Today, my friends, is almost a very important day. In fact, for some of you, it may already be an important day. May 5 happens, in fact, to be the day of days. May 5 is my birthday, and MAN I’M SO PUMPED. In honor of my birthday (…lol…) I’m going to give you an extra special itty interwebs. Well, it might actually be pretty standard, but you should be able to feel the magic birthday powder that I’m lightly dusting it with. And it should be exhilarating.

I’m going to start you out with this adorable fucking video by Gold Motel. All right, the song is pretty much just decent, but it’s undeniably nice and fun (really poor use of adjectives, Ari.) The music video however seems to pretty much be the cutest birthday party in the world though. I want it. I’m living vicariously though it. Having May 5 as a birthday means I will have infinity cinco de mayo themed birthdays. Which is … okay… I mean, I take French, but still, okay. I like burritos as much as the next northeasterner. Anyway, I’ve also never been that big of a fan of The Hush Sound, mostly because I don’t think I’ve ever really listened to them enough, but Gold Motel is the girl from them and some other dudes. I hate to use the word adorable again, but srsly… adorbs.
Video: Perfect In My Mind – Gold Motel

So you may or may not have heard of this guy Chris Weingarten who has been ranting about the evils of the blogosphere and how he’s losing his job and indie rock sucks and something about stumble culture, etc. If you haven’t, I recommend you watch one of his lectures (here or here, for example). Try not to fall for his adorably aggressive use of curse words, or his cute n floppy hat. Listen to what he’s saying… it’s pretty much ridic. SO ANYWAY, what I’m getting at is that I’ve been writing this essay for the past couple nights about the music blogosphere and why Weingarten is a douche bag etc, and it’ll probably be done by the next itty interwebs, where I might post a portion of it. For now I’m going to leave you with this mash up of Weingarten quotes and … hyperboles, recorded by Casey Newton over at Crumblr. I recommend watching the original first though, to get the most of the humor.
Weingarten Parody

These have been some long paragraphs so far. Here’s a short one:

This is funny.
Dipset Haiku

And so is this
Dudes With Beards Eating Cupcakes

Recent fact about me: I’m obsessed with The National’s new album High Violet (which is coming out in one week! And I will totally purchase legally to help support artists!) If you haven’t heard it, it’s streaming over on npr and I REALLY recommend it. Or wait until text Tuesday.
This is relevant because Pitchfork just made this nice little video of a couple of their songs performed in some rando abandoned castle. To be honest, it’s pretty boring. However the cinematography and songs are so awesome that it’s worth watching through, which is why I’m recommending it!
Pitchfork TV – The National

AND THE BEST THING OF THE WEEK?! This remix of The Joy Formidable’s “Whirring” that PMA premiered today! I really love these guys, and this remix is pretty stellar. I don’t know what or who “Voodoo Friends” are, but in an attempt to figure out I came upon this site, which is too bizarre. I’ve been dissuaded from searching further.
I recommend you pick up their full album A Balloon Called Moaning which came out today. It’s pretty fab. And here’s the remix!
Whirring – The Joy Formidable

Well, even after writing this it’s still not my birthday. I’m a little worried about the about of notifications I’m going to have on my facebook wall. I love how many people are attentive to my facebook persona on my birthday. It’s really… nice!

Time to do some more work on that aforementioned paper.

Buhbye!
ari (1 2 3)

I was just mentioning to Tsuru earlier today that you guys are going to be so sick of me once I’ve finished my finals. Right now I feel like I barely have time to post here, but man, when I’m sitting around all day for months in my east coast suburban home, you guys are going to have so much ari on your hands it’s going to be disgusting. Seriously.

I realize you guys got totally gypped (excuse my potentially slanderous diction) out of shit last week and had to read through all that Coachella bullshit instead of getting to see some awesome rando internet stuffs. So here is a collection of the stuff that I came upon this week AND last week,  so you don’t miss out on some of the mostly hilarious stuff I was dealing with 7-14 days ago.

