Then, I stumble upon an old podcast from one of my favorite neurotic Jewish comics (as if there’s another kind) Marc Maron.  Piror to interviewing guests, Marc usually postmoretems his most recent emotional dilemma.  In short, it explains perfectly to me why my brand of self-awareness, and maybe everyone else’s, tastes so bitter.  Here’s the excerpt:

“Self awareness, once it becomes intellectualized, once you can actually say in conversation ‘Yeah my mom was like this, my dad was like this, I’m like this, this is my struggle, you know sometimes I do this because my mom did this, or I grew up with this or whatever’  that that pattern, that emotional dialogue actually insulates you from feeling the feelings around that shit.  Like self-awareness can just be another shield of armor because then you can just say ‘Oh yeah that’s because of this’.  ‘And what are you doing about that?’  ‘Well I don’t fucking know. But I know about it. I know I have it.’  Hopefully something will happen one day and shake you to your core and connect all of that self-awareness to actual feelings in your guts and force you to make a change.  God damn it.  I hate growing.  I hate emotional upheaval.  And I cannot stand knowing I’m fucked up in a deeper way than I might have imagined.  That’s just the way life is.”

WTF with Marc Maro – Episode 132 Blaine Capatch

In case you haven’t noticed, the French have made a much welcomed land grab on the music scene in the States over the past several years.  What’s left of the pie has been eaten up by pop music (More on the turf war between Ellie Goulding, Yelle, and Little Boots later -I’m with Boots.) and the resurrection of hip hop.  Daft Punk, Phoenix, Chromeo, and Justice are just a few, but here’s what’s been on my rotation lately…

Jupiter – Sake
Sexy, smooth, electric… great beat!  Just a straight up solid song.  Jupiter will never go big – I hope I’m wrong – but I’ve yet to go a set without them in it.

Chinatown – Apprender a Danser
I could easily write volumes on this band; I absolutely love them.  And if you ask a Frenchie, their absolutely not French.  They’re Canadian, du Montreal.  The video, like the song, is awesomely anachronistic.  Enjoy.

Plastiscines – Barcelona
How are these girls not big here?  They remind me of Sleater-Kinney, or a pack of Madonnas circa Immaculate Collection.  Play loudly.  Cold Case, if you’re reading the DJ remixes are tight.

Revolver – Parallel Lives

This band gets real estate for one reason and one reason only – many of their songs eerily remind me of Elliot Smith.  The acoustic style and melodies are so similar, I’d mistake them for him if it weren’t for the fact that Elliott would rather kill himself than cover Abba.  Too soon?

Justice – Civilization
Whaaaaaaat?  Justice B side?  Fuck me.  Can the world stop and remember JUSTICE?  Speaking of which, Osama Bin Laden is dead.  Does that make Gangstarr cliche?

Kaolin – J’irai Mélanger les Couleurs

Part of the Nouvelle scène française movement, Kaolin is not as poppy as the rest of the genre, and sounds a bit like Julian Casablancas & The Strokes, eh?

Okay, enjoy!  And happy weekend!

Separately, is there anything worth looking forward to from the music gods?  Kanye was a giant disappointment, GirlTalk fuck struck everyone for a week, then our crushes went cold as quickly as his ticket price hit $40.  Toro y Moi comes out in February, until then…

Wonderland Playlist

Take Me Over – Cut Copy

Congratulations – MGMT (Erol Alkan Remix)

Dancing With the DJ – The Knocks

The Friendly Sound – Lemaitre

Pumped Up Kicks – Foster The People

As usual and per request, here’s a sample of the playlist.  Play loudly and often

Tokyo – The Wombats (Vampires & Wolves ’96 Bulls Remix)

In The Summer – Crystal Fighters

We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off To Have a Good Time – Jermaine Stewart

Got to Get It On – Marvin Gaye

I Want You Back v. Starry Eyed – Jackson 5 v. Ellie Goulding

I Poke Her Face – KiD CuDi

Fluorescent Adolescent – Arctic Monkeys

Electric Feel – MGMT

Fantasy – Mariah Carey

Odessa – Caribou

Hearts On Fire – Cut Copy (Aeroplane Remix)

Lovefool – Mr GASPAR Remix

Stand On the Word – Keedz

All These Things That I’ve Done – The Killers

Silvia to Ibiza – Swedish House Mafia v. Miike Snow

But damn it, the remixes of their crap are midas-like, an alchemy I’m 100% okay with, and would go as far as to say justifies their (the pop drones) existence in the first place.  Isn’t one of most honorable things about art its ability to make the ugly beautiful?  Well, without further ado, here are beats to guiltlessly indulge and share.   Do yourself a favor, check them out.

