I'm on the air tonight, 8-10pm EST. 88.7 if yr local, wxdu.org if yr not. I know... that's in about 90 min. But rest assured that I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to play. So perhaps some brilliantly spontaneous radio mix will occur. Or it might be 2 hours of randomness and mistakes...

Saw Kitano's Zatoichi last night. Like I said over at Funnystrange, arterial spray and a big dance number... what more do ya want from a movie?!?
Had dinner at Acme, where we hadn't been in a bazillion months. Outstanding. Even better than I remembered. I had crab cakes (which were MD-worthy) over a surprisingly good succotash. But Sarah's grilled chicken was the highlight, particularly the almond/smoked red pepper sauce. Very yum.
XDU's getting ready for another semestre o' college radio goodness. There seem to be several actual Duke students on the board this year, which can only be a good thing. I'm thinking of running a world music interest meeting (type thing) sometime in Sept. I mean, it's not like we need more DJs to staff "Mondo Mundo" (XDU's world music show, Saturdays 1-3pm... but you knew that). But more people involved means more CD reviewers and more people who might know about some label we're missing out on, or some genre we could get more exposure to. Plus any kinda outreach to the general DJ population should increase the number of people thinking about world music and maybe playing it during their shows. My goal (or perhaps it's more of an idle fantasy than an actual goal) is to have the entire XDU top 10 be world CDs some week.
And then there's this (which I spotted on boing boing last week). I haven't made it past the intro pages yet, which had me laughing so much I nearly spat coffee all over my monitor. (with that lovely image, i bid you good night)

Here's the top 10 in world music on XDU for the week ending 8/29. Number in parentheses is the overall playlist rank.

1. (6) VA...Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk & Pop Music Vol. 1
2. (8) J.U.F....Gogol Bordello vs. Tamir Muskat
3. (11) VA...Bush Taxi Mali: Field Recordings From Mali
4. (24) Migala...La Increible Aventura
5. (34) Bebo & Cigala...Lagrimas Negras.
6. (44) Vakoka...Introducing Vakoka
7. (47) Antibalas...Who Is This America?
8. (49) Omara Portuondo...Flor de Amor
9. (52) Gangbe Brass Band...Togbe
10. (55) Los Amigos Invisibles...The Venezuelan Zinga Son Vol. 1

Two in the top ten and four in the station's core CMJ report (top 30). Not our best week ever but pretty good. And I'm pleased that there's a diversity of reviewers represented (six, if I'm doing the math correctly).

Watched an installment in the Zatoichi series tonight (1968's Zatoichi and the Fugitives). Even though this is the only one I've seen, I can tell that Sarah's point about the formulaic nature of these movies is dead on. And that's not totally a bad thing. I enjoyed the hell out of Fugitives. While I was watching, though, it seemed oddly familiar or reminiscent. I thought it was the loose similarities to Kurosawa/Mifune movies like Yojimbo. But this site reminded me that the 1998 classique du fromage Blind Fury was loose remake of the Zatoichi story. While they're pretty dismissive of Blind Fury (hey, it's a Zatoichi fan site, whadda ya expect?), I'd say it's worth a rental. Captures the spirit of the Japanese movies -- unlike A LOT of Hollywood remakes (insert a list too long to even begin here) the folks who made Blind Fury seem to have understood what was so good about the original Zatoichi movies. Plus it features a fine turn by Rutger Hauer, bringing the same kind of charm he would later show off in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.
I was going to say that I was struck by is how much more violent Zatoichi and the Fugitives was than most anything released by Hollywood in 1968 but then I did an IMDB check and saw that Bonnie and Clyde was released in 1967 so never mind on that...

