albums that made a lot more sense upon revisiting years later. A move towards cloudier soundscapes, quieter arrangements and airier production that could still build tension and explode with bursts of abrasiveness and noise. That this album came out after they’d already put out eight others is formidable: most bands have dried up their creative wells at that point in their career, or settled so stiffly into a sound that they’re incapable of operating outside the realms of a very specific template. Instead, Yo La Tengo delivered what is probably my favorite album of theirs– an evocative, elegant piece of art that exists gladly and serenely outside the constraints of conventional songwriting.

“And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out” is an album that features a different kind of introspection: one that inhabits moments and spaces rather than the hubris and self-doubt of the confessional singer-songwriter trope; half-remembered hum-alongs and comfortable silences and taciturn pauses. There’s an aura of mystery around all these songs, of contented wonder, like whispered sentiments that are swallowed by the buzz and creek of the space around us: when it doesn’t matter what is said but that we cared enough to speak at all. This is an album rich with memories– every song feels lived-in, thoroughly familiar, like what we’re hearing are intimate, slumberous renditions of old favorites that will never be released: a wonderful secret we’re being let in on. The performances groove and rumble and meander placidly along as the songs dissipate into each other. Like a dream upon waking, remaining hazily poignant.

Listen to the lovely album track “Last Days of Disco” by clicking the embedded player below:

2 comments | tags: and then nothing turned itself inside out, last days of disco, music, top 10 2000s, yo la tengo | posted in 2000 Top 10, Music

March 21, 2013

In the Shadow of a Bat: Brett Culp’s “Legends of the Knight”

By Jorge Farah

Last weekend I was sitting across from a German couple I’d never met before, trying my best to formulate a coherent answer to the inevitable question “what do you do?”. It was after 3 AM, I’d already had a few drinks and was feeling particularly loquacious, so I couldn’t simply give them a straight answer. I didn’t want to say “oh, my job is this thing, and I want to do this other thing.” I wanted to provide them with a peek into my soul. I wanted to communicate something real, something that would more accurately convey who I was, beyond the pleasantries and platitudes. But of course– because it was after 3 AM and I’d already had a few drinks– I didn’t have the vernacular. I struggled for the words for several painful minutes, until I was finally able to dredge up the awkward phrase “I… like… stories”.

I quickly shook my head and opted for an easier, more palatable answer (effectively surrendering to the pleasantries and platitudes), but I later got to thinking about that first answer I gave, and how it rose from the depths of me. And I realized that throughout my entire life, from early childhood all the way to adulthood, I really have been fascinated with stories: the telling of, the listening to, the making of. As an overimaginative youngster drawing epic renditions of superheroes instead of paying attention in class, into my adult life as a would-be writer and filmmaker, feverishly consuming fictions like some sort of addiction. It shapes my interest in song, too: I’ve always been especially moved by music that tells a story– not necessarily a literal story, like a rock opera, but songs that have a certain drama to them– that build and climax and resolve. It’s all part of the same thing, and it’s an integral part of my personality. It has shaped and inspired me all these years.

There’s been a character from these stories that has remained a constant fixture: the story of Bruce Wayne, the Batman. And I’m talking well beyond the reach of its pop culture ubiquity– I’m talking real, life-changing, personal significance. I’ve already written about how a specific experience with a Batman movie shaped my professional aspirations (you can read the story here). It’s a presence that has been with me since I was a kid, in various iterations– comic books, the Adam West show, the corny 60s cartoon, the Burton/Schumacher film series, the wonderful 90s animated series and even an embarrassing fanfiction serial I wrote at age eleven in which I became Robin (true story). I’ve long been enamored with the Batman mythos, his family of characters and the stories that accompany his legacy. Even after I grew out of my comic-book phase in my early teens, Batman is the only character I still keep up with, whose mythology I’m still very much steeped in.

The universal appeal of the Batman character comes from the notion of resilience and perseverance through abject adversity. It’s an aspect that’s been with the character throughout its dozens of permutations and incarnations– from the pulp swashbuckling detective of the 1940s through the brightly-colored comedic camp of the 1960s TV show, from the dark & brooding persona of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” to the smiling, kid-friendly crimefighter of “Batman: The Brave & The Bold”. The malleability of the character has made him an enduring pop culture icon across several generations who continue to be thrilled and inspired by his stories.

The idea of Batman as a modern mythological figure that, 70+ years into its existence, continues to dazzle and inspire us is what drives Brett Culp’s new feature “Legends of the Knight”. An exploration not just of Batman but of the power of storytelling, zeroing in on why we continue to chase these whimsical fantasies throughout our lives, and what we derive from them. The documentary takes us through several examples of real-life, everyday people who take comfort and inspiration from the story of Batman, motivating them to push on forward and extend themselves beyond the limits of what we think we are capable of. It also features interviews with professionals within the film and comics industries, as well as the field of psychology, who have dedicated their time and energy to understanding what is so exhilarating and all-encompassing about this hero’s struggle. It’s not just a celebration of Batman: it’s a celebration of stories and what they can mean to us.

Watch the trailer to Brett Culp’s film “Legends of the Knight”:

When Brett initially told me about this project, I knew immediately I wanted to get involved in some way– the character is so intrinsically tied to my identity that the project resonated with me on a very deep level. Seeing the trailer now, after several months in production, I feel like it strikes a chord– not just within me and my own closed-off existence, but the overall human experience. Now it’s nearing the home stretch, coming up with funds for fine-tuning and completion. You can get involved in bringing it to full fruition by contributing to its Kickstarter page. It’s already received a great amount of support, but every bit counts.

If you’ve ever been inspired by this timeless character, if you’ve ever found solace and comfort in his continued adventures, please consider supporting this project. Let’s bring this to as many eyes as possible, to tell these extraordinary stories of ordinary people being pushed along by a legend.

6 comments | tags: batman, brett culp, documentary, film, friends, kickstarter | posted in Movies

March 15, 2013

Moments Worth Hundreds of Sparrows: The Day I Learned Mark Linkous Died

By Jorge Farah

Last week was the three-year anniversary of day Mark Linkous took his own life. He was the creative force behind Sparklehorse, an indie rock outfit that produced five beautiful albums from 1995 to 2009. He was a troubled individual with a knack for writing beautifully poignant songs that could be fragile and delicate or violently psychedelic, but always tinged with a deep-rooted sadness.

My heart sank when I read the news. I was a massive fan, and even though I’d never met him, I felt a strong connection with this person through his music (read my post about his work here). I was distraught, like I’d lost a longtime friend or family member. And in a certain way, I had– so many times I’d listened to a Sparklehorse record (especially “Good Morning Spider”) and thought to myself yes. yes. Absolutely. I know. It was that off-kilter understanding of the world, the appreciation for the small moments, the beauty in the bizarre. I felt like I’d lost an ally. Someone whose music resonated with me on a deeper level than some actual friendships could ever hope to do.

That same day, I was supposed to meet with a new friend, Sofia, for ice cream. I had met Sofia the week before, through a mutual friend who was staying at the same hostel she was in. Sofia was a total hardcore straight-edge chick from Pittsburgh, the type of person I have almost nothing in common with other than a shared appreciation for The Descendants. She’s an incredibly sweet and genuine person, and we hit it off and became quick friends. That day, I wasn’t feeling like the best company, but decided against blowing her off– it’d be good for me to get out of the house instead of staying in and wallowing in my misery.

