Randomness.

1. Have you heard !!!'s "Take Ecstasy With Me"? It's a Magnetic Fields cover* and methinks it's even better than the original. The !!! crew retain the song's bittersweetness but amp up the beats and also add layers of guitar distortion and a lovely Casio synth bit that reminds me of that Cyndi Lauper song in The Goonies** or the keyboard meltdown in Radiohead's "Let Down."
   
   
   
2. I caught a screening of Jacques Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped on Sunday. It's a gritty-but-stylish remake of James Toback's Fingers, featuring a stellar performance from Romain Duris as a twentysomething torn between being his father's son (working as a thug) and his mother's (developing his talent as a concert pianist). You really couldn't ask for a better slice of French genre filmmaking.
   
   
3. In an effort to rid his life of clutter and all things McSweeney, my friend Pier sent me Believer's 2005 Music Issue (sans the nu-folk comp that comes with it; trust me, I'll live without it). Could that crew have their heads any further up their asses? I know their mission is to remain snark free, but Christ that thing is dry and joyless. (And where is their White Liberal Guilt? Not a single piece on a musician of color?) I will admit that I enjoyed learning that Beck's song "Debra" was a response to the explicitly honest R. Kelly jawn "I Like the Crotch on You" (as opposed to, say, Dianetics). I am seriously considering the iTunes purchase of said Kelly track.
   
   
4. Driving down Olympic Blvd. during lunch, I spotted a poster in a restaurant which read:
   
   ))<>((
   FOREVER
   
   It made me happy.
   
   
5. El Presidente de Fagistan has resumed blogging and the world is a better place for it. How could it not be when Joshua concludes a rant with: "Nice young ladies should spend their time crocheting prochoice potholders and burning their bras during a festive tiki party, not writing about how one specific young woman is an atrocious disease-carrying whorebag"?
   
   
   

* Only Stephin Merritt could write a song about ingesting MDMA and make it sound like some wistful, romantic rite of passage.

** Not "Goonie R Good Enough" the other one that plays during the sequence when the kids have tied up Brand and they begin their adventure, whizzing down that hill on their bikes.