A YouTube artist you should check out if you like cute female Canadians

So, from what I can tell, midnightfirefly14 is girl from Canada named Sam, and she has a sister named Tiff. Sam has posted some sugary-sweet acoustic covers of popular tracks (even "Umbrella," ella, ella, aye, aye, aye) featuring her and her sister. Sam and Tiff are very cute, pretty talented, and utterly young. It seems Sam and Tiff have a bright future, but then again their nation does have universal healthcare, and we all know how awful that is. Check out their nice cover of "Sweet Surrender" below.



Sam has also posted original songs as well. Link is below.

http://www.youtube.com/user/midnightfirefly14

Supporting artists from everywhere with Gawker Artists

You may notice that there is now a Gawker Artists banner on the side bar to the right (scroll down a bit if you can't see it). The Lit Department is now an exhibitor for Gawker Artists, which is tres chic. This is how Gawker Artists describes what they do:

Gawker Artists promotes the works of artists of all mediums. Participating artists receive free profile pages and a select group have their images published on Gawker Media titles. When you spot one of these images, click on it to read about the artist or browse our collection by artist name, medium or location.

So, if you see a piece of art you like displayed on the Gawker Artist banner, click on it! Support a young, starving, attractive, heart-broken, and possibly depressed artist out there somewhere on the interwebs. All proceeds go to the artists.

P.S. Look, we are on gawker.com, sort of.

Doogie does DANGER!

I have but one directive... Get thee to Hulu.com and watch this piece of sheer genius, otherwise known as Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.




I won't give you much to go on, except: Doogie Howser + Joss Whedon + slightly blatant but ultimately forgiveable iPhone product placement = AWESOME.

That is all.

YouTube ukulele goddesses

One of the coolest things about YouTube (besides the bloopers from The Office) is the multitude of singer/songwriters that post original work and covers. This post is dedicated to my favorite female ukulele songstresses (now THAT is a random group of people to discuss in any depth) of YouTube. And yes, they tend to be on the adorable side.
Julia Nunes, http://www.youtube.com/user/jaaaaaaa

Julia Nunes rocks the ukulele, and has quite the collection of fun/folky covers. Her original stuff isn't half-bad either, but her main appeal seems to be the quirkyness of covering pop songs on the ukulele accompanied with her earnest and sweet vocals. It seems she just finished an album, and she is selling it through snail mail, which is both awesomely old-school and silly.
Clara Bell, http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaraBelleMusic

I'm not going to lie, Clara is on the list because she is simply gorgeous, stunningly so. She has a very sweet voice, even if her performances are sometimes as energetic as a sloth on Xanax.

Sweetafton23, http://www.youtube.com/user/sweetafton23


Sweetafton23, also known as Molly Lewis, wins the award for the girl I would most like to have a beer with. Her original song about the crazy female diaper-wearing (allegedly) astronaut is brilliantly funny (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrUwqc0sF7U).

Even sweatpants can see I am no Hunter S. Thompson

I suppose the first rule of responsible journalism is not to get drunk when covering a story. Luckily I am neither responsible, nor am I a journalist.

Last night I went to a show at Marilyn's on K in Sacramento and proceeded to drink heavily, stopping only briefly to scribble barely legible notes on the back of show flyers. From what I can tell, a three-piece band from Modesto called Sapo Sueño played, and they were well-rehearsed and fairly tight. My notes include the phrases high school rock, Radiohead-esque, voice not suited for metal, and playing too hard for their britches. A friend of mine saw my notes, and said I was being too critical. At this point, I have no clue.

Next up was The Dirty Feet (self-described as Pink Floyd meets Tool). Great sound, nice vocals, but I was distracted trying to figure out why the bassist was wearing sweatpants. I guess when you rock that hard, comfort comes first.

