mrshl | blog

Andy Samburg has become the primary reason SNL remains a must watch for me. I saw this on last night’s season premiere, and today it’s blowing up the Internet. Samburg might never translate to the big screen the way Adam Sandler did, but his work on Saturday Night Live beats the hell outta Opera Man.

And because I love it when SNL hires people who can hit more than one note, I’ve included a couple other infamous shorts from the Lonely Island veteran.

Don’cha hate it when they put pictures of women right above the urinals?

  Photo by Hans van de Vorst.

What kind of law governs Blackwater and other private security contractors? This video from the Rumsfeldt era shows they really have no idea, and haven’t thought much about it.

Lots of people call OK Computer their favorite Radiohead record. The Bends is my fave, but picking Computer is a choice I can live with. Its depressing proggy brilliance is acknowledged the world over, and I bought it the day it came out. Ten years later, my love is unabated.

OK Computer might be the greatest album of the last 20 years or the greatest of the 1990s. But OK Computer isn’t flawless. This morning I’m asking you to remember my least favored Radiohead song, “Electioneering.” Among the sophisticated, elegiac laments that dominate the record, Radiohead just had to insert a mediocre rocker that’s dumb as a bag of hammers.

What’s wrong with it? You could point to the shrieking repetition of its bleating guitar hook, or the too-obvious ascending/descending bassline that makes it sound like the tossed-off jam session it probably was. Meh, I’ll go with the lyrics: a first-person, fourth-grade critique of globalism and American-dominated world politics:

I will stop, I will stop at nothing.
Say the right things when electioneering
I trust I can rely on your vote.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
Ha ha ha
Riot shields, voodoo economics,
it’s just business, cattle prods and the I.M.F.
I trust I can rely on your vote.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.

At least I think that’s what it’s about. The song does little more than namecheck a few specific evils before getting back to its braying chorus. Elsewhere on OK computer, singer Thom Yorke does a great job weaving these kinds of images into a nightmarish landscape in which our lust for technology and withering attention spans has reduced human kind to a droning, impotent wreck.

Unlike “Let Down” or “No Surprises,” Electioneering doesn’t contain the kind of wistful compliance that makes the nightmare seem so frighteningly plausible. It’s OK Computer’s “Ignoreland“; a shrill idiot protester marring an otherwise masterful gathering of sad-bastard musics. But, like REM, Radiohead was smart enough to sequence their dud at no. 8, leaving them four more songs to recover and save the record from derailing.

• Paper Thin Walls :: Independent Music Community
  Why have I never heard of this site? It’s because I am lame.
  (tags: musicsites musicblogs blogs music indie downloads ptw)
• Paper Thin Walls :: Single Reviews :: BRING BACK THE GUNS - “No More Good Songs”
  Link courtesy of Skyline Network.
  (tags: ptw reviews local htown bbtg music singles)
• CRACKED.com - The 8 Most Needlessly Detailed Wikipedia Entries
  (tags: wikipedia funny cracked)
• fabpics | International Architectural Photography
  Some really nice photos. Of buildings.
  (tags: photography architecture)
• Shopping: Ten Great Wines for $10 or Less - Lifehacker
  (tags: cheap wine foodblog)
• Consumer group blasts binding arbitration clauses
  Surprise. Artbitration is weighted heavily against consumers and in favor of businesses. In theory, it’s actually not a bad idea. In practice, it’s nightmare… nearly the polar opposite of justice.
  (tags: law arbitration consumers)
• Top 10 Most Weird keyboards | Funtasticus.com
  (tags: computer hardware keyboard weird)

This from the government that brought you George Bush. Embarrassing.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/eG6X-xtVask" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Gothamist has the story. Insert LOL-rus joke here.

Little Girl vs Big Yellow Dodge Ball

I’m not sure whether the maniacal laughing is part of the scene or if it was added later. Either way, this poor unfortunate girl has already achieved some measure of internet fame in her young life. So dry those tears, young one.

Photo courtesy of NASA. Hat tip: Coudal Partners.

• Mistake costs dishwasher $59,000
  Just one more immigrant to this country taking dishwashing jobs from honest Americans and expecting us NOT to seize his life savings when he voluntarily leaves the country.
  (tags: immigration illegal government customs law)
• Report Says Hussein Was Open To Exile Before 2003 Invasion - washingtonpost.com
  Wow. It would have cost us at most $1 Billion to have exiled Sadaam Hussein and avoid the Iraq War. Now that we’ve spent many hundreds of times that amount, it’s kind of sad to realize how cheaply we could have turned away a national tragedy.
  (tags: sadaam hussein iraq war bush)