B. Dolan - "Fallen House, Sunken City"

Fallen House, Sunken City is B. Dolan's second full length album and entirely produced by anticon. producer Alias. On this album, he has appeared to have left his post-apocalyptic bomb shelter from The Failure and found that the only survivors of the devastation were corporate cutthroats and political war hawks.

From the very beginning, the album feels like an album, which you don't see much anymore in the age of artists trying to sell 99 cent iTunes singles instead of the whole record. Toward the end of the first track, "Leaving New York" Alias cuts in a sample that simply says "I too suffered for my art, now it's your turn." This sample isn't just badass, it's prophetic for the rest of the album and necessary to know to prepare yourself for the experience of listening to the album.

From the intro to "Fifty Ways to Bleed Your Customer" on, it's relentless beats, relentless flows, or both. With lyrics about selling "brand X seat belts and planned obsolescence/Clinical trial cover-up, ever crash tested" the chorus, a repeated "I get bloody," seems to be coming just as much from the shady CEOs regarding their customers as it is from Dolan himself on his CEO lyrical murderfest.

On his first single "Earthmovers" he brings home quite a few of the hip-hop industry stereotypes he twists around for himself on this album. Now, "Earthmovers" doesn't address these issues, nor do any of the other tracks, but throughout the album you'll frequently get a sense of deja vu. The phrase "I get bloody" from the aforementioned "Fifty Ways..." sounds a bit too much like "I get money" to listen to Drake's or 50 Cent's songs comfortably again. The lyrics "West side, bail it out/South side, bail it out/East side, bail it out" at the end of "Economy of Words" are immediately reminiscent of UNK's "Walk It Out". "The Hunter" has some synth and swinging beats that sounds like everyone in old g-funk died, went to Hell, and became zombies. On "Earthmovers" the rhythm sounds like it would be a club banger, if something wasn't slightly off about it. And you realize that's the point when you hear a truck's reverse signal, then Dolan say "back that thang up".



By far, the best albums come in the latter half of the album. "Marvin" is simply an ode to Marvin Gaye. Even with all of his vitriol, quick raps, and raging beats, "Marvin" brings home the emotion unlike anything else on the album. That's not to say the other songs are bad, it's just that this one is better. You can almost see Dolan in the studio, his jaw becoming limp and his eyes hitting the floor introspectively, and realizing something about himself every time he quietly says "Marvin was left with a hole in his chest," barely articulating the last word.

And, to be frank, "Border Crossing" is my shit. I love that fucking song. The beat sounds like a marching band in an empty brick room, and that's because it is. The chorus, "caught up at the border of the living and the dead" and the beat make you feel like your funeral is taking place on the river Styx, Dolan is eulogizing, and Alias is giving you a military funeral from Hell. It's the most crowded I've ever felt desolation.

Between reptile men ("Reptilian Agenda"), vampire hunting ("The Hunter"), and sex workers ("Body of Work"), there's rarely a chance to breathe, especially when every silent moment on the album feels less like a reprieve and more like Dolan is just reloading.

The album as a whole seems to sway heavily between breathtaking and suffocating. As much as the album seems to be needed to be taken in one dose, it's hard to sit there and take the fifty minutes straight to the head. I don't know if that's because of the money- and single-fixated artists that I mentioned before, or if it's because it's simply TOO relentless (a phrase that, until now, I've only used for death metal albums that think "hard" means "tuned lower and played louder"). But unlike those death metal albums, by the end, you feel like the endurance challenge that is Fallen House, Sunken City was worth it in the same way that winning a football game is. You may get pummeled on the way to the end, but that feeling lets you know that you did something after it's all said and done. From there on out, you can sit back and watch the game's highlight reel.


Your tour guide to the apocalypse.

Lindsay Lohan Might Sue Me

Well, it seems that if Lindsay Lohan coked up that A Beautiful Mind-style thinking cap of hers and decided to sue e-Trade for using her name in an ad.


Her "thinking cap" is made of tin foil (for the satellites) dipped in linseed oil (to keep the demons at bay).

I don't mean using "Lindsay Lohan" and making explicit reference to her like I just did three times, but using the name "Lindsay". The line in question is "And that milkaholic Lindsay wasn't over?"

