No mixtape or fast essay this time. I just wanted to say how much I like this video for Buraka Som Sistema’s “Up All Night,” which is probably mildly nsfw for having the sexiest people in the entire world in it. It’s erotic without being a real bore about it like most videos like to be. I like the gimmick of this video, the live webcam dance party. It’s very fun, and it reminds me of Vines, the little six second videos that you can record and post to Twitter now. I know a few people who do vines, and I’m always impressed when they manage to get across a whole idea or mood in that short period of time. I love dance videos anyway, and this is one of my favorites.

I like this video, too. Description:

Cho Cho Cho is the first song and music video produced and written by the youth of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. Created in a Beat Making Lab, the song was inspired by a popular call-and-response chant in Goma, and the video was filmed during Yole!Africa’s SKIFF Festival dance competition.

–I read and enjoyed this excerpt on the subject of Magical Girls and the influence of Sailor Moon. The full piece is over here. I like reading about paradigm shifts in genres and mediums, things that forever alter the landscape. It makes me wonder how much of it is bandwagoning and how much is someone realizing that a door they thought was closed or didn’t exist is actually wide open. A lot of the post-1986 stuff in comics is like that, I feel like. People out there read those books and realized that they could actually push the envelope and evolve in new directions and there was a market for it and worth in it.

–I read and enjoyed this piece on a Latina teen “coming out” as black. One thing that gets lost in the conversation a little is how internally diverse each race is, and how the lines between them are often blurred thanks to… basically everything, really. I’m interested in how other people view the fine lines and subtle gradations that go hand-in-hand with race as a concept.

–Jim Rugg’s Flickr is must-viewing.

-I got a new job! I’m Content Manager at Image. Sort of a Flo Steinberg, quality assurance type of situation, with a little more besides. Someone asked me why Image and I talked about that some. Last week was my first week, and it was pretty interesting. BUT I’m basically gonna stop writing about comics for a bit, especially industry nonsense or recent books. I still owe people reviews for a few comics, but I’m gonna put those off for a few weeks while I get settled and figure out the best way to do that while distantly or implicitly representing the company. I’ll probably do more stuff like this parallel I noticed between a couple books I like and this question about the current best cape comic, but definitely no news and nothing that would make me drown in conflict of interest. I’m still figuring this out—bear with me.

-If I ever become one of those braggy “Oh look what I just read that you can’t see yet” types of dudes (outside of like, a legitimate critical context, I mean) feel free to smash me into a thousand pieces. I don’t want to be that guy. I’ll still be enthusiastic about stuff I dig, but I hope it’ll never come from that place.

–I wrote about a family friend who passed away some time back, and my reaction/lack thereof.

I caught up on Arrested Development over the past week or so. I didn’t want to binge on it, but I did find myself wanting to watch it, so I did a couple episodes a day after work. I’m surprised by what impressed me. I thought it was pretty funny, but much, much better-written than it was belly-laugh funny. It was still plenty funny, especially anything involving Maeby, Ann, or the Michael/George-Michael stuff, but the writing was what grabbed me more than the laughs. A few of the parallels only hit me as time went on, from the various walls to how much of the series was about people explicitly trying to get something from someone else without tipping their hand or giving up anything valuable. I appreciated it more than I laughed at it. I’m really interested in how it was made now, too. They successfully nailed an incredible juggling act, editing scenes down to equally significant slices of time and then organizing those slices into a greater whole. Everything had to work when it was obscured, partially revealed, fully revealed, and integrated. There’s something really impressive about that. I like complicated or intricately constructed shows, but I don’t think any of them have managed to walk that line half as well as Arrested Development. I’ll have to wait a few months and check it out again to see what reveals itself.

Open thread. What’re you reading/watching/hearing/enjoying?