the Observation Deck (day two): "get specific"
Today's card is not so much news to me as it is a reminder. I think everyone who has ever taken a writing class has heard "show, don't tell." Of course, the reason it's said so often is that most people have a tendency to be general, vague, non-specific. We talk about something that was like something else. We talk about how we felt or how we think other people felt. We have to learn to zero in on the details when we write. Exactly what were they eating? Was it raining? Did the car have a cracked windshield? The accompanying text references Garcia Marquez who had a grandmother who used to tell a story of how every time the electrician came to their house it was filled with yellow butterflies. When Marquez later wanted to use that in his writing, he found that if he left out the detail of the butterflies being yellow, no one believed the story. I think it is possible to get so lost in specifics that you're fetishizing them, and then it's less about the story you're trying to tell and more about the writer showing off their taste in music, or love of cars, or ability to zing off trés obscure references (just imagine what a horrorshow an novel written by Dennis Miller would be). But mostly the push towards specificity and away from vague generalities is only a good thing.

I'll be on air tonight, 8-10pm. 88.7fm if you're local. Or streaming from the XDU website. As usual, I have no idea what I'm going to get around to playing. No doubt something in a fluffy mackerel pudding stylee...

You are Fluffy Mackerel Pudding!! You somehow
manage to combine seafood and dessert into your
wonderfully fluffy world. We should all be as
tolerant of New Taste Sensations. And of
big-yolked eggs.


What Weight Watchers recipe card from 1974 are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

truly bizarre quiz found at Pinky's

the Observation Deck (day one): "raise the stakes"
I bought this a while back in one of my oft-begun, never-completed efforts to reconnect with Writer Me. It's a deck of cards each with a phrase that's meant to act as a suggestion, jumping off point, creative spur, etc. I think "raise the stakes" is a pretty interesting card to pull at the start of this new effort. Which I'm blogging on the theory that committing to writing stuff down here (as opposed to using a notebook or even the iceBook) will help keep me doing it or at least provide another incentive not to slack off. On the negative side-effect side, it'll probably bore the crap outta the small but... well just small readership of this blog. Sorry in advance.
Anyway, the "raise the stakes" entry in the the Observation Deck accompanying book talks about pushing your story elements to the next level. Which I think is a valid point. I've both written and read a lot of beginning fiction and many writers do have a tendency to "write what happened" even if what happened isn't very interesting. If you're writing about highly dramatic, highly charged situations, it's easier as a writer to make them engaging. It's often easier as a reader to connect to those situations. The downside is a tendency towards melodrama. Handled badly, raised stakes start to seem like drama queen crisis hour. If everything is pitched at "11" all the time it's hard to take it seriously. But for me, I think it's helpful advice. When I was writing stories, they tended to be character-driven and to revolve around very small but personally significant moments in characters' lives. It's all too easy, I think, for stories like that to seem trivial, as if nothing is happening at all. A reminder to push the envelope, to push the story, to push the characters, to raise the pulse, is not unwelcome advice.

Went out to Kings for the latest installment o' fun from AV Geeks. Tonight's episode: Terror of the TV Spots. Short TV ads, mostly for movies but also some for TV shows and a few regular ol' commercials. Mostly from the early 70s. Falling into a few basic categories: classics and/or big-budget fare (Halloween, the Omen, Bad News Bears, Superman), MST3K fodder (Killer Fish, Slithis, Warlords of Atlantis) and shit I never heard of (Police Surgeon (a TV series), Terror, Incoming Freshmen, etc). Also several examples of great actors winding up in atrocious 70s movies, including Robert Mitchum in Matilda (about, I kid you not, a boxing kangaroo -- or more accurately, a boxing man-in-a-kangaroo-suit), James Coburn in Sky Fighters (hang gliding action heroes!), and Henry Fonda in the Great Smokey Roadblock (don't ask).
... good times

btw, previous 7 title references all from 3 Mustaphas 3

top 10 wrrld music CDs at XDU (week ending 9/26/04)

Rough Guide to Brazilian Hip-Hop :: various
Rough Guide to Mambo :: various
Rough Guide to Tango Nuevo :: various
Guitar Fo :: Sekou Bembeya Diabate
World Groove :: various
Songs From 68 Degrees North :: Triakel
Selwa :: Choying Drolma & Steve Tibbets
Testimony from Rwanda :: Samputu
Gogol Bordello vs. Tamir Muskat :: J.U.F
Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk and Pop :: various

