cryforburke.

Conan Makes his statement....

I think by this point, anyone who actually reads this sparsely updated blog understands that when we type “we” we really mean “I,” so from now on, or at least for this update, I’m gonna stick with “I.”  There is no office,  no group of interns or surly, sailor suited accountants. Just me.  A 28 year old unemployed comedian/actor that probably owes his entire life’s ambitions to the man pictured above.

I cannot think about Conan O’brien without thinking about school nights staying up way too late just to make sure I catch his show.  Without thinking about the sharp stabbing pains of hysterical laughter, held in with the hope that my mom wouldn’t hear and tell me to shut off the TV.    Without thinking about how I just couldn’t understand how anyone could come up with the kind of jokes he came up with.  Without thinking about the first time I saw the masturbating bear or Preparation H Raymond or the Year 2000 and realizing it’s possible and acceptable for a grown man to be so absolutely ridiculous, silly and smart.

It was pleasure watching him on Late Night and I’m sure it was a pleasure watching him on the Tonight Show.  Sadly, having no television, I was only able to catch the first few episodes.  I always assumed his show would still around when I finally got off my ass and  able to afford TV.   Looks like, at least when it comes to the Tonight Show, it just ain’t gonna happen.  Somewhere in that epic cluster fuck of a network at NBC, someone thought it would be a good idea to give Leno his 11:30pm spot back and push Conan and the Tonight Show to 12:05am, essentially making it “The This Morning Show.”

Conan, always the class act, has decided that his reputation, along with the legacy of The Tonight Show, is more important than staying with NBC.  I’m glad he’s making this decision and really looking forward to what ever it is he decides to do next.   Below is Conan’s statement regarding this whole fiasco.  It’s a good read.  I think you’ll like it.

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision. Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over “The Tonight Show” in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004, I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both. But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my “Tonight Show” in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule. Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the “Tonight Show” to 12:05 to accommodate the “Jay Leno Show” at 11:35. For 60 years, the “Tonight Show” has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the “Tonight Show” into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The “Tonight Show” at 12:05 simply isn’t the “Tonight Show.” Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the “Late Night” show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy. So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard, and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of “The Tonight Show.” But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet, a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the “Tonight Show,” I believe nothing could matter more. There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work. Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

Yours,

Conan

New Vampire weekend track, "Horchata"

You guys here that bell ringing? We sure do.  It’s the bell signaling the end of Vampire Weekend’s fifteen minutes.

Incase you haven’t been to Pitchfork today, they’ve posted VW’s new track, “Horchata” and guess what, it sounds exactly the same as every other fucking song they’ve ever recorded.  Way to keep it way inside the box guys.  Actually, if it’s at all possible, this song is even pussier sounding than anything off their first record.  But what do you expect from guys who look like this:

Nice sweater, asshole.

Kind of reminds me of another group we know.

OH MY GOD, THEY’RE ALL WEARING CHUCKS!  Now that’s comedy.

Anyhow, check out the new Flaming Lips.  It’s got balls.

We're still alive....

Barely.  Sorry we’ve been absent around here, folks. Things in the cryforburke offices have been a bit of a cluster fuck as of late.  It seems our human resources manager, Lunchbox, has been suffering some sort of midlife crisis and has been refusing to come into work.  It’s a real shame too because Lunchbox is essentially the heart and soul of this office.  Just look at the guy:

And it’s not even Halloween, that’s just the way dude dresses!  Is he awesome or what?!

Anyway, it seems that he’s had some troubles with his “old lady”, which is what he usually says right before he starts a 3 week whiskey bender.  We all know Lunchbox ain’t got no old lady.  Dude’s gotta be free!

While he’s away, it’s up to the rest of us to figure out exactly how not to pay our interns so it leaves little time for actually putting up new material for you.