I arrived at the ice cream shop, a disheveled sad sack, barely able to formulate coherent sentences. Sofia introduced me to her friend Amina. After a futile attempt at regular conversation, with my eyes glazing over and a total inability to maintain a steady train of thought, I confessed the reason I was so distraught. I told them that I was sad because this musician– this person I’d never met– had taken their own life. And then something huge happened: instead of rolling their eyes at this giant weirdo for being so sad about some rock musician’s passing, Sofia & Amina took it upon themselves to cheer me up. We spent the remainder of our time together that day making surreal crayon drawings based on Sparklehorse song titles. They didn’t have to do that. I’d just met Sofia that week, and Amina I didn’t even know at all. Yet, in their own way, they grieved with me, and that small act felt enormous and meaningful in that moment. We were ringing a bell out into the ether. We were waving goodbye.

This crude yet lovingly crafted piece of artwork hangs on my wall to this day. It serves as a tribute to Mark Linkous’s boundless imagination, and as a reminder that, however low I get, I can count on the outstanding people I’ve chosen as friends to lift me right back up. And that’s what it all comes down to: surround yourself with quality humans and it all becomes surmountable.

Thanks for that, Sofia and Amina. Rest in peace, Mark Linkous.

2 comments | tags: friendship, mark linkous, sparklehorse | posted in Music

March 12, 2013

Punch Your Tuesday in the Face: A Pick-Me-Up Playlist

By Jorge Farah

Mondays get a bad rap. Every one of your Facebook friends, every hack comedian on a stage, every misanthropic orange tabby with an eating disorder who communicates through thought bubbles– everyone’s constantly ganging up on Mondays. And I get it. It’s a completely understandable hatred. First day of the working week, after the relaxing (or debaucherous) weekend, back in the cubicle, probably nursing a ridiculous hangover, muttering bitterly “fuck this day, man, why can’t we just have a second Sunday?”. As if the existence of an eighth day in the week would somehow eliminate the need for a Monday.

And they always come so quickly. Increasingly so as time slips by, with each consecutive week taking up a smaller percentage of our total lifespan. Weekends seem shorter and more fleeting, therefore scarcer and more precious. Mondays are seen as the overzealous helicopter parent who shows up early to pick us up from the party, prying us from the delicious stagnancy of the weekend and unceremoniously dumping us back into routine.

But to me, Mondays have always been so much easier than Tuesdays. Mondays are kinder. Mondays are slower. Everything and everybody around you seems to understand that you’re gradually easing back into the grind, so the workload feels much lighter, my colleagues seem so more compassionate, every meeting has that overriding feeling of “okay, gang, let’s just get through this”. Tuesday, though, Tuesday is cruel, Tuesday is vicious, Tuesday is merciless– on Tuesday, the gloves are off, you’re effectively in the week and people have no qualms about smothering you with work and pulling you in hundreds of different directions. And for all the whining people do about the start of the week, I think they just resent the fact that they even have to work for a living, and they use Monday as a scapegoat. Poor Monday did nothing wrong. Tuesday is the real enemy.

But you can fight back. I present this ass-kicking 38-minute playlist I lovingly put together to aid you. Let’s hadoken Tuesday into submission with these high-octane pumped-up jams. Together, we can get through this.

Tracklist:

BRONZE- “Horses”
tUnE-YaRdS- “Gangsta”
Die Antwoord- “Fatty Boom Boom”
Girlfriends- “Bernie Mac Attack”
Baroness- “Psalms Alive”
Kongos- “I’m Only Joking”
Y La Orkesta- “Mambo Mexicano”
Cleft- “Gulch”
Ostrander Aardvark- “Panther Panther”
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears- “Sugarfoot”
Jessy Bulbo- “Maldito”

Click here to play:

Leave a comment | tags: baroness, black joe lewis, bronze, cleft, die antwoord, girlfriends, indie, jessy bulbo, kongos, music, ostrander aardvark, playlist, tuesdays, tuneyards, y la orkesta | posted in Misc., Music

March 8, 2013

The Return You Didn’t Know You Were Waiting For: A Desultory Broadcast

By Jorge Farah

Aww yeah. You’ve been waiting for this. You might not have known you were waiting for it, but you were, and here it is, and you should be tingling with excitement because I’m back to the world of podcasting. This is not a full-throttle, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, back-with-a-vengeance return, mind you. More like a soupçon. Like dipping my toe into the waters of internet radio in preparation for a full-speed, majestic cannonball dive the likes of which will leave long-lasting ripples across the vast ocean of the infobahn. So if what you’re looking for is ridiculous hyperbole and self-exaltation with a whole lot of “umm”s and “ahh”s peppered throughout, you’re in luck– you have a lot of that coming.

In this 30-minute blast of aural insipidness (hastily recorded after an exhausting day of work and sighing in exasperation at my inability to type anything of value), I reach new levels of verbosity by prattling aimlessly about my experience watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” in an alcoholic haze, I sing the praises of jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, and I try hopelessly to rationalize my love for Canadian sister act Tegan & Sara.

The sweet tunes in this blogcast are as follows:

Charles Mingus- “Hora Decubitus”
The Clash- “Spanish Bombs”
The Notwist- “Consequence”
Yo La Tengo- “Green Arrow”
Brad Mehldau Trio- “Knives Out”
Isolée- “Schrapnell”
Tegan & Sara- “Hell”

So sit back, press the little embedded player below and prepare to have your day utterly ruined. I’m so sorry.

5 comments | posted in Movies, Music, Podcast

February 27, 2013

When the Storefronts Are Closed in Paradise: The Blue Nile- “Saturday Night”

By Jorge Farah

Elvis Costello once wrote “music is more like water than a rhinoceros– it doesn’t charge madly down one path; it runs away in every direction.” I like this description– music as water. It’s especially clever because, though Costello was referring to the history of music and how it evolves over time, it’s also a perfect description of how music comes at us from every direction and thousands of sources every day, effectively soaking us with sound. Movies, television, radio, the internet, your obnoxious neighbors– you’re constantly showered with songs and it’s up to you to wade through the musical overflow to find those precious few gems you’ll let into your life and eventually grow to love. Some folks are determined to carve out their own path, so they block out the stream of constant auditory stimuli. Myself, I feel like I’m more of a sponge in that regard, absorbing all that I can from the tide of music that envelopes me.

One of my favorite and more dependable sources for good music is my friends. I’m lucky in that regard: I surround myself with people who live and breathe music, who know how a simple chord progression and a melody can shake you to your core. It’s important, I feel, for people in my life to have an understanding of that effect. Otherwise I’d come off as a gigantic weirdo, prattling on incessantly over what, to others, could be inconsequential and banal (which is probably how I come across when I try to explain my love for The Muppets). But, also, because they act as really effective filters: vessels through which I’m exposed to great music I’d probably never listen to otherwise. The enormity of someone who knows you saying “here, try this, you would love it.”

Several months ago, my friend Aly (one of my oldest and closest friends with whom I barely ever agree on anything musical, save for our shared appreciation for Kate Bush) made one of these contributions to my life, introducing me to the music of The Blue Nile. Specifically, their 1989 opus “Hats”.

