Reading that Richard Wilbur post a little ways down the page, I realize that recently I've been anticipating people's word choice. Like when someone pauses for a second to pick their word, and I think of one that would fit, they almost ALWAYS end up saying what I thought. Normally, this wouldn't be that weird, but it's been really consistent, even with rarely-used words.

Yes this blog has atrophied. No I'm not using my time in better ways, just different ones. Yes I made it through fall semester on precious little sleep. No I did not lose sleep because I was working. Yes I am psyched to go to South Africa next month and have the time of my life. No I will not get stabbed there. Yes all my year-end performances were solid. No I'm not psyched for the last semester ever of college. Yes I just slammed my finger in the bathroom door.

The next time someone offers me trick gum and I go for a stick and the little metal spring snaps my finger, I think I just won't react except to take the bit of cardboard masquerading as gum, metal spring and all, and start chewing it like I didn't notice it was a gag. That would certainly get a reaction. Though I will have to wait a long while, I imagine, before anyone tries to play that trick on me again.

One midnight during finals we had a big foursquare game with two courts. I don't think I need to tell you it kicked ass.

I'm going to quit this post and try to get some real writing done. Or make excuses not to.

All you need to know is that recently I've been busier than a Vietnamese hooker in 1968.

Other things you might want to know:

1. When I get ball sweat it smells like semen. I think this is universal.

2. People often think I'm Jewish. 20% of those people made the mistake when they saw that I have no foreskin (I was born without one (not really (well actually, there'd be no way of knowing (for me, anyway, I'm sure my parents know)))).

3. I'm all for returning to a state of nature.

4. I'm only kind of embarassed about how much scrotal and penile content are in the first two points (and this point, too).

When I think back on how many of my fondest memories happened in a bowling alley, I think, man, my life must have sucked if most of my happiest memories took place in a bowling alley.

Everyone knows that you can match Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" up with "The Wizard of Oz." What I want to know is more like: what band is going to do the album that matches up with "Snakes on a Plane"? Because, hey, do it.

Yesterday I saw Richard Wilbur, big-time poet of the universe, give a reading. He was actually pretty funny for an 80-something guy, and read a poem inspired by Bernini's statue of St. Theresa that the church congregation (yeah I had to sit through some churchy crap) probably thought was pretty innocent and sanitized. But the statue in question, if you've ever seen it, is clearly in the throes of a toe-curling orgasm, and the poem makes that much clear...he says something like, "the sweet O of ecstasy" somewhere in there and toes the line between sexual pleasure/religious ecstasy. Also, he introduced another poem by saying that it first depicts three sets of lovers who part ways, followed by a depiction of himself and his wife, who did not part. I was thinking, "Smug, Richard. Really smug." And then he says, "I hope this doesn't read as smugness." So in addition to being funny, he also read my mind. And then he read a poem about a mind reader. Spooky.

Reading period draws to a close and people cry on account of all the work they've been ignoring since Mountain Day. The stereotypically gorgeous New England fall weekend didn't help matters at all. I predict that at least twenty percent of campus will OD on some study-aid stimulant tonight...and cocaine probably counts.

The more I complain about school slipping by too fast, the more I miss (because I'm so busy complaining).

The bushwhacking team made it up to Stony Ledge on Friday after many good men were lost to the mountain's wrath, by which I mean incompetent leadership. They did not die in vain, because I reached the summit and enjoyed cider, and that's all those unfortunate souls really wanted anyway: for me to have cider.

Here's my most recent article for the Williams Record, if I piqued your interest with a description of it, ever.



Ridin’ the Tide of Public Opinion:
Secular Worship and Disposable Idols on the Dance Floor