Just wanted to let you know we got a few things lined up.  We’re still trying to cook up a new format which is taking forever because we’re lazy as shit.  We’ve also got some reviews of the new Pissed Jeans and Jay Reatard records coming soon.  Keep an eye out for them!  Finally, we have a whole new line of interns that showed up at our doorsteps.  Looks like they got nothing to do with their summer vacation and need to kill time before going back to middle school.  We’re gonna introduce you to them in a few days.  Until then, know that no one will ever love you as much as this:

what. the fuck?

This piece of shit published a shitty book called “I hope they serve beer in hell”:

Some one is now releasing a movie based off of that shitty book.  Thankfully it looks like it’s going to be the biggest piece of garbage since Miss March but that’s besides the point.

How do these movies keep getting made?  We can’t believe we’re all still broke.

More actual posts coming shortly.

Michael and Michael have issues.

We really wanted to put up a list of the top five most overrated bands in the world, but we figure we can get to that tomorrow.  Today we have more important matters to discuss:  Mainly, selling out and shilling some show that we have nothing to do with, even when it won’t further our own success.  The show we’re talking about is Comedy Central’s own Michael and Michael Have Issues.

These guys have been comedy heros of our since their days with The State.  We were abnormally pissed off when their excellent show “Stella” was cancelled and we really don’t want to see the same thing happen with their new show.  The first episode was pretty good (what more do you want from a pilot) and the second episode (airing tonight) is gonna flat out kill it!  Trust us, we’ve got a  man on the inside.

Do yourself a favor and tune in to this one.  10:30pm, Wednesday nights on Comedy Central.  Don’t be an asshole, watch the show.  If it gets cancelled because no one watches it, we’re gonna ruin your lives.  Think we’re bluffing?

Brooklyn Pool Parties: Week 2

What a fucking dud of a show.  Even with it being free, we still feel like we were ripped off.

The second week of the Jelly NYC pool parties was a massive failure for multiple reasons.  Let’s discuss a few, hmmm?

First of all, White Denim got canceled. So the only real reason to show up to the water front today just went straight through the window.  If they did end up playing, we’re pretty sure it would have been just like this:

That’s right, White Denim live is akin to two giant male gorillas going toe to toe to establish dominance over all the sexy female gorillas in heat.   Sadly, instead of something so awesome as all that, we got this instead:

complete dog shit.

So the the first band to go up was the Crystal Antlers.

We would have loved these guys in high school but now they just seem kind of boring.  We have to give them extra credit for having a black guy in the band though…way to go fellas.  We saw the singer walking around the venue looking for gash after they played but no one recognized him.  Bummer, dude!

That reminds us.  Can we please knock it off with the Crystal ::insert whatever bullshit here:: band names?  We get it already.

Next up on the block was the snoozetastic Magnolia Electric Co.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….! What?!  Oh, magnolia electric company is playing on the ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Wrong band, wrong genre for the uber “hip” crowed.  They performed their “we kind of sound like Wilco, right?” brand of rock to almost dead silence.  Awkward!

And then there was the headliner of the night, The Dirty Projectors.

We heard these jokers play 2 and a half songs before we decided to pack it in.  We figured we could just go to Bushwick and watch poor “artists” jerk off onto their guitars for 45 minutes and it would be about the same as a Dirty Projectors show.  Seriously, what’s with the hype on this band?  They have one pretty catchy song on the Dark Was the Night comp and thats about it.  They’re  boring bullshit that pretentious idiots have tricked themselves into enjoying.  Hey assholes, enjoy the ride cuz you got about 13 minutes of fame left before someone else comes along and gets the “new vampire weekend” title.

Next week’s free show will have the Black Lips + And you will know us by the trail of dead.

And you will know us by the backs of our heads moving away from you the second after the Black Lips leave the stage.

Monsters of Folk release their first single.

Monsters of Folk, the collaboration between M. Ward, Jim James (or Yim Yames as that crazy asshole is going by these days) and that chick that kind of looks like Kristin Stewart, has just released the first single for download on their website Monstersoffolk.com.   We’re too lazy to hyperlink that site so just suck it up and apple - V that shit.

