And it’s not just ini­tials. I’m very excit­ed about a few things in the off­ing at my day job. I’ll be sure to post links to them when they run. Big things, friends. In all hon­esty, it’s amaz­ing to have a job that I a.) real­ly care about and b.) care about because I’m allowed to do pret­ty much what I want with respect to cov­er­ing music and c.) because I get paid to do it. Hav­ing a vehi­cle like Blind­ed by the Hype! allows me the free­dom to cov­er stuff out­side the AP feed [and it’s a big world out there] and start devel­op­ing ideas for the future by lay­ing the ground­work now. Onward and upward, for real.

Oth­er developments:

• Last week I came to a real­iza­tion that I think a lot of folks who nev­er were exact­ly ‘career-mind­ed’ have: I think I need a smart phone, specif­i­cal­ly the Black­ber­ry Curve. I’m in shock too. It also makes me wish that the iPhone was much cheaper.
• Goodreads.com. Anoth­er rab­bit­hole ventured.
• This is Eng­land real­ly makes me want to watch Jubilee and Rat­catch­er again.
• Lat­er this week: BMIML 2.0 commences!

• It feels real­ly good to be able to make M.I.A.‘s Kala my pick of the week at work.
• I real­ly need to fol­low Jason Her­skow­itz’s lead and just jump into the fray of Web 2.0 and test every­thing — which is me invit­ing you to make sug­ges­tions about com­mu­ni­ties you use. That said, I ful­ly expect my new About page in BMIML 2.0 to be lit­tered with badges from these things. In fact, I’ve just joined Good Reads, so expect that to replace my Library Thing mem­ber­ship soon! [Oh and yeah, I’m on MyS­trands now too!]
• Mean­while I’m try­ing to pull a pan­el togeth­er [albeit a bit late] for SXSW and sort out trav­el plans already. It’s not until March! I can’t wait though! And yes, if you search these archives you’ll find that I’ve spent the bet­ter part of my life bemoan­ing these pro­mo­tion­al orgies and all the bbq posts on blogs every­where. Expect that all to change when I take a cam­era crew with me next spring!

As the New Pornog­ra­phers’ new­ness ends, their fans seem to grow more irri­tat­ing. Con­fi­den­tial to Rob Mitchum: brace your­self for some ridicu­lous hatemail. [NB: Mitchum’s dig on Elec­tric Ver­sion real­ly cap­tured how betrayed I felt by that album…and every last blog­ger falling over itself to con­grat­u­late New Pornog­ra­phers for repeat­ing his­to­ry. They did­n’t. Nice songs, though. Then again, I fell in love with Mass Roman­tic and that first tour, which pret­ty much ruined all but a few moments subsequently.]

As an aside, that New Pornog­ra­phers thread from ILX points up every­thing that’s changed about the mes­sage board since I first found my way to it ca. ’04. Three years lat­er there’s no one jump­ing in to set the record straight, except my old Sty­lus col­league, Mr. Alfred Soto. Thanks for that.

• Just fin­ished V. Don’t know what I think about it yet. My short response is I think we’d be much bet­ter off if more polit­i­cal nov­els were writ­ten that way, that is, cir­cum­spect in their analy­sis of right and wrong, while pre­serv­ing a stri­dent moral clar­i­ty. Maybe Kurt Mon­dau­gen’s sto­ry embar­rassed Pyn­chon as a crude anal­o­gy to the Holo­caust, but the voyeurism and sadism cap­tured there­in is with­out equal when it comes to eroti­cized polit­i­cal violence.
• Com­plete­ly shift­ing gears: I’m hooked on Xbox 360. Real­ly. This new game Bioshock is unbe­liev­ably beau­ti­ful and pret­ty hor­ri­fy­ing at the same time. Be my friend on Xbox Live — my user­name is Mutant Dis­co!
• Oth­er things I’m into right now: local blogs. I’ve been read­ing The Pover­ty Jet Set and Fun Vam­pires reli­gious­ly late­ly for a num­ber of rea­sons. When I first start­ed blog­ging I thought it was best to main­tain some sort of nar­row focus and cul­ti­vate an ‘expert’s’ per­spec­tive. I’m off that now. Well off. I’m thrilled to read blogs that incor­po­rate mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­gan­za and are all over the place in their cov­er­age. Sure I still read plen­ty of rig­or­ous­ly nar­row blogs, the lat­est addi­tion being End(-)of(-)World Music (via Zoilus).
• Also God & a Bot­tle. In the scant five plus months I’ve been at the new gig, I’ve found myself seek­ing out blogs well-estab­lished crit­ics who end­ed up in new media some­how or oth­er. Joe Keyes has been doing his thing for quite some time and I’ve been read­ing him just about that long. Since I rarely ever pick up whichev­er local week­ly he’s writ­ing for here in Philly any­more, I usu­al­ly swing by his blog to catch up on his lat­est mus­ings. And it’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to be remind­ed which movies I’m not see­ing because I don’t live in NYC any­more. It’s always great to read some­one who’s already churn­ing out loads of copy every­where, yet finds time to take a deep breath and just get out those ran­dom, sum­ma­riz­ing thoughts that order wild­ly dis­parate projects.
• Swing by and read Bryan’s Max Roach obit, writ­ten through a review of Mon­ey Jun­gle.
• What’s next? Lawrence Williams’ The Fiery Fur­nace, How to Eat Your Water­mel­on in White Com­pa­ny (and Enjoy It), This is Eng­land and way more Bioshock.
• I’m crazy look­ing for­ward to launch­ing BMIML 2.0.

I just wrote a long com­ment at All Things Girls Can Tell, which I auto­mat­i­cal­ly real­ized may be the only time I’ve ever actu­al­ly brought my aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing to bear on South St., where I worked slav­ish­ly for over two years at TLA Video on 4th St.

To me South St.‘s decline rep­re­sents the acqui­es­cence to the Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion in that its trans­for­ma­tion from sleazy dive out­let in the 70’s to cor­po­rate-rid­dled out­door mall in the late ’90’s/early ’00’s to its present day strip mall ghost town sta­tus says so much about how con­sumer habits have changed and how they prac­ti­cal­ly affect an urban land­scape. With­out get­ting too Clus­ter­fuck Nation about it, it also demon­strates how busi­ness improve­ment dis­tricts can micro­man­age eclec­ti­cism into obliv­ion.