Sarah's already covered the Karsh Kale portion of last night's show so I'll just move on to the rest of the evening. Like I said in my comment to her post, Ming + FS rocked hard, especially considering the sparseness of the crowd. Early in the M+FS set I was chatting with fellow XDU DJ Bruce H. and we agreed that we'd expected the house to be if not packed then at least more sizeable than it was. Oh well. Y'all missed out.
Along with their "Immigrant's Song"/"Intergalactic" mash-up, M+FS also did a bunch of live remixing as well as some straight-up DJing and some of their own material. Not as much from Subway Series as I was hoping. MC Napoleon Solo (bonus pts for gratuitious 60s TV reference) was there to drop rhymes and encourage voter registration. Ming popped some tasty hard rock gee-tar riffs into the mix. FS played some bass, did some beatboxing, and plenty o' supa-fast scratching. //aside: I had no idea there was now digital scratchin'// MCNS came out in a GW Bush mask for one number. Then, later in the set, they all masked up (Ming as GHW Bush, Solo as GWB, and FS as Dick Cheney) and got down to "Jungle Boogie." Oh yeah, and P-Funk was also deployed at some point.
...good times...

My car is reaching the end of its days. Well, more accurately, I'm driving it into the ground. And it's not that far of a trip. The car is an 89 Honda Prelude and its got about 275K miles on it. Which just in terms of engine wear could be good for another year at least. But like I said I'm driving it into the ground. Once I decided that I was going to replace it the impetus to fix the serious but slow moving decay sorta faded away. So if you hear about any used cars, esp. mid 90s Hondas or Toyotas for under 5k, keep me in mind. And many thanks to those already helping out. Because the Honda's still basically functional, I'm being a picky bastard and looking for just the right car, although with a set of criteria largely unarticulated even to myself. Surely frustrating to others (thanks for yr patience!) since it's occasionally frustrating to me.
and now, off to rock!

Well, I did not get to dress up as a potato today, so clearly my Wednesday was not as interesting as some. Actually, it wasn't all that interesting at all. But here's the recipe I made for dinner tonight. It wuz good....
Chorizo Corn Pudding
4 ears corn (husked & cleaned)
1 cup milk
1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 onion, chopped
mushrooms, sliced (to taste; I used about 1 cup)
1/2 lb chorizo
1 egg, beaten
1 cup grated cheese (or more; there's no such thing as too much cheese)
salt (to taste)
freshly ground pepper (to taste -- use lots!)

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a small or medium casserole and set aside.
Fry chorizo in medium-sized frying pan until done. Remove, let cool. Drain off most of the grease. Saute onion about 5 min. then add mushrooms and saute until most of the liquid has cooked off. Set aside to cool. When chorizo is cool enough to handle, slice and add to onion/mushroom mix.
Cut kernels off corn cobs. Place half the corn in food processor with milk, flour, and baking powder. Blend until smooth.
Grate cheese. I used a combo of provolone, manchego, and smoked gouda. I think any blend of sharp and/or smoky cheeses would work well.
In bowl, combine remaining corn with puree, beaten egg, cheese, salt, pepper, and chorizo mix.
Pour into greased casserole and bake 1 hour or until knife tests clean.
Note: this is a variation on a recipe that was in today's N&O, which said to bake for 45 min. But mine was still a bit wet at 45 min. so I'm thinking you'll wanna maybe check at 45 but probably expect it to take an hour or so.

current music: 60 Channels
Just finished reading City Come A Walkin' by John Shirley. I think I'd only read a few of his stories before. He was one of those authors perpetually "on my list" that I never quite got around to reading. But his recent stint on the guest-blog at boing boing got me motivated to pick up City when we were at the library earlier this month. It's Shirley first novel, and it's a bit rough around the edges. But the sheer manic drive carried me past the random bits of "weak" writing. (and yes, i'm aware of just how arrogant that sounds, but what else to we do as readers but make value judgements?). Originally published in 1980, City was in many ways a template for the cyberpunk that was to start appearing in the next few years (Neuromancer hit the shelves in 1984). Gibson wrote the intro to the Four Wall Eight Windows trade paperback and he's pretty direct about the importance/influence of Shirley: "I was somewhat chagrined, rereading it recently, to see just how much of my own early work takes off from this one novel." I don't think that makes City a better novel than Neuromancer but it's still a hell of a ride. Well and truly recommended

