1. “I Need A Dollar”. This song was recently used in a commercial and I immediately loved it. It’s deflated spirit but danceable underbeat reminded me of “Sixteen Tons”, another beloved song of mine.

2. “Money” by Pink Floyd. I have only recently been introduced to The Floyd (I know, I know) because I had always heard about how drug-infused their concerts were and I figured you needed to take copious amounts of LSD and pot to appreciate their music, so why bother? I now realize I was wrong, because they are rad, even when you are straight-edge.

3. “For the Love of Money”. This track is FUNKY. I always feel guilty boogie-ing to it because it’s got quite the grim message. It’s like gettin’ down with your bad self to “Luka”. This song is not for dancing. That being said, try to find a video of the O’Jays performing the song live. They do some fine choreography.

4. “Price Tag”. While the entirety of this song is charming, my favorite bit is a small chunk of the chorus. From about 1:13 to 1:17. If I hear this in my car, I’m singing with it, I don’t care who sees me.

5. “She Works Hard for the Money.” I love Donna Summer. One of the few tapes I had as a kid was her greatest hits album. Nothing sexier than a kid singing along with this and “Bad Girls” (beep beep, toot toot). However, this song is forever changed in my mind to Hank Azaria’s version from The Bird Cage. Forever. There’s no going back.

And additional monetary songs that I like but have not heard recently:  Kanye’s “Gold Digger”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Money Changes Everything”, P. Diddy’s “It’s All the Benjamins – Rock Remix” (we listened to this all the time in college), and, of course, “If I Had a Million Dollars” by Barenaked Ladies. So sad they broke up. Sigh.

We were surrounded by all kinds of people, but the best people were the middle-aged black women. They were into it – singing, dancing, etc. One woman behind us had been appreciating hard liquor earlier in the evening, and she was hell-bent on hearing Prince sing a song called “Adore”. Every time he started playing something, she would scream out, “PRRRAAAAAAANCE! ADOOOOORRRRRE!!!” At one point, I said to Börrke, “Do you think she understands the concept of a set list? As in, the song are set in advance? It’s not a ‘yell out stuff’ list. Don’t be all screamin’  ‘Free Bird’ and whatnot.” Anyway, the super-awesome concert ended, and we decided to take the stairs down from the roof of Madison Square Garden (about ten flights). So does Adore Lady. She turned to me and says, “You know the song, right?” and she started belting it out. We’re smooshed in there with everyone else in the known universe and we’re moving at the speed of a glacier. A man started howling like a dog in response to Adore Lady’s enthusiastic singing. I turned to Börkke and said, “This is my hell – trapped for eternity on a never-ending downward-heading stairwell with a thousand other people moving really slowly while this woman sings ‘Adore’ and the other man howls like a castrated wolf. My hell. Welcome to it.”

Finally, about a million years later, we made it outside where I saw the Empire State Building. I would like to think it was purple in honor of Prince. So until someone tells me otherwise, that’s what I’m going to do.

And since I’m sure you’re curious, here’s a link to the song “Adore” (which Prince did not sing).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVkw3p2xRgI

First of all, there were the fans. Almost all white people, mostly dudes. A great deal of black garments, especially those oversized black canvas pants with tons of zippers and latches. A lot of t-shirts featuring Slayer, Lamb of God, Metallica, etc. An ABUNDANCE of piercings. One guy had multiple piercings on his hat. (I wanted to ask him if it hurt, but I didn’t feel like getting killed.) Cricket, in his tasteful zip-up jacket, and me, in my dorky puffy coat, were not the ideal audience. We sat quietly during the opening act, CombiChrist, while people around us drank copious amounts of beer and yelled stuff. And then Rammstein came on (and immediately Cricket and I were in the center of a swirl of pot smoke). Has everyone seen “This is Spinal Tap”? Spinal Tap, the fictional band in the film, was famous for having elaborate, ridiculous set pieces, and Rammstein does the same. They need twenty trucks to go on tour with them to hold all their stuff. And pyrotechnics. Hoo boy. If you type “Rammstein Live” in Google Images, this is what it looks like. FLAMEY.

So, there was steam…

And crazy lights…

And insane amounts of fire.

