Tag: eminem

Today was a long week

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, TeachingLeave a comment

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken 8th graders on a field trip or not. I suspect you probably haven’t. And since I was primarily responsible just for my advisory, who I love, and about four other kids who I didn’t hand-select but I might as well have, it really wasn’t a bad or stressful field trip at all. The kids behaved admirably and I was proud of them. But Jesus, trying to keep constant track of 21 people out in public all at the same time is exhausting, and once we got back to school they (entirely predictably) decided that they’d all collectively had enough of their best behavior for the day, and then actual fucking sex assault drama blew up in the 8th grade, and … yeah, I wanted to talk about LL Cool J tonight and I just don’t have the spoons.

That said, watch this, especially the verse that starts at about 58 seconds, and see if you can figure out when this motherfucker is breathing. Dude has been rapping since 1985 and I’ve never seen anything from him like this.

#ATOZCHALLENGE, Day 5: Eminem

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music8 Comments

EArtist: Eminem
Best Album: The Marshall Mathers LP
Best Song: Mosh
This Letter Could Have Been About: Eazy-E, EPMD, Eric B. & Rakim

Why I’m Writing About This Artist: Not because Eminem is the best white rapper who ever lived (he is) but because he’s one of the best rappers who ever lived, period.  Now, Eminem’s music can be hugely problematic– his early albums in particular are full of homophobic and misogynistic lyrics and frankly in a lot of ways are the work of a man who is seriously fucked up in a whole lot of ways, but his talent is prodigious.  And, frustratingly, he occasionally lets this weird progressive streak slip; I’ve often wished that I could have an album by Eminem that stripped all of the Eminem out of him and just let him write music without all the baggage, and the closest I ever got was the soundtrack to 8 Mile, which was basically autobiographical.

This was also the first artist where I had real trouble picking his best song, so I’m including three videos instead of the usual one.  Note that if Eminem usually offends you, these three songs will not be problematic.

Also, if you’ve never seen 8 Mile, get on that.

Have a video!:

Fuck it, four. Pay attention to the way he plays with vowels:

Previous A to Z post
Next A to Z post (will be dead until post is up)

In which I make things so complicated

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews1 Comment

imagesI keep almost writing a music post and then not doing it; I’d like to pretend that I don’t know why, but the simple fact is that I don’t have the vaguest idea how to write music reviews.  Despite that, I still write music reviews from time to time; they’re just bad music reviews.  When I read them, I never have any idea what the hell the writer is talking about and half the time I feel like I’m reading word salad.  I also can’t begin a music review without that disclaimer– I can review movies and books and food and other things coherently, but I always feel like I ought to begin any piece about music with an apology.

I’ve downloaded four new albums in the last couple of months.  I even bought one of the four on CD as a backup copy– yeah, the physical version is the backup now.  They are: Pearl Jam’s Lightning Bolt, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Latyrx’s The Second Album, and… uh… speaking of things I always apologize for, avrillavigne’snewCDwhichsheselftitledsoit’scalledAvrilLavigneSHUTUPDON’TJUDGEME.

*Cough.*

Yeah.  I have all seven of her albums (and I live in a world where Avril Lavigne has seven albums, Jesus, what the hell?) and I have felt dirty while buying each and every one of them.  I don’t care, fuck you; I’m gonna keep buying them until she’s old.  Ha!

The really scary part is that her new album may be my favorite of hers, or at least it’s the perfect antidote to spending several days trying to listen to Eminem’s new… thing.  It’s thoroughly poppy and fun, even the bits where she brings in in Marilyn Manson and tries to be all… I don’t know, not cute, which Christ you can’t have a Marilyn Manson cameo on an album with a song called Hello Kitty where you spend most of it yapping in Japanese.  Or something, hell, that might not be Japanese, I really have no idea.  But fuck it, it’s fun, that’s the point.  There’s a song on it called “Bitchin’ Summer” and the damn album was released in November.  Gimme a break.