Thanks to WTH and LBR for emailin' in during today's show. (everyone should have a favorite 3 Mustaphas 3 song) And even more rare than rare, XDU actually had the requested Dub Syndicate track. No Enrique Iglesias, alas. And if you think I wouldn't have played some, well... stick around a while and you'll be disabused of that notion.
2 exciting new arrivals in the mail: Fiebre by Radio Tarifa; Sunshine Barato by Mosquitos. I brought home the Radio Tarifa to review it. Resisted the temptation to take the Mosquitos disc, as I'm sure they'll be a clamor/scuffle for that tomorrow night. Did snag the new Fatboy Slim. Ol' Norman is probably as much of a brandname as it gets in techno/electronica/whatever-the-hell-we're-calling-it-this-year, and unlikely to get playlisted. But I wanna hear it, if only to rinse my ears from the unpleasant experience of having listened to the new Prodigy CD.

I'll be on air this afternoon, doing the radio Mondo Mundo from 1-3pm. 88.7fm if you're local. Or streaming from the XDU website. Not sure what I'll be spinning. Usually I like to use what's new (as in, so new it hasn't hit the playlist yet) as a jumping off point. But there's not much coming in lately. I do have the new Rokia Traore, the latest from Savath & Savalas, and a couple of Latin discs that just shipped in from Harmonia Mundi. Who knows, perhaps inspiration will strike and it'll end up two hours of polkas and yoik.

A couple mornings a week while headed to work I drive out of my way to go to Bean Traders. As much as I love XDU's second home, I gotta say that I much prefer the coffee at Bean Traders. Anyway, when I stopped in this morning they had a sign up near the register saying that someone had complained to MasterCard about a credit card minimum purchase policy that Bean Traders used to have. Note, "used to have." Altho I've never used a credit card there, I've overheard them telling other customers that they don't take credit cards for purchases under $5. Which only makes sense. They've got to pay a service fee to process those payments, after all and it's the same fee no matter how small the payment. But I guess that doesn't make sense if you're a dumbass arrogant "you-must-let-me-pay-for-my-$3-latte-with-plastic" self-absorbed muthafucka. God forbid you might have to walk next door to HT and get cash out of the bank machine. So some jamoke complained to MasterCard who leaned on Bean Traders and now they're not accepting credit or debit cards at all. Yes, that makes it so much better for everyone. I'm so glad you complained whoever you are.

What is to be done? Education is clearly wasted on such people. And like my friend Jeff says, you can't just open fire cos eventually you'll run out of ammo...

Spent the evening hours today shopping, kicking around, having a beer at Federal, meeting Sarah at XDU, getting dinner from Cosmic Cantina, watching Survivor. Included in the shopping stops was Offbeat Music, the new CD store in Brightleaf. I was enjoying browsing around but hadn't seen anything that really grabbed me by the throat, altho I had picked up Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi (1st CD from Thievery Corporation) for Sarah. Then I noticed a rack near the door. The outward side, facing the entrance, was sale CDs but the inner side was treasure trove of stuff from Stern's (who never answer my emails about servicing for XDU), Soul Jazz (who answered but told me they can't afford to do any radio servicing) and others. First I picked up Laughter Through Tears by Oi Va Voi. Sophie Solomon (of the kickass Solomon & Socalled CD) is in Oi Va Voi, who can be very inadequately described as the answer to the question "what if Massive Attack was a klezmer band?" They're on Outcaste, which is why I've never been able to get a copy of their CD for XDU. But then I put that down and picked up Chant to Jah by Sandoz which is one of Richard H. Kirk's many side projects. On Chant to Jah he's bringin' the dub. Had the Sandoz in my hands for a while but ended up putting it back and grabbing Rogue Satellite, the first new CD in three years from Omni Trio. Which I'm listening to as I write. Perhaps a bit more downtempo than early classics like "Renegade Snares" but still just awesome killah drum & bass. Oddly, Amazon UK lists Rogue Satellite as not being released until 9/27. Not that I'm complaining. It's definitely up in the running for my fave of the year. So, yeah, I'll definitely be going back to Offbeat.
...good times

Hey, I meant to post something about this on Sunday. According to the men's fall fashion magazine in the NY Times, skinny ties are back. Good news everybody. Especially if, like me, you haven't bought a tie in the last decade. Or at least not one that wasn't vintage. I mean, I hardly ever have an occasion to wear a tie, but at least now if I do wear one there's a small chance (okay, a very small chance) that I'll look hip (hip hip VIP hip I tell you) instead of like I'm doing an 80s look for a Halloween costume.
And, also hey, the fashion magazine in the NY Times is called "T" (i shit you not).
Crazy gourmet tunnel diggin fools!