“Hats” is a stunner of an album that displays pretty much everything that I love about 80s pop music– melancholic after-hours ballads with bursts of lush, richly orchestrated layers of swirly, sugary synth against an almost-mechanical rhythm section, stouthearted pop songs delivered with painstaking sincerity and unapologetically earnest sentimentality. And though the super-80s adult-contemporary production may be a turnoff for some, it works for these songs– they just need to sound like this.

With 7 tracks clocking in at just under 40 minutes, the album is remarkably cohesive musically and thematically– the songs share a common melodic space, and similarly baroque arrangements. In some ways, this feels like the 1980s, coked-out pop-music equivalent to Tom Waits’s “Heart of Saturday Night”– a sort-of-concept-album about the sizzle and buzz of the nightlife, the wide-eyed optimism of youth and the weary, dreary sulking of the lost souls who hang around the joint for too long. The songs in Waits’s record were set in dingy pool-halls and sketchy street corners, while the songs in “Hats” take place in nightclubs and hotel rooms. They explore the dynamics of the big city nighttime– the inherent loneliness of crowded bars, neon signs, a panoply of headlights rushing up and down the boulevard, cutting through the thin drizzle of rain; downtown lights finally flickering off as dawn breaks.

The entire album is a pop tour de force, but my favorite track is the plaintive closing number. It’s a mid-tempo synth-laden trudge-along with that very typically 1980s gated reverb sound– it’s not as instantly hooky as other songs in the album, but on the whole it’s a wonderfully captivating piece of music, with a crescendoing bed of strings underlining the fragmented vocal melody. It serves as a satisfying conclusion to the themes explored in the album, a denouement of sorts. The song is titled “Saturday Night”, but Saturday night is long over. It’s Sunday morning and daylight spills out on the streets as the nighthawks retreat back to their dwellings, contemplating the night’s victories and defeats.

4 comments | posted in Music

February 21, 2013

Explained Radio Silence, Award-Induced Blogging Hangups, And a Sleepy-Sounding Playlist

By Jorge Farah

The two months that I was out of Buenos Aires were accompanied by something of a blogslumber– a necessary disconnection from the world of web-logging to ensure I’m preoccupied not with capturing my experience in writing but with taking it all in, in the most natural and least self-consciously reflective way possible. A lot happened during this time– lots of adventures (mostly involving my drunk ass getting hopelessly lost in the legendarily-easy-to-navigate streets of New York), lots of conquered adversities (like a sleep-deprived 9-hour layover in a very crowded airport in Lima, Peru) and lots of fulfilled dreams (like seeing the Mingus Big Band play Mingus Mondays at the Jazz Standard, a musical experience that left me inspired and joyful).

Another nice surprise was being nominated for and subsequently awarded the 20SB Bootleg Award for Best Male Blogger of 2012 (let’s all please quietly ignore that other category I also won). The 20SB community has been very kind to me, from my humble beginnings as a chatroom cage-rattler, through the Jor-Mom podcast fiasco (quick summary: started a podcast with fellow 20SBer Jorah Day, who turned out to be a compulsive liar with mental problems) all the way up to my current standing as an on-again-off-again contributor with very little to actually say. As a notoriously flaky blogger whose site often veers into bizarre and increasingly self-indulgent tangents, the support I’m getting from 20SB and other corners of the internet, as well as the growing readership I’ve accumulated in the last year, all feel like some horrible mistake. Like a happy bank accident at the expense of some senile old lady’s life savings. Like “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, I’ve duped all these oysters into following me, only to be viciously devoured. I… I’m not calling you oysters, nor am I promising to shuck and devour you. That analogy didn’t make much sense, and I am abandoning it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I enjoy manning my ramshackle little lemonade stand at the sidelines of the giant hypermarket that is the Internet, and it’s one of the things I’m trying to become better at this year. Look for continuations of the Everyist Top 10 Albums of 2000s series, My Hostel Year, Bedhead Melodies and a return to podcasting. Beyond the site, it’s an exciting time for me, with a number of projects reaching completion and a few others just starting up. It’s also paralyzingly terrifying, but the greatest leaps into the abyss tend to be so. It gets bumpy from here, but also so much more exciting.

And hey, don’t let it be said that Every -ist and Every -ism isn’t a music blog at heart, despite the meandering palaver and bizarre digressions. I’m leaving you with a little playlist I edited together with the help of my peeps at the Red Mosquito Message Board. It was one of those community-mixtape internet things, where everybody contributes a track based on a theme. The proposed theme was “Dreamy Songs to Fall Asleep To”, and the resulting playlist:

1. Baby – British Sea Power
2. Motion Picture Soundtrack – Radiohead
3. Leaving for Good- The Missing Season
4. The Dress – Blonde Redhead
5. Green Arrow – Yo La Tengo
6. October Language- Belong
7. Idlewild – They Might Be Giants
8. Feeling Yourself Disintegrate – Flaming Lips
9. Rutti – Slowdive
10. Rain Song – Led Zeppelin

I really like how it turned out. A suitably dream-like and disjointed hodgepodge, almost nightmarish at parts. So I put it all together in one continuous playlist and I think it plays pretty well. Here it is, for your enjoyment. Don’t fall asleep at the wheel.

2 comments | posted in Internet, Music

February 17, 2013

Blowing Like Tumbleweed (Reflections on Distance, Friendship, Family & Trapper Keepers)

By Jorge Farah

This is a picture of Karla. More specifically, this is a picture of Karla having dinner at a badly-lit little cocktail bar in midtown Manhattan. And more significantly, this was a picture taken by me, on January 30th of this year.

This is significant because, up until mere moments before this picture was taken, Karla and I had never actually met each other in person. Despite nearly a decade of online interaction, of spilling guts and inside jokes, of hasty afternoon chats via various IM platforms as we navigate our increasingly-hectic grown-up days, our friendship was entirely web-based. It doesn’t make a friendship any less real– I know a number of folks I gladly count as “friends” whom I haven’t had the opportunity to meet in “real life” yet– it just makes it different. Different rules are in place. Different social conventions. In lieu of hanging out, we’d IM back and forth. In place of actual shoulders to lean on, we offered our most heartfelt sympathetic smileys. Instead of hugs, we had… well, “*hugs*“.

Karla and I found each other almost 10 years ago. It was a simpler era: the internet was collectively obsessed with Kurt Halsey drawings, Ben Gibbard song lyrics and dark neon lettering. Back in the pre-MySpace age, angst-ridden teenagers postured furiously on their Livejournals (a sort of proto-tumblr, for the uninitiated), spilling their hard-earned melodrama and hammy histrionics like a violent case of mental dysentery. As is usually the case with teen age, before the weariness of adult life settles in, everybody felt everything very passionately. Every heartbreak, every deception, every disappointment triggered the sort of soul-crushing depression that could only be accurately conveyed by Dashboard Confessional song lyrics– preferably on bright purple text against a pitch-black background. In essence, Livejournal was the Trapper Keeper of the internet.

Fuck yeah pandering to 90s kids! Up 50 traffic points!

