best friends make my world go 'round..

they do. i know it's the same for most people, but fuck it. this is my ish, dammit.

it's e-mails that tell of kids jibbing in yellowknife.
it's waking up extra-early for breakfast at school when i normally won't even wake up for class.
it's movie plans for films that we don't even know have release dates yet.
it's thinking of someone who would love a song, or a movie, or a joke, even when it still hurts too much to tell them about it.
it's playing 18 holes on a sunday afternoon in september and not caring that you were both at least 10 strokes past where you wanted to be.
it's signed copies of one of your favourite groups' new album.
it's dinner with their family.
it's 8-hour time differences.
it's knowing that i'm taking pictures of traffic.
it's text messages from halifax about the ships they have there.
it's getting a birthday e-mail from someone you thought only now existed in your saddest songs.

it's all love, however you look at it. from me. to you. and back again.
if you're here, and you think it's about you, then it probably is.
thank you.

jh..

"that is so not true. wait, what does that even mean?"

i love how some movies, sometimes, have the unique ability to make your life better, at least for some short period of time. truly great acting, screenwriting, and production, especially when serendipitously coinciding, are an amazingly powerful thing. especially amazing considering that the whole production is necessarily staged. it's sort of a personal (yet unknown to them) contest whenever i go to see a movie. 'alright, impress me. do something. make me not regret spending my often $14 on this roughly-two-hour-including-previews-and-commercials presentation. make me not resent you, hollywood.' more often than not they fail to genuinely impress, and i win. (yes, i do in fact realize the half-truth of that statement. i did spend my $14 on a half-ass-decent moviegoing experience so, yes, in fact the studio/theatre/paying advertisers also win. perhaps moreso than myself. but telling myself that i win as well makes the otherwise mediocre-to-crap experience of losing that hard earned money bearable enough that i don't have to write off all future visits to the movies in an effort to save face.) so when they do impress, it really is something particularly impressive. and by the defenition of that word, the experience sticks with me.

the last movie that impressed me so was Garden State. i won't bother explaining it because i'm sure a million other blog writers have already done it more aptly and time-consumingly than i would, so search those out to hear people's in depth thoughts. all i'll say is that it's a great movie. i saw it three times in theatres. that's how great. if you disagree, screw you, i don't want to hear it. just kidding, that's harsh. well, sort of kidding...

and with unprecendented prolificacy, there are more soon to be released. I Heart Huckabees being one, and Life Aquatic being the other. watch the trailers. you might just agree...

"you don't plant no tree in this parking lot!"
you'll understand. it's funny. funny like terry tate commercials.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/i_heart_huckabees/
http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/the_life_aquatic/

peace. love. one of each.
jh..

don't bother reading this garble. really.

ninja, please.

so on to hip-hop. it's a shame that rap has become what everyone assumes hip-hop to be. they have certain elements in common, yes. rap could perhaps be considered an integral part of hip-hop. granted, to underground heads rap would be the bum knee of the hip-hop corpus, but it's there nonetheless.

but thanks to the mass media, people not in the know (nb - this refers to most white people) assume that hip-hop is rap is whatever garbage the radio, television, and bad club dj throws down your throat whenever you're unlucky enough to be caught off guard with lips even slightly parted.

and it's such a damn shame.

for those who actually know, the musical genre of hip-hop eclipses the sore thumb sub-genre of "rap" by such magnitude that perhaps the genre of hip-hop is overlooked for just that reason. it's too fucking big.

most people have never heard true hip-hop music. they have no idea that the culture (yes, culture) has a history of its own. an evolution. a message. a beauty.

some people don't think that hip-hop is music.

fine.

but if that's the case, then neither is mozart. nor led zeppelin. nor ccr. nor any other piece of "music" that you've heard in your lifetime.

why?

because that's what hip-hop is. it's every other form of music. every genre, every group, every instrument. hip-hop music, as it began, was nothing more than parts of songs that stood out to the dj that happened to be looped over to make that section of the song appear longer. THAT'S IT. hip-hop is other music. it's parts of other songs blended together in unique ways. sometimes it's different genres mixed together in a unique way. it uses voices as musical instruments, and also uses them as percussion. it takes sounds that aren't musical in the least, and makes them into percussive instrumental sounds. hell, that might make hip-hop more musical than other music, if such a ridiculous statement can be made. and since i made it, it can. bip.

hip-hop has a knack for taking the best, most melodic, unique parts of songs, and expanding upon them to create something new. do you like jazz? well there are thousands of hip-hop songs that are jazz. the same goes for folk, rock, classical, funk, soul. you name it and by now someone has probably made a hip-hop song out of your favourite genre, possibly even artist, less likely but not improbably your favourite song. and if they haven't, if they knew your favourite song, they probably could. and if you gave it a chance, you'd probably like it.

if you don't like the subject matter of the song, then you might like the beat. if you don't like the beat, you might like the rhymes. some songs just aren't good, of course, but that's true of any genre. but most people aren't ever exposed to the wealth (yes, wealth! we're talking a vast abundance) of hip-hop songs that are not only incredibly melodic, but also well-written, clever, conscious, and positive if not funny or insightful. you've probably heard at least one hip-hop song that you actually genuinely liked. and that you would have listened to regularly had it been available regularly. well, guess what? there are thousands of other songs that you'd like just as much, all of them hip-hop. so ask someone, because the media sure as shit isn't going to be knocking on your door telling you, 'don't bother with 50 cent! here, listen to talib kweli, blackalicious, mf doom, souls of mischief, all natural, and dilated peoples.' so find it! ask someone who knows. ask me. ask your brother. your sister. that kid on your class with the big headphones and Quannum t-shirt. your kids. the internet. ask the internet. search underground hip-hop. listen to the sound clips that are out there. find out what group you like and find more by them. find more artists on the same label. from the same area. of the same style. you'll probably end up finding out that by listening to more real hip-hop, you end up listening to more new music in general. remember, hip-hop is made up of bits and pieces of other songs by other groups in other genres. find out what songs those are and listen to them, too. if you don't know how, ask the same people you asked to find the hip-hop in the first place. ask me.

in summary, give hip-hop a chance. it's probably not what you think it is. the people who love it probably aren't who you think they are. your opinion of hip-hop probably hasn't even been formed yet, because you probably haven't actually been exposed to it. you'll thank yourself later. i can almost guarantee it.

one.
jh..

'why?' you ask, 'for the love of god, why?'

but why what? why do i type in all lower-case? why do i love hip-hop and hate most rap? why do i stay up, and consequently wake up, so late? why do i feel stuck here? why do i feel stuck there? why do i even try? and above all else, why would i join the masses and (gasp) publish a blog, of all things?

(i hate that word, to be perfectly honest. it sounds like some sort of epidermal condition.)

well, let's be honest. i was publishing my life on the internet in a time nearly a decade past. this isn't new. it's something old made to look more aesthetically pleasing. it's the same as it always has been, but it's pretty. user-friendly. something to use for good. and evil.

'but what's to follow?' you ask.

well, everything, of course. thoughts. stories. words. images.
and nothing, of course. more of the same.

but something. even if something is nothing.
nothing is always something.
sometimes it's the scariest thing.
the most painful thing.
the most expressive thing.
the most beautiful thing.














things will start looking different here. soon. thanks for stopping by.
peace. love.
jh..