It’s important to know that I’m not making up anything I say from this point on. Till, the lead singer, comes out on stage for the first song wearing a red leather apron, a hairnet, a red feathered neckpiece, and an apparatus that wraps around his cheek and lights up the inside of his mouth. For the tour, he wears the metal thing that goes into his mouth and lights up, but to film their latest video Till actually pierced his cheek, put a grommet there and wired the light into his mouth that way.

Then, in one of their later songs, the keyboardist, who goes by the name of Flake, comes down and knocks Till over. Till picks up Flake and tosses him into a large metal bathtub. Till then picks up a really weird-looking arm gun and fills the bathtub with sparks. Shortly after, Flake comes out in a sequin-covered suit and goes back to the keyboards, were he walks on a treadmill while he’s playing. None of this has anything to do with the song they’re playing, or any song they’ve ever played, or anything that’s ever happened anywhere, ever.

Then, for the song “Engel” (“Angel”), Till comes out wearing a giant pair of metal wings, which slowly open. Then fire shoots out of the tips of them and sparks fly out of the middle bits.

But, by far, the piece de resistance is during the encore, when they play the song which, for reasons of tastefulness, I will call “Kitty”. During “Kitty”, Till gets on a giant, pink cannon that shoots foam all over the general seating area. Still not making stuff up.

It was a hell of an experience. Aside from the fact that I had to stand the whole time, it was delightful. For pretty much the whole show the guy in front of me was rockin’ the devil-hands, so that was nice.

And the sea of camera-phone lights were beautiful.

The best part was that earlier that day, something called SantaCon had taken place, so many audience members were still dressed as Santa. Very trippy. Here are some pictures of SantaCon.

Here’s a link to their latest video. They filmed it on their travel set, so you can see the light in Till’s cheek, the pyrotechnics, the sequined suit and the treadmill. Also, one of the lines in the song is “barbed wire in your urethra.” Magical, I tell you.

http://www.muzu.tv/sonisphereuk/rammstein-rammstein-ich-tu-de-weh-promo-video-music-video/578200?country=us&locale=en

2. Spam!

The first bit is your standard “I don’t speak English, so I’m going to cobble a statement together using words I picked up out of a basket at the Salvation Army, and this shall cause much mirth among the native English tongue-folk” spam. The second one is the one that made me laugh.

So…you were moved to tears by…my flair collection? Was it the “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” one? That always makes me misty as well.

3. Covers and Mash-ups!

There’s this hipster jazzy version of “Single Ladies” that has grown on me. It’s sassy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIr8-f2OWhs

There’s this version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, sung by an Estonian acapella group. I can’t stop listening to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Eb2LGj714

There’s this mashup of the theme song of Mad Men and a song by Nat King Cole, sung by Brian Williams’ (the news anchor) daughter. Read the description. It’s all one shot and not lip-synced or anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEj0z0maxzM

And then there’s these two guys who did a mashup of three pop songs, and damn if I don’t like their version better than all the other original songs. They used “Love the Way You Lie”, “Dynamite”, and “Teenage Dream”. I truly HATE HATE HATE the way he does his “L” (Does your tongue really have to come all the way out of your mouth? Really? Does it?), but his enthusiasm is great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkHJ2-zoSB4

I am a tickety-boo site. Don’t you wish you were a tickety-boo site? I bet you do.

2. I was watching Eminem’s new video which is supposed to be taking place in a crappy wood-paneled double-wide, and in one scene Megan Fox is getting beaten up by Dominic Monaghan and he puts his fist through the drywall in their living room and – hey, what’s up with that wallpaper?

I remember that wallpaper. I saw it on a design blog somewhere and I thought it was gorgeous and then I saw the price, which was $250 a roll and I was like, oooh, a little too rich for my blood. And now I’m supposed to believe a crappity trailer has that wallpaper in it? I think not. I could no longer suspend my disbelief. Bad set decorator. Baaaaaaad set decorator.

3. A while back I decided to incorporate different materials in my art, like eggshells and insect exoskeletons and tin cans, stuff like that. So recently I thought, hey, there are Japanese beetles everywhere, they’re not indigenous, they’re a scourge, I should collect their deceased bodies, remove their wing casings, and use it in my art. Here is a photo so you can appreciate their bronze-colored elytra.