Then came A New Hope, and I really enjoyed the show. They pull off the live hip hop thing very well, and the funk-slanted backing meshed with some nerdcore-ish mic skills make for an interesting sound. Oh, and another pair of sweatpants showed up, this time rocked by A New Hope MC, Prozak. It really was a banner night for elastic waistbands. Pseudo-journalistic bit: Prozak cites influence from The Pharcyde and The Fat Boys. Word.

Sex Rat also played, but at that point I was outside speaking in tongues. It may have been the first time anyone has gotten genuinely blitzed off Michelob Ultra. Band links below.

http://www.myspace.com/saposueno
http://www.myspace.com/thedirtyfeetband
http://www.myspace.com/anewhopecrew
http://www.sexrat.net/

Fun with domain names

So, every self-respecting blog needs a catchy domain name. Brave China-tackling Carly suggested going with litdept.com, and I agreed. Sadly, some prick out there in the interwebs owns that name, and isn't using it for shit. On top of that, that owner of litdept.com is auctioning it off. Minimum bid: $99. Fuck.

Anyway, thelitdept.com wasn't taken, so I grabbed it. Hooray! The Lit Department now has a proper domain name of its own, even if it's heavy one demonstrative adjective.

http://www.thelitdept.com/

Yeah, that wasn't so bad to type.

I admit I wasn't sure how to classify the word the. So, after some intimate time with Google, I found the below page.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002974.html

I've never thought reading about the word the would be so interesting, but then again I was an English major.

Be brave, bold Dean

Dean Haakenson is the heart of Be Brave Bold Robot, which is very appropriate because he may very well be the human personification of love. If you've seen him play live then you know that Dean lays it all on the very sweaty line every time he picks up his guitar and gets behind the microphone. There's nothing artificial there, and there's nothing artificial on the Be Brave Bold Robot self-titled release either. It's a punk-folk-rock-soul collision echoing Elliot Smith, Counting Crows, and whoever it was that sang Puff the Magic Dragon (Peter, Paul & Mary). Lyrics are everywhere, sometimes belted out, sometimes delivered as stilted half-raps, and they are worth listening to. If you don't know Dean Haakenson before you listen to this record, you will after. Melodically, this album does nod occasionally to pop sensibilities (you may even hear a chorus or two or three), but it never approaches Mayer-esque song construction, which from my point of view is a good thing. Fear not though, there is always a beat to dance to.

Dean is joined on the album at various points by a varied cast of characters, including Matty Gerkin (who also adds some electric guitar) and Thomas Minnick on bass, Andrew Morrin on drums, Rocky Rupple and Heather Phillips with backing vocals, Eric Talley on cello, Jeremy Pagan on lead guitar, John Bellizia on banjo, and Alisha Jurick on clarinet. All in all, the record is a product of love, and love seems to make everything okay. You don't often find a banjo, vibraphone, cello, stand-up bass, and clarinet all comfortably nestled on the same record, but they recline well here.

Visit http://www.myspace.com/bebraveboldrobot to buy the album and see show dates.

Off-off topic, but of concern...

Though I realize the focus of this blog is arts and music, the only thing on my mind this week is China. And to be fair, this issue hits on something extremely important to any form of art: freedom of expression.

When the Olympics kicked off last week in Beijing, over 840 million Chinese tuned in to watch the opening ceremonies on CCTV. Compare that with 34 million in the U.S.—still the largest audience of any non-U.S. held Olympics opening ceremony. Global viewership was estimated to be in the billions. Yet, while the world watched the now infamous 9-year-old Lin Miaoke lip sync the “Ode to the Motherland,” there were many people who either chose to boycott the ceremony (me included), or were unable to watch because they sat in a Chinese prison, jailed for their attempt to protest the games or speak out for Tibet.

Since Beijing was granted the Olympics in 2001, China has spent billions to make the 2008 Olympics spectacular. The Birds Nest – their Olympic stadium – is a magnificent piece of architecture to be sure. But at whose expense has the massive redevelopment of Beijing taken place? Earlier this week, two elderly women who were relocated as part of the redeveloped filed for a permit to protest at the games because they assert that they were never compensated--as promised by the Chinese government--for their relocation. Instead of being granted the right to protest in one of the pre-designated protest areas set up by the government to limit disruption during the games, however, the women were sentenced to a year in a Chinese labor camp for “disturbing public order,” according to the South African Times.

