Why be cruel to good ol' boy Scooter Libby? Sure, he's the first cabinet member to be indicted for crimes committed in office since Orville E. Babcock in 1875 (I'm sure you remember Orville from his involvement in the tax-embezzling Whisky Ring). But it's not fair, because Mr. Libby is the victim of a horrible memory disorder that makes it impossible to recall events from the months of June and July. It's called Junulyphobia and is most often found in powerful white men. At least horrible person Mary Matlin has come to Scooty-boy's defense, claiming on Fox News that Mr. Libby is a "victim" of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, aka "Mr. Bulletproof". Washington DC's own Slant 6 were a victim of the mid-nineties "Riot Grrrl" fad. Unfortunate, because they were more of an alt-pop group than an angry punk band. Here's a great little song about what Mr. Libby is really a victim of.

If there was a ring to embezzle, Orville was on it.

The rumors were true. Jay-Z and NaS appeared together and performed several songs at Hova's "I Declare War" concert. The show was billed as a forum for Mr. Carter to attack his enemies, including 50 Cent, The Game, and Cam'ron. Instead Jay got all mushy on us, declaring that beef was "wack". What a pussy. The concert also featured Diddy, Beanie Sigel, Young Jeezy, and BadmintonStamps rival Kayne West. According to the New York Times the audience was not impressed by his appearance: "To this rough-and-tumble crowd, he is more pop star than hip-hop hero. Some people sang along with "Gold Digger," his current smash, but for most of Mr. West's brief set the response was notably mild...Mr. West probably would have been received more warmly if he had crashed a Nets game instead. Or maybe even a Devils game." Hey Kayne, the New York Times just called you white. Now that's some beef.

Remember that video where DMX was in jail? That whole life-imitating-art thing keeps proving itself right yet again.

The New York Gypsy Festival starts this weekend and runs through November 9th. Gogol Bordello will be a highlight. Buy pricey tickets here, but first listen to this super cool song:

Looking for more in-depth coverage of songs written for sports teams? Probably not, but here it is. Also, congrats to the Second City's Second Team for winning a World Series that will be remembered for its forgettableness.

Hey indie rockers! Already digested that new Broken Social Scene album? Well, ex-junkie/alcoholic/crackhead Dave Berman and his Silver Jews just released their latest excellent record, entitled Tanglewood Numbers. Not for everyone, but well worth it if fractured beauty is you kind of thing. BadmintonStamps has a country-tinged number for just you.

Is no English word goofier? But I digress...
Oh, that Harry Potter. A boy among men, this little four-eyed punk gets all the luck: a hot exotic chica girlfriend, all the best secret spells and potions, another cute babe that wants to stroke his wand, and a chance to hang out with rock supergroup The Wyrd Sisters. That's right, in the upcoming Potter flick, hormonal Harry hobnobs with the one-off band comprised of Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood and Phil Selway. And while the Sisters have had a rough time of late, getting sued by Canadian folk bands or quarreling with super sorceress J.K. Rowling, at least the band's spooky and goofy leaked track is hotter than Hermione's goblet of fire. So let everyone else yap about the all-star hipster jam "Do They Know It's Halloween". BadmintonStamps is here to bring you the real scariest musical potion of the year.

This weekend, Roc-a-fella franchise rapper and Jay-Z foe Cam'ron was shot several times in an attempted car-jacking. Bullets reportidly pierced both of his arms. Cam'ron's reaction: "I got shot three times and my album comes out November 22." Those robbers should have known not to mess with such a thug life self-promoter. "No one takes anything from me, not a quarter million dollar car or a five cent stick of gum," he added. "Well, no one except for that whole Damon Dash stealing my soul thing, but you get the gist." Consider the gist got. Meanwhile, you should cop Summer Teeth, if for no other reason than Jeff Tweedy was shot ten times in the heart, and it's also Wilco's best album.

Last month, we emailed news of our joke diss track about Central Village Idiot to various websites. Considering our genius, it's not surprising that the overall response was positive. However, Jessica Coen, the hottie editor of media gossip site Gawker.com, felt we were out of line. Here is her email:

-----Original Message-----
From: Jessica Coen @ Gawker [mailto: omitted]
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2005 1:59 PM
To: (name omitted)
Cc: (name omitted)
Subject: Re: blog diss song
I've heard it, but I don't understand why someone would bother doing
this to some kid who blogs for fun. Strikes me as cruel; knives should
be directed at the big guys, not this Central Village boy.