By Miles Klee

The act of “ridin’ dirty” is defined several dozen times over on the user-edited UrbanDictionary.com, and though many of these amateur lexicographical entries pertain to illicit substances, firearms, sex, scatology, stolen cars, and even automobile insurance, no one discussion of its semantics or usage example captures the linguistic force of the term as uttered by one Chamillionaire in his single, “Ridin’,” the summer of 2006’s zeitgeist compressed into one song.
The Sound of Revenge, Chamillionaire’s debut album, didn’t fare too poorly either, easily selling a million and a half copies. The music video for “Ridin’” beat out 50 Cent for MTV’s Best Rap Video of 2006, which means that a good chunk of his clamoring fans fall squarely inside the mainstream music scene. His MySpace page has been accessed by four million viewers. But the most telling phenomenon of all is also the weirdest: according to his website, Chamillionaire is the first ringtone artist to be RIAA certified triple platinum, and “Ridin’” is the single best-selling mastertone of all time.
Just what the hell is happening here? Certainly “Ridin’” is not the best song of its kind to come out this year, at least not going by raw aesthetics, and Chamillionaire is not the most talented rapper around—he gets schooled when Krayzie Bone takes a guest verse—so why is it that most Williams students on campus over the summer were literally unable to hang out without putting on a technically mediocre song about things that get covered ad infinitum in hip-hop (i.e. guns, weed, cars, the Houston police department)?
Like any snarky music critic I wanted to develop theory that could explain the success of “Ridin’” and songs like it. You know the type: a song that, when some invisible threshold is crossed by the social body of our college, becomes a force to be reckoned with, is heard at every party, gets played endlessly on road trips, suddenly pervades to the point of oversaturation (much to the chagrin of the handful of people who aren’t fans), then abruptly falls of the radar, never to return. They are profound little anthropological artifacts, if you think about it, highly consumable, utterly disposable residues of an absurdly exact moment. And the more I examined at them, the more complex they became. But, for starters, here’s what they seem to all have in common, and if you ever want a high-selling single, consider this a basic recipe:
One: Less Is More. “Ridin’” has, like, one synthesizer riff. For the whole song. Eric Prydz’s “Call On Me,” has one lyric. The song has to be reductive, even to the point of rendering it nonsensical. This seems crucial for its infectious quality; if you know the words and melody by heart on the first listen, the odds are a lot higher that you’ll be hooked right away. These songs don’t shy away from just saying simple words that have no narrative value, either. The chorus of “Hey Ya!” comes to mind, or even more appropriately, the part where Andre 3000 goes, “You think you’ve got it / Oh, you think you’ve got it / But got it just don’t get it / ‘Til there’s nothing at all.” Circumventing meaning is never a bad bet.
Two: Have A Sense of Humor, or Failing That, a Funny Seriousness. These songs are social relics. You’ll find that people don’t generally listen to Chamillionaire alone, unless they’re trying to learn the verses for some reason. It’s a group activity, one that gains the momentum it needs with a bigger audience. The thing about audiences is, they love to be in on a joke, whether it’s intentional (see The Darkness’ “I Believe In A Thing Called Love,” Tenacious D’s “Tribute”) or not so deliberate (and now we’re back to Chamillionaire). If the irony or comic value of the song is strong enough, you get people craving it in repetition. As Larry Dworkin ’07 pointed out to me when I told him the gist of this article, people didn’t “sit in a room in Agard listening to nothing but [Gunther and the Sunshine Girls’ ‘Ding Dong Song (You Touch My Tra-La-La)’] for four hours for nothing.” Hard to argue with empirical data like that.
Three: Stick An Easy-To-Remember and Novel Catchphrase In There. Pretty self-explanatory. This always works, especially if it’s a crass call-and-response. I defy you to find me one person over the age of sixteen in this country who doesn’t know the reply to “It’s getting hot in here…” even if they have no idea who this so-called “Nelly” is.
Four: It Can’t Be Too Good To Throw Away. If you were to name one song produced by hip-hop artists in the last year that was in direct competition with “Ridin’” this summer, it would be Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” the result of a collaboration between two geniuses—Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse—that is deserving of all the hyperbolic critical approval it got. And while there was a good chance you would hear “Crazy” wherever you went, it simply was not the common denominator or de facto anthem that “Ridin’” was. This relates to the disposability factor. If a song of superior quality becomes socially hallowed to the point of total ubiquity, we are conflicted in our simultaneous desire to move on and admire the piece. “Hey Ya!” was a bit too clever for its own good in that respect, and as a result it went through an awkward decline rather than the binary transition from “it” song to a vague memory all at once. People have ADD to soothe, and the two-month lifespan of these songs is evidence of that.
What we have, then, is a piece of art narcotic in its addictiveness and neo-tribalist in its community bond-making. I don’t think I’m overstating the religiosity these songs spur when I say there is something of a ritualistic ecstasy in their being danced and sung to over and over again. If the name of such a song is dropped in conversation and one person is uninitiated to it, others will take pains to induct him or her into its cult: “You’ve never heard it? Okay, well we’re going to listen to it right this second.” Every moment counts when the flare-up in the populace’s music consciousness lasts a few fleeting weeks, because by the time Weird Al Yankovic parodies it and an a cappella group performs it, you know it’s on the way out. You go on the lookout for the next patently ridiculous single to deify. When discovered, it moves like wildfire, every convert spreading the word until it too inevitably collapses under its own weight. So enjoy the dirty ride while you can.