So for anyone who watches 30 rock, you may or may not remember this scene where tracy mentions his Werefolf Bar Mitzvah song. Some friend of mine (I actually can’t remember where I saw it now… sorry for the lack of shout out) posted this Sims 2 movie video for the song. I’m going to just let you watch it and hope you find it as humorous as I do. I guess it will be funnier for those acquainted with the amazing character that is Tracy Jordan… and you should probably start watching it if you aren’t.
Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

Here’s a political home-state joke that will have minimal resonance with readers, but is still pretty funny to outsiders I would imagine. Rosa DeLauro is one of Connecticut’s representatives and this site is for/about her. It’s really worthwile to look at the pictures and read the captions. My favorite one references Kazaa. My second favorite references blogs only operating on weekdays. You readers ought to find those both funny also…
Rosa DeLauro is a Fucking Hipster

I heard a few of Inlet’s songs this past winter, and was upset that I couldn’t really find any other music by them. And then their first full-length Inter Arbiter was released this week! Horray! It’s pretty good, although Bright Orange Air remains my favorite. I don’t know how long this music video has been out, but I only stumbled upon it last week, so here it is! It’s rad!
Bright Orange Air Music Video

Grizzly Bear has a new song omg! I’m in college so I don’t watch TV… ever… (well… I watch tv on my computer, sans commercials, so what I’m trying to say is…) I never watch commercials! Fortunately I stumbled upon the 1billion mentions of this new lottery ad featuring a new Grizzly Bear song yesterday. Want to hear a humorous anecdote? “Yeah! Tell us ari!” Well as I was just searching for a proper video to link here, I googled “Grizzly Bear Lottery” and the first result was this.

Well… I laughed at least.

Anyway, here’s the actual commercial, via onethirtybpm
Grizzly Bear Lottery Commercial

By the way, if you haven’t seen the LCD Soundsystem video for Drunk Girls, which Tsuru already posted here, you really should go watch that, because that was certainly the best thing of the week last week.

Okay and my favorite thing of this week? Probably this new Tokyo Police Club that I can only link you to listen to at Entertainment Weekly *grumble grumble* I really can’t accurately describe the affection I have for TPC. It’s probably got a lot to do with the memories I associate with falling in love with them and falling in love with my boyfriend. *gushy romance gush gush*  A Lesson In Crime, in my mind, equals one of the best summers of my life (touring Europe, falling in love, lots of firsts, etc) so, I dunno, I guess I’m biased towards them. Also, I’m infatuated with Dave Monks, the vocalist/bassist. HE’S JUST THE BEST THING EVER. Anyway yeah so, go listen to that song I linked up there! Also if you haven’t already, download their upcoming album’s single!
Tokyo Police Club – Breakneck Speed

Okay that’s all I’ve got for you tonight! I hope you guys like the new front page. I think it’s super sweet.
Until next time, forever yours, etc
ari (1 2 3)

PS. The Soft Pack played at my school this weekend. Here’s a picture from 2010′s Kohoutek Festival!

Oh hayyy! Did you know that I played the super savvy TSURURADIO Coachella correspondent this weekend? Did you forget to follow my twitter or read … anything… on the internet about it? Do you just love reading me more than pitchfork? Do you like when journalists start articles with questions? (I really hate this. I’m sorry.) Fortunately for all persons involved, I’m going to supply you some of my opinions and rantings about this year’s festival, starting off with my twitter flow. Cause I was there! It should accurately capture my highs and lows, tears and laughs, ecstasy and exhaustion, excitement and crankiness, etc.  Also I’m gonna throw in some pictures my friend Nathan Freyman took on his super sneaky camera (they wouldn’t let me bring mine in :( tsuru, you should hook me up with legit press capabilities!) and also a few from my über lame canon p&s. booo.

*IMPORTANT NOTE: for god knows what reason, these are all in EST, so please mentally subtract 3 hours for each time stamp and be on your way.

