Your Friday night is mercifully straightforward.
Handsome Furs finally make up for last fall's Khyber cancellation with a show at
North Star. For those not knowing, basically, the rock star half of Wolf Parade has ditched the loud whiny dude half in favor of a sexy lady who knows how to keep her mouth shut and drop beats half. Wholly awesome.
SATURDAY IS CRAZYGONUTS!!!
More specifically, for example, you've got
Les Savy Fav's (pic'd) first Philly show since 2003 at the
TLA. It's virtually impossible to describe what their shows are like, but just to make sure everybody knows what they're in for, think part Making Time, part Burning Man, and part
Eyes Wide Shut. Seriously, I still have a mask from the last time I saw them. A mask!
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Earlier on Saturday, put on your "College" t-shirt and head over to the Human BBQ at
Pi-Lam. No better way to kick off the day than a
Brown Recluse Sings brunch, plus a smattering of other bands foreign and domestic.
Ok, back to nite time. If I didn't have tix for the Fav, I'd definitely fer sure be at
Johnny Brenda's catching the
French Kicks. Or at
North Star for the long overdue return of sentimental 'Stamps faves
Ambulance Ltd. Or puttin' the dance back in my pants at the April installment of
Hurrah down at Medusa Lounge. Totally.
Oh shit, and
Ladyfingers is back in town, too! The badass of bluegrass is bringing his punkabilly revival to the Old Swedes Church, of all places. And what's this? An after party at For Pete's Sake?
With FREE BEER??? Yup, Philadephia Brewing Company is steppin' up their game and lubricating everyone who has the good sense to buy a ticket. People, this is officially not optional.
Sunday night super awesome rock info forthcoming...
Bjorn, Sven. Bjorn, and Sven
Earlier this month, Lil Wayne faced the hype machine and dropped the
ridiculously anticipated Carter III into your local Virgin Megastore
or iTunes outlet. It is a triumph, and if it isn't a masterpiece, it's
pretty damn close. Coming on like a combination of Usher, Sly Stone,
Prince, Jay-Z, Weird Al Yankovich, Radiohead and 50 Cent, Weezy is in
full control and as focused as he will ever be. First off, you know
we're in luck when Kayne drops three beats and doesn't utter a single word.
Then there's the album version of #1 hit "Lollipop". I'm stunned in a
Tim Russert death way at how good the album version of "Lollipop" is.
I called the radio version "
We'll dispense with the long-winded and fantastical excuse for the radio silence, and simply say that after three long years of slaving over a hot keyboard non-stop, the 'Stamps boys wanted a blog vacation. There was no point trying to prepare you for our brief absence, since you would've still lost your shit in the end. Better to just rip off the band-aid, throw you in the deep end, and let you find your own way home. But we're back. And boy, did we have fun. SkinnySlim's adventures included no less than shooting a movie in New York City, climbing the Pyramids, and going on lion safari in Africa. Or 
Comin' atcha first thing every Monday morning, it's The Pony Track, a super-fantastic short distance dedication to BadmintonStamps Collective founding member and internationally renown symbol for musical excellence Aaron "Pony"
Child. No fancy links, no clever write-ups, 'cause these awesome songs
don't need no splainin'. So c'mon, ride the pony!
You know when you say, "Hey", and people respond, "Hey is for horses"? These people are assholes. They're also factually incorrect. Hey is an interjection used to attract attention or to express surprise, appreciation, wonder, or pleasure. Hay is that crap horses eat. So hey isn't for horses, it's for exclaiming. And furthermore, hey is much more commonly used than hay. So really it makes more sense that when people say, "I'm so hungry I could eat a pile of hay" to respond, "Hey is for attracting attention or expressing surprise, appreciation, wonder, or pleasure." Although that would be a pretty dick thing to do too.
When I graduated High School, I...wait, that's right, I never
graduated high school. That shit is for sellouts. As everybody from
Hillary Clinton to the corner bum (soon to be one in the same) will
tell you, getting an education is lame and means you are not a real
American. Also, apparently, being black means you're not a real American
and 
Here's a quick look at the mp3s spinning on SkinnySlim's record player
this month.
The dashing young lad with the very not-mop top at right is renowned 
I believe it was Churchill who said that when it comes to war, you
gotta have good weapons, better soldiers, and the best propaganda.