Came home from work and proceeded to crash for 2 hours. Guess the drywall experience™ caught up with me. So now I'll probably be up until 2 or whenever. Perhaps they'll be doing equestrian or judo or something suitably out-of-the-ordinary on the Olympics tonight.
Hopefully, we'll be able to get the painting pretty well taken care of tomorrow and Wednesday. Cos on Thursday it's time to get on down and party at the Cradle... Ming + FS and Karsh Kale. Kale put on a great show when we saw him at Artscape in 2002 and Ming + FS's last CD Subway Series is an absolute monster. Should be killah!
And here's a bit o' fun that anyone who was growing up or slacking off in the late 80s should enjoy. Can't remember how I found these. No doubt linked off someone's blog that I should be crediting. But anyway, comedy gold...

First off, lemme just say "grrr" as I had this post all written and forgot to save it, went off on a google hunt to correctly ID the quote i was planning to use as a title and forgot where i was in the process and checked outta Safari and lost the whole thing.
Just finished watching a Food Network tribute to Julia Child, which was overall very good. Lots of clips from her shows, reminiscences from Jacques Pepin, Sara Moulton (who worked for Child on the Julia Child & More Company series) and others. I'd have preferred less Flay and more Alton, but that's a minor quibble. My only major beef is I thought they made too much of the contrast between the horrors of pre-Julia American cooking (TV dinners, canned everything, etc) and the techniques and recipes Child advocated on her shows and in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This plays to the horror of all food processing that no doubt grips the majority of the Food Network's target audience but is not an accurate reflection of how things were in the 60s, when Julia Child was exhaustively testing her recipes to make them work with American ingredients like canned mushrooms or frozen spinach. Or when Jacques Pepin turned down the chance to be chef of the JFK White House to be head of the kitchens at Howard Johnsons.
Some of my fave Julia Child TV memories:
an appearance on the Carson Tonight Show (this would've been late 70s or early 80s) when she fired up an acetylene torch to finish off some dish. I knew nothing of creme brulee at that point but remember being impressed that bigtime professional cooking had the possibility of including such implements of mayhem as blowtorches;
a broadcast on C-SPAN of some food-related event from DC (saw this in the late 90s on one of the first trips Sarah and I took to Asheville) and someone asking Child what she thought of the common sight in France of dogs in restaurants. Her response was that she thought it was lovely to see a well-behaved dog in a restaurant, just as it was to see a well-behaved child;
a live-performance event shown on PBS (late 90s again) with Julia Child and Graham Kerr cooking together. This was during Kerr's "low fat zealot" phase and there came a point in a recipe they were doing where some duck breast had to be ground up, and Child stressed that it was important to chill the duck before you began so that it would absorb more fat (she was adding heavy cream, I believe). To his credit, Kerr only missed a beat or two, but with a look of such abject horror on his face that you'd think Julia had suggested driving around town putting babies on spikes.

A few recaps from the week:
yes, words did fail me.
yes, Ginger Altoids kick major ass.
yes, Olympic fencing is cool.

And now, a message from the shameless commerce division...
Melodies & Structures 2 (with my very good friend Mr. Tony Bennett !!swanhunter at track 3)

Finally, according to my Simpsons calendar, today is the (centennial?) (centenary?) 100th anniversary of the birth of Count Basie. So go out & swing, baby...

recent references: Cole Porter, Hunter S. Thompson, none, Ian Dury, Frank!, Evan Dorkin, Eddie Izzard

Hey, it's beat on the Indy week and I wanna play too (after all, I have a history of this sort of thing). It wasn't the coverage of Durham's downtown that got to me, though. Just this short piece in the front porch section that hits the trifecta of annoying. (1) Is shocked (shocked!) that there are brawls in baseball these days; (2) turns that into musings on the history of man's inhumanity to man; (3) wraps the whole thing up by condescingly equating cable TV with the matrix. I know... I know... just typical Indy-approved, soy latte, "kill your television" bumpersticker style dithering and hardly worth ranting about. But, hey, this is my blog. Like Frank! said, I'm just trying to have a little fun here...

