The Announcers In The Olympics Are Haters

The announcer’s were just talking about Eamon Sullivan, from Australia, who won the Men’s 100M Semifinal 2. They mentioned his three shoulder surgeries, an ankle surgery and a hip surgery and 18 cortisone injections in the past 3 years.

Then. THEN. They say how, right before he left for the Olympics, he broke up with his girlfriend, Stephanie Rice.

So while Eamon Sullivan is winning Olympic gold in China, a certain Stephanie Rice is back in Australia going “Son of a goddamn bitch” because now the world knows she got dumped by an Olympian gold medalist.

These announcers are just all up in every bit of shit that is possible to comment on.

Time Waster Tuesday – The Olympics

The Olympics!

Chinese Drummers

Chinese Artists

Wire Dancers
(more Opening Ceremony images at Boston.com)

It’s fucking Cirque du Soleil and Harry Potter, you guys. All up in your face.

I’m freaking out on a daily basis. Things that I would never, EVER, in my normal life go hysterical over is now happening more often than I can handle. It’s like I’m going through some sort of heterosexual athletic-centric menopause, and my body and mind are just going crazy trying absorb as many events as possible.

With the amount of events, and the seemingly endless coverage coupled with the time difference, I get the feeling random events are happening every single hour of the day. Like, right now, people are fencing on horses while doing releases on the uneven bars. It’s crazy.

But because there is so much going on, it’s hard to keep up. For me, anyways. So that’s why you can waste your time with this!

Olympic Medal winners at NBC Olympics.com!

Or this!

2008 Olympics Video Coverage at NBC Olympics.com!

You can install these widgets [and others!] on every single social community, blog and desktop in your area. So you can now sit back and just refresh your page over and over again until you find out who wins that ribbon dancer event. I know it’s top of mind for me.

Seriously, it is. I can’t wait for that shit.

All Points West

All Points West, a musical festival at Liberty State Park in New Jersey, took place this past weekend, showcasing 3 days of live performances from some pretty kickass performers. I only had the chance to attend Saturday, but I think next year I’ll have to rethink my strategy and attend at least two days of the event. I wasn’t sure what to expect, only because I had only two bands I really wanted to see; Sia and Radiohead. Everything else was just bonus, as far as I was concerned.

After getting off the ferry, we spent some time in the beer section before heading out for some music. We started off with The Virgins. I’m only slightly familiar with them, but even so, really enjoyed what I heard. I’ve definitely added them to my download list, though I’m sure most would tell me I should have done this a long time ago.

Afterwards, we headed over to Animal Collective. I didn’t spend much time at all here, because I wanted to head over to the other stage so I could get in as much Sia as I could. Which I think was the best decision I had made all day.

(Sia pictures from Music Snobbery)

Sia announced that her keyboardist is leaving the group and joining up with Beck. She promptly stated that he should take off his pants for the rest of the performance, something he’s apparently prone to do. He quickly obliged.

Also, let me say this about Sia live. She looked genuinely happy to see the crowd clapping for her, and gave an honest thank you after every song. Also, she absolutely blew me away with her vocals. I think I turned to friends at least 4 times during her performance to mouth the words ‘Holy shit’. Combine her with her fantastic band [complete with cello!], and Sia is now easily one of my favorite live acts. Ever.

From there, we went to see Kings of Leon. Again, a band that I’ve only heard a couple songs from, and a band I’m invariably going to be spending some time with in order to remedy that. I’ll be paying attention to them to see when their next life performance is taking place.

After that was The Roots, which I’m wholly embarrassed to admit I’m not familiar with NEARLY as much as I should be. Although I enjoyed what I saw from them, a few friends and I decided to head out early so we could set up camp for Radiohead.

(Radiohead pictures from Brooklyn Vegan)

This was my first time seeing Radiohead perform live, and guys, I was not disappointed. They were incredible. They performed for 2 hours, including 2 encores, and the entire time I was enthralled. Also, watching Thom Yorke dance was just as good as I was told it’d be. Crazy, uninhibited and reminiscent of Pinocchio singing that song ‘I ain’t got no strings to hold me down’. In one word: awesome.