• on another note, I can’t sleep! too excited for today! ahhh coachellaaaaa! 12:46 PM Apr 16^th
• Yeah this traffic outside coachella is better than yeasayer, she&him, and rarariot anyway, amirite? #coachella 8:32 PM Apr 16th
• Caught she and hims encore cover. Pretty cute. Super sad I didn’t hear more. 9:32 PM Apr 16th
• Passion Pit is happy to be here, but they’re t5 shows in jan were a lot better. Sleepyheads on now, pc1 10:35 PM Apr 16th
• He keeps yelling shit like “get crazy!” and “mother fucking awesome!” though which is lame to say the least. 10:38 PM Apr 16th
• Grizzly bear looping clarinets on top of flutes on top of random acordian-like box thing. Pretty rad, too slow for a tent show though eh? :/ 11:30 PM Apr 16th
• Just made the greatest call of my life leave grizzly bear early to wait for lcd soundsystem. I’m four people from the gen admission front.:) 11:56 PM Apr 16th
• Lcd discoball says 350lbs on it in marker. I’m that close. 12:18 AM Apr 17th
• Omg do I go to vampire weekend and meet friends or wait 50 minutes front row (basix) for jayz alone? DM me! Help! 12:39 AM Apr 17th (*btw, no one helped. I ended up waiting with my crowd BFF, Trevor, or something.)
• Why is jayz having us sing wonderwall? Funniest thing of the day 2:56 AM Apr 17th
• jayz brought beyonce out for a forever young cover. Pretty epiccc. 3:38 AM Apr 17th
• Btw zero phone coverage here so mind the gaps or clusters or alltogether lack of updates 3:44 AM Apr 17th
• So hot. So tired. Also, I love me some portugal the man but they’re set was uber bluesy & guitar jamming. Not my style man. Also no deaddog? 6:11 PM Apr 17th
• Girls look like girls wow cool! 6:36 PM Apr 17th
• Beach house I love youuuu 8:06 PM Apr 17th
• I’m pretty sure there will never be a day that I stop liking tokyo police club. They’re bringing it on the mainstage, &I am so singing along 8:41 PM Apr 17th
• Crowd shift from tpc to coheed and cambria was lolsworthy 9:16 PM Apr 17th
• I heard edward sharpe and the mag 0s did some cute dancing & mic passing shit during Home. Sad I missed it, but so happy with tpc 9:21 PM Apr 17th
• Congrats on adding white to oyur usually all black decorum, the xx! Now get your shit together and turn the bass down. 9:31 PM Apr 17th
• My god the xx are so boring. Its definitely time for the dirty projectors. 9:51 PM Apr 17th
• The size of the dp crowd in comparison to the xx is upsetting. Also, that suspender-ed makeup-ed man by the bathrooms may have been jonsi… 9:53 PM Apr 17th
• Ugh leaving dirty projectors early to go to hot chip is the hardest thing ever! Just one more! 10:18 PM Apr 17th
• Sorry for skipping mgmt twitter community, but I was hungry & tried! Also hot chip was incred as usj. Fact: wrote my college essay on them! 12:25 AM Apr 18th
• #qotd “These guys know what’s up. Takin a break before devo. Allriiight” 12:48 AM Apr 18th
• Local natives is blowing me away. I mean,I love gorilla manor as much as the next, but I never realized the awsm the harmonies & drum duets! 5:22 PM Apr 18th
• OMG LOCAL NATIVES WAS AMAZING. I had relatively low expectations and I was fucking blown away 5:52 PM Apr 18th
• Bradford cox making some silly coachella rhymes. In other news, that huge tigers blood slushie is giving me a headache :/ 6:55 PM Apr 18th
• Deerhunter right now is the equivalent of the Relaxation Station at six flags. Straight chillin. 7:08 PM Apr 18th
• I wonder how many bottles I can find on the ground and fill with the ice water that venders put their hands in all day before I get typhoid 7:27 PM Apr 18th
• Florence was late but made up for it with her angel costume? Oh and I guess her voice is good too 7:57 PM Apr 18th
• Cold war kids’ Nathan sang hospital beds with flo. Also jumping. Also amazing. Also on shoulders. Also harp. Also swooooon 8:15 PM Apr 18th
• Jonsi, looking weird as fuck as usual. 8:59 PM Apr 18th
• Jonsi has the purest voice in the world, even in real life. I think itd be worth putting to the text as an AIDS or cancer cure or something 9:16 PM Apr 18th
• Wouldn’t it be epic if jonsi dove into the volcano? 9:21 PM Apr 18th
• Thanks for playing my 2 favs first phoenix, but I gotta go see pavement! 10:37 PM Apr 18th
• *insert tweet about pavement kicking ass cause apparently I forgot to.
• Too upset by the thought of sitting in the camp grounds til 2 in time to sit in traffic for hours to enjoy thom yorke :( 1:03 AM Apr 19th
• Swinging by the big pink in hopes of catching velvet or dominoes. So little hope left. 1:04 AM Apr 19th (*we did catch dominoes, by the way)
• Thom yorke’s (ahem… Atoms for peace’s) 30 minute encore seems a little contrived…. Whatever, its basix radiohead amiright? 1:17 AM Apr 19th
• Got out of the parking lot in minutes! I’m happy as a really exhausted clam! 2:08 AM Apr 19th
• In-n-out was a fine finale to coachella weekend. So much awsm shit, but also so fucking pumped for bedtime. 3:47 AM Apr 19th
• HOME. ZZZZZZ. #coachella 4:10 AM Apr 19th

Yeaaaah, it was a pretty great weekend overall.