Katy Perry Covers MGMT – Electric Feel
As talentless as she may be (see youtube clips of her live, awful), this cover is silk.  Just like the original, the beat and xylophone (all due credit going to MGMT) are hypnotic.

Jay-Z and A-ha – Hey Papi + Take On Me
The 80s are as indefensible as Jay-Z is a magician (see: Rihanna). This song rocks.

16 Bit Covers Yael Naim’s Cover of Britney Spears – Toxic
This is my favorite.  Don’t bother listening to it if you don’t have access to a good sub.  The bass is thick, making Yael Naim’s voice that much sexier.  Come to think of it, don’t bother listening to this song alone.

Justin Bieber and MSTRKRFT - Heartbreaker Baby (CJ Milli Mix)
Justin?  MSTRKRFT?  Luda?  Are you kidding me?  Why am I listening to this?  Is it the piano?  Look, it’s not amazing, but the fact that CJ Milli’s made Bieber enjoyable is no small feat.  Also, it doesn’t hurt that Milli is gorgeous.  Hit me up if you’re reading this.

Seriously, were you expecting to see Party and Bullshit in the USA?  Okay, fine.  Psyche.
Dr. Dre + Snoop vs Miley Cyrus – The Next Episode

My job is fundamentally – at its very core – useless.  Extraneous in the best of lights, but more often than not painkiller for a chronic illness.

Inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, unprofitability, obsolescence, whatever the corporate ailment, my job and consulting at large is not the panacea we in industry imagine ourselves to be.  We’re not curing anything in fact, we’re merely treating a symptom at best, and at worst, we’re palliative.

Morose, isn’t it?  Well, sometimes we are needed.  Consultants are essential in diagnosing what exactly is wrong, and writing the prescription to make things better.  But we’re still fundamentally ineffective at curing.  To cure is to make ourselves obsolete.  To borrow from an obscure but brilliant title, companies can make my job obsolete by doing theirs well.  As a closeted, aspiring, patiently waiting business manager, there’s literally nothing I can attach to more strongly, believe in more passionately, and elevate more hyperbolically, than to rally behind the idea that companies and the individuals that power them should strive to make people like me obsolete.  In fact, it precisely analogous to how I feel about non-profits.  Non-profits’ sole (and soul) goal should be to make themselves redundant.  I’m sure you already agree, why wouldn’t you?  But let’s not bleed this into a whole other discussion.  The point is companies that solve their own problems (with the help of consultants of course) are poised to be infinitely more profitable, effective, innovative, et. cetera, than those who would rather ride on the coat-tails of consultants than pull upon their own bootstraps.

And as someone who believes whole heartedly in American entrepreneurialism, the social good business can lead in, and the stand-alone merit of running an efficient and profitable business, there are few things I could more strongly wish for than to be obsolete.  Maybe world peace… and a backstage pass to Phoenix.

Several mornings ago I had one of the most odd experiences of my adult life; I had to go get drug tested and finger printed.  It was very… unique?  Where to start?  Chronologically I suppose.  The drug testing was hilarious, Beckett himself could not have engineered something so ridiculous.  A room packed with people – government people – in suits.  Men and women and pin drop silence.  And me.  Government people aren’t your normal breed of human; they’re a more awkward, slovenly, unkempt, disheveled bunch.  Needless to say, Ben Sherman and I stuck out like sore thumbs in a sea of baggy cuffs and matted hair.

The mood was awkward and embarrassed, because unlike in a regular doctor’s office, there’s no anonymity to protect you from why you are there.  Everyone knows; you’re there to pee in a cup.  So there’s this odd tension, with people getting up and returning sipping from styrofoam cups of water.  I sat there for almost 30 minutes before a nurse finally came out and in a room full of adults asked, “anyone ready yet?”

Not a word.  She says “Fine.” and walks out.  That’s when it occurs to me that these people aren’t waiting inline to be tested, they’re just pee shy.  Which is stupid.  But then again, so is this entire situation.  So I get up and ask if I can “pee in the cup”.  By the way, you can completely use someone else’s pee, they don’t check and there’s no real control in place to even scare you into quality assurance.  This measure was literally as effective as random bag checking on the subway.  Oh right, spoiler alert, I pee’d in a cup.  And I’m clean.

