In solidarity with the models of Milan...

my records are on strike

and so is WHITE ANIMAL
until they start paying me.

I'm not even finished reading this thing and I'm ready to give it a solid reccomendation.
Remember the summer after Godspeed You Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennae to Heaven came out and sometimes you would be playing at a gathering or even by yourself and you had to turn it off because it was just too much? Not depressing nessecarily, just too bittersweet, too heavy, intense.. too much.
A few times in reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn I've had to put it down for the same reason. It wasn't that it was bumming me out, it was just too rich with emotion and meaning, I needed time to digest. And I didn't want it to be over too quick.

Flynn has an amazingly unsentimental way of recounting the traumatic events of his life. Unsentimental, but also free of tough-guy posturing. Another Bullshit Night.. is like a great personal zine, but written by a poet with the benefit of a professional editor. He somehow turns the threads of American dysfunction he finds in his own life- alchoholism, heredity, failure, and self destruction, into full-bodied literary themes.
But this isn't just some therapy-induced literary colon cleansing. It's also a great read and very engaging story. I would compare it to Mykal Gilmore's writing about his experience living in the shadow of his brother, Gary Gilmore (see the book Shot In The Heart), in terms of using intellectual disconnection to relate the tale of a very messy family story.
I'm not just saying this out of my own home-team preferences. In the book Flynn talks about living in Provincetown harbor on a boat called EVOL, talks about living in an abandoned strip club in Boston's combat zone, about seeing the Pixies and minutemen at the Middle East, about speding a drunken night searching for a mysterious man named Crowbar... a man who was something like an uncle to me and my brother growing up.
These are all locational references I can relate to as well as the ongoing tradicomedy of living with an eccentric alchoholic father and the genetic implications found therin. Yes, reading Flynn's book is like having a drunken conversation at a Truro beach jag with a particularly compelling wash-a-shore, but it's the diamond prose that makes the book a lasting experience.

Yeah, I know that mash-ups are so 2002, but DJ BC is still bringing wit and intelligence to the idea. His Summertime Mash-Ups section is filled with hot, clever new tracks which reflect skill, a great ear and a sense of humour. Who knew he was a masshole? I reported last year that DJ BC was from Prague. I'm not sure where I got that idea, but on his new website it's clear that BC is in Boston, with a residency at The Independent in Somerville fridays called Mash Ave. The Summer Mash ups link will take you straight to such Mp3s as Pete Rock and CL Smooth vrs. Donovan, Buju banton Vrs. Stevie Wonder, and Snoop vrs. The Flaming Lips (and Will Ferrel as Goulet!). Use them to nice up the dance this summer.