From 20×20, a storybook episode about female roles in society. Maggie is voiced by Jodie Foster:

My favorite kindergarten story is about playing with blocks. Ask me in person sometime, it involves Machiavelli.

In case y’all don’t pay attention to basketball, here’s Lebron’s sick jumper from last night’s game. No, it’s not faked. Yes, it’s a buzzer beater too.

That’s two steps past half court. He catches his double-team totally off-guard. Believe: Lebron is a threat everwhere.

The Cavs are crushing it. They’re winning playoff games by like 20 point spreads, and it’s mostly James.

This Summer is Hip Hop season. Companies are stacking releases, as Pac once said, “in fear of a wipeout in retail interchart movement.”

DX has a list, but here are my most anticipated:

May 5: The New South – Greg Street & Bubba Sparxx

The disc ends a three year hiatus for Sparxx. Here’s his classic Southern track, Deliverance:

May 12: Fast Life – Paul Wall

Ends a two year hiatus for Wall, and he claims this album will be deeper than his previous ones. Wall’s mostly known for being featured in Nelly’s Grillz:

May 19: Back On My B.S. – Busta Rhymes

Ends a three year hiatus. Busta, the Manson of Hip Hop, has lightning flow. If you watch no other video in this post watch this one:

May 19: Blackout 2 – Method & Red

I’ve never really gotten into the Wu, save Rza the superproducer’s soundtrack for Afro Samurai. Blackout 2 ends a ten year hiatus for Method and Red though. Probably worth seeing what a decade in the lab produces.

Here’s Da Rockwilder, one of the singles from Blackout! that drove it to platinum cert in the Great White North. Statistically speaking, Canadians love Method and Red:

May 19: Relapse – Eminem

Ends a five-year hiatus for Em. He and Dre recorded so much material they’ll be releasing a second disc later this year.

The general rule in hip hop is that when you combine a writer/lyricist of Eminem’s calibre with a producer like Dre it’ll be an instant classic. Tough hype to live up to. Em’s apparently spent the last couple of years addicted to various drugs, struggling with Proof’s shoot-out death, and dealing with the failure of his second marriage to the infamous Kim Scott. This album is supposed to be the outlet for all that, and I wanna hear it.

Here’s the radio single, in fine Em tradition a diss track railing against popular culture:

May 19: Lowdown: Suite 2: The Box – Moka Only

Victoria’s own (well, Langford’s own) M-O-K-A-O-N-L-Y, who really can’t tell you why he’s flowing so fly.

Moka’s best known for his collabs with the Vic/Van Battleaxe Warriors — The Swollen Members — with Victoria’s Nelly Furtado, and for destroying his career in fits of narcissistic rage. His iconic appearance, to me, were his four bars on Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, from T.Dot’s LEN, a classic late-90s party track.

If you listen to two tracks in this post, this should be the second. It’s 100% pure maple earup:

May 19: Strange Journey Volume One – Cunninlynguists

End of a two-year hiatus. Here’s the single, Never Come Down, about getting too high from eating pot brownies.

We’ve all been there. The key is to take a multi-vitamin, drink a big glass of water, take a couple deep breaths, and chill out. It’s impossible to get “too high” from weed, you’re just panicking.

I dig the shout-out to Google Earth:

There’s more great music hitting the street in June, including a new Mighty Mos Def*. But we’ll cross that fade when we come to it.

Note to the record labels: You made it so hard for me to find embeddable copies of these songs — so hard for me to make your music more popular — that I’m not going to pay for any of it. You took your money in the form of my time, you’re lucky I don’t send you a bill. To our readers: If you aren’t set up for infinite free music yet, get µTorrent and visit TPB. Enjoy responsibly.

* I used to think I liked Mos Def because he was talented. It turns out I like him because I’m genetically predisposed.

During this, the holiest of seasons, Dave has resurrected Red Dwarf for a run of four episodes:

First two are out here, or I suppose you could wait for next year’s PBS pledge drive?

I am having an awful fucking day, insomnia melting into uncontrolled anxiety and compulsion.

Thirty-hour circadians are turning me into a chattering, clicking mystic. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die. The Breath moves upon The Waters.

On that note, here’s pictures of birds, fish, and the Leviathan dancing in The Great Below:

That’s not CG, that’s a BBC-funded camera beating the SHIT out of Canada’s budget-ass nature documentaries. Fuck you, Harper — that shot should have been ours.

I’ve been watching the Zeitgeist films (or as they self-identify, “The Zeitgeist Movement”).

The first film is heavy on conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods that caricature legitimate dissent — I recommend not watching it. It’s value to me lay in putting a name to a face, Bill Hicks, Prophet Most High:

The second film, aside from a couple of references back to the first one, is a lot better. When I drop truth bombs like, “the fractional-reserve banking system makes us all capitalist oppressors of each other“, or, “employment is slavery“, I kinda just assume you all share my background in finance and economics (or that you’re good at Wikipedia) and that it doesn’t come off as a maladjusted rant.

The first hour of the second film, Zeitgeist Addendum, explains what I mean in pretty graphs, well-defined lay terminology, and rampant mindfuck paranoia. The second hour goes into Utopian technological post-scarcity economics. Watch the film free off Google video; or head through the link, download it, and watch it big.

The Big Sleep is a Bogart / Bacall movie from the end of WWII. Bogart is 44 to Bacall’s striking 20.

Filmed in 1945 for release in 1946, wartime giveaways are all the men calling each other “soldier” and the fact the movie is absolutely stuffed with women, to the point of being campy (esp. the scene in the taxi). The sex ratio is way off because all the men are otherwise occupied fighting The Axis, leaving Bogey alone with the ladies.

The movie’s about changing sex roles too. There are two versions, partly because Bacall had a couple of lines about horse racing and saddles (pictured above) added to sex-up her character. Roger Ebert says this version is a qualitatively different film — a “Hollywood” film — an example of a studio cut improving a director’s cut. Somehow I don’t trust that. I’d like to see the restored Noir version, but it’s hard to pirate.

It’s one of those movies whose plot was so complex, so edited, it became Gordian. You’re not supposed to understand the film — no one involved in making it did. It’s one of those rare, great mystery works that is actually mysterious.

It’s Kaufman, of course you should see it.

The thing to notice when watching it is the constant confusion; the inability to communicate, especially in repetition; and the metonyms. It’s about authenticity and absurdity, and if you’re a little twisted it’s very funny. Here’s a quick summary:

Synecdoche is full of metonymy, get it?

No, not Vonnegut: Rage.

There’s no better way to start a self-employed day.