I'm sitting here right now at my desk in Durham listening to David Byrne playing live in NYC right now. Webcast of the Creative Commons benefit. Alas, since I was out formulating plans for wrrld domination, I missed most of Gilberto Gil's opening set. I expect he'll probably come back and play some with Byrne later in the evening. But so far Byrne seems to be playing the same set as Sunday night. Which means it'll be much later in the evening.
Well, everything's later in New York...

edited later: so far Byrne's dropped 6 songs that were in the Durham set ("Man Who Loved Beer", "Nothing But Flowers", "Blind", "Desconocido Soy", "Heaven" and "Lazy"). On the other hand, the NYC crowd got to see Gilberto Gil so they got nothin' to complain about.
Right now Gil's coming back onstage to join Byrne. And they're doing "Don't Fence Me In" OK, show's over -- go home now...

Tonight was scheduled to be the wrrld music interest meeting but only current DJs showed up. So instead we'll just say it was the first Mondo Mundo staff meeting. Had fun hangin out at Ooh La Latte (or: XDU's home away from home) with Lisa B. Rockmeier and Sta Salsera. It was decided that Ooh La Latte has some very cool lamps, that some people out there in the world spend way too much time and energy trying to make reality "child-safe" (no, we need more cussing & broken glass!) and that there's a very interesting sounding concert coming up at NC State in a few weeks. Mariza is definitely worth driving to Raleigh to see. Fado is the new black. (you read it here first). Probably I'll try to have some kind of wrrld meeting at least once a month. Maybe eventually some new DJs might even turn up.

ref.check :: Connells, Frank!, Talking Heads, Python, (none), Sex Pistols, Sex Pistols, Evan Dorkin, the Glove, Frenté, Ming + FS

The autumnal equinox is actually day after tomorrow but Sunday really felt like fall. Cool and sunny. About 5-10 degrees below normal for Durham but about average for NYC around this time of year. That's what it reminded me of. Early Sept. in NYC there's often a last gasp bounce of stoopid heat 'n humidity. Then, just about this time, just about every year, there's a weekend when the weather turns. Bang like that. And right around the time fall arrives there's NY is Book Country, a big street fair/book festival. Days like yesterday always remind me of getting the sweaters outta storage and walking around Manhattan feelin' all artsy and literary and shit. The kind of day where I just wanna buy the NYTimes and lie around all day and read and do nothing else. No matter what city I'm in. I did get the buying the Times part done yesterday but only got around to reading it a bit yesterday afternoon and then some more tonight. But it was a really good day full of gardening, shopping, and rockin' out.
So what's not to love...

Just got back from the David Byrne show. Amazing! Some pics over at funnystrange. Big ups to Xta for scoring us all such great seats. I was 2nd row. Dead center. I can't remember ever having better location at a large-venue show. Closest was when I was 2nd row for the Cure at the Beacon in NYC, but I think there was an orchestra pit area between row 1 and the stage, and the stage is much higher there than at the Carolina. Byrne and band were in killer form. And his voice is still amazing. Plus he's touring with Tosca Strings (as seen in Waking Life). And doing many more Talking Heads songs than I'd expected. And "What a Day That Was" from Catherine Wheel and my 2 fave songs from Look Into the Eyeball and even his cover of "Don't Fence Me In." Way back in the Pleistocene (aka the 80s) there was a couple month period in which I saw Hüsker Dü, X, and the Damned; all amazing shows and all at a point where I knew almost every song they played. Tonight was a lot like that.

btw, the quote on the "talk like a pirate day" post is from the song in the Crimson Permanent Assurance, Terry Gilliam's weird little finance/pirate movie that runs at the beginning of Meaning of Life

Two links (both from boingboing) in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day
old school Disneyland Pirates o' the Carribeano fansite
arrr!

(mad bonus points to anyone who can ID the trés obscure reference in this entry's title)

Slacker DVD followup (link found at Wiley Wiggins' blog, which also contains his thoughts on the shortcomings of the new DVD release of Dazed and Confused) ::

Here's a description of what's on the two discs of the Criterion release of Slacker. Looks like I'm definitely gonna have to buy this.