Now off to finger printing – another adventure.  The finger printing office is located above the Farragut West metro, in a nasty, nasty concrete building, the kind that looks like the corners are made of charcoal.  And, par for the course, there’s some Pentecostal reggae man singing outside.  If only he’d be stationed outside the drug testing facility…

So I enter the building, graffiti in the elevator reads MS 13 (nice) with more graffiti in Spanish beneath it saying “no mas violencia”.  As I enter the suite this short, tiny Filipino woman greets me.  The Finger Printer.  Dressed in all black, with fire truck lipstick, and a bra that makes her boobs look like they are sitting on top of even bigger boobs, I’m escorted down a hallway with wallpaper curling at the tops.  Enter her office, which looks like Vietnam.  Plants lining the wall and various stone idols mixed in there for… good measure?  We sit down at opposite sides of her desk, and she just stares at me.  Smiling.  She then offers me tea.  So her and I have a cup of tea, in her office, which must be ridiculously expensive since its 4th floor bay window overlooks Farragut Square.  I ask her how she got into fingerprinting, because honestly, how the hell do you get into finger printing?  It’s an excellent niche market to corner in Washington, DC.  She pours me another cup of tea (green tea with roasted brown rice – delicious) and says, ”My late husband… he work for the CIA and get me this job”.  Oh my god.  I can only imagine what black ops shit goes down in the Philippines.  Spooky baby, spooky.  With those being the only words she’s said to me thus far, she finger prints me.  There’s a technique involved that I won’t get into, because it’s a technique for finger printing, but suffice it to say it’s much more messy and involved than I would ever have thought.  Like changing a diaper.  All done, I head for the door.  As I’m about to leave she says, “Hey, wait one minute!” and reaches into her drawer, and pulls out a handful of tea packets, giving me several.  With gifts in hand, I peace’d.  And all this before 10:00 AM.

The end.

It’s taken some time to come to fruition because I’ve been very deliberate with the planning of it all.  Everything from the name down to the menu, font,  and individual drinks has been tested.  But by no means is any of this a final product, I only have 5 infusions perfected and need another 5 more to be confident.

I want Guerilla Bar to be in the same vein as underground restaurants like Hush or Hidden Kitchen (both amazing, please check them out!), so as hopefully illustrated by the menu, I’ve tried to make the cocktail experience more thematic and balanced, as opposed to simply serving up a menagerie of food and drink.  In fact, every ingredient is natural and homemade.  I’m very serious about this last point.  Mixes and already-infused liquors rob cocktails of their taste, skirting flavor in favor of a sugary cover-up.  I’m learning how to make my own vermouth (taking a lesson from Derek Brown of the much-famed bars Gibson, Cork, and The Passenger), to make sure every ingredient used is natural.  Mark my words, I will not serve anything diabetic.

So, take a second and check out the menu, share with me your thoughts on what you like, don’t like, what to add, remove, and improve.  Democratize my bar.  I’m looking at end of March for the first Guerilla Bar, in Washington, DC, with the following one taking place in Manhattan (or Brooklyn, depending on demand).  No tentative dates yet, but if you’re interested shoot me an email at arthur.j.nelson@gmail.com and you’ll be the first to know when and where.  There’s a suggested donation of $15 per person, with limited space available (each night has a 20 person cap).  Best of all, at Guerilla Bar you’ll get to see me sport a shirt, tie, and skull & cross-bones apron.  Sartorialist, here I come.

I swear my NEXT post will be awesome and sans-music, but this one’s quick and easy – four new songs, new for me, new four me… you get it.  First up is this great new band called MGMT, psyche  Now enjoy!

Making Plans for Nigel – Nouvelle Vague
Beautiful, crisp, clean bossa nova… not at all new wave like their name suggests, but then again, they’re French and well aware of the irony.  The entire album’s worth downloading, but start here.

Alley Cats – Hot Chip
Where has THIS Hot Chip been?  This is exactly the song you’d imagine listening to as the last bits of rain splatter against the windshield, as the storm and sun sputter and peek out respectively.

Girl’s Night – First Rate People
As much as I love indie… there’s such a thing as too much synth pop.  First Rate People is a welcome reprieve.

Dirty Dancing – New Kids On The Block
I really didn’t want to like this song, but that piano… that damn piano.  That’s when it hit me, this song sounds very similar to the Sufjan Stevens & Outkast collaboration – Dumb I Sound.  Crisis averted, integrity intact.

Hello and Happy December; I’ve missed you kids dearly.  Guess what, lot’s of cool stuff coming your way in the near future, including more pleonastic updates (ha).  What do you have to look forward to from yours truly?

• A speakeasy coming to an apartment near you next post
• Downloadable mix tapes (instead of these bastard links) next next post
• A 2.0 Primer for mom & dad next next next post

But, before I get ahead of myself, let’s focus on the season at hand, and apropos jams.  These songs are a bit off the beaten path (read: you won’t find Mariah freakin Carey on my playlist.  Enjoy!

Julian Casablancas – I Wish It Was Christmas Today

Bing Crosby – Happy Holidays (Beef Wellington Remix) <— So So So Good

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – All I Want For Christmas

Run DMC – Christmas in Hollis

Sufjan Stevens – Put The Lights On The Tree (Pocketknife Remix)

Happy Christmas

Arthur