Cuz No One Likes Reading

Interesting video-essay series at The L Magazine.

"At a time when summer movies seem uniquely capable of consolidating the cultural discourse, our Evolution of the Modern Blockbuster series looks back to the summers, and summer movies, of 1984 and 1989, when MTV editing, post-Boomer cynicism and other cultural sea changes converged to shape the summer blockbuster we all know and can't avoid."


Below is the first part, the others can, and should, be seen at the above link:

Van Halen - Running With The Devil (Acapella)

One Time

DJ AM on-stage w/ Jay-Z.



Filmed it when Santi opened up for Jay, mid-'08.

CASUAL SAX IS HERE!!!

Finally, After 4 long years of hard work, the masterpiece, Sven Barth & Induce are Casual Sax & The Saxual Revolution in The Blow Sven Theory, is out now on The Wonderful Sound!!!

To call this album an album seems an understatement. It is more than that, yet less, all at once. It's full of dirty snippets, lewd lyricism and blatant honesty, yet TBST is a tapestry. A tapestry full of sweat, semen, and wordplay that found it's way onto Perez Hilton's front page with nothing more than a tug on the proverbial sausage and a hook that included "dong". The time spent on the aforementioned lyrics can be placed in direct correlation with the time it takes to whip out the aforementioned "dong" from a set of loose undies. It was instantaneous, orgasmic and completely free of ink. That's right, all 21 of these beautifully crafted tracks are 100% freestyles.

- Get the digital album at iTunes, Amazon, Zune, and most major digital retail outlets.
- Also available on double CD, with the Instrumental verison of the album as the 2nd disk.
- Main Vinyl version comes as a LIMITED EDITION Double Vinyl, Triple Gatefold Jacket, with only 500 pieces manufactured.
- Instrumental Vinyl version - Double Vinyl, limited to 500 copies.

Double CD and Limited vinyl versions available EXCLUSIVELY AT TURNTABLELAB.COM.

Click the link below for a free track that didn't make the album! Be careful - It's a weird one!

Sven Barth & Induce Are: Casual Sax & The Saxual Revolution - "Pants On Fire" - Unreleased Track

Some Of My Friends Do Things

Got an e-mail from a DC friend who seems to be a rarity in that he is applying himself to improve the world; e.g. he recently started his own NGO after spending two years living in Uganda working with warlords to negotiate against recruiting child soldiers. Anyways, i'll just post it and hope you take 5 minutes out of your day to read and maybe add your signature.

Dear friends,

I just returned from eastern Congo. Following this trip, please find my oped co-published with John Prendergast on electronics and the war in eastern Congo. It is published in the Huffington Post and San Jose Mercury News, the leading newspaper in Silicon Valley, home to many of the largest electronics companies. I thought you would find this interesting. Apologies for cross-posting. If you haven't yet, please sign our pledge to electronics companies - it will help spur them into action. Thanks so much.

Electronics companies and consumers can help stop Congolese bloodshed
By John Prendergast and Sasha Lezhnev

San Jose Mercury News and Huffington Post


Have a cell phone or laptop computer? The conflict in eastern Congo, which has killed five times as many people as the war in Iraq, affects you. Fresh attacks last month caused 100,000 people to lose their homes, the latest in a war in which tens of thousands of women have been raped by violent armed groups.


We just returned from eastern Congo, where the demand for cheaper electronics is a key driver of this war. Our research has revealed that armed groups in eastern Congo earned approximately $185 million last year from trading in four minerals that form critical components in cell phones: the 3Ts of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. The militias get rich and buy weapons by selling these minerals to smelting companies in East Asia, who then sell them to consumer electronics firms such as Apple and Nokia.


The human rights records of the armed groups speak for themselves. One militia, the FDLR, is led by the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. And the Congolese army recently absorbed another militia headed by Bosco Ntaganda, aka "The Terminator," a war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court for conscripting child soldiers, including using 13-year-old girls as his personal bodyguards.


The answer to this problem isn't simple, but it is far from impossible. It requires a commitment by the Obama administration, electronics firms and the Congolese government to clean up supply chains and invest in good governance. These steps would cut off a key source of funding for the militias and make the conflict significantly easier to resolve.


But some corporate interests would have you believe otherwise. Metals trading companies have argued that cleaning up supply chains would impoverish miners in eastern Congo. We share their interest in the livelihoods of eastern Congolese people, but let's be clear on how we can actually help impoverished people in that region.

Miners in eastern Congo work in the worst conditions in the world. Ben, a 15-year old child miner, told us how he had worked in a mine since he was 10 and narrowly avoided a mine shaft collapse last year, a common occurrence in an area with no health or safety standards. Meanwhile, The Terminator's militia and other armed groups rack up the profits from the trade by controlling the mines or taxing the trading routes.


The central reason why these conditions are so horrific is the presence of the armed groups. Cutting off their resource base is the key to getting them off of miners' back.

We also need a plan to directly address the needs of miners. To that end, the Obama administration should partner with the Congolese government to enact reforms enabling miners to benefit from Congo's mineral wealth. These efforts must be complemented by investment in agriculture, a sustainable source of employment for ex-miners.

Added transparency and improved regulation would help provide real employment to miners with companies with meaningful health and safety standards. To jump-start this process, the Enough Project has organized a conflict minerals pledge (www.raisehopeforcongo.org), which companies and consumers can sign to reform their supply chains and make their electronics verifiably conflict-free.


Combating the conflict minerals trade requires a comprehensive strategy involving electronics and metals companies, the U.S. and regional governments and consumers. It took over a decade for the blood diamonds campaign to help halt Sierra Leone's bloodshed. The Congolese people can't afford another decade of conflict fueled by our consumer demands.


JOHN PRENDERGAST is co-founder of Enough, the project to end genocide and crimes against humanity at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C., think tank. SASHA LEZHNEV is executive director of the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, a nonprofit that aids former child soldiers. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.

The True Story of Roger Rabbit & Toonville

Well, not quite, but ever wonder why our mass transit is so horrible?

Blu Jemz & Induce - "Don't Go"

This is a little tidbit of teddy bear Jemz I had laying around. Recorded during one of his stays in Miami, the music was done with original Ace Tone sounds I sampled into the MPC-2000, the bass line I played on the Fender Rhodes running though the Mutronix Mutator, and the synth part is an Arp Omni. For the bongo part during the hooks, we originally wanted to record them live so we went on a trek around town to every pawn shop looking, finding out they go for way to much money than we thought, so we ended up just using the sounds from the Roland 727 drum machine, which sounds just as amazing as if we had the ghost of Ray Baretto. Jemz kills it on sensitive "come-back-to-me-baby" vocals and me on doo-wop back up.

For as silly as the track sounds, it actually has a hint of genuine sensitivity that can be easily heard on further listen. For those who can't take the 6 minute epic love song masterpiece, there's a radio edit that's about half as long. ENJOY!

Blue Jemz & Induce - "Don't Go" - 12" Version

Blue Jemz & Induce - "Don't Go" - Radio Edit