So while I was in Massachusetts this weekend, I took my neighbor’s full bug bag. I brought it home, and yesterday Cricket and I opened it in the driveway. The good news: there were about 400 beetles in there. The bad news: they were actively rotting, all squishy and stinky. Gross. I asked Cricket what I should do. He decided I should go outside to his rose bushes in the morning, flick the drowsy beetles into a jar, put the jar in the freezer, and then remove their wing casings later in the day. I shouted, “Genius!” and went to bed. This morning I set the alarm for mad-early and when it went off, I went outside to capture my beetles. If you were Cricket’s neighbor and looking out your window at 7:15 this morning, this is what you would have seen: a sleepy woman wearing a crumpled t-shirt, her hair all jinky and unbrushed, her face all puffy, standing motionless outside with a jar in her hand, staring intently at a rosebush for ten minutes. If this was a movie, that would be the point when someone would come outside with a shawl, wrap it around my shoulders and lead me slowly inside while saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” I have since learned that this wasn’t a dramatically bad season for Japanese beetles, and the season’s over now anyway. So to drown my sorrows I went on good ole eBay and found people selling environmentally-harvested beetle elytra, so I bought them. It wasn’t quite how I wanted this to go, but when life gives you lemons, you buy stuff online. Here’s what fifty bucks can get you – two of these sets (20 elytra total):

Two of these sets (20 elytra total):

And a pile of 200 random non-matching elytra.

They should be here next week. We’ll see if I can get them to do what I need them to do.

I got really excited when I saw a car illustration in Wired magazine and I was like, “Hey, isn’t that Feric?” And it was! I was a happy camper.

The other artist I wanted to talk about goes by the name of McBess. Same story as Feric: His real name is Matthieu Bessudo, nom de plume is McBess, charming. His style is bringin’ back the 1920′s cartoon style, like this one. You know, the black and white people with all-black eyes and rubbery limbs.

And he’s in a band too, so he worked on a video for them. Just an FYI, there’s a couple less-than-work-appropriate shots in the video. Song’s real catchy, tho’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD1Rrfc0y-M

I think that the name should be changed to “American Cheese Slug”.

Thank you, photographer J-Fish.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-fish/

2. I saw The Princess and The Frog the other night (it was meh) but I noticed that I look exactly like the large friendly alligator named Louis who only wants to play trumpet in a band. I took a screengrab so you could appreciate the similarity. I mean, look at Louis’ facial expression. I make that face all the time.

I would prefer to look exactly like a fancy-pants lady movie star, but it is what it is.

3. Charts! First, a chart about Pixar characters.

And then an angry chart about how stupid charts are.

4. I originally thought this was the greatest Rube Goldberg thing of all time – the Honda cog commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo

And then I saw the OKGO video. Super rad, dudes. Super rad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZjS8

Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” hand gestures (the good bit starts at 1:38):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq–Nw

OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI

And Beyonce’s “Single Ladies – Put A Ring On It”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-NULFMky4s

And to keep my hard-earned street cred, here is a Ukrainian band covering “Hot ‘n’ Cold” by Katy Perry. With an accordion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1upZz3a-7iM

Gnarls Barkley “Crazy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2B6SjMh_w
Does this really need an explanation? It’s a Rorschach test using light and dark to carve the artist’s faces out of the ink. And bugs and spiders. And a skull. That too. Gorgeous video. I actually sat down in awe when I saw it the first time.

Kanye West “The Good Life”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su_zrW9WBVk
I wish I had worked on this video. I would have loved – LOVED – to do the animation. Also, so considerate for the deaf. Pretty much everything that is said is spelled out. Kanye is thinking of the aurally challenged, how sweet. He’s not the self-centered meanie-head everyone says he is.

Coldplay “The Scientist”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3Kd7IGPyeg
I don’t much care one way or the other about Coldplay’s music, but to have to learn your own lyrics backwards, wow, that must be hard. I like the video because it reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Memento. Very clean and emotional and stark.