U2 at Giants Stadium

I caught U2 at Giants Stadium last week and it was pretty incredible. What I mean by that is their stage setup ("The Claw") was insanely huge. Bono's voice was definitely on (unlike some previous U2 concerts I've attended) and The Edge was shredding with the confidence that makes him The Edge.

Their playlist was a little heavy on the newest album material (which barely anyone knew) but they pleased the crowd with such hits as "One", "With or Without You", and "Sunday Bloody Sunday." The one thing I liked during "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was the screen showing pictures of the recent uprising in Iran against corrupt voting.

In the end I didn't like the lack of intimacy that you usually feel at a U2 concert. Maybe it was the outdoor experience, or maybe it was The Claw, but I have felt more warm and fuzzy after other concerts.

The biggest hit for me was when they played "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)" off the Achtung Baby album. I have never heard them play this live, nor have I ever heard a live recording of it, so that was cool! Now, why didn't they just move onto "Tryin to Throw Your Arms Around the World?" That's my favorite U2 song.

Shut Up Kanye Game

Check this "Shut Up Kanye (West)" game out on Addicting Games:

Shut Up Kanye

Wolf Blitzer gets Blitzed on Celebrity Jeopardy

Annoying Facebook Status Updates

Ok, i'm all for hearing what you're up to this exact second via Facebook's Status Update, but I don't like it when people write something like this:

"_______ wants to know if anybody has good hotel recommendations for Bangkok, Phuket and Krabi?"

Yea, got it. You are traveling somewhere cool. Thanks. But you're too cool to just tell it how it is. This type of status update drives me crrrazy!

Which ones annoy you?

Michael Jordan trash talks Bryon Russell, and Bryon Russell responds!

If you missed the Michael Jordan induction ceremony into the Hall of Fame, then you missed 45 minutes of trash talking from the king of basketball himself. Nobody was safe, not even his kids! (“I don’t envy you guys.”) But the best was when he told a story about Bryon Russell, Karl Malone, and John Stockton visiting him while he was on his failed pursuit of becoming a baseball player for my beloved White Sox. Bryon Russell trash talked and said that he could shut MJ down if he ever came back.

Well, we know what happened – MJ returned, told him at a game, “Remember how you said you could shut me down? Well, now’s your chance.” And Bryon will FOREVER be posterized by the great MJ in the 1998 NBA Finals.

Bryon Russell got wind of this final trash-talking from MJ and he just could NOT keep his mouth shut! Have you not learned your lesson yet?

From Yahoo Sports:
Bryon Russell has a message for Michael Jordan: Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be waiting in California – in my basketball shorts.

“I’ll play his ass right now,” Russell told Yahoo! Sports. “This is a call-out for him to come play me. He can come out here in his private jet and come play. He’s got millions of dollars. He can pay for the jet. He can meet me at the Recreation Center in Calabasas.

“We can have Mark Jackson do the commentating. We can have Mitch Richmond do the officiating. We can put it on TV and see if Michael’s still got it.”

Be careful what you wish for!

Jay-Z Secret Concert - Run This Town

Last night popped into a secret Jay-Z concert at the Blender Theater over on 23rd St. I just read about it online and decided to check it out after work. It ended up being a MySpace Music event.

Lots of fun, hung out with the band and DJ (Neil Armstrong from the 5th Platoon), and Jay did his thing...again. Although I must say it must get tiring rapping the same songs over and over again. When the concert started, I actually started to think to myself, "When is enough?" when it come to OD-ing on Jigga. And for the first half of the concert I barely moved, even though he was pointing out people in the crowd for not getting into the music. "This ain't no poetry reading!" he yelled.

It was towards the end that the music was better, as he pulled out some songs he never plays, such as Allure and Lucifer from The Black Album. Actually, Lucifer was the highlight for me.

If you can't seem to get enough of Jay-Z, he is performing on Sept 11th at Madison Square Garden and then on MTV's Video Music Awards on Sunday, Sept 13th along with Alicia Keys (to sing "Empire State of Mind" from Blueprint III).

Side note on the host of the VMAs this year - why Russell Brand again?? He is so irritating and NOBODY thought he was funny last year. MTV must be getting desparate. Thoughts??

Love in 2-D: Japanese Men fall in love with imaginary characters

This article is so trippy. It's about Japanese men who are falling in love with female dolls and pillows. They think it's their girlfriend. Seriously. For some reason, it is not so shocking.

Here's an excerpt:

Love in 2-D (by Lisa Takayama):

Nisan didn’t mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter — at a comic-book convention that Nisan’s gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo — was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan’s bright blue eyes. In the beginning, they were just friends. Then, when Nisan got his driver’s license a few months later, he invited Nemutan for a ride around town in his beat-up Toyota. They went to a beach, not far from the home he shares with his parents in a suburb of Tokyo. It was the first of many road trips they would take together. As they got to know each other, they traveled hundreds of miles west — to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara, sleeping in his car or crashing on friends’ couches to save money. They took touristy pictures under cherry trees, frolicked like children on merry-go-rounds and slurped noodles on street corners. Now, after three years together, they are virtually inseparable. “I’ve experienced so many amazing things because of her,” Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan’s leg warmly. “She has really changed my life.”