Being back at work today was slightly more fun than being hit over the head with a sack of doorknobs. But maybe only slightly...
Some other leftovers from Vegas: coming back from the trade show on Monday I got to take a spin on the new monorail. It runs from the Hilton down to MGM Grand, altho I only took it as far as Harrah's. Which still left a bit of a shlep back up to Frontierland. And it wouldn't be much use to anyone staying at Stardust or Circus, Circus. But I've read that plans are to extend it down to the Sahara and eventually Fremont Street. And also have it go all the way to the airport. It's a bit cooler (and a bit less free) than the old MGM-to-Ballys monorail and reminded me of a cross between the Disneyworld monorail and the DC Metro.
Did I mention that I never fully conquered jetlag, and so was waking up around 6am each day? Which isn't so bad, really. Gave me a chance to do some reading and also to go out, walk around and take pictures, including the new Steve Wynn hotel going up right across the street from Frontier (on the site of the Desert Inn) the current display at the Bellagio conservatory (still the 4th of July theme from last month, looking a bit worn down, I'm afraid), and the sad wreckage that used to be the TI pirate show. (once I figure out how to post pics, I'll come back in and add them). Being out in the early AM also gave me a chance to observe various techniques in Vegas sidewalk cleaning. Caesar's has a sidewalk zamboni that they drive around to clean up all the previous night's detritus, Mirage was using a power-washer, and Frontier had a guy with a leaf blower.
Sunday night had dinner at Fiamma. Like I said, I'm probably not being fair to Bouchon cos I was too fried to enjoy anything at that point. But Fiamma was everything I want out of a spendy-as-hell meal in LV. Start (kickass mojito with minty foam on top) to finish (zabaglione made w/ a vin santo custard) it was just spectacular.
One other cool thing I just remembered. While walking around MGM before dinner, walked past Seablue and their sound system was playing the Señor Coconut version of "Showroom Dummies"

Back from Vegas. IBIE was plenty overwhelming. There's just so much stuff to see. And Vegas was a blast, as always. Let's do the numbers...
Blisters formed: 1
Random vendors who talked to me cos my badge said "Whole Foods Market": 4
Chocolate fountains: 5
Robotic arms: at least 7 but I lost count (could be as many as 10)
Bakers I'd previously seen on Food Network: 1
Software companies that seemed interested in what I was saying: 3.5
Vendors giving out free doughnuts: 3
Software companies that didn't seem to give a damn what I was saying: 1.5
Cop cars rolling up to Frontier: 2
Slot machines played: many
Table games played: none
Money lost: yes
Fun had: yes
Celebrities at LV airport: 2
(...and now let us all honor our inner fanboy) This afternoon while walking to my gate at McCarran I walked past someone who looked familiar and did a double-take. It must have been a really obvious double-take because another guy walking towards me said "yeah, he looks familiar." At which point it clicked and I realized that I'd just walked past Teller, which isn't all that surpising in the LV airport. I figured he'd just flown in from somewhere. Continued on to my gate. While I'm waiting at the end of the group C line, I see a tall guy with long hair, dressed all in black walk by and up to the gate a few over. It's Penn Jillette. Of course it is. He walks over and sits down and starts reading the paper. I'm trying not to lose my shit and figure out whether I should go over and say something to him. No one else around seems to know or care that they are in the presence of greatness. And around this point, Teller shows up with a Subway sandwich bag and sits down next to Penn. My flight is only in pre-boarding. There's only about 4 people behind me anyway so I don't have much place in line to lose anyway. So I walked over and just said thanks to them for all the great stuff they've done over the years. Pretty lame. (by the time I was on the plane I was wishing I'd asked Penn how airport security was -- go find their website and read his brilliant rant on same) But, if in my heart I'd like to be the guy that said something memorably witty and cool when he came up to interrupt their conversation, I'm at least glad that I'm not the guy who was an annoying jerk, stuck a digital camera in their faces, and/or gibbered and drooled. Better to be unmemorably generic than memorably stupid.