By the time Radiohead took stage, though, I was exhausted, and ended up standing for only about 2/3 of it. Every part of my body ached from standing, dancing, walking and more standing, I had to camp out on my ass for a few of the slower songs.

I have to say, APW was pretty freaking awesome. If it weren’t for the ferry line at the end of the show [seriously, you'd think we were standing in line for free money, not a ferry ride to Manhattan], I wouldn’t have a negative thing to say about the entire show. Even the 5 beer minimum wasn’t too bad. You could only drink in designated areas anyway, so this forced me to see more music than I originally had intended rather than chilling out with $9 beer.

Next year? Mentally prepare myself for what this festival really was, a three day marathon. One day completely wiped me out, I can’t even imagine what 2 days would have done to me. I passed up a VIP pass for Sunday just so my body could heal itself. And never mind attending 3 days. I know what my body can take, and right now and for the foreseeable future, 3 days of amazing music would just exhaust me to death.

Though what a hell of a way to go out.

Not Funny

Isaac Hayes passed away yesterday [only a day after Bernie Mac], and this is what someone decided to put up on Wikipedia? I posted a screen shot, because this will mostly likely be taken down by the time anyone of you clicks through.

Not cool. Also, this is my biggest gripe with Wikipedia. A great thought for sharing information completely tarnished by the reality of jackasses with poor senses of humor.

Isaac Hayes and Bernie Mac, you’ll both be missed.

Aural Explosion Of Awesomeness

I go off about music every so often, and I’ve specifically gushed about Mates of State here. But that was awhile ago, and I find it totally appropriate to go ahead and gush again.

This past May, they released their new CD Re-Arrange Us, and I think I can say with almost 100% certainty that this is the best recording of theirs ever. Courtney, my musical enlightenment if nothing else, sent me the CD a few weeks ago, and I’ve been happily trapped within the 10 tracks since. I don’t think there’s a single song that I don’t love.

And the great news? I might be seeing them tonight at the Highline Ballroom! Making this week the most musical week of the summer, as I just saw Kanye West, N.E.R.D., and Lupe Fiasco earlier in the week, and I’m attending All Points West this coming weekend. Gosh, I have so much to write about here…

In the meantime, download Re-Arrange Us by Mates of State. Here is my current favorite song, just to get you hyped up…

05.Jigsaw – Mates of State

And if you’d like to listen to more, head on over to imeem and take a listen.

Time Waster…Thursday

[It's been a busy week, so this got a little delayed. But boy, is it worth it!]

I’m not entirely sure if this is something you’ll be able to waste time at work with, but then again, maybe you have a private office and an IT department that doesn’t block questionable content. More specifically, 5 minute preview porn videos.

It would be the biggest cop out of me to suggest to you guys to use porn as a time waster. Firstly, I’m not going to suggest to you something that you probably already do [let's be honest with one another, okay?]. Secondly, I don’t want to be wholly responsible for throwing you all into a porn spiral that could last for days. Knowing some of the people who read this blog, I’m worried there isn’t a rope strong enough to pull you out from that void.

That being said, let’s watch porn and dictate what’s happening! Porn For The Blind is, evidently, an NPO “dedicated to producing audio descriptions of sample movie clips from adult websites”. You know that it’s true because they have a .org domain.

This service is provided free of charge, and gives those who are visually impaired the opportunity to enjoy all the sites that all of you work so hard to keep out of your browser history. Aesthetically, the site is safe for work, with click-to-play audio clips of people describing sex videos. And I guess, if you just want to listen, all you have to do is put on some headphones and bam, porn.

I’m envisioning a great many excel sheet projects that have just become more tolerable.

And if you decide that you would like to volunteer your time and energy, Porn For The Blind is looking for some help recording some new clips. Go here if you’d like to find out how you can be the next narrator for videos from BangBus.com or MomsAnalAdventure.com.

Huzzah for community service!

Oh No

Bullying of the 21st century is on a global scale.