June 24, 2008
Gizmodo got to visit the secret Lego vault, containing every set they ever created. It's almost Proustian. (PS Sorry for the lack of updates recently. We're moving, having a baby, and starting a new job, maybe in that order. Hopefully I'll be back on track soon.)
May 14, 2008
Not to make this blog all-Barack all the time, but apparently Obama said in a recent interview that his sensibility was partially shaped by the books of Philip Roth. Like I needed another reason to like the guy. (Umm, I'm assuming you've all read American Pastoral? The Human Stain? The Plot Against America? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)
May 14, 2008
the anti-talking heads:
May 5, 2008
I like this man:
April 28, 2008
Here's a new interview with Robert Forster about finishing one of departed band-mate Grant McLennan's last songs "Demon Days." It's a good tune, making an impact with short direct lines and a simple, subtle melody, like so much of McLennan's best work. The Evangelist, the new Forster solo album the song is featured on (released in the states tomorrow), also hits the mark as a sad and funny tribute. It's not where I'd recommend one start when beginning with The Go-Betweens (try Before Hollywood or Tallulah), but like the best of either McLennan or Forster's work, it's an album that sinks in and rewards repeat listens. I need to write more about these guys sometime soon. (I've added "Demon Days" to the top of my muxtape.)
April 16, 2008
Here's a time lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. As Kottke points out, it's not easy to watch.
April 15, 2008
Pregnant? Brooklyn? New Hampshire?! Brooklyn at heart explains all.
April 12, 2008
This is a link to a video I don't have the heart to embed on my own blog. Intolerance is an ugly thing, and the four "talking heads" featured in this video live in the gutter, live beneath the gutter. Makes me want to puke.
April 12, 2008
Liz Phair wrote about Dean (formerly of Luna) Wareham's memoir "Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance" in last week's nytimes. Sasha Frere-Jones also chimed in. I'll have to put this on my list. And maybe add a Luna song to my muxtape (an online service that just keeps getting better).
(on a different, but not completely unrelated, note: Bob Dylan won a Pulitzer?!)
April 12, 2008
Defective Yeti has a great post on the perverse appeal of Lost (no spoilers):
An episode ends with someone on LOST finding a leather-bound tome entitled "Secrets of the Island." Yes! Finally we'll learn what's going on! But in the next installment, that person opens the book to discover that the whole thing is written in ancient indecipherable pictograms. Dammit! But in the last five minutes, someone notices that the final third of the book is blank, and the ink of the last entry is fresh! "It's a work-in-progress," says Major Character. "Someone is still writing it!!" And in the last five minutes of the next episode it is revealed via flashback that Other Major Character studied Ancient Indecipherable Pictology in college--holy shit!!!! And this goes on for three more episodes, at which point Major Character confronts Other Major Character with the book, and he (O.M.C.) confesses that he is using the book to record the movements of the other castaways, but only because a giant, ambulatory, sentient coconut threatened to kill him if he didn't. And you, the viewer, are, like, "well, I'm glad the mystery of the book is cleared up BUT WHAT'S THIS ABOUT A GIANT AMBULATORY SENTIENT COCONUT??!!!" Lots and lots of clues (and episodes about clues), but you're not one jot closer to understanding the central mystery. And meanwhile the LOST prop department is hastily burying the book in a Superfund site, hoping that no one remembers the title.
April 1, 2008
Not one, not two, but three music videos to dry out a wet tuesday.
The Leningrad Cowboys & Red Army Choir doing their best "Sweet Home Alabama":
(via boing boing)
Tom Waits and his "Chocolate Jesus" (a little late for Easter, I know):
(via Conscientious)
And, finally, one of my favorite bands, Robert Forster and Grant (r.i.p.) McLennan (a.k.a. the Go-Betweens), singing "Clouds," one of my favorite songs:
March 27, 2008
New edit of The Backs here. Some pictures added, some removed, some color-corrected, etc.
March 26, 2008
Muxtape seems like a great idea and just what I've been looking for: a very simple web-based mix-tape making machine. I'm tempted to complain that is doesn't have certain features (like, say, a search feature), but that would be an argument against its simplicity, which I love. I'm a little doubtful they'll survive the lawyers of the music biz, but here's hoping. My first muxtape is here. There will be more.
(For more simple, useful web apps, also see Instapaper and Ta Da Lists.)
March 6, 2008
I love the internet: an extraordinarily well-researched article on the different versions and uses of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." (via kottke)
[Imogen Heap's] song "Hide and Seek" soundtracked the final moments of the OC's second season, the slot occupied a year before by a full rendition of [Jeff] Buckey's "Hallelujah." This pairing was so successful that, for the finale of season three, the final moments were accompanied, once again, by Heap, this time covering --and, to be clear, I am not shitting you--"Hallelujah." This is the point where the OC consumes itself whole, and it is a sickeningly gorgeous thing to watch.
February 27, 2008
Garfield Without Garfield. (No, I'm not the first person to link to this, but it still made made me laugh.)
February 21, 2008
Robert Christgau has a blog! (thanks jake)
February 21, 2008
Said the Gramophone is holding a make-your-own video contest. I haven't watched them all, but I enjoyed this one by Mike Bennett for Spoon's "Back To The Life." The song is from Kill The Moonlight, my favorite Spoon album and something I kept in my car's CD player (remember CD players?) for quite a while during my commute to work (to a workplace that may soon be closing). The video itself seems sort of silly at first, but by the end makes me kind of uncomfortable. Probably a good thing.
Spoon "Back to the Life" from The Hippo 8 Recording Co. on Vimeo.