Since the Olympics began on August 8, over 70 applications for protest permits have been reviewed by the Chinese government, but not one had been approved. To the impartial observer it seems that this application process is a convenient way for the government to know who is planning to speak out, and to quickly arrest them before they can tarnish the image of Big Mother China. Applying to protest seems like walking into a lion’s den if you ask me. Just in trying to co-operate with the police and following all procedures required to protest peacefully, protesters are arrested. You can imagine what happens to them when they speak out without prior permission.

One disturbing example is the Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. According to the International Herald Tribune, Gao disappeared a year ago after speaking out against harsh treatment of Falon Gung practitioners, who have been routinely oppressed and persecuted by the Chinese government. Reports of Gao’s subsequent torture have been documented by the Tribune, which writes that according to the Sound of Hope Radio, Chinese authorities stripped Gao naked, "threw him to the ground and attacked him with electric batons."

Meanwhile, the Detroit Free Press wrote this week that 6 Americans were arrested Tuesday for holding up a “Free Tibet” sign and waving a Tibetan flag (which are banned in China) outside the Birds Nest stadium. The Americans were members of Students for a Free Tibet which has staged many small similar small demonstrations throughout the games, most ending with protesters being arrested and subsequently deported. This time, however, the Americans are reportedly being held on 10-day detention, perhaps a sign that the government is trying to crack down on these demonstrations in advance of Sunday’s big closing ceremonies.

Among others recently detained are a number of Associated Press photographers who were simply trying to do their jobs and take pictures of the protests. They were released after being “roughed up” and having their camera’s memory cards forcibly confiscated.

It’s extremely sad to me that the unity and competitive spirit that the Olympics typically represents has been tarnished by its being held in such an oppressive country. Even those athletes who tried to silently protest the games while competing by downloading an album of Tibetan protest songs from Apple’s iTunes were awarded with the subsequent ban of iTunes in China.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is reaping great rewards from the newfound media exposure, and the boon of advertising dollars flooding into the state-run broadcasting system CCTV. “That was part of the idea of having the Games in China - opening new markets for the Olympics," Ben Seeley—a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee—admitted to the International Herald Tribune. Of course, Seeley likely meant exposing the Olympics to new faces in China, but in reality, this Olympics has been all about exposing news faces to advertising from the West.

To all of those who take comfort in the idea that the Olympics are not political, and thus are worth watching despite the political controversy surrounding it: The Olympics are profiting China. China is host to a number of political atrocities and crimes against humanity. The Olympics are profiting crimes against humanity.

I know that my boycott of the games has no effect on the pockets of advertisers, of the minds of politicians, and doesn’t directly help those jailed for expressing their beliefs. But I can’t bring myself to cheer for a competition that is taking place on the backs of the repressed. Especially since the list of those repressed by China has grown substantially in recent years: journalists, students, Tibetans, human rights lawyers, the poor, the elderly, the list goes on and on and on.

My only hope is that once the flame is extinguished on Sunday, the plight of those negatively affected by the games and by the Chinese government will remain in the minds of the one billion plus viewers who have tuned in for the past few weeks. We shall see.

For a list of articles cited... go to: My Delicious Page.

Alright Eric, feel free to revoke my admin priveleges. I probably just got your blog banned forever in China.

An interview with Dean Haakenson of Be Brave Bold Robot

Dean Haakenson (right) outside Luna's in midtown Sacramento.

When did music become something you just absolutely had to have in your life?

I think I could answer that two ways.