Way to take the high road, Jess. It's very brave to stick to princi...wait, what's this? It seems Miss Coen took a break from "the big guys" and plunged her butter knife deep into the heart of Central Village. Oh, sweet hypocritical Jessica! First you hate us, then you bite us? With this sort of passive aggressive behavior, we can only assume someone has a classic schoolyard crush on the ol' BadmintonStamps. It's understandable. We're the baddest boys in the blogosphere, and we look quite dashing in our school uniforms. So yes, we will go to the Halloween Bake Sale "Fun"draiser with you. But you should also consider yourself warned, 'cause there just might be another diss track in the works. And this time, we're coming for the big guys.

Allow The 'Stamps to lift you over the high walls of even higher society. This is how we do, we Badminton.

Saturday, I sallied uptown for the dress rehearsal of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Catherine Zeta Jones and featuring 'Stamps faves Franz Ferdinand. The show got off to a bumpy start when Darryl Hammond warned us that none of the sketches featured any jokes, just inane premises. The pre-show tension was high, particularly when Don Pardo mocked his assistant and made her cry. The rehearsal itself runs long, and sections are cut for the live show. One particularly off-putting sketch involved Zeta Jones playing a Hebrew stereotype and eating crackbabies. It was rough. Lorne Michaels stormed in during another sketch about a blind prop comic and hit Fred Armisan over the head with a framed photo of Bill Murray. Still, the Franz rocked the roll, and it's a thrill to see them in that setting. Here's a "big hit out of '77" and a reminder of those bygone glory days.

A recent and alarming trend in the world of Music Website Psychiatry is the outbreak of Immodicus Hypidus, aka "over hyping". Patients exhibit a desire to be the so-called "first kid on the block" and fantasize about "breaking" a band. Symptoms include delusions of grandeur and excessive use of hyperbole, and the afflicted sites are left sounding like a desperate local film critic padding his reviews with ad-worthy sound bytes. Take, for example, the praise doled out by this particularly sick site (and whipping boy) over a span of just thirteen days last month...

"I really love this band" (The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers)
"One of my favorite bands" (Voxtrot)
"One of my favorite albums" (Maximo Park)
"They really impressed me" (Morning After Girl)
"These guys were special" (Wolf Mother)
"There was just this feeling in the air that something special was happening" (Silversun Pickups)
"They were perfect. I was in awe" (Two Gallants)
"Simply the best band out there right now" (Cloud Cult)
"Certainly a band not to be missed" (Thunderbirds are Now)
"They were amazing" (Hopewell)
"Absolutely breathtaking" (Doveman)
"Then they started playing music and oh my fucking God did they deliver" (Wolf Parade)

The afflicted websites become irresponsible, persuading readers to spend incredible amounts of time and money to enjoy these "must see" acts. But it is implausible, and in fact untrue, that all of these bands are special. Or, to quote Dash Incredible, saying everyone is special "is another way of saying no one is". And that's the greatest tragedy of Immodicus Hypidus: a loss of perspective, which causes those rare, truly deserving bands to get lost in the crowd. One recent victim is the aforementioned Wolf Parade, who've put out an extremely promising, albeit imperfect, debut album. Here's hoping Lupus Paradii take their blog antibiotics and don't let this e-neurosis stunt their own musical growth.

The great news? The rumor mill has Nas and Jay-Z teaming up. The bad news? Kanye.

Wanna watch the most ridiculous video ever for probably the worst song ever? Sure you do, it's hysterical. Check out some Coheed and Cohiba here and click on "The Suffering".

Badminton are huge Clipse fans, but their record label is not. The coke-themed rappers follow-up album has been delayed for two years. To tide you over, buy their well-reviewed new mixtape 4 cheap right here.

In the U.S. marijuana possession arrests are higher than violent crime arrests. That's enough to make us want to kill somebody, but we'll just smoke these trees instead.

When all else fails there's always this picture of a boozing squirrel.