(Which is not to say some people didn’t– or do, since it’s still very much a thing– use the service to post genuinely powerful, non-hammy, maturely introspective and actually-thought-provoking content, because those people are out there, but– when you unleash a tool unto the world, one that can serve as a venue for broadcasting the vainest self-serving platitudes, well, it’s going to be overtaken by people who will do just that. Just look at Twitter. Or tumblr. Or WordPress. Or this blog! Which is on WordPress.)

Karla and I developed a quick rapport after finding each other on an LJ community dedicated to song lyrics. Over the years, we built a strong bond, with me often essaying the role of the pestering little brother. As time wore on, the frequency of our chats decreased as our lives became increasingly mired in the unpalatable prosaicness of adult life. Having missed each other the last time I made the trip to NYC, we were determined to make the transition from “online buddies” to just “buddies” by meeting face-to-face. And on a rainy winter evening, we made it so.

Meeting someone you’ve only ever seen in pictures is still a surreal experience. It’s happened a number of times and I’m still left reeling from it, like my brain has a really hard time reconciling the realness of what I’m facing vs. the space this person occupies in my brain, and all its corresponding baggage. Trying to come up with a decent analogy, I ended up rambling about Astro-Boy, the Japanese cartoon from the 1950s. An iconic character, instantly recognizable by hundreds of thousands in his original 2D, black-and-white form. But then when they made him into a CGI character, it looked exactly like him, but… off. The added depth and texture throws the entire equation off-balance, so CGI Astro-Boy is stuck in this Uncanny Valley of cartoonishness where depth and texture are just completely out of place. This is the best analogy I could come up with to describe how it feels to meet an “online friend” face-to-face.

Anyway, I don’t mean to suggest that meeting Karla was weird or off-putting—I mean, it was, but in the best of ways! She’s an amazing person and we had a great time. It was one of the highlights of my trip stateside, which was filled with sheer awesomeness. I got to hang out with my brother, my sister and my mom, who’ve all taken residence in American soil. I got to wander the streets and get lost, I got to get drunk with friends old and new, I got to see great live music, I got to see a Broadway show, I got to dive face-first into the snow and do all kinds of things I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. The US was a graceful and hospitable hostess.

My brother and sister. I like these kids.

Taking the bus from my sister’s place up in Lake George down to the apartment I’d rented in Manhattan, I was a little sad to be leaving my siblings behind. I knew I probably wouldn’t see them for a while. This got me beaming with pride, thinking about how well they’d turned out: how my sister had matured into a kind yet passionate young woman, how my brother was growing into a real stand-up dude. I started wondering how my other two siblings would turn out when they were older, and it made me a little sad to think about how far away I lived from them. And I was thinking about these things when the Gods of iPod Shuffle decided to labor the point and land on the song “Sadie” by the great Joanna Newsom.

As is often the case with Ms. Newsom, I don’t actually know what the song is about. I mean, I understand the words, and I understand some of the sentiments, but the overall narrative is lost on me as soon as she starts singing about pinecones and seabirds and mik-eyed menders. But it’s a lovely song, and there are some lines that hit me like a kick in the face, specifically:

“And all that I got is scattered like seed
And all that I knew is moving away from me
And all that I know is blowing like tumbleweed”

I started thinking of how strange and fragmented my life turned out. I have half my family in one country, the other half in a different country, and the life I’ve built for myself in yet another country. Some people I care deeply about have ended up thousands of miles away from me, pulled away by the fickle gusts of life, only reappearing in my periphery for the briefest of intervals. I was thinking about how I’ll never really be one of those people who can get everybody they love under a single roof for a birthday shindig; instead, my peeps are hopelessly scattered throughout the globe. All separated by thousands of kilometers and several hours of air travel.

And this is where I neatly tie it back to the whole Karla thing: I am an idiot who keeps forgetting that we live in an era where relationships can be forged and nourished regardless of physical location. I may not be able to take my little siblings out for ice cream every Saturday, but I can Skype into their lives at any time. I may not be able to taste my Mother’s cooking through the internet, but I am grateful for her extremely (and I mean extremely) detailed recipe e-mails that allow me to hopelessly try my hand at making it on my own. Shit, as a citizen and daily user of the internet, I should know more than anybody that being physically removed from someone does not mean you’re out of their lives. And no, online interaction doesn’t replace physical contact– it merely stands in, just for a little while, until the next time I’m able to see them in person. Until I’m able to put all these people together, under a single roof, for some grand celebration.

I am so incredibly lucky. Lucky to have the friends and family that I have: a truly heterogeneous assortment of individuals so kind, so caring, so hysterically funny and wonderfully idiosyncratic. I am extremely lucky to have these two amazing parents, these four hilarious siblings, and these scrutinously-vetted and meticulously hand-picked group of people I call my friends. Online or otherwise.

8 comments | posted in Internet, Misc., Music

January 18, 2013

Je Suis Un No Man’s Land (Or: Film Festivals as Self-Help Seminars)

By Jorge Farah

I’m sitting on my bed in Barranquilla, clothes strewn messily across my floor and a wide open travel suitcase plopped right in the middle of the squalor, completely empty. In about an hour I will be heading out to the Ernesto Cortissoz airport to make the journey up to the snowy Adirondacks, where I’ll be staying for a week with my brother, my sister and her husband. After that, I’m going down to NYC to see friends both old and new, roam around and get lost in the vastness. I should be packing but instead I’m watching an adorable video of a big dog teaching a little dog how to climb down the stairs. I’ve watched it ten times tonight. I just had to stop writing to watch it again. God, they’re cute.

I’m excited for the adventure, but sad to leave Barranquilla. This last month has been extremely light, easy, familiar fun, the kind I can’t really experience back in Buenos Aires or anywhere else. And though I haven’t gone out every night and partied, and though I barely even saw the beach, and though the city seemed strangely deserted by people of my generation… I still love being back home. Walking my dog. Hanging out with my baby siblings, who are growing into these wonderfully imaginative, wildly hilarious kids whom it’s a genuine joy to be around. I like hanging out with my dad, watching movies together like we used to when I was a kid. I just love being a homebody in Barranquilla. And as much as I bitch and moan about this city’s many shortcomings, and as much as I couldn’t live here in the long term, I always find myself wishing I could stay just a little bit longer.

One of the things I love about the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival is how I’ll watch dozens of movies in the span of a few days and it all kind of blends together, becomes a big wash of faces and stories and sound– this giant, amorphous mega-movie. Until somehow, you find yourself in a situation that triggers a memory that then recalls the entire film in sharp detail. The experience of being back home in Barranquilla just reminded me of this strange little movie called “Je suis un no man’s land”. This played at the BAFICI a few years ago, during a time of deep turmoil in my life: I was in over my head on a number of projects, I was in the midst of a torrid relationship that was doomed to fail from the start, I was having a bit of an identity crisis. Who I was was not who I thought I was, and who I thought I was was not who I wanted to be, and I felt like I was constantly leading everybody on while not knowing what the fuck I was doing. I was convinced I was a failure, a fraud, an imposter, and that there was absolutely no way that I was deserving of anybody’s kindness and affection. I was way down on myself. And I was thrilled with the opportunity of losing myself in that big, beautiful wash of film.