I'm in Vegas, baby. Sitting on the floor in the Convention Center, outside the IBIE showroom. Bloggin.
Interesting show so far. Well, probably not to anyone not in the bakery biz. Lots of robotic arms though which is always cool.
Staying at the decidedly downmarket Frontier. Excuse me, New Frontier. Just on the edge between downmarket and scary. So far, erring on the side of downmarket. Did get into a penny slot for 38 bucks last night which brought me back to even for the day.
Had dinner at Bouchon, which is in the insanely swank Venezia Tower at the Venetian. Venezia clearly fills the need for those for whom the Venetian just Wasn't Expensive Enough. Bouchon is a straight-up French bistro. It's a branch of Bouchon in CA, which is owned by Thomas Keller (the original is just down the road from French Laundry). Gorgeous restaurant (decor by ooh-la-la designer guy Adam Tihany) which overlooks a pool/garden/atrium at the center of Venezia Tower. The bread was excellent. The wines by the glass, while not exactly generously portioned, were very good. Appetizers, including duck confit, beignets de cod brandade (which try as I might I cannot explain as anything other than a fish-y doughnut), and spinach salad, were well received by the group (Jeff, his mom Judy and her husband Jurgen). Unfortunately, by the time the entrees arrived I had hit the wall. It was probably between 9 and 9.30 Vegas time but most of my body clock was still on East Coast time, and therefore post-midnight. So although on some levels I could tell that the poulet roti was about as good a roast chicken as I've ever had, I wasn't enjoying it much.
Left the 3 Js to gamble at Venetian and walked back. Passed the saucy pirate show at TI, which was in progress and seemed just as ghastly as I'd expected from the press I'd read and rehearsal snippets Sarah and I had caught last fall. The walk cleared my head a bit and I fell asleep almost as soon as I hit the bed.
Slept for about 8 hours, which was good. Woke up feeling great. Unfortunately before 7am. Read for a while but then got up and went out for a walk. Took lots of pics (the new Steve Wynn casino is under construction right across the street) then went down to Le Notre/Paris and had a coffee and pastry
And now I'm at IBIE. Probably I won't post again until I'm back in NC

Goin to Vegas tomorrow. For work. No, really. It's the International Baking Industry Expo. And looks like we're flying out just ahead of a big nasty storm. Which is better, I guess, than trying to fly out after said storm. To say nothing of during. Spent some time tonight trying to track down wifi hotspots in Vegas. Not too many free ones on the Strip. But it looks like the Convention Center might have wireless access so maybe I'll be able to post from there on Sunday or Monday. Also looks like there's a chance of rain out there this weekend. Not like here, but still it's holding down the forecast highs to double digits (mid- to high-90s which isn't so bad considering it was 116 the other day)

Doing some quick math, it turns out I've seen 40% of these movies. That's less than I'd expected. On the other hand, about half of those unseen I have no interest in whatsoever and most of the rest are already in my Netflix queue. It's odd, though, to think of some of these as "overlooked" as they're among my all-time faves (esp. 15, 33, 40, 46, 49, 58, 62, 88, 89, 90)

And in today's Icelandic popstar update, I read that Bjork's going to be performing during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Athens tomorrow. Mostly I'm not much of a sports fan, but I like the Olympics cos it's a chance to see things that hardly ever show up on TV (fencing, field hockey, yachting, etc). Sadly, 2 of the affiliated networks carrying coverage from Athens (Telemundo and Bravo) are not in the Durham cable package. I just know that's where all the "variety sports" are going to end up. And probably most of the futbol too.

Over at Salon today (the usually forgettable) Thomas Bartlett has a pointer to a free legal Bjork download. Very cool. She's working with UK Asian Underground producer Jolly Mukherjee.