Mike Bloomberg has Bloomberg News and it seems Jay-Z has BadmintonStamps. In our latest update, President Carter has signed Japanese rap quartet The Teriyaki Boyz. Svengalied by Japan's hipster king Nigo, the group's debut album is called Beef or Chicken, and features production by such luminaries as DJ Premier, Just Blaze, Daft Punk, Cornelius, DJ Shadow, Dan the Automator, Ad Rock, and of course The Neptunes. One really has to admire Jay-Z's success. He has transformed himself from drug dealer to local rapper to worldwide rockstar to music/fashion overlord. And the guy gets love and respect like his name was Q. Look at Mr. Z's business holdings: Two sports franchises, a large and successful record label, a clothing line with several subdivisions, a nightclub, a vodka company, and Miss Knowles. By the time he's eighty he'll own at least nine countries and have added Supreme Court Justice and Pope to his resume. Still, we'll have to wait and see about the "Boyz", because many challenges lay ahead. When it comes to food themed Japanese bands it's gonna be hella hard topping Cibo Matto, and when it comes to beef/chicken songs it'll be damn hella hard topping The Moldy Peaches.

Reader "Greggles" writes in: "The site is DOPE. It's like CNN for people that are with it. I tune in 3, 4, sometimes 5 times a day. Can you post the song from Dolemite's opening credits. Darn, what a fine film!" It's common film studies knowledge that there are only seven masterpieces in cinema history: Citizen Kane, Days of Heaven, The Godfather, Barry Lyndon, Dolemite, Grand Illusion, and Back to the Future. Of these, the most hard-hitting and emotionally raw is Rudy Ray Moore's early seventies masterpiece, a movie not afraid to ask the most profound of all existential questions: "What the shit is this?". Do yourself a favor and check out the cover of Rudy's classic Christmas Album (nsfw?) and buy me the lunchbox here. Unfortunately, this is not the actual opening song to Dolemite, but it is a funky little number with quotes from the film sprinkled in, and hopefully will suffice.

Philabuster spruced up our site with an in-depth web statistics tracker. Now we can learn even more information about our readers, including your favorite colour (mauve), food (Jamaican patties), and rappers (BadmintonStamps). We also can see where all you 'Stampers are logging on from. This makes us not only your musical big brother, but also your ominous, thought-crime monitoring Big Brother. We're glad to report that the 'Stamps is pimpin all over the world, from France to Brazil to Japan and Taipei, but it seems we have a particularly strong stranglehold on Oceania, both in Australia and New Zealand. I'm not quite sure why the land down under loves us so, but I'm assuming it's because of all of our baseball posts. We'd love to hear from you guys (or any international readers), so write in and make a request or just say "good-ay". And no worries, out of respect I will not mention Foster's, didgeridoos, Men at Work, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, and definitely not Crocodile Dundee, mate. This is a great slice of DFA-esque funk from Australia's The Shocking Pinks that came out in '03, and it cuts like a knife.

Besides Indie Rock and Early Jazz, my favorite musical genre is Rap Songs Written Specifcally For Local Sports Teams. Classics include "Who Let The Mets Out", the "When I say Shaq, you say Shaq" song, and the Knicks' "Go New York, Go New York, Go!". Thankfully, we have a new entry to add to the mix. Houston's own Chamillionaire, aka the mixtape messiah, has remade his local banger "Turn It Up" for the World Series-contending Houston Astros. With such lines as "Couldn't win the series is what they thought so now we proving it/Put the veteran up to the plate and you'll get you a hit", even Craig Biggio's going to be sporting an icy grill. And while this song pumps during the playoff games at (the former) Enron Stadium, we're sure to hear a lot of old white men in their corporate box seats misusing the word "crunk" (Via Fader, props to Philbert)

UNICEF is bombing and killing the Smurfs in the name of world peace. Just check out the story. I say screw the blue bastards. I totally got Gargamel's back. I mean, they're encroaching on his land. Encroaching, for godsakes! This is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands, off their album Little Creatures.

Reader Dr. Alexandra P. writes in: "why does the itunes store not have any biggie? i wanted to get some songs off 'ready to die' and they don't even have the friggin album. why does itunes hate biggie? (i also wanted 'party and bullshit' and that song whose hook is 'going, going, back, back, to cali, cali'). am i just retarded, or is there some kind of giant 'conspiracy' going on here? does itunes hate black people? or just fat people? (well, actually, we can answer the latter in the negative since they have a lot of big pun songs. as if that makes anything better.)" All I'm gonna say is that obviously yes, this is pure racism. That, and you're totally wrong. Itunes has the complete and essential Biggie catalogue. Try searching for "Notorious B.I.G." and maybe put the herb down, Miss PhD. Last night I went to the Stadium and watched the Yanks beat the Anaheim Angels, forcing a deciding game tonight and a red-eye trip back, back to Cali, Cali.