So I walked into a screening of “Je suis un no man’s land” knowing anything about it, and was taken for a ride. It’s a kind of Groundhog’s Day fairytale about an aging rockstar who is literally trapped in his old hometown– by some strange cosmic anomaly, he literally cannot leave the city limits. Resigned to his fate, he makes the most of his time there and comes to deal with many characters in his life that he’d left behind while searching for fame. Doesn’t sound like much of a winner, but it’s all in the execution: there’s a deeply romantic human comedy (but not a “romantic comedy”) lying underneath the magic realism of the plot. Part screwball comedy, part wistful character study, the film is a sincere, humorous look at childhood, grief, regret and disappointment. The movie lifted my spirits in a big way, and I left the movie theater feeling encouraged, energized and inspired. And incredibly happy, somehow.

Those are the best films. Those are the best songs. Those are the best people. The ones that make you fall in love with the world again. The ones that leave you changed, pull you out of those well-padded boxes of ennui and disenchantment one builds for oneself, and give you the momentum to tackle whatever problems, neuroses, insecurities you are burdened by. More often than not, they’re on your shoulders because you put them there yourself. Sometimes a simple film can break it down for you more cleary and succinctly than any self-help seminar.

Shit. I have to finish packing. Listen to Philippe Katerine and Julie Depardieu sing “L’au delá”, from the original sountrack to “Je suis un no man’s land”, by clicking the player below:

2 comments | posted in Movies

December 26, 2012

Home is Where Beds Are Made and Butter is Added to Toast

By Jorge Farah

I’ve never had a real Christmas tree. Like an actual tree, something that was once alive. As an avid fan of the more secular (and childish and materialistic) aspects of the “hap-happiest season of all”, this is a part of the experience I’ve always felt like I’m missing out on. I’ve always had the store-bought synthetic stuff.

I’m not complaining, though. The idea of cutting down a real tree and dragging it into a living room for decoration seems strange and foreign to me. This is because I spend Christmas in sub-tropical climates, either in the sweltering stickiness of the Buenos Aires summer (southern hemisphere and all) or the permanent heatwave of my hometown of Barranquilla. This year it was the latter, as I once again made the trek down to Barranquilla to spend the holidays with some of my nearest and dearest.

It always feels like a weird kind of time warp, stepping back into Barranquillan life. Life kind of slows down and speeds up simultaneously. Weather-wise, it’s still as swampy and dusty as it always was, but the December northern winds collide with the otherwise suffocating heat and make it into beautiful hangout weather. Most other times I’ve been in Quilla, I’ve been tempted to stay indoors in the comforting hum of air conditioning systems. This time, I just want to sit outside with a beer.

Each year I come back, I get the distinct feeling that there’s less folks around; like perhaps people from my generation, who graduated high school 7 years ago, are getting to the age where they’re starting actual lives elsewhere, making the transition into true adulthood and full-fledged independence, with families and business ventures and education grabbing hold of their attention. They’re less concerned with visiting their old haunts. They find less excuses to take that trip at the end of the year. So the visits become more scattered, and that yearly pilgrimage back home starts feeling like a chore.

Sometimes I think I should be feeling that way, too. I mean, I don’t even like Barranquilla. Buenos Aires is this majestic (messy, chaotic, disorganized) metropolis, bursting with art and culture and things to do and people to meet. It’s where I’ve built my life– where I’ve carved out my little place in the world, amidst all the radio static. Why would I want to be anywhere else? Why do I every year find myself back in this stagnant cesspool of a city?

But as I sit in this old room, on the morning of the day after Christmas, with wrapping paper still covering the floors under the tree downstairs… the answer seems obvious. These end-of-the-year trips to my hometown are a huge comfort because they take me right back to simpler times, reducing the world to a more manageable size. The projects and contacts and complications and networks and hassles that I have going on in Buenos Aires don’t exist here at all. In this house, I’m a kid again, free from the burden of adulthood. That’s a feeling that I’m happy to have once a year. A battery recharge, so to speak, to keep me from diving headfirst into the deepest pits of cynicism & despondency towards which my personality tends to gravitate. To keep me afloat. To prolong the magic.

And in the spirit of prolonging the magic, before the Christmas spirit washes away from us like a drunken stupor, here are a few original Christmas songs that my music library has called to my attention in the last few days. Perfect for listening to while eating leftover ham or sweeping torn wrapping paper off the floor.

Badly Drawn Boy- “Donna and Blitzen”

bdb

A lovely little tune from the soundtrack album to the generally-underrated-but-actually-pretty-okay Hugh Grant vehicle “About a Boy”, this is a wonderful slice of Christmas cheer. A song about cautious optimism disguised as wide-eyed enthusiasm, with a lush and elegant string arrangement and a decidedly nostalgic sound. I love this little song to death, although, if you break it down, there’s really not a whole lot to it.

The Mynabirds- “All I Want is Truth (For Christmas)”

themynabirds

Have to thank my friend Peter for this one. The Mynabirds are a band that have been on my radar for a while, but I’ve willfully ignored due to Peter’s over-the-top love for them. For some reason (some would call it hipster reflex) my natural instinct is to back away from whatever is on the receiving end of such vigorous gushing. Peter was right, though. The Mynabirds are a wonderful band that I’m slowly discovering, and one of the immediate standouts from the songs I’m sampling is this clever take-off of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, which morphs the familiar tune into a protest song of sorts.

Jason Gleason- “Sleigh Bells and Wine”

gleason

Jason Gleason is a singer I’m completely unfamiliar with. A cursory Google search reveals that he’s the former lead vocalist of something called Further Seems Forever, a Christian (?) emo (?) rock band formerly fronted by Chris Carabba (of later Dashboard Confessional fame) that’s so far removed from my scope of interest that I had to read their Wikipedia article to make sure they weren’t a parody band. Chances are I would’ve lived my entire life happily unaware of this man’s existence were it not for a Christmas compilation album I was handed as a stocking-filler a few years ago featuring this little gem of a song. A twisty-turny blue ballad with a cool jazz backing (the vibraphone!), I’ve already spun this tune more times in the last week than I’d ever even heard of Gleason’s former band. Really good stuff.

Sufjan Stevens- “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever”

sufjan

Sufjan Stevens likes Christmas. Sufjan Stevens likes Christmas a lot. He likes Christmas so much that in the last decade he released exactly 100 Christmas songs, an assortment of originals and covers, across 10 EPs. As you can probably imagine, he knows Christmas music well, and thus knows what makes a good Christmas song work. He understands that the best ones are those that incorporate the playful, singy-songy holiday cheer as well as the mysterious, folky English ballad minor-chord sound. In that regard, “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever” is a resounding success, and one that deserves to become a holiday standard.

Okkervil River- “Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas”

okkervil

This beautiful piece of music pretty much captures everything I was talking about earlier. Trips back home and down memory lane, pacing around a house that’s no longer your house but feels like home more than anywhere else in the world. Because, for all your worldly aspirations and illusions of self-sufficiency, this is shelter from the torrential downpour of responsibilities and hazards out there. This is calm and protection, and though it comes with its own special kind of melancholy– the advent of old age, the unrealized aspirations, the memories you’d rather leave behind– this is safe. And as much as I go on about how much I hate this city, I can’t deny the power of what it represents. A refreshing respite from the tumultuous cacophony of the life I’ve chosen for myself.

2 comments | posted in Misc., Music

December 5, 2012

Mash-Ups and The Dizzying Trudge: Burning the Candle at Both Meh-nds

By Jorge Farah

Cell phone self-portrait in dingy dive bar bathroom. 3:06 am. 7 drinks in.

