Electro-shock-therapy.

- Halloween Jump-Offs: Two Halloween leap-offs this weekend. Bo and I are DJing at the soon-to-be-epic Philly party Child's Play with Low Budget, Steve Bloodbath, and our White T compatriot Dan The Swede. Remember: it's BYOB, so come get rowdy with us. Then, on Saturday night, we're rocking the East Village at CURL. Free Vodka from 10-11 and no cover and just us smashin' mugs with that electroshocktherapy. Come through!

- Slightly Nerdy to Sincerely Strange: Like woah.

- Feast or Famine: Here's some more good press for Reef’s new album over at RapReviews.com. Reviewer agrees with me that "Look at the Sun" shoulda been a single! Gyeah!

- Can I Kick It?: You go, girl! This girl was homecoming Queen AND the football team’s kicker. If I’m not mistaken, Mike Vanderjagt is the only other kicker that can claim to be homecoming Queen and his highschool football team’s kicker.

- Stay At Home Mom On Strike: I think this lady is over-estimating how much leverage she has. She certainly has a better job than I do, though.

- BDSM Sheriff: Dude, this dude is the scariest human ever.

- Sudden Impact: Remember Sudden Impact? Don’t worry, me neither… that is, until I clicked this link and it all came rushing back to me in a flurry. If you click one link of mine today, make sure it’s that one.

- Janet Jackson's got a seed?: Apparently, Janet's got an 18-year-old daughter with James DeBarge.

- Donnie Darko: My dude R*b*rt/Icarus from the shrimp broke down the “Donnia Darko is great” phenomenon on a messageboard recently. I’m posting it because it’s pretty hilarious:

There is a certain breed of hetero, Yankee, cracker of the male persuasion who thinks himself smarter than the average person -- his tastes more refined, his penchant to derive 'meaning' more pronounced. Let’s call this young man Blake. This person is typically between the ages of 17 and 23. He's not particularly well-read (though he thinks he is because he's read Invisible Monsters AND Survivor ). His knowledge of music consists almost entirely of the recent Pitchforkmedia canon and maybe the Velvet Underground. If he likes rap at all, his favorite artist is probably Aesop Rock. And when it comes to film, impossible weak, borderline offensive, shit like Garden State is his favorite shit. In fact, the main character of Garden State is his patron saint. The character's disenchantment with suburban cracker culture resonates with our hypothetical young man. Like the Garden State guy, this kid can't actually leave suburban cracker culture behind, cultivating a distinct personality, considering the world, music, film, on radically different terms. That would involve far too much work for our young man, who'd rather fake it than make it. Instead, Blake keeps his parents' culture at arms length, arrogantly holding his nose. His old friends and family tolerate him because they know he hasn't gone nearly as far as he thinks he has and that he'll eventually come home to roost.

This kid loooves Donnie Darko. Why? Not because it's such a great movie -- it's good, but that's almost irrelevent. But:

1) The main character is another disenchanted suburban white boy, it reminds him of all his other favorite films (think Wes Anderson) and his favorite topic (i.e. himself).

2) Donnie Darko, like Blake, isn't just disenchanted with suburban cracker life (like, say, a character in a Todd Solondz film), he's discovered a way out. This works for Blake in several ways:

3) Donnie's path out of suburban crackerdom is exclusive to him. Only he can see it. He is the fucking unique butterfly superhero that all the Blakes of the world think/wish they are.

4) Donnie's path out of suburban crackerdom is couched in metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Blake loves this shit. He might've read a book about chaos theory or some shit like that in his life. It's important, though, that the way out is mystical but not spiritual. Blake is a militant believer in science. Had this mystical mumbo-jumbo been instead religious mumbo-jumbo, Blake would certainly think less of the film. The film is set out to mock Swayze's mystical, non-scientific mumbo-jumbo but asks us to take Donnie's scientific mumbo-jumbo seriously.

5) The casting of the film was brilliant. I've known several Blakes in my life and almost all of them once had a thing for Drew Barrymore. Drew Barrymore, in her prime, was unlike anything else Blake has ever known. She was a gorgeous Hollywood star but she was also an unpredictable alternachick. In Blake's dream, accessible. Sorta like Fiona Apple but less self-consciously intellectual. And Patrick Swayze as a child molester? The Swayze of Blake's youth was a pretty-boy badass ladykilling dancing machine. Blake loves watching guys like that go down.

God damn the dude is killing it!

-e