Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° listen ° available 10-28-08
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
Listen Without Prejudice 2.0 (Or, "When I'm Not Having Copies of Keys Made...")
Who doesn't love TV's Michael Cera, George Michael from Arrested Development? From his parody of the information superhighway's beloved Star Wars Kid to his parody of the intertube's bestronglydisliked Aleksey Vayner, he's found a place in our collective too-much-time-spent-online hearts.
Why, I can't fathom any circumstance that could dislodge him, save the molesting of children, or the mewling of fey, out-of-tune indie rock...
Oh, dear. (via Underrated)
Five minutes and four seconds of your life just bolted from the room, hands over its ears.
A band fronted by Michael Cera is about as exciting a proposition as Jena Malone's band, or Juliette Lewis' band, or Jared Leto's band, or That Kid from Rushmore Who Only Gets Acting Work from Relatives and People Who Want to Meet His Uncle's former band, or that same schmuck's latest band, or that guy who thinks Gus van Sant is still shooting Last Days. Or the latest records from singing sensations Hillary Duff and Lindsay Lohan. The Return of Bruno (Still in print!)! Heartbeat (Sadly, not.)! So on/forth.
I blame vaudeville and its undue influence on today's children. Here: Watch these guys cover Weezer!
Granted, that song's sort of supposed to sound like it's falling apart anyway.
The difference between those other actor-slashes and Cera is that his appeal comes from a modest self-awareness. Which is why I'm choosing to believe that The Long Goodbye (Cera, like Ms. Lohan, is a huge Altman fan) is a total joke. And a real wayhomer; their first blog mention came over a year ago. The sound is earnest and lo-fi - of course it is, and of course there's a glockenspiel involved - and though there isn't a big twatty picture of the group frozen mid-air during a jump, they've already myspacefriended a band with exclamation points in its name. So it's all right if you want to laugh. They want you to laugh. Confusingly, they call themselves "Indie," as opposed to "Hawaiian Slack Guitar/Hyphy/Funk."
This may all exist as a promotional gimmick for the new [insert awesome new slanglingo for "internet"]-based comedy series "Clark and Michael," which has something to do with subway hero Wesley Clark and Michael Bloomberg teaming up to fight terrorists and apathy in The Big A. Action! Romance! Or something.
Cera co-stars with bandmate Clark Duke. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Duke was nominated by the Young Artist Awards, in 1993, as "Outstanding Actor Under Ten in a Television Series" for his role as Elliot Hartman in the John Ritter/Markie Post sitcom Hearts Afire. (He lost to I'll Fly Away's John Aaron Bennett. I'm sure it was a squeaker.)
Series premiered yesterday, here (nice socks!); it features a cameo from Buster Bluth and the following line: "I was raised like a gentleman. Like a classy gentleman." You can watch other clips n' shit at the show's myspace page (where they want to be perfectly clear that they prefer the British version of The Office, you fucking Philistine).
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This morning, I was passed in Prospect Park by a diminutive female police officer riding a Segway.
Toward the base of a flight of stairs.
"NYPD got themself some flying motorscooters," said some guy.