The above dimly-lit, ridiculously-high-contrast, hilariously self-serious display of Internet Disease was taken at the crossroads of the night: that ever-important moment where one must decide whether to switch to water and maintain some sense of personal dignity or continue downing vodka martinis and secure oneself the task of sending contrite apology e-mails the next morning. I can’t remember what I chose, which could potentially be a bad thing. I still talk to all those people, though, and none of them seem to hate me (at least not more than usual), so I think I’m in the clear.

I’ve been working too hard and sleeping too little and writing too much and stashing it all away and going to shows and watching movies and writing about those shows and movies and submitting them to other publications and I’ve been terrible about returning phone calls and I’ve been terrible about responding to emails and I’ve pretty much been a gigantic fucking flake for the last month or so. There’s just too much going on– too much of everything, too much at once. I can’t really offer much in the way of excuse, though, as a more organized and well-adjusted person would probably be able to deal with this more expeditiously than myself– they probably wouldn’t have let it get this bad in the first place, by not taking on too many assignments at once and not putting things off for way too long as they idly browse reddit. Alas, as the song goes, “I’m 25 but I still act like I am 10.” That is an actual song, by the way. You should listen to it. It’s good.

I’m about to leave Buenos Aires for about 7 weeks. Two of those will be spent in New York, visiting my mom, sister, brother and friends who live in or around the area. The other five weeks will be spent in my hometown of Barranquilla, Colombia, making up for lost time with my two baby siblings (one of which isn’t so much of a baby anymore as she turned 10 years old yesterday! Happy birthday Nicole!), my dad, my grandparents, my dog, extended family and the few friends who still wash up on the shores of that city every once in a while. It’s getting to be less and less peeps every year, as we get older and start building our lives elsewhere, we stop coming up with reasons to come back every year. My pool of “close friends” from back in High School was small enough already, factor in those who have uprooted elsewhere and it’ll probably be a quiet few weeks of hanging out with 2 or 3 close friends, spending time with my dad watching “Breaking Bad” and walking my dog a lot. And you know what? That’s pretty much exactly what I need right now.

This is the part of the entry where I remember this is supposed to be a music blog. Below this picture of my headphones you will find some words about music.

Like I said earlier, I’ve been going to a lot of concerts. In the last two weeks I went to see Pulp, Lady Gaga and Dinosaur Jr. (which my ears are still ringing from). Tomorrow night I’m seeing Tony Bennett. And the shows have been a grand ol’ time (well, the Lady Gaga show was half-annoying), and I’ve been reminded of how much I love seeing live music. Surprisingly, however, I haven’t been spinning obscure Dinosaur Jr. b-sides or Pulp outtakes non-stop. Instead, what I’ve listening to non-stop for the last few days has been a compilation of mash-ups by mixmaster extraordinaire Isosine. A “mash-up” is the result of marrying two (or more– in the case of Isosine’s work, sometimes dazzling amounts of) elements from various songs to make a new creation. A very popular example of a successful mash-up is the now-classic amalgam of The Strokes’ “Hard to Explain” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle”. Check it here.

A mash-up like that is successful because it weaves the immediately recognizable vocal melody of Aguilera’s teenybopping debut single and the new-wavey fuzz of the Strokes backing track without hitting as much as a single bum note. Both tracks come together and transcend genre norms to form an exciting piece of music that exploits the strengths of both songs. Similarly, Isosine makes incredible sound collages incorporating pieces from rock songs, rap songs, pop jingles and more. Some of his songs are massive in scope. But the ones I’ve found myself drawn to are the simpler ones, where he recognized a pattern that moves through two songs that couldn’t be further apart in tone, tenor or subject matter… and brought them together to make something fucking awesome.

If you click the above player and recoil in horror upon recognizing the opening chords to Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, fear not. I have not gone insane. I’m not a sudden Bieber fanatic. Keep listening for a few seconds and, just when you think you’ll be met with Bieber’s pathetic yelping, what you get instead is the abrasive vocal stylings of Slipknot’s Corey Taylor spitting venom over that Radio Disney pop beat. This is Isosine’s most famous work (over 11 million Youtube views!), an absolutely wonderful mash-up of “Baby” and Slipknot’s brutal “Psychosocial”. And its appeal lies beyond the novelty value of hearing Taylor’s screaming over the Bieber track– it’s a genuinely well-crafted piece of music, every factor lining up perfectly, from the syncopation in the verses to the melody of the chorus, the oppressively bleak and apocalyptic lyrics contrasting beautifully with the instrumentation and countermelody. It’s just amazing. The whole thing is amazing. And I’d think it was amazing even if I didn’t know the original songs.

I just wanna be absolutely clear here: what Isosine does is more than simple cut-and-paste. This is not something that comes naturally to most people– browse mash-up videos on Youtube for five minutes and you’ll realize that most of them really fucking suck. Because it’s more than simply realizing that two songs share a similar chord progression. It’s about hearing the melodies intertwining. It’s hearing the harmonic spaces that are there to be filled. It’s about hearing twists and turns of performances. It’s realizing, instinctively, what fits where. It’s like… like… like those incredibly talented Asian kids who defeat Tetris on the hardest level at dizzying speeds and compete internationally. Basically, this is musical Tetris, and I’m pretty sure Isosine is Asian.

I present to you, as evidence of his genius, his most recent mix. Korn vs. Taylor Swift- “We Are Coming Undone”.

So fucking good.

Listening to these mash-ups, I kept thinking to myself “damn, I’d love these songs even if they were originals.” Because they’re just good songs, beyond the novelty aspect. But also, there’s something strangely satisfying about having these abrasive, aggressive vocals singing about anger and helplessness over these shimmery, overproduced poppy beats. And I was wondering if there’s an artist out there that’s doing something like that. I couldn’t really think of any. I mean, I can come up with dozens of examples of the opposite– pop vocals over heavy music– but not the other way around. Why isn’t there an artist out there making ridiculously catchy pop songs with aggressive, screamed vocals? I’d buy that album. Honestly. I’d buy it in an instant. Someone go ahead and make it.

Screamy, angry, catchy & cathartic pop music. It’s what the world needs now. Until that day, though, all we have is mash-ups.

3 comments | posted in Misc., Music

November 29, 2012

I’d Upgrade My Account, But I Kinda Like the Guessing Game

By Jorge Farah

The idea is to have a life that’s completely free from the shackles of professional protocol as a free agent of creativity rather than a suit-and-tie automaton. The idea is to get to the point where I’m not nervously pitching new ventures to bemused junior executives in the hopes that they’ll put a word in with their superiors, but to be the one picking up the phone and handing assignments to those under my employ. The idea is to operate on a whole other level, far removed from the sick game of empty pleasantries and conference calls and round-table meetings. And I’ll get there one day. It’ll be a while.

For now, I remain tethered to the song-and-dance of business life. As of a couple years ago, this involves having a profile on the haughtiest of social networks, LinkedIn (and seriously, doesn’t “LinkedIn” sound like the name of a boyband from the late 90s?). The whole thing is pretty silly, acting like one hilariously long, extended, hyper-padded resume. But one nifty little feature which other social networks lack is the ability to see who’s been looking at your profile. This adds a whole other layer of awkwardness to the proceedings– and while I thrive on awkwardness, other members choose to make their profiles private to avoid exposing themselves as the e-creepers they clearly are. So LinkedIn will tell you who visited your profile, but in some cases it’ll only give you certain details.