Either it was Churchill or I just made it up. But no matter, it's true
nonetheless. There is no better example of Churchill's point than the
famed Fried Egg Civil War of 1993. The fierce conflict pitted Over
Easy against its ideological nemesis, Over Hard. Propaganda was in
full effect. Over Easy fired the first salvo, releasing their wildly
popular slogan, "Life's Hard: Take It Easy." Over Hard hit back the
only way they could. Hard. They countered with the slogan, "Over Hard.
These Eggs Don't Run." Not to be outdone, Over Easy shot back with,
"Life's Hard: Why you want your eggs to be hard too? It's seems
excessive, to be frank." Needless to say, this slogan bombed harder
than the egg bombs Over Hard was pummeling the Over Easy home base
with. The combination of their stunning loss in the propaganda battle
and the constant barrage of hard eggs being thrown at them by other
hard eggs seemed damning. But Over Easy insisted it would not be over
that easy. They released one of the most stunning advertisements in
wartime history. Some called it slander. Others cited the old
Churchill idiom, "All is fair in love and war." The ad stated, "Over
Hard...Not as hard as you think they are." While still wordy, it was
the image that shook up the world. The ads showed a photograph of a
limp Over Hard fried egg gorging itself on Viagra and Cialis. Hard
insisted the photo was doctored. Easy claimed the only thing that was
doctored was Hard's hardness. Over Medium, which had sat out the war as a consciousness objector,
knew it was the only hope for bringing peace to the fried egg world. In a
passionate speech before the United Egg Council, Over Medium pleaded
with the two rivals to come together, lest they all be done in by the
new alliance of Scrambled and Poached that was threatening the entire
U.E.C. community. Thankfully both Over Easy and Over Hard listened to
reason and settled their differences, although the scars of their
infamous propaganda campaign will never truly heal.
We've all been there. You're in the audience of indie rock concert X, standing on the fringe of that shifting no-man's land where the passive observers meet the movers, shakers, and jump-up-and-downers. You suck it up and deal with the occasional jostle, which you realize is fair trade-off for being so close to the stage. Then the moshing starts. You're too busy protecting your face to enjoy the show, and your arms are tired from shoving sweaty dudes back into other sweaty dudes. But how do you stop the moshy menace? I'll tell you how. Push a girl over. Now please understand that, on the whole, Philabuster is a man who treats a lady in strictly chivalrous fashion. I open her car door, point out broken glass on the sidewalk, and always 
Ever since we Pony Tracked "Some Way Through This" 
It's been forty years since the social revolutions of 1968.
Anniversaries and commemorations are in full effect, celebrating the
free sex, free drugs, and free police beatings. One thing that wasn't
free in 1968 was the protest paraphanalia. Whether it be a black
wristband, a tie dyed American flag, or guns that shoot flowers, 1968
was the heyday of the protest industry. But today ain't like the good ol'
days when there were riots in the streets every day. Protest is a
perfect profit opportunity, but the industry went into decline in the
70s and hit a full-fledged recession ever since do-it-yourself
effigies came into fashion in 1980s Iran. Mom and pop protest shops
have been on death's door with no reprieve on the horizon. Enter that
ingenious little manufacturing machine known as China (editor's note:
badmintonstamps is 
We'd be excited enough just to have 
The Girlfriend Track is song that SkinnySlim deems sexy for a lady to
feel. We're talking about songs where, if my girl said "Yo, turn this
up", I would be turned on.
As our regular readers know, SkinnySlim is only in it for the money.
And nowadays, there's one word that's synonymous with money: prequels.
"Prequels," you ask, "what are those?" Yeah, I didn't know either.
Apparently a prequel is when there's a successful movie or book and
then someone writes a new, lamer story about what happened before the
movie or book began. "Oh, like a sequel!" Well, sort of. Except my
understanding is that a sequel tells the lamer story of what happens
after the movie or book ended, not what happened before it began.