Now, if the line was "And that milkaholic Moon Unit Zappa wasn't over?" then we would definitely be talking about Moon Unit Zappa.

Instead of Moon Unit Zappa, slap these names in that sentence and you're good to get sued too!:
Moxie CrimeFighter Jilette
Fifi-Trixibelle Geldolf
Pilot Inspekter Lee
Dweezil Zappa
Kal-El Cage
Sage Moonblood Stallone
Kyd Duchovny
Destry Speilberg


But, really... Lindsay isn't the most popular name in the United States. It's like the 200th. In the past decade alone, over 20,000 people have been named Lindsay. Just Wiki search the name Lindsay and here's some names that pop up: Lindsay Shaw, Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Cardinale, Lindsey Buckingham, Lindsey Wagner, Lindsay Taylor, and Lindsay Price.

Next she'll probably end up suing the band Park for their song "Lindsay" or Y-O-U for "LA Lindsay" (she did live in L.A. and her name is Lindsay, so, in the words of a great sportscaster "boom goes the dynamite... *awkward pause*... *fiddles with paper*... *tears up at flashes of sportscasting career in flames*").


Not Lindsay related. This video is not making fun of Lindsay Lohan in any way, shape or form. Any similarity to Lindsay Lohan, perceived or otherwise, is coincidental.

Here is a booking photo of Lindsay Lohan when she went to jail for drunk driving and cocaine, which I'm going to post here because, to the best of my knowledge, I can't get sued for since it's true:

The Oscars Are Tonight

I predict Avatar is going to get "Best Picture" and James Cameron is going to go up and pretend he made a good movie with a great story. Honestly, if the movie had come out in April 2009, the charm would have worn off and he wouldn't be a contender for anything except "Best Visual Effects" (which, for his innovations in motion capture, he deserves).

I mean, how can you get "Best Picture" without having "Best Actor/Actress" or "Best Writing"? Of course a good score (which it was undeservedly nominated for) helps. Of course all of these things enhance movies. Great sound editing, mixing, effects, and all that can enhance movies. But, really, when an editor has to splice together mediocre acting (which Avatar had in spades), a shitty script, and a shitty, stolen, unoriginal story, it's still makes the movie as a whole bad.

Let me put it this way, no matter if you had God itself editing Gigli, Plan 9 From Outer Space, or whatever Blue Collar Comedy fronted movie about being American they feel like putting out this week, you'd still come out with a gloriously edited shitty movie.

The movies that stand up as truly great are movies like Rear Window, Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Dr. Strangelove, or It's A Wonderful Life. All of these movies had sparse visual effects and editing magic. In particular Pulp Fiction had a particularly bad editing moment that I can pull off the top of my head, but was a good film overall. Avatar will not hold that candle. "You should have seen it in 3D" will last until someone makes something prettier. We don't watch The Matrix for visual effects anymore. Ben Hur won for "Best Cinematography" and the most iconic scene in the film is largely based on that cinematography, but could that hold a candle to what movie makers are able to do now, with films like Saving Private Ryan, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or The Dark Knight? No. Against those movies, Ben Hur would lose. But that's not why it stuck around.

Now, am I saying that cinematography, art direction, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing, and visual effects are useless in film and shouldn't be recognized? No. But all of those things alone will not make a great film. Certainly, they can break your film if executed poorly. They can also make your movie resonate with greater effect (like when Harvey Dent is holding Gordon's child at gunpoint in The Dark Knight, the music has always made the scene hit harder for me). But, for fuck's sake, that's not what makes a movie truly great. Without a story, acting, and directing, you have shit. And honestly, if you're actors aren't at the top of their game, I can't say that you have done your job as a director. I'd never seen Sam Worthington before, so that's all well and good, but I've seen Sigourney Weaver do better. And, so, as a director, I can't say James Cameron did something that he should be awarded for if he's not inspiring great things from a good actor like Mrs. Weaver.

To sum all this up, I'll just say this is my part 2 of a three part "fuck you" fest about Avatar. I hope that anything but Avatar and Blind Side win Best Picture.