Sometimes… sometimes it gets pretty darn cryptic.

1 comment | posted in Internet

November 26, 2012

In Which I Make My Auspicious Return to Late Night Talk Radio

By Jorge Farah

The Jordan Rich show on on WBZ is a staple of late-night talk radio in the Boston area. The kind of after-hours talk show that attracts that peculiar contingent of graveyard-shift stragglers and lost souls; denizens of the witching hour and restless insomniacs who tune in after midnight to hear a familiar, soothing voice. And it doesn’t get much more familiar and soothing than the voice of Jordan Rich, the charismatic host, who deals with the eccentricities of some of his callers with a bemused warmth as he keeps the proceedings rolling along throughout the show’s 5-hour running time.

Through some strange twist of fate (read: an internet message board), I ended up befriending Peter Clarke, who used to produce the Jordan Rich show. He once posted a hilarious clip of Jordan battling it out with a white supremacist, and I decided right then and there that I should listen to this show. I’d hook up to their web stream and listen along, effectively becoming one of those stragglers and lost souls. After a few airings, I decided I should take things to the next level, and actually called in. Jordan and I quickly found a rapport of sorts and the calls became a regular thing. I wouldn’t listen every week (because my schedule wouldn’t allow it), but every once in a while I’d pick up the phone and join the fun. I had become, as they call it, a “friend of the show”.

As time went on, for some reason I never fully understood but pertaining to music licensing, the network CBS decided to end the online streaming of WBZ Boston. This means I couldn’t listen live. I still called in and joined the conversation without much context, but it became too much of a hassle. Eventually, Peter moved on to other positions in WBZ and I just kind of forgot about the show. However, this weekend, Peter told me he was filling in as producer, so I decided to give the old webstream a try in hopes that, somehow, the international block was no longer in place. And just my luck, I was able to stream the show without any problem. So I decided to call in, just like old times, and have a conversation with my buddy Jordan.

Below is the audio from my call. I do have to warn you, though, that I made this call while half-drunk in a hotel room, just about to give in to complete exhaustion and pass out, so I’m not exactly at my sharpest. Still, it was fun to talk to Jordan. Pete was kind enough to tell him to ask about my blog, so this very site gets a nice little plug. Enjoy my sloppy musings on body hair, Cloud Atlas and the oppressive heat of the Argentine summer by clicking the player below.

2 comments | posted in Internet, Interview, Podcast

November 14, 2012

Everyist Top 10 Albums Of The 2000s: #7. Radiohead- “In Rainbows”

By Jorge Farah

It’s hard to imagine a list of albums from the 2000s that doesn’t include at least one entry from Radiohead, one of the most ubiquitous bands of the decade. And while this particular list exists happily outside of terms like “greatest”, “most influential” or even “best“, instead striving to be simply a collection of personal favorites, it still feels inherently wrong to deny them a spot. A lot of the musical elements that came to define the decade, namely the disassembling of traditional pop-music tropes, the inclusion of bleepy-bloopy electronic flourishes, the move towards smaller, more detail-oriented arrangements and the fearlessness in experimentation were proliferated, in large part, by Radiohead’s seminal “Kid A”. Easily one of the most important albums of the decade, “Kid A” redefined what a traditional “rock” band was capable of, and while previous albums “The Bends” and “OK Computer” spawned a legion of pale-faced, acoustic-guitar-wielding, caterwauling imitators, “Kid A” was influential in a different way: a cold splash of water in the face of stagnant guitar complacency, shaking an increasingly homogenized and lackadaisical music landscape from its stupor.

As important as “Kid A” was, though, it never really reached me on the deeply personal level that all of my favorite albums tend to do. Don’t get me wrong; I listened the shit out of it because it’s just that good, but my connection with it was always more on an intellectual level than an emotional one. I knew the album was amazing, but there was a crucial element missing; something I’d always loved about the previous Radiohead albums but they seemed hell-bent on completely doing away with, leaving icy-cold mini-beats and copious amounts of mood and texture in its stead: their outstanding gift for melody. This was what made “The Bends” and “OK Computer” such thrilling records to listen to. This was what made songs like “Let Down”, “(Nice Dream)” and “Exit Music (For a Film)” so powerful. And it was all but absent in “Kid A”.

In this sense, I feel like 2007′s “In Rainbows” is their most accomplished album to date, managing to be forward-thinking and cerebral as well as emotional, melodic and, dare I say it, groovy. Yeah, a group of five pale English rockers, the guys who made “Creep”, recorded an album that could be reasonably described as “groovy”, and what’s most surprising is just how well they pull it off. By dispensing with the thick, impenetrable globs of keyboard digital landscapes from previous records and putting the focus back on songcraft, the band produced their most coherent, cohesive and satisfying collection of songs.

Much was made of the controversial release method– the whole “name-your-price” downloading gimmick. But what a lot of people didn’t talk about was what a nice change this album was from the ones that preceded it. The production is stark and unadorned, yet airy and natural, without the baroque wall-of-sound clutter of earlier albums. Every little detail is mapped out intricately and is clearly audible, every arpeggiated chord and hi-hat strike ringing out clearly. This approach finds the band putting aside the deliberately difficult sounds of Krautrock and instead bringing their jazz influences to the forefront. And sure, jazz is something they had dabbled with in the past (see “The National Anthem” from “Kid A” or “Life in a Glasshouse” from “Amnesiac”), but only here did they successfully incorporate it into their own style rather than a one-track dalliance. It’s a sparser record, less obscure, with melodies more instantly “pretty” than anything since “The Bends”. This is the album that legitimized late-career Radiohead in my eyes– they could have become caricatures of themselves, churning out increasingly difficult records for no reason other than to maintain that sense of “mystery”. But here, I don’t hear a group of pretentious musicians struggling to remain relevant by conjuring the abstract and the overwrought. Instead, what I hear is a group of seasoned veterans more interested in writing and recording beautiful and evocative songs.

It feels like a bit of a betrayal to my “Paranoid Android”-worshipping teenage self, but this– this collection of airy, jazzy, soulful, understated pop songs– is the best Radiohead album. What the hell does my teenage self know about anything, anyway?

Listen to “Reckoner” from “In Rainbows” by clicking the player below:

2 comments | posted in 2000 Top 10, Music

October 29, 2012

Monday Morning Megamix: Starting Your Week With a Kick in the Face

By Jorge Farah

My work schedule for the last few weeks has been nothing short of ridiculous, pushing my mind to the outer limits of sanity and getting precious little sleep. Between an ungodly amount of new projects, a coworker’s illness, two writing gigs and maintaining some semblance of a social life (increasingly approaching the definition of “functional alocholism”), I’m left staring at a large amount of half-finished drafts, false starts and two-line “brainstorming” sessions. And they taunt me. Every day, they mock me from their little corner in the dustbin of my wordpress account. And I promise, I will get to finishing and posting them eventually. I hope.