Reader B.M. Lily writes in: "inspired by the ridiculously off-the-hook performance of beck & co. at the coney island festival, I urge you to post "Cyanide Breath Mint" from One Foot in the Grave. one of the most effective beck songs, in which the lyrics coalesce into thematic profundity despite being hilariously indecipherable taken line by line. and isn't that what weirdo postmodern art-folk-funk-rock is all about?" Well, that and bagging the hippie chicks. If you like Beck and don't have One Foot In The Grave you're really missing out. Here's Mister Lily's request, and a little Mellow Gold as well.

Just a reminder to go see Chronikill this Saturday night. Here's the info. It should get rolling around 11:30. Also, listen to some songs. It's cheap, fun, and for a good cause, plus it offers a chance to meet with your blog idol.

A good mix of entertaining and horrible (thanks Brendan):

A Personal Message From Chris Cagle

Here's hoping that Mr. Cagle impregnates the wife of the bastard who's responsible. You also should hear this song, it's ridiculousness at its best.

In this week's series, SkinnySlim runs through some gems he unearthed during a recent closet cleaning at his family home.

What would a SkinnySlim weekly series be without a little Sonic Youth or Pavement? In this case, we're going the Malkmus route courtesy of Stuff Up The Cracks, a bootleg collection of Pavement odds and sods. The first song originally appeared on the No Alternative charity compilation, and features the immortal first line: "Some bands I like to name check, and one of them is REM." You can buy the that album for one cent here. I'm not sure where the other song originates, but judging by its rough sound it must be from Pavement's often overlooked mid-18th century period.

In this week's series, SkinnySlim runs through some gems he unearthed during a recent closet cleaning at his family home.

Mr. "Rick" Pettibone writes in to ask, "I noticed that regular reader Aaron ["Pony"] Child is nicknamed Pony. What up with that?" Despite numerous lurid rumors circulating on the net, the nickname is actually an acronym. It stands for Playa Originale New York, and does not refer to Aaron but rather his missus, Julia (who received the rank back in '98). In Brooklyn street culture, when a Playa Originale settles down, he/she's significant other adopts the PONY nickname. It's a sign of conceit to the superior mate's playa-ness, an ownership mark similar to a branding on the buttocks (which Aaron also has). Growing up, I was often mistaken for the Playa Orginale "Telly" from the film Kids because of my skinny frame and propensity for hitting up the virgins. This lothario-esqe song appeared on the Kids soundtrack (although not in the film) and was a fluke MTV hit for Folk Implosion, Lou Barlow's side project from Sebadoh.

Chronikill, the baddest (white) boys of hip-hop, are at it again. When not lighting it up on BadmintonStamps' original songs, they're off saving the world. Since they represent both NYC and the N.O., it's only natural that they hold their very own Katrina Benefit. But here's the catch: it's free. The boys are simply asking for donations for their adopted city. So, if you want to fuck the poor and displaced, you can give nothing at all. It goes down this Saturday at Satellite Bar at 505 East 6th Street between Avenue A and B. You can't beat $2 Pabst and $5 Pabst and shot specials, so please come on down and support the team. These kids really have skills and put on a great show. Seriously highly recommended. In other hip-hop news, Damon Dash punched the editor of his magazine in the chest. I mean, there's some people I hate, but I just write diss songs about them.

In this week's series, SkinnySlim runs through some gems he unearthed during a recent closet cleaning at his family home.

Spurred by the success of Pulp Fiction and the desire to party, the 90's saw a major comeback for heroin. For those same exact reasons, surf music also had a comeback, albeit one less damaging and fun. This one is from surf legends and surf junkies The Lively Ones, because, as my daddy always said, "Bad surf is a whole lot better than bad horse."

In this week's series, SkinnySlim runs through some gems he unearthed during a recent closet cleaning at his family home.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and be thankful we live in the secure, healthy world of the two thousands. You kids might not remember, but back in the nineties we had to deal with the Y2K computer bug. This was when the robot people living inside our computers had decided to kill us all on New Year's Eve. But a miracle came in the form of music and saved us all. Was it a drunken rendition of Auld Lang Syne? No! It was indie-poppers Apples In Stereo. Here was a band that could address the issue head on, helping to raise awareness among humans. At the same time, they knew how to charm the pants off the robots. Their personal favorite was "Ruby". It's the most perfect silly rock song you'll ever hear, filled with enough "ooo-la-la's" and "ba-baba-ba's" to turn any robot's frown upside-down.