The Song is called say please and it’s quite the corker…in a sort of bland, classic rocker kind of way.  Don’t get us wrong, we think the song is okay but it’s nowhere near as good as anything M. Ward or Jim James has written before.  To be fair, it is leaps and bounds better than anything Bright Eyes ever cried out.

We over heard someone in our office say that this “supergroup” is the Traveling Wilburys of our time.  We think that’s a pretty fair assessment.

Wilco at Keyspan Park, Brooklyn

At this point we may as well change the name of this site to Wilco (the blog) ((yuk yuk)) But like you, we’re also getting sick of the parenthesis jokes.  Anyhow, we got a chance to see Wilco play over in Coney Island at Keyspan park and it was pretty fucking insane.

Luckily, Yo La Tengo opened this show instead of that girl from bright eyes and her new band.  Yo La Tengo is one of those groups we’ve kind of missed the boat on.  We’ve always had their albums laying around and knew they were supposed to be great but we just never got around to listening to them.  Big mistake.  They fucking rocked it hard.  Can’t really go into too much detail as we aren’t all that familiar with the material, but we can say it was a dance/guitar freak-out good time.  They played for exactly one hour and then promptly got the fuck off the stage to make way for the head liners.

We have to digress for a second and point out that there was a dude in the audience wearing a t-shirt that said “this is what a feminist looks like.”  FUUUUUUUUCK YOU!   Hey buddy, you ain’t fooling anybody with that shirt.  We all know you only wear that so you can bang girls who are waaaay too into Le Tigre.   Go fuck yourself.

Back to the Show.

Wilco came out to the Price is Right theme song and then opened up with their new album opener, Wilco (the song).  Now after repeat listenings, the song is skippable.  It sounded mediocre live as well and it seems like most of the audience agreed.  Thankfully the show kind of exploded after that.  Here’s a list of High/lowlights of the night.

The awesome…

the band itself - Tweedy and company were in rare fucking form.  We’ve never seen the guys so animated.  Something happened over the last year that turned the band into some serious rock smiths.

Hummingbird - Great song, Tweedy running in place/ swinging the mic like david lee roth…good stuff.

Spiders (kidsmoke) - They brought Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo out and the dude flat out killed it.  Between him and Nels Cline, it was hard to tell who was having the hardest guitar seizure.  13 minutes of Kraut rock/acid freak out.

Bull Black Nova - The best song on the new album is also the best new song to hear live.

One Wing - A close second.

Can’t stand it and I’m always in love, back to back - The guy standing next to us started speaking in tongues, no joke.

Hoodoo Voodoo - It only seems right that they closed the show with a song that was written only 3 blocks away from the venue.  They played it way harder and more rockin than the album version and we even got to see a short guitar fight between Nels Cline and Pat Sansone…More surprising was that Sansone held his own.

All the new songs but one - were much more satisfying heard live.  We’ll get to the one exception in a minute.

The not so awesome…

The guy in the lame shirt - can’t really say anything more about that idiot….just want to point out how much of an idiot he actually is.

Feist - It was supposed to be some kind of big treat to bring out the indie songstress and perform their crumby duet “You and I” but it just kind of brought the mood down.  You could tell she really thought she was stealing the show but again, she just seemed unnecessary.  The song would have been just as boring and cute if Jeff sang it by himself.

Feist and that jerk off from Grizzly Bear - They brought out the guy from grizzly bear so they could all sing “California Stars” together.  What a disaster.  The song was fine but dude didn’t know the words so he just stumbled through while shaking some maracas that you couldn’t even hear.  Feist was the same way…she played her tambourine and just got in the bands way.  Even worse is the fact that even after Tweedy said good bye to her, she continued to worm her way into the set somehow….can anyone say “attention slut?”

After the 5 or so times we’ve seen Wilco, this was easily the best they’ve ever been.  We’re looking forward to seeing them in a few months, after they’ve had a chance to really work the kinks out of the new songs.  Until then, we’ll keep looking for a recording of this show and put it on repeat.