This month’s Shit You Need is not a movie, or a book, or a song-- well, technically, it’s not a song. At least not an entire one. This month’s Shit You Need is a song’s verse. One verse. That’s one paragraph.
From which song? \"If It Wasn’t For You\", the second track on Handsome Boy Modeling School’s new album, White People. The lyrically responsible culprits? De La Soul. Specifically: Dave.
The song is pretty much a thank you/tribute to all the things they couldn’t have done it without. And at the 1:46 mark, Dave says the following:

It\'s hard for me to write this review without a biased slant. I interviewed the author of Burn, Christmas! Burn!! (Soft Skull Press), Brian Gage, back in 2003. Since then, we\'ve become somewhat friendly. No, not in a \"we bathe together\" kind of way. But rather in a \"we dig what the other person does\" kind of way.

Coo-loo-co-co-coo-loo-co-co! How’s it going, eh? I know many of us have already moved to the Great White North after the \"election\" that took place recently, but for those of you who stayed behind, Canada’s finest export-- the McKenzie Brothers-- are still available at your local video store.

I used to watch Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids when I was young. It was a fun and colorful cartoon with a bunch of goofy characters who sang songs and told jokes. What kid wouldn\'t want to watch it?
Now, of course, I\'m older, and realize that the animation wasn\'t very good. Or the writing, to be honest. Or the production. That\'s not to knock it, though, because even though it\'s not technically perfect, it is great in its flaws.
With age, I have also realized that this was a very smart cartoon. Extremely smart, in fact. Way ahead of its time.

I’m kind of at a standstill here. All out of wit. All out of metaphors. I don’t really want to write this review. Every time the record begins, I just want to lay down somewhere and watch the perfect blue day or black night sky like a hypnotist’s stopwatch, leave my body, and go wandering in It’s Only The Future.

First, I have to apologize to Bryan Master. I feel bad because I\'m reviewing his CD the morning after I attended a GWAR concert, so my ears aren\'t exactly up to par today. Everything is very quiet. So I\'m reviewing Master\'s new seven-song EP, Incommunicado, through ear canals full of GWAR sludge.

I think it must be difficult for well-known authors to continue writing about the same characters book after book, once they feel that they’ve said all that they have to say about them. Nonetheless, the fans still want to know what happens next in the \"lives\" of these characters.

Detroit will no longer be known as Rock City. Why? Because with the likes of The White Stripes and Blanche coming out of that neck of the woods, Detroit is now known for producing bands whose sound is more of a marriage between country and rock. The Stripes are fucking great at it. And Blanche\'s newest release, If We Can\'t Trust The Doctors..., places them on the same tier as ol\' Jack and Meg.

Whoa! This CD is fucked-up! And I love it! I\'ve only got one problem here, folks, and that is that I don\'t even know how to begin to describe this five-song EP to you. Let me try, though:
Imagine if someone with Tourette\'s Syndrome put on one of those one-man band contraptions, and then dropped six hits of acid. Yeah, it\'s kind of like that.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this. Wayne said it was a \"...weird kind of folky,\" which apparently sums me up well enough to warrant it being in my office mailbox with a note that says, \"Review this.\" And with a press release describing the band as \"emo-folk rockers\" (a pox if ever there was one), I felt my desire to hear this wane. But as apprehensive as I was going in, song after song made me a slight believer.