So, I never did say anything about Speedy and Alloy Orchestra from Saturday. Mucho fun. I should have brought a chair, as I didn't realize the movie screen was against the wall of the museum and not over in the amphitheater. But that's only a minor quibble. The movie was great. Very fast-paced, very funny, with a several amazing set pieces, including a tour of Coney Island (filmed on location I assume), a huge fight scene that highlights the degree to which Jackie Chan is working in the same tradition as Harold Lloyd (plus trained dog fu, flatiron fu, and wooden leg fu!!), and a wild chase thru Manhattan with a horse-drawn trolley. It doesn't look like Speedy is available on DVD yet. Hopefully it will be released. And hopefully with the music by Alloy, which was a perfect match. This was the 2nd time I'd seen a silent movie with a live band providing the score and I must say, even having read that Alloy Orchestra was the gold-standard in the field, and even knowing that Roger Miller (Mission of Burma) was the keyboard player, I still had some trepidations. I can't remember the band that accompanied Page of Madness when we saw it at Duke a few years ago, but their score was clanging, loud, dissonant, and mostly unpleasant. Probably that marks me a some sort of philistine. But the Alloy performance on Saturday was outstanding. Everything seemed to fit. It's hard now to imagine the movie with any other music.

(recent title references: Wonder Stuff, Manu Chao, John Wesley Harding, none, Orbital, Cabaret Voltaire, Calvin & Hobbes)

(current music: MIDIval Punditz)
I was gonna say that I'm a total sucker for VH1 Classics but that's not 100% correct. Most of their programming is highly ignorable. And even the shows I like tend to show too many of the same few videos over and over and over. And, given that the whole mission of the channel is nostalgia for the rapidly aging MTV generation, I'm surprised no one's thought of re-running entire programs, instead of simply videos. I, for one, would love to see some episodes of Yo! MTV Raps with Ed Lover and Dr. Dre. Or Pinfield-era 120 Minutes. Hell, VH1C has started running this show called the Alternative which might as well be 120 Minutes 20 years ago. Why not finish the job? But, again, I digress...
What keeps me coming back to VH1C is that, every once in a while, they'll drop in a video for a song I haven't heard, or thought about, since halfway to forever. Tonight's was "I Don't Know Why I Love You" by House of Love. Not great art maybe, but a nice slice of late 80s Creation Records pure pop. The video (which I'd never seen before) was quite wack. But it was fun to hear the song again. I shall resist mightily the temptation to play it on the air tomorrow morning.
...now if they'd just play the vid for "Sensoria"

Tonight, after work and XDU board meeting, I was feeling too tired to cook and Sarah was equally uninspired so I just grabbed some take-out on my way back from the station. I did stop at the Durham WFM to scan their prepared foods section, but nothing looked particularly appealing. (sidenote: I often feel this way when scanning the prep.foods dept at the Durham store so I'll be interested to see if the new team leader there makes any significant changes to their offerings) Ended up getting Bo's but some combination of dinner and last night's lack o' sleep went off on my system. Lay down around 8. Woke up just before midnight, feeling like I'd eaten a greasy starch bomb. So while I'm drinking a few more glasses of water, I might as well write this, no?
If you haven't already, pop on over to Phil's where he mightily smacks down the Village. I haven't seen it, nor do I plan to. But I agree that Ebert's review was a rare highlight in his usual vapid criticism. Was he always like this? Perhaps the loss of Gene Siskel as critical foil caused him to lose whatever edge he once had. My feeling is that Ebert seems to forget that, unlike him, we don't have to watch every single movie that comes out. The typical current Ebert review consists in finding the one enjoyable feature in a crappy movie, without ever acknowledging that, since it's a crappy movie, you (the reader) probably shouldn't waste your time seeing the movie in the first place. But I digress... After reading Ebert's review, I went online and tracked down the spoiler info. All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't have to pay money to find out that particular "shocking secret." Like Xta, I slogged thru Signs and that was pretty much enough to finish me off with Shyamalan forever. I swear, Signs is a movie that you can see getting dumber frame by frame.