This morning was the worst. I woke up with absolutely no energy. This has been the case for most every Monday morning for the last few months. I’m thoroughly drained, devoid of any of the zest, zeal, joie de vivre that is usually characteristic of Jorge Farah (no). This morning was especially drab and lifeless, as it was as damp and grey and unappetizing as a bowl of old oatmeal. So I decided to put together a quick playlist for the sole purpose of prying myself off of this armchair, and out into the world. Pretty happy with how it turned out. I thought some other people might enjoy it, so here it is for your listening pleasure. Thirty minutes of aggressive, energetic rock music to get your week started the right way.

Tracklist:
Fucked Up- “The Other Shoe”
Pavement- “Flux=Rad”
Bloc Party- “Like Eating Glass”
Sparklehorse- “Happy Man”
Sleater-Kinney- “Jumpers”
Only Crime- “R.I.R”
Harvey Milk- “Barnburner”
Japandroids- “Wet Hair”
Baroness- “Take My Bones Away”
with a little bit of Hüsker Dü‘s “Monday Will Never Be The Same” thrown in for good measure.

Running time: thirty minutes and forty-seven seconds. Special care was put into flow and general kickassery.
Grab that week by its stupid face and stare it right in the eye and say, in the creepiest, hissiest voice you can muster, “hey. Week. You are mine to conquer, bitch.” Then you show that week who’s boss.

4 comments | posted in Music

October 19, 2012

Songs For The Stratosphere: Five Freefall Favorites (For Felix)

By Jorge Farah

Is that the most obnoxiously alliterative blog post title you’ve ever read? The answer is yes. Yes, it is.

Last week, Felix Baumgartner made the entire world incredibly self-conscious about their own achievements by flying 39 kilometers into the stratosphere, then freefalling for 4 minutes and 19 seconds before deploying his parachute and landing unscathed. When all the pesky paperwork is taken care of, he will become the record holder for highest altitude jump, as well as the first human being to ever break the sound barrier without any sort of vehicular power. He will also be a verified badass.

I won’t go into what I spent my day doing while Mr. Baumgartner was diving off the edge of space, because it’d be embarrassing. In fact, I have to go through the rest of my life now knowing that nothing I ever do will be even half as awesome as Felix’s victorious descent from the heavens. But in the world of my imagination, where I come to terms with my shortcomings in life by dreaming up impossible scenarios, I’ve taken that leap several times. And then I stumbled upon this question on Reddit, the global repository of human knowledge and cat pictures: Let’s say, hypothetically, that the stratospheric jump was something everyone was capable of doing. And let’s say, hypothetically, the pressure suit was equipped some nice audiophile headphones that allowed the diver to listen to music during the fall back to earth. What song would I use to fill those 5-odd minutes?

Being the kind of guy I am, I’d probably go for the ethereal and spacey rather than anything aggressive. I understand the appeal of leaping out to the sound of AC/DC’s “Shoot to Kill” like some third-rate Iron Man, but I think I’d already be in an adrenaline high from the leap itself. I’d want something melodic, contemplative and peaceful to assuage my rattled nerves, and to really take in the beauty of the planet we live in. Here are a few ideas. No Tom Petty in this list.

Steve Burns- “Troposphere”

The troposphere is the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere, right above the jetstreams, which Felix Baumgartner sliced through like a human x-acto knife before deploying his parachute. It’s also the title of this wonderful and powerful song by Steve Burns, off his brilliant and criminally overlooked album “Songs for Dustmites”. Falling through the air while listening to that enormous chorus would be thrilling and cathartic, as if leaping off the outskirts of the planet isn’t thrilling enough. Also, this is quite possibly the first mention of this song that doesn’t stress the fact that this guy is the former host of Nickelodeon’s “Blue’s Clues”. Oh, wait… shit.

M83- “We Own the Sky”

And you thought the first selection was on-the-nose. Officially one of my favorite songs ever, I’ve already written about how this is one of the songs I’d be comfortable dying to. And just like it would be an appropriate sendoff as my brain fires off its final synapses and I shuffle loose the mortal coil, this dreamy, ethereal blend of synthpop and shoegaze would be a wonder to listen to as I plunge down from the highest heights and into the blue planet below.

British Sea Power- “Baby”

Sample lyrics: “I powdered rhino horns for you / and I’ll serve it on a plate to you / I still want you coming round here today / beautifully to my squirrel cage.” Perhaps not the most lyrically relevant selection in this post. Or maybe it is. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what this song is about, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t a gorgeous piece of music. And, you know, the name of the track is “Baby”, and the mental image I get is that space baby from the end of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Have you seen that movie? I have no idea what it’s about, either.

Shearwater- “I Was a Cloud”

“I was a cloud / I was a cloud looking down / your frantic waving did not provoke feeling.” Perhaps a bit more lyrically apropos than the previous selection. This is a breezy (yet ponderous) acoustic guitar ballad from the stunning album “Rook”. There are about a billion things I love about this song, one of which is the simple beauty and understated elegance of its arrangements– it just kind of unfurls before you, like a hushed secret. It communicates a profound sense of peace, of floating along effortlessly among the clouds, bursting in and out with grace and style… not spiraling downward in a fiery panic as I would probably find myself.

Arthur Rubinstein- Chopin’s Nocturne Op.9 No.2

One of the most beautiful and recognizable pieces of music ever produced by man, and for good reason; Chopin’s Nocturnes are delicate, wistful pieces for solo piano that plunge the depth of human feeling, evoking melancholy and tranquility. Out of his 21 Nocturnes, this is perhaps the most enduringly emblematic melody, and this performance by Rubinstein highlights the sublime quietude of the composition. Listening to this while falling from the skies would be quite an experience, a testament to man’s accomplishments as one overlooks the world we inhabit; a quiet celebration of the grandiosity of it all.

1 comment | posted in Music

Subscribe

Dig what you're reading? Enter your e-mail address below and be the first to know when a new trifle is posted on this webrag.
Find stuff!
Do the Twitter!
- Ah, where would I be without you, HowToBasic? youtube.com/watch?v=F5A5MJ… "How To Properly Wash Your Hair" 15 hours ago
- @pussawus It has this demented otherworldly horror movie feel to it. 15 hours ago
- @squidita Try this on for size: bit.ly/17QVv00 15 hours ago
- @pussawus Here you go. Enjoy: bit.ly/17QVv00 18 hours ago
- @squidita Yeah! It goes from "everybody had matching towels! :-D" to "everybody had matching towels ಠ_ಠ " 18 hours ago
- Did you know that by slowing it down by about 35%, you make "Rock Lobster" sound real menacing? 18 hours ago
- @LibbyCudmore with the occasional Elias. 1 day ago
- Mild concussion from bashing my forehead against the top of a doorway. The perils of being over 6'5. 1 day ago
- @LibbyCudmore Ugh, I love Father Ted. I had never seen an episode of it 'til a few months ago, until an Irish friend set me right. 1 day ago
- @ginntastic Aw, hey, have an awesome time! And congrats! 1 day ago
- Adding the #Eurovision Song Contest to that list of Strange European Things I'm Confused and Frightened By. 1 day ago
- You just don't get it, do you? youtube.com/watch?feature=… 1 day ago
Follow @everyist
Recent Posts

Every -ist and Every -ism

Author Archives: Jorge Farah

About Jorge Farah

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Dug it? Share it!

Like this:

Subscribe

Find stuff!

Recent Posts