0.45:1

Despite my upbringing and the often true stereotype of Jewish cheapness, I have never been a particularly frugal person. I enjoy spending money on fine goods. I am rarely one to make a fuss over the payment of a split bill amongst friends. I consider myself to be a pretty good tipper (especially now since I work in the service industry). Granted, it pains me to waste money–especially in regards to food and alcohol. No matter how full I am I will finish the last few bites of that burger; no matter how drunk I am I will down the last half of that sugary bottle of 50. Regardless, I am no cheapie. Be that as it may, there is one specific cottony item that I will forever be cheap about: socks.

Yes, loyal reader(s), I pride myself on being a bargain sock shopper. My philosophy regarding the purchase of socks forgoes any sort of dialectic methods and relies heavily on mathematical principles. You see, I am most pleased when I can reach a specific sock to dollar ratio, the coveted 1:1.

Now, at this point I should hope you are questioning why you have spent the last few minutes of your life reading a young man's musings on socks. Rather, I hope you are questioning such an act. Otherwise I fear for your priorities and social life.

As I now feel the mild stirring of guilt in my stomach for having briefly distracted you from your Farmville, I will make a quick ascension to the peak of this post: I recently reached a monumental sock to dollar ratio, a ratio so unfathomable it took me minutes to realize the gravity of my discovery. Yes, I achieved a ratio of 0.45:1. I will give you a moment to allow this to sink in.

Okay, back to Farmville.

An open letter to Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene

Kevin,

Truth be told, I have never been too keen on Broken Social Scene (nor am I too keen on cute rhyming triplets). I have always had a like/hate relationship with so-called indie rock, which in itself has been disproportionate and unfair: My negative feelings have always been far stronger than my positive ones. For example, I enjoy Metric's Live It Out, nearly from start to finish. On that note, I cannot even listen to a Stars album without wishing Quebec would secede from Canada and bring Montreal with it, simply so there can be a more official, internationally recognized barrier separating myself and the band (I hear slabs of concrete are great for this and have the potential to be a lucrative entry into the nic-nac market).

That being said, the majority of what is to follow in this letter has less to do with the music you and your cohorts have made under the Broken Social Scene umbrella and more to do with something I'd like to call "racing a retired horse."

First, allow me to explain this analogy I just coined:

Arguably, horses do not posses conscious minds. Thus, they are ultimately unaware that they may be past their prime and ready to move on to the green pastures of retirement. Whilst basking in this retirement, if an unsavoury character was to dangle a carrot before the aged horse, drawing it into a race of sorts, said horse would most likely gallop forth disregarding its retirement. Why? Because, as I just explained, horses do not posses conscious minds. Therefore, an horse could not possibly know that it is in retirement.

Kevin, I sincerely hope you follow this analogy and can use the rudimentary logic most humans posses to see how it applies to Broken Social Scene.

Fine, I'll just fucking spell it out: BSS had their peak. You conquered indie rock. You are the definitive Canadian band of the 00's. You created a scene, a specific sound, a tightly-knit association of musicians. But please, I beg of you, stop the madness. Stop filling this balloon with jangly indie rock helium, otherwise it is going to burst and spew tongue-in-cheek lyrics upon the land!

The release of Forgiveness Rock Record and companion EP Lo-Fi For The Dividing Nights are not what the music world needs right now. Ten years ago, yes. I thought you had already passed the torch with your protege-signing of Still Life Still to Arts&Crafts. I was under the assumption that Still Life Still was the Vader to BSS's Emperor. However, based on the refusal of BSS to dignifiedly fade away, it would appear that begun this clone war has.

Thank you for putting Toronto on the map musically. Thank you for putting out a couple of the quintessential indie rock albums of the 00's. Thank you for subduing that she-devil Feist. Now, kindly fuck off.

Yours,

This Guy.

Yes wave!

This scrumptious little band of cupcake-heads recently called it quits to take the admirable and self-fulfilling route of going back to school, like some sort of bad Adam Sandler film (yes, redundant).

I'll spare you the intricate Wikipeadia-approved details and sum up Mika Miko in this short list:

• From Los Angeles
• Part of The Smell collective
• A few releases on No Age's Post Present Medium
• Are kick-ass riot girrrrrrrls
• Were not as good as I was expecting last year at NxNe

Their video for "Business Cats" begins as one of the worst high school camcorder-shot projects possible, then becomes a fine bit of stop motion, then becomes a somewhat standard rock and or roll video. Either way, fun stuff!

We Be Xuxa

C.Y.S.L.A.B.F.

While this blog is on indefinite hiatus, not unlike the jivers in the Blink-182 ensemble once claimed to be, why not follow this delightful blog like random-access biblical protocol? We all could use a fairly uninformative series of reviews of Toronto nachos. Thanks, guy.