On the one hand, I think I realized that music, the musicality of things, was a necessary part of life, something that permeated every thing around me, from a young age. I can remember making noises with my mouth, and thinking they were fun to make, and, you know, always singing along with the radio. I guess everybody has done that, but something about my memory of it all tells me that I always knew that music is for any and all that choose to embrace it. I wish I would have kept up with those mouth noises, I'd be a much better beatboxer now.

So, on the other hand, the part of "having music in my life" that incorporates the slightly regimented processes of writing chord progressions on the guitar, and writing words to sing, and then singing them, and playing that music in front of people, I think I started to realize that all of that was a necessary part of this role I had assumed right around when I was hitting my twenties. I had always sang loudly to the music I loved when I was in high school, and I even played a folk song on the guitar in front of my senior class., so I loved music, and didn't mind trying to play it in front of people. I realized I wasn't shy, very very nervous and anxious, yes, that's built into my personality, and I don't fear it so much the more I play, but I realized that I tend to express that anxiety in an outpouring of myself instead of an internalizing. Even though I was playing rehearsed guitar chords and singing in front of people, I don't think I truly understood what it meant to be a musician, someone who has to have music in their life in a practical, experiential creative way.

I still don't think I exactly know what it means to be a musician, and I have a hard time calling myself that as I have a whole lot to learn about guitar and music theory, but I have now known since, I was, to name a number, 23, that I absolutely have to have music in my life, and, like all our muscles, it is something that I must keep in my life to become more experienced and familiar with it, and it is something that will make my life and the lives of my children and all around me richer

Short answer - early twenties, when I realized that practice makes one better at something.

You mentioned that your performance anxiety leads to an outpouring of self when you play. What sort of reaction do you perceive audience members having in response to this?

I think, in general, they "like" it. I think people inherently like anything that looks and feels honest, and that's what I think is perceived when I am performing and letting it all hang out, so to speak. I get a little spastic, my anxiety makes my heightened heart rate and frenetic muscle movements cause my body to start sweating and sweating. I am urged to speak into the microphone. I usually don't know what to say, and sometimes that's very apparent, and I speak gibberish, but sometimes, something funny and poetic comes out, but always, always, I think it is perceived as something honest. It's like desperate lustful sparking electrical wires of nerve and vibration flailing out into the abyss of the audience, just hoping for any sort of connection.

I also think that it puts some people off. They came to see a musical show presented in a professional and straightfoward way, and are a bit embarrassed for me and wish I wouldn't say the same thing over and over and would just play the damn songs, but half of that perception is my own self-deprecation and I think the other half rationalizes the whole thing this way: even if I am perceived as an embarrassing pile of childish nerves, then at least I have expressed myself, and I think that is more important than anything, and, if I have to off put a few folks to make some drunkies laugh, that's pretty important too. Yeah , I think my unabashed visceral ramblings and nervous nincompoopery connect with people's baser instincts in a way that does more good than bad.

Where's your favorite place to play in Sacramento?

I don't really have a favorite, per se. I appreciate the different feelings that the different venues give me, each one having its own stage and bar and audience area configurations. I have played lots of shows at The Fox and Goose Public House; the old wood in that place, and the friendly bartenders who I have come to know, and the comfort of performance that has come through playing there so often, those things make it enjoyable to be at The Fox and Goose. I've also played at Marilyn's a bunch of times now, and I like the big stage, and the also friendly bartenders and the tall tables. The sound systems at Marilyn's and Old Ironsides are pretty good. Luna's is a nice intimate stage place, and the owner Art is a really nice guy. I don't know, I think after a while, and after a bunch of varied experiences at each venue, it's hard to pick a favorite.

There was this place in Old Sac called The Speakeasy, I don't think they do shows there anymore, but I enjoyed being at that place because the building was so old, and when you walked outside to have a smoke, you were in the middle of the Old Sacramento old brick buildings, and I love old buildings, and that was a big plus to that place. I know that I have certain feelings about venues where I haven't played that many shows. Old Ironsides, The Blue Lamp, I've only played a couple shows at those places so the thought of playing there still feels new and exciting.