Instead of itty interwebs links, I thought I’d instead give you a taste of Coachella itty-style. I’m just gonna mention a few minuscule facets of my weekend, and you will consume and enjoy them as much as you normally do with the mp3s, videos, articles, etc that I typically post. Mmkay?

• The food. The food area at the camping grounds was not as terrible as I expected, aka, not as expensive as the food area inside the venue. There were loads of organic venders and I totally bartered a 2-for-$1 deal out of some orange sellers. It was awesome. I also ate a strawberry off the ground. Got some shit for that, but it was tasty so, props to the strawberry growers also.
• The slushies. Saturday, the slushy was awesome. There were self-serve syrups from Blue Raspberry to Lemon Lime to Tigers Blood! You may be asking yourself ‘what the fuck is Tigers Blood?’ Basically coconut flavored, but red, and also hilarious (because every other flavor was a fruit… and this one sounded illegal.) It was the best thing ever though. Sunday, the slushie was not awesome. Gave me a killer headache, assumedly from extreme sugar overdoes. BOOO!
• The volcano. I love the fact that I am so fucking detached from the world around me at college that I didn’t even know a ginormous fucking volcano erupted and basically killed off Europe. I only ended up hearing this huge news when bands started cancelling. “The Cribs aren’t coming? Thom Yorke is stuck in Iceland? What the fuck are you talking about?” That’s pretty much how my volcano ignorance was broken. Btw Thom Yorke not coming was a rumor. He did infact show up.
• Misc. Band Members. I decided I really want to be that guy in Pavement (Bob Nastanovich) who doesn’t really play an instrument but just fucks around with a bunch of random shit. First of all, he was kickass. Second, I’m talent-illiterate so being good and random easy shit would be great for me. Thanks for the new aspirations, Pavement!
• 3 Day Passes. Look, I really would have rather only gone one day, saved $200, not died of exhaustion, etc. But in retrospect, it was worth it at least this one time. The camping experience is definitely something everyone should try. Also, in and outs were really awesome. Being able to come back to camp and make dinner fo’ free was really pleasant. But still, fuck you Coachella for being so fucking expensive.
• Coachella. Seriously though, fuck Coachella. If I could help it, I would never go again. They charge you $12 for a, what, 8oz water bottle? And those are the only ones you can bring in and fill. What the fuck is that bullshit? $269 + surcharges for a ticket? No! You make so much money! Tons of your employees are volunteers! You must make a huge profit! Coachella planners are douchebags, put simply. Alas, I can’t say no to all of my favorite bands in 3 days, so I might have to go again :(
• Show stealers. I probably should mention somewhere in here my favorite acts. I know its typical and a little boring, but its pretty much the only valuable information in this post. I’ve been hard pressed to pick a single favorite, so these are the top 5 that I was able to see. Keep in mind I didn’t see Sleigh Bells, Yeasayer, She & Him, Vampire Weekend, Edward Sharpe etc, or Tiesto, and they all probably would have been awesome. Okay so top 5, in no order:
  • LCD Soundstyem – Awesome. Never seen them before. So. Awesome.
  • Local Natives – Low expectations turned into new found soaring respect. I always liked them, but never realized how amazing they were.
  • Florence and the Machine – SHE’S INCREDIBLE. Plus Cold War Kids whats-his-face came out and sang a duet version of Hospital Beds. Killer.
  • Hot Chip – Fun as always. Go see them this summer in NYC! I’ll be there! By the way I really did write my college essay about a Hot Chip concert 3 years ago… and I got in… so… yeah. They’re great.
  • Pavement – Although the middle of their set lagged a little, gold soundz almost brought me to tears.

Okay well, wow. That’s it. I can’t tell whether this is far to short or far too long. Or perhaps too medium length-ed? That’ll do I guess. If you want some legitimate Coachella coverage, google it! But if you want some more snarky tidbits on the music industry and beyond, come back here next week :)

Love you all oddles!
ari(1 2 3)

Microsoft Word and I have been reestablishing our friendship these past few days. Currently tackling an English paper on Tristram Shandy, a media studies paper/presentation fighting for the benefits of the music blogosphere, an impromptu and also very late application to the language residence dorm on my campus (guess what happened this weekend! I was room draw number 897 of 912! My residence for next year is kind of on unstable ground right now…), etc. All this is irrelevant though, because it’s already past midnight on Monday (…well Tuesday rather…) and I’ve yet to publish this week’s post! Too much personal nonsense, not enough internet community commodities! (Spell check wants me to capitalize internet. That’s silly! *Ignore*) Read more »