Nemutan doesn’t really have a leg. She’s a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo, printed on synthetic fabric. In the game, which is less a game than an interactive visual novel about a schoolyard romance, Nemu is the loudmouthed little sister of the main character, whom she calls nisan, or “big brother,” a nickname Nisan adopted as his own when he met Nemu. When I joined the couple for lunch at their favorite all-you-can-eat salad bar in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, he insisted on being called only by this new nickname, addressing his body-pillow girlfriend using the suffix “tan” to show how much he adored her. Nemutan is a teenager and wears a little blue bikini and gold ribbons in her hair. Nisan knows she’s not real, but that hasn’t stopped him from loving her just the same. “Of course she’s my girlfriend,” he said, widening his eyes as if shocked by the question. “I have real feelings for her.”


Nisan is part of a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters. These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture— the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games in Japan in the last decade. It’s impossible to say exactly what portion of otaku are 2-D lovers, because the distinction between the two can be blurry. Like most otaku, the majority of 2-D lovers go to work, pay rent, hang out with friends (some are even married). Unlike most otaku, though, they have real romantic feelings for their toys. The less extreme might have a hidden collection of figurines based on anime characters that they go on “dates” with during off hours. A more serious 2-D lover, like Nisan, actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a prepubescent anime character on it is his girlfriend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

I Am T-Pain iPhone App

This is so cool. You can AutoTune just like T-Pain!

$2.99 for this iPhone app (which goes against my personal policy for ever paying for an app), but hey, it looks like fun.

Check out Day 26 trying it out as well as a bunch of people in the streets.

LA Times Album Review: Blueprint 3

LA Times (Greg Kot) released their album review of Jay-Z's most recent release, Blueprint 3.

Do you agree?

It's tough for hip-hop stars to age well. Once they become celebrities living in mansions and starring in family movies, street cred is usually the first thing to go. Just ask Ice Cube. Longevity just wasn't built into the hip-hop lifestyle, with its premium on youthful swagger, street tales and fast turnover.

But Jay-Z, who turns 40 in December, asserts that he's the exception on his 11th studio album, "The Blueprint 3" (Roc Nation), which he rush-released Tuesday after it leaked online. "I'm a multimillionaire, so how is it I'm still the hardest [thug] here?" he announces on "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)."

The track takes a shot at the ubiquitous vocal effect that has dominated hip-hop production in recent years, though Jay-Z is not above using it himself elsewhere on the album. If nothing else, Jay-Z has proved himself an expert at knowing the marketplace, and "The Blueprint 3" employs a handful of top-dollar producers (Kanye West, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz, the Neptunes) to cover all the commercial bases, Auto-Tuned or not.

Its reach echoes the first "Blueprint" album, released in 2001 and co-produced by West, at that time a relative unknown still three years away from his starmaking solo debut. The combination of West's dusty soul grooves and Jay-Z's determination to reassert his skills as a master MC (after a few years in the pop celebrity wilderness) turned the album into a landmark.

"The Blueprint 2" came out a year later but was a far less focused effort, larded with cameos, as if Jay-Z could only be intermittently bothered to participate in his own album.

"The Blueprint 3" splits the difference between its two predecessors, with Jay-Z sounding hungrier than he has in years on about half the tracks, while sharing time with guest stars or grappling with undercooked production on the rest.

At its core, the album is less about introducing newfound skills or subject matters than it is a platform for Jay-Z to showcase his imperious flow, to reassert his world-conquering ego, to remind everyone just who the heck he is. Jay-Z has a way of delivering the news as if he has already done it all -- twice.

Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter in 1969, grew up to be a drug dealer in the Brooklyn housing projects. He turned to hip-hop as a way out, self-releasing his debut in 1996 when no label would take a chance on him, and turning himself into a star and power broker. Last year, Forbes magazine estimated his annual income at $82 million. Little wonder he once crowed, "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man."

"The Blueprint 3" aims to show everyone he still has wicked skills on the mike. It does, even as it illustrates that sometimes he coasts on his celebrity. The opening "What We Talkin' About" sets the tone: He doesn't have time to escalate long-standing beefs with his rivals because they're just peons and he has more important things to do, like hang with his pal, the president.

Hubris reigns. He's the king of New York, able to command cameos from Rihanna and Alicia Keys on "Run This Town" and "New York State of Mind," respectively. These tracks are the sound of Jay-Z cruising for pop hits. But there's no justifying "Forever Young," with a vocal hook sung by Mr. Hudson; it's the kind of mush that suggests there might be something true to those rumors Jay-Z has gone soft. And "Venus Vs. Mars" reaffirms that Jay-Z has never been particularly strong at seduction raps.

Yet even at three-quarters speed, Jay-Z can still be formidable. Timbaland's sci-fi production on "Off That" is a poor fit, but the MC opens up a spigot of rhymes about refusing to live in the past, invoking his nemesis Bill O'Reilly to comic effect. The hard-edged soul claps of "A Star Is Born" and the zinging strings of "Already Home" (both produced by West) are natural fits, and he dazzles without breaking a sweat. He even turns a joke about his resemblance to a camel into an opportunity to once again disarm his critics.

The message: Don't mess with ol' Gray-Z.

MTV's The City is back - Season Trailer

The City - MTV Shows

Jay-Z recreates all his album covers

This is a sweet commercial.