Eminem’s new album is not any fun, and in fact is probably the most relentlessly angry thing he’s ever released.  There are still bits where he blows away any other rapper working today with his lyrical skills, but… God, the thing is so damn long and so damn pissed off that I just can’t deal with it.  I’m sticking with my initial assessment, which is that it’s exactly like some horrifying hybrid of mid-197os The Who and Pink Floyd released something and decided to call it a concept rap opera, which kind of feels like I’m making shit up and sticking words together but I swear that it makes sense in my head.  Also:  that’s not a recommendation, in case you’re not sure.  The thing is interesting in the sense that it’s so consistently unlistenable, and it’s not unlistenable because it’s bad, it’s unlistenable because Eminem made a conscious decision as an artist to make an album that no one anywhere could ever be happy while listening to, but without releasing an awesome piss-off-fuck-the-world album like, say, Rage Against the Machine or Ice Cube or the fucking Ramones used to be so good at.  Which is an achievement of sorts.  But I don’t want to listen to the damn thing ever again.

The new Latyrx is… well, Latyrx, which is always a recommendation.  It’s deeply weird and experimental too, but in a much better way.  I don’t have a whole lot to say about it right now because honestly I haven’t digested this album yet; the time I’ve spent trying to wrap my head around Eminem’s bullshit has taken away from The Second Album‘s richly deserved braincycles.

And you should already own the new Pearl Jam album because it’s a fucking Pearl Jam album and Pearl Jam is the greatest band on Earth.  This one’s kind of weird too, though; it’s their first album with a title track, which I kinda think ought to be significant even though I can’t quite elucidate how, and there are a bunch of tracks that don’t really sound like Pearl Jam (Let the Records Play and Getaway and maybe a couple of others); the band’s clearly still pushing themselves.  It’s not my favorite album by them (Vitalogy) but it’s got some great tracks on it– Sirens, Yellow Moon, Future Days, and Mind Your Manners, even though MYM took a while to grow on me.  I need to memorize more of it so I can sing along; I can’t ever finalize my opinion of a Pearl Jam album until I can sing along with at least half of it.

There’s a reason I’m not talking about work much today, by the way.  Maybe tomorrow.

First things first

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching, Uncategorized1 Comment

2012-07-06 12.40.09The cat (the black one) is home; he appears to be mending nicely. The vet is mostly convinced that he had a nasty pulmonary infection but we have to take him in on Monday for one more follow-up X-ray to make sure the fluid around his lungs isn’t returning.

Other than that, a solid hour of staring at my computer has failed to yield anything resembling inspiration.  I had a mixed day at work today; I lost my temper with fourth hour for a minute but did well otherwise.  I think I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again because it’s still on my mind:  I can’t tell if I’m more frustrated this year than I have been in the past or if the frustration is just getting to me more than it has in the past.  Hell, I’m not even sure that those two scenarios actually describe meaningfully different things, if I’m being honest.  Maybe I need to start meditating or something; I dunno.  Or start drinking.

(No, really:  I don’t drink at all.  There is room to argue that a goddamn glass of wine once in a while could be a good thing.  This is a legitimate theory.)

On my second or third run-through of the Eminem album, and I still have no goddamn idea what the hell is going on with it.

Here’s a thing, I don’t know if you’ll care:  I’ve downloaded Baldur’s Gate on my iPad and it’s been eating a fair share of my time, to the point where I’m looking up leveling strategies on the Internet in between paragraphs here.  I don’t know how the hell I played it when it first came out; it’s balls-hard, for starters, and more than often the best way to get through a situation is… well, a bit opaque.  There’s a dude right away who killed the shit out of me like fifteen times until I had a combination of finely-iterated good strategy and pure luck that got me through without losing any of my characters.  At this point I’m going to start fiddling with the difficulty; I’m too old to give a damn about hardcore mode anymore and I just want to relax and play the game.

I’m thinking about buying the Marvel Lego game.  The Kotaku review made it sound really fun.

Also I’ll easily hit 7500 steps today.  So all the gaming isn’t making me too terribly fat.

The end.