WXDU top 10 world music CDs (week ending 8/8/04)
Mapou :: Rene Lacaille
Fire Blender :: Little Tempo
Manifest Tone, Vol. 1 :: Speakerphonic
the Venezualan Zinga Son, Vol. 1 :: los Amigos Invisibles
Who is this America? :: Antibalas
Flor de Amor :: Omara Portuondo
Si, Soy Llanero :: Grupo Cimarron
Live in Krakow :: David Krakauer
In the Mirror of the Sky :: Kayhan Kalhor and Ali Akbar Moradi
Brizzi do Brasil :: various artists

(current music :: DJ Food)
Yesterday on my way home from XDU, I stopped at Kroger to pick up a somewhat random selection of consumer products. On my way back to the car, I heard someone calling to me. Not me, personally, but me in a "hey, you over there" kinda way. So I look up, and there's this guy rolling towards me in a wheelchair. He comes up and asks if he can ask me a question without bugging the hell out of me (those may have been his exact words, in fact). I tell him to go ahead and he says that he's a disabled veteran and that he's "on a goddamn drunk." He might have said he was a goddamn drunk, but I think he said he was on a drunk. And then something about how he wasn't going to lie to me and he started to go on but at that point I handed him a dollar. He seemed surprised. And then we went our separate ways.
You could argue (go ahead, I won't stop you) that what he needed was not cash so he could go buy another 40, or other weapon-of-choice. What he needed was an effective social safety net. But, I can't provide that. Especially not standing in a Kroger parking lot. And, more to the point, that wasn't what he asked for. What he wanted was money. Frankly, probably the last thing he wanted was for me (implicitly or explicitly) to be telling him what he should want out of our transaction (food, shelter, the phone number for AA, whatever). So I gave him what he asked for. Perhaps because I didn't care enough to want to spend the time to get him what he needed. But if I was that guy, missing part of my leg and most of my teeth, and cadging folks for money in a fuckin Kroger parking lot, dammit I'd want to get really really drunk in a really big hurry.
There ya go then... this is what you want, this is what you get...

Today's edition of Mondo Mundo went pretty well. Got a request I couldn't fill (for Abana ba Nasery, who I'd never heard of before today but will clearly need to investigate). Mostly I stuck to new releases (of which there are a surprisingly large amount, given that it's summer, traditionally the slowest time of the year) but I found an album on the world music shelves that I swear I've never seen in there before, as many times as I've looked thru or re-alphabetized that stuff. Kanchan and Babla, who I'd also never heard of. Fun Bollywood stuff. Checked online just now and found this, sadly an obit for Kanchan. Got a call from Sta Salsera, who thanked me for plugging her show (Wednesdays 6-8, but you already knew that, didn't you). Got home and discovered that the result of the whole time-consuming nightmare set-up this morning was zilch zip nada. Sarah thought that maybe the iceBook had gone to sleep, killing the record. But I tried it again, while I was sitting there watching it and that doesn't seem to be it. IRM is launching the scheduled record (so the synch up between IRM and iCal seems to be okay) but it doesn't seem to be finding/connecting to the XDU stream. Feh!

So I guess it's my week for low-level banging of the head against the wall of software. At work, we're being compelled to switch to Outlook (had been using Netscape mail). My first reaction was: how does one manage to get hired to a national-level IS job and still not realize that Outlook sucks? Which sounds knee-jerk & harsh (cos it is) considering I'd never used Outlook before this week. But I've used it for a few days. And it does pretty much suck straight across the board. But the decision's been made. It relates to the company-wide switchover to exchange servers. Not that you care... Add to that a steady stream of lowkey mayhem caused by the switching out of my computer for a newer one (which looks exactly the same). Without too many boring details, computers at the stores need to be able to access a shared file on my computer to place their orders. I thought this was a simple enough matter of them remapping a network drive. Apparently not. (if I were Mikey I could explain this better but I'm clearly not so...)
And as if that wasn't enough fun I spent 90+ min. this morning trying to install software that'll allow me to record the XDU stream. Grabbed Streamripper only to discover it doesn't work with Real or Ogg streams. Grabbed WireTap but decided that was too minimalist. Finally settled on iRecordMusic, which is the latest iteration of RAW, and supposedly has worked out the bugs that were conflicting with iCal in earlier versions. Got that all loaded in only to discover that I had no player installed. Several failed downloads later I got the Java Ogg Vorbis player, but couldn't get it to work. Then several failed attempts later I got Real player up and running. Will see what happens in about an hour. It all looks like it should work.

