Weezer + Lil' Wayne = Huh?

I'm pretty sure Weezer has gone completely off the deep end. Off the deep end of awesome! Am I right? Eh, well maybe. The following song has literally no reason to exist. It's a leak off of their new album, hilariously titled Raditude, which, yes, stands for "Radical Attitude."

Anyhoo, in case (okay, when) this Youtube video I linked to is yanked off the internet by the powers that be, this song could be best described as, "What?" It's a song about how Rivers, a self-admitted stone-cold sober Buddhist, can't stop partying. And it's done in a style that, in a move nobody fucking saw coming, splits the difference between Weezer's steadfast rock and the ubiquitous Timbaland-aping synth-n-b that dominates the radio right now.

The main craziest part of the song comes at 2:05 when Lil' Wayne hops in the fray and puts the weirdness of this song perfectly succinctly: "It's Weezer and Weezy, upside-down MTV." I don't even know whether this is good or not. Part of me says it's awesome, and the rest of me says, "Uh, what?" Anyway, here it is:



I have no idea whether this song (which I can only assume is going to be released as a single) is going to be a massive, genre-transcending hit or the the bonehead move that finally kills Weezer in the way that the emo-tastic Make Believe and the Red album could not. A quick trip down Wikipedia lane reveals that Polow da Don (the guy who produced "Throw Some D's" for Rich Boy, which was a pretty big hit in my neck of the woods) produced for the album, as well as, um, Dr. Luke, the Swede who wrote Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone."

Raditude comes out November 3rd. The album cover is to the left. Do with that information what you will.

Hey Kids Here's An Anecdote.

So last night I took a red Sharpie and wrote "Canned Heat!" on my forearm, as I had planned to play that one song of theirs "Going Down to the Country" or something on my radio show this morning at the ungodly hour of 6 am (If you were awake for the show, I thank you dearly. In other words, Thanks Mom!).

I can never sleep well the night before my radio show, because I'm afraid if I drift into too heavy a slumber I won't be able to wake up in time to spin some tunes or whatever the kids are calling it these days (Aside: I have a strong aversion to just bringing my laptop to the radio station, making a playlist on iTunes, plugging it into the soundboard, and then having that be my set. That kind of kills the fun factor of going into WXYC's massive library of records and CD's, finding some random bullshit to put on, and then messing around with transitions, weirdness, volume levels, etc. Also, the term is DISC JOCKEY, and the last time I checked mp3's were zero percent circular except for the fact that they're stored on a disc drive sometimes but that shouldn't count especially since iPods now use flash drives, but I think we can all agree that this is immaterial and tangential tangents should be dismissed as the ramblings of a sleep-deprived bozo who wasn't able to stay that much on topic to begin with.).

Anyhoo, so I went to sleep around 3 am and woke up circa 5:30 (crash is imminent trust me), and went into the station, did my show, and then came back to my humble abode. Just before I went back to bed, I decided to wash my face. And as I washed, I noticed that there's a fairly prominent red "C" in the middle of my forehead, most definitely from having "Canned Heat!" written on my arm and it rubbing onto my face as I slept. Evidently I sleep with my head on my forearm, who knew?

Love,

Drew

The Trials And Adulterations Of David Letterman

By now, I’m sure you’ve gotten wind of the recent David Letterman, um, situation. Basically, what happened was this. Some guy was blackmailing him for two million dollars, saying that he would release evidence that Letterman had been having sex with women who worked for him. So, good old Dave cut this guy off at the pass by going to the police with the entire situation and getting him arrested. He then went on his show and told the world about it. The video for this confession is here:



Now on the surface, what Dave did was pretty noble – he called out an extortionist, and then made a very tough admission that would surely tarnish his public image. But when viewed in terms of its aesthetics, the entire admission is pretty weak.

For one, he delivered this confession in the form of his opening comedy monologue, in which he cracks jokes about finding incriminating evidence in his car at six in the morning and how the fact that he’s had sex at all is pretty shocking, let alone had sex with his employees. The fact that he’s willing to make light of such a terrible situation for all involved parties makes him kind of a crapdude, to use the parlance of our times. The tone of voice in which he tells this story is also notable. He speaks in a jokey, conversational style, indicating that he doesn’t take the situation very seriously.

It’s interesting that up until about 7:33 in the video, Dave is clearly the hero of this story. With a hint of triumph in his voice, he announces that his blackmailer had been arrested that afternoon. After this little moment, he finally cops to having slept with his employees and for about forty seconds, is serious. His gravity is cut short when he says something to the effect of, “Would this be embarrassing if this got out? Yes, yes it would. Especially for the women.” He then ends the segment with a crack about how nobody would expect him to be having sex at all, let alone with women who work for him.

And finally, notice that he never actually apologized for having sex with all of those women, which I’m more than certain he understands to be wrong. It should be noted that a few days later he apologized to his wife, staff, and viewers for putting them all through this and made it explicit that these transgressions are in the past, but that apology carries a lot less weight – like Cat Stevens said, the first cut is the deepest.