Wednesday grab bag

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews, Teaching1 Comment

microwave-etiquette-meme-generator-vaguebooking-that-s-a-paddlin-94d7ad.jpgSorry about the vaguebooking yesterday; one of our cats has been sick for a while, got abruptly really sick yesterday and we spent the whole evening shuttling him around from home to the regular vet to the emergency vet and it really really wasn’t a good evening.  He looks like he’s going to pull through, though; he’s coming home (from the regular vet, who we had to deliver him back to) tonight to spend the night at home where, the thought is, he’ll be more comfortable.  Then he goes back to regular vet again tomorrow for the day.  Assuming there are no disasters tonight.  Cross your fingers; I’ve had enough of medical issues in general lately.

Did my first observation for the probation assistance team today; I have three days, more or less, to get my notes compiled together and sent out to everyone.  I have less to say than I thought I would, honestly; I spent most of the observation musing about what might come from putting the teacher on probation in my classroom.  Because, honestly, there were things working in there that simply don’t work for me, and the lesson plan itself may as well have been ripped directly from corporation paperwork– which is interesting.  Is that a weakness, because there’s none of the teacher in the lesson?  Is a strength, because they presumably recommend that lesson plan for a reason and this teacher is Doing it Right?  Which means, then, that I’m Doing it Wrong?  I dunno.  I didn’t see much that made me think the teacher should be let go, which is a good thing.  I just hope everybody else on the team feels the same way.  Writing up the notes will be interesting.

Day Three of wearing a Fitbit Force:  I walk about seven thousand steps a day, maybe, when I’m not spending the entire evening in my car shuttling a cat around to doctors.  I haven’t tried pairing it with MyFitnessPal or doing any actual exercise yet; I want to take a week or so and get a baseline for how much I move around during a day and then we’ll set some goals and make some adjustments.  One development:  I’m way more into the idea of a smart watch than I’ve been in the past; the idea of notifications being delivered via a vibration to my wrist rather than an an audible tone is wonderful, and I don’t ever want to be awakened by an alarm again.  Seriously, I could completely give up on the idea of fitness– fuck it, I’ll just be fat forever– and I’m still gonna wear this thing to bed.  Silent vibrating wrist alarms are fantastic.

Posts that are percolating;  reviews of the new Eminem and Latyrx CDs, as soon as I find the time to listen to the damn things, and that reminds me I never really wrote about the new Pearl Jam album, and probably a post on theology based on this piece at the Atlantic, which quotes people who I know from grad school.  Who somehow teach at Oxford now.

Yeah.  I know Oxford professors.  I think that probably confers nerd baller status, but maybe not.

I’m not writing that last piece unless I can do it in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m gleefully tossing grenades and lit torches around; I’d like to participate in a conversation and not just be an asshole. We’ll see how well it works.   In the meantime, click on the link; it’s worth the read.

I can’t see at all

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews, TeachingLeave a comment

1027-01I’m four tracks into the new Eminem CD and I have absolutely no goddamn idea what is going on.  The first track is seven minutes long with at least three or four distinct and separate movements.  It’s like Pink Floyd made a rap album.  I really wish I hadn’t used “What is this I don’t even” as yesterday’s post title; it would be more appropriate for how I’m feeling right now.   There will, I expect, be a fuller review once I’ve had the time to listen to this a few dozen times (it’s an hour and a half long!) and absorb it a bit.

Also released today:  a new Latyrx album, which I was expecting to be eating up most of my listen-to-music energy today until listening to the first track of Marshall Mathers 2.  I’ll… uh… get to it when I have time.

(About halfway through the album.  He’s gotta be back on drugs again.)

Today was actually a pretty good day at work; good enough that I’m struggling right now with coming up with anything terribly interesting to say about it.  The new BEST kid apparently walked into her classroom, saw a student she’d had issues with in a previous building, shouted “fuck this” and left the building.  So, uh, not so much with her coming to class?  And they’ve put her in my homeroom for some reason now, because the universe hates me and I’m losing another of my favorite kids on Friday so it’s clearly time to fill the gaps with assholes.

Then again, I haven’t met her yet– granted, because she started shrieking swear words and fled the building— but maybe I’ll like her, who the fuck knows.

I think I’m gonna make egg drop soup for dinner.   Need to go get some green onions.  Maybe I’ll post a picture later if it ends up looking neat.