Thusly, the story that happens after the movie or book begins or
before it ends is simply called the quel. But the beauty of prequels
is that you can just take an existing success and exploit it for your
own pocketbook/agenda. Some guy named George Lucas did this to those
kickass Star Wars movies, and he ended up making millions even though
he clearly had none of the talent of the guys who created the
originals. Now the truth is, the same thing applies with a sequel. See the
Beverly Hills Cop/Lethal Weapon films for evidence. But here's the
rub. They already made a sequel to the most successful story of all
time. It's called the New Testament. But they ain't ever made a
prequel. That's where SkinnySlim comes in. That's right, I'm
prequelling the Bible. What was this God character up to before the
whole Earth thing? Crazy shit, that's what. Dude was on a whole
different tip. Lots of dragons, lots of flying giraffes, lots of
erkimats. What are erkimats? Crazy shit, that's what. Crazy prequel
shit, in fact. See, with a prequel you can make up whatever nonsense
you want, as long as it ends at the beginning of the hit story you're
capitalizing on. I bet you didn't know God was into macrame before
Earth. He made a whole planet out macrame. He even made an erkimat out
of macrame. But in the end everything went dark. Very dark. And God
was confused and lost, mostly because it was so dark that he couldn't
find his way around. And then God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. The end
Roaming through the crowd,
US Customs tale:
I know what you're thinking. You checked Badminton last night before bed, but the site remained frustratingly stagnant since last Wednesday. When you return today, presto! Several more days' worth of posts have appeared, as if by magic. Actually, it's just another case of Google dishing out some good old everyday inspiration. Yesterday, they introduced 
There's this website that's become very popular. It features
observations on what white people like. I believe that is in fact what
it's called. Little did I know that the guy who writes it is white.
Which is bullshit. It takes no balls to make observations about your
own race. However, it takes three balls to make observations about
another race. Which is what I've got. Three balls. So what do black
people like? Entry number one: Tyler Perry. Entry number two: Red
Lobster. Look, I got a million of these. This is my fucking hobby.
They trick out their railings. "What?" Yes, they trick out their
railings. Here's 
Say goodbye to The Tweeter Center, and hello to 
Swayin' side to side.
Regular reader and 
The 
The Girlfriend Track is song that SkinnySlim deems sexy for a lady to
feel. We're talking about songs where, if my girl said "Yo, turn this
up", I would be turned on.
Due to the chaos and clusterfuckishness of the Democratic primary
race, Michigan and Florida have been 
Shocking. That's the only way to describe the contents of today's New York Times article introducing the world to MySpace whore/actual whore Ashley Alexandra Dupre. The big news, of course, has nothing to do with the biographical minutiae of Ashley's childhood or journey into hookerdom. What has the world - and especially the music world - abuzz is the Times' 
I got a tattoo. Years in the contemplating, I finally went out and did
it. And as you all know, when SkinnySlim does something, he doesn't
fuck around. He goes full throttle. That's why I got an inner lip
tattoo. Actually, I got two inner lip tattoos. One has an arrow
pointing towards my throat, with the word "Food" below it. The other
has an arrow pointing away from my mouth with the word "Brilliance"
below it. Cause, you see, food goes in and brilliance comes out.
Problem is, the tattoo artist didn't share my skills with the
brilliance, and he reversed the order. So now I have "Brilliance"
pointing towards my mouth and "Food" pointing away from it. Which would mean
food would go out and brilliance would come in. Since I don't want to
spend the rest of my days eating my words and vomiting, I am in a bit
of a jam. At first I tried biting my lip like 
What's up with the hat?
How many gimmicks can the local music media coax out March Madness? As the owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial would say, "let's find out!" Up first, the Philly Rock Shootout, a battle-less battle of the bands sponsored by City Paper and Y-Rock. Question is, who was asleep at the switch 
I do many things very well, and I do other things not at all. Example
of the former: dancing. Example of the latter: driving. Then there are
those things I do, but not particularly well. An example here would be
wrapping presents. A final category in the Things SkinnySlim
Does/Doesn't Do list would be things I do well, but not particularly
sexy. An example here would be cooking. I'm not a sexy cook. Sexy with
the lovemaking, sexy with the music selections, not sexy with the
food. Oh, I'll cook for you. I'll make you a little pasta with pesto
or a nice pork chop with rosemary. It's going to be clean, cooked
thoroughly, not poisonous, and, well, fine. But I don't give food
life. I don't infuse it with any, as they say in France, "jennooze say
kwa." Which is fine. Because you can't be sexy at everything. George
Clooney? He's not sexy at everything. Probably most things, but not
everything. And those 
Philly's 
Last week, I put forth a well thought out and fundamentally sound argument for why
Jewish people 