Back to the music. A lot of your songs seem to share a lot of yourself. While writing a new song, have you ever written a lyric that you soon realize you aren't ready to sing in public quite yet because it's too personal, or seems too recent?

What's the saying, "All stories are fiction?" Something like that. I think that's very true. Well, as true as "There is a bit of truth in every lie", etc. I think it comes down to how easy it is for me to share my private life with others., and it's not hard at all for me. Live out loud, etc., and don't be afraid to tell other people things. Either they'll appreciate your honesty, or they will judge (in which case, fuck them), or they won't care.

That's the part that sucks, displaying your intimate details for somebody who doesn't appreciate the fact that you just shared part of yourself. But one who is willing to freely drop their intimates all around, must not be offended when others do not pick them up, I tell myself.

Where was I? Oh yes, I certainly do write from a personal perspective. It's just the easiest way to formulate the details of a story when you have them fresh in your memory, but I must always interject a bit of fiction to fill in the details, and sometimes, although I will write in the first person, the story is entirely or mostly fictional, perhaps spawned from a line about some sort of existential sentiment that I thought up when I was thinking about homeless people or something, but ends up being something completely made up, that sounds completely true. So, when I blur the lines between what really happened, and what could have happened, I end up just trying to tell a story, and it makes no difference to me what people think about it, or if it's true, or how sad the actual experience actually made me. In that sense, I regard myself with zero seriousness, as opposed to my actually personal experiences, which I can sometimes be far too sensitive about. Sometimes? What?!

I tend to think that the best art shares a piece of the artist with the outside world. Do you agree? Assuming you do, how do you react when you see an artist that isn't making the connection between the internal and external?

Unless the artist was attempting to be ironical or mocking or trying to make a point about affected expression, I think that I would think they were boring as shit. Art is honesty, I completely agree. There is a whole lot wrong with this world, I think. I don't have any answers, I don't even dedicate much of my time to figuring out how to make it a better place, but one thing I do know is that when I see somebody who is not allowing themselves to connect their internal with their external, I feel as though everything would be a whole lot easier and logical and fulfilling if they did.

I want to get that person to "see the light," and I want to have a conversation with them just to see if I can draw their insides out, but I don't think I would really enjoy observing or applauding somebody who embodied that sort of fake energy in any sort of performance setting. I'd just change the channel, or go do something else, or something...

Complete subject change. If beer was a friend, what type of friend would it be?

Beer would be a complex friend indeed. Pretty much about as complex a friend as we are "friends" to ourselves. I think foremost, beer would be an enabler, one of those friends that lets you believe that EVERYTHING that you do is exactly the right thing. Now, a variation of that is usually inherent in the people we call our good friends, because we want to be around people who think that we are funny and wise and capable of good decision making, but most of our friends would probably say something if they saw us making bad decisions (drinking to excess every night, ravenously pursuing the services of sex industry workers, etc.). In fact, I think the older I get, the more I appreciate people in my life who point out most of my mistakes and shortcomings,it challenges the enlightenment seeker inside of me, but that, my friend, is not beer. Beer is a yes man, blindy loving everything I do. The only reason I think I would still listen to beer is because his convincing agreement goes down with unwavering smoothness. Sure, you have to put up with some occasional poopy panties, small messes in the bathroom, but it's worth it. Hell, people marry trophy husbands and wives, and put up with the impending dissatisfaction for those same reasons. The luxury of a an amber cream top telling you how wonderful you are. I could ponder that with the eventual realization that a full time friendship with beer is something that will lack the hard work of self-improvement and the experience of relationship growth, that one would eventually end said relationship with Beer, but, I tell you Eric, I don't know how to break it to him gently, so he keeps coming around. Don't tell him I said any of this, PLEASE.

So concludes this interview, and Dean, don't fret. I will not tell beer any of this the next time I see him, although I always thought of beer as more of a she. How else could beer so easily break my heart?