It's not humid and it's not hot. And yet somehow it's still August in North Carolina. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Work's finished kickin' my ass for the week. And it's all go for the weekend. Back to Ooh La Latte for Chicks Rock tonight. Tomorrow I'm on the air from 1-3pm EDT bringin' the world-music luv. Tomorrow night it's Harold Lloyd's movie Speedy, with live music by Alloy Orchestra. And I think on Sunday we're going to see Before Sunset. Probably some time will be designated for breathing as well.

c'mon, we knew this already

this week's references: none, Simpsons, John Wesley Harding, Clerks, Front 242, John Wesley Harding

for those keeping score at home, Lisa B. ROCKmeier wins the "i'm blogging this" trophy for tonight.

Had a swanky little soiree over at Ooh La Latte tonight. Was there cake? Yes there was indeed! Made by Sarah. Were there gifts? Yes indeed (inc. an iTunes gift card, a Homeland Security playset (warrant not included), yummy exotic truffles, yummy gin, and cool shirts). But most important there was Lisa, Lisa, Christa, Alicia, Ray, Sylvia, Christine, Charles, and Jeff. And Sarah who not only made the amazing cake but organized the whole swingin' affair. Thanks. Y'all rock.

good show tonight, i think. Real Soon Now i'm planning to have my playlists somewhere on the site. why? dunno, just something i always planned on doing once i got this blog started. anyway, didn't get any calls this week. 2 weeks ago there were 3 or 4, which is alot for me. no calls is a much more typical state of affairs. got an email request from wth, up in providence, for "jesus on the payroll" which as it turns out was a much better segue out of the orb than the urban blight track i'd had cued up. funny how that works out sometimes... only thing i regret is not getting to the Kayhan Kalhor CD. as most of you reading this know, i'm the world music director at XDU. and i feel this sense of obligation especially towards the "less accessible" world CDs on the playlist. y'know, i'm not so concerned about not playing los Mocosos or Bebel Gilberto. but, improvisational Kurdish music, yeah, i really feel like i *should* play that. maybe cos i'm worried no one else will.
good news everybody (/farnsworth)... the David Krakauer CD that went missing last week turned up tonight inside a Papa Wemba case (well, where else?) on the shelf next to the concert box.

I've been thinkin' lately that many of the problems swirling around me (this mostly relates to work) could have been prevented with a bit of RTFM. It can be helpful, por ejemplo, to be able to distinguish between "colleague" and "boss." On the other hand, sometimes they rewrite the manual and don't bother to tell anyone. In my case, I found out that a few jobs that I used to do are being centralized down to Ratlanta. I liked these projects. But there are also more things in my vaguely defined job than I can get done in a week anyway. And I can see the value of having us integrated into the region, as opposed to the independent, out-on-our-own way we used to run. We're good at what we do. That's always given us mucho slack. But sometimes, it seems, being good at what you do isn't quite enough. Still, it's way more fun to be pirates...
(argh!)

So, first blog entry from me. And it's my birthday (for another hour and 20 min). Good day. Well, I had to work (cos they keep paying me, so I keep showing up) but at least the chaos-level there is much diminished from last week. Tonight Sarah took me out for a fantabulous dinner at Lantern -- if you go, I highly recommend the six hour coconut braised pork. Ate too much but it was oh so very good. Odd feature of the evening was discovering that our table was being waited on by Christina (of XDU Top Ten at 10 fame). Which reminds me, I'll be on the air tomorrow, 8-10pm EDT. If you're local tune in (88.7fm) or log in from anywhere (www.wxdu.org)