Week over. No more screaming outbursts at work. All to the good. One day this week my horoscope said something about keeping cool under pressure or not over-reacting and the only thing I could think was that it was a damn good thing the boss was out of town that day. Which is really just me over-reacting again as things aren't as bad as all that.
Tried a new recipe from the Rick Bayless cookbook tonight, a chayote casserole. I was short a few ingredients (poblanos & corn) so I riffed on it a bit. I don't like to do that until I've cooked something a few times and gotten comfortable with how the recipe's supposed to work. But it turned out okay. Substituted mushrooms for the corn and some jarred salsa for Bayless' home roasted chile mixture. Hey, the recipe's got over a cup o' grated cheese in it so it'd be hard to screw it up that much.
Last night in order to facilitate the pending dead-tree removal in the backyard, I had to clear out a swath of overgrown shrubs and fallen branches. Which actually took less time than I'd expected. Given free rein, I can apparently destroy the hell outta some backyard foliage in nothing flat.
Meanwhile, we're running out of Ramones.
1-2-3-4...

Today's insight (#1): some people just should not be working as phone solicitors. We must have gotten on some kind of list or something cos me and Mike each had about 3 or 4 cold-calls from people trying to sell us shit at work today. The best was this guy who called up and asked for the person in charge of ordering computer supplies. He seemed completely confused by my answer that, since we were a small office, there really was no one directly responsible for that area. He was sort of mumbling, almost like he was talking to himself and then he went on to identify himself as Jerry Johnson. Except there was a hugely audible pause before he said the name. A pause which clearly meant "pause while I stop to think of fake name to use here." HY-larious!! It was all I could do to cut off his spiel (something about buying used printer cartridges) and hang up before busting out laughing. Sure it's a cheap laugh. But any sort of entertainment value is a welcome bonus to the working day. And the punchline is that the same guy called back an hour or so later and I got the phone again. I recognized his voice as soon as he started up the script about wanting to talk to the person in charge of ordering computer supplies. That call came at a point when I was much busier and less receptive to phone solicitors on crack. I believe I ended the transaction by informing the gentlemen caller that he'd rung us up already today and I hadn't wanted to talk to him them and I didn't now either.
today's insight (#2): Starlite haters, bite me...

So I think I mentioned that DJ Camry has a tapedeck and not a CD player. Until I get the CD player out of the Prelude, I've been listening to old tapes. I think the most recent ones are from 99, some go all the way back to the early 80s. Anyway, that's reminded me of a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't heard or thought about in a while. I went into XDU for my show tonight with a list of 5 or 6 things I wanted to play. Of course the station library ended up only having 1 from the list ("Wall of Death" by Richard & Linda Thompson). No Factual. No Section 25. No Digital Poodle. No Sandalo. But it was a pretty good show nonetheless. Got 1 phone call. In the middle of a very dance-y set -- Wagon Christ, Siouxsie (the 12-inch remix of "Dazzle"), DJ Rels, Arthur Russell, Lars Horntveth -- the phone rings and the guy on the other end wants to know who I'm playing. So I try to do a brief explanation of who Arthur Russell is (which didn't get too far, since he thought I was saying "Art of Russell") and then he says "so are you just playing anything?" I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. I said "well, it's my show." Then he requested the Beatles. Okay, not the most adventurous request but I like to meet the listening public halfway. But then he adds that he'd like something from Sgt Pepper. Eep! I can't think of a Beatles album I'd be less likely to play of my own volition. (i just went and checked a tracklisting online and i could, with a clear conscience, play either "Getting Better" or "Fixing a Hole" but that's pretty much it) Turned out not to matter cos Sgt Pepper may be the only Beatles album we don't have at XDU. Instead I played one of my favorite Beatles songs, "Taxman." And by the way, everyone should think happy thoughts about Ringo cos "Bob" knows we don't want Paul to be the last surviving Beatle.
I also got an online request from WTH but it appeared as the following unreadable gibberish: T2xkIEpvZSBDbGFyaywgV2FzaGJvYXJkIEp1bmdsZQOK
(i may be good but i'm not that good...)

Hey, I noticed something tonight. I was watching the first part of Slacker (I only watched the beginning cos I'd recorded it when it ran on Trio last month and the commercial interruptions were just too annoying) and the opening seemed familiar. So I popped in the DVD of Waking Life and 2nd scene there, of Wiley on the train looking out the window, echoes the opening shot in Slacker, of Linklater on the bus looking out the window. Just something I thought was kinda cool. It's been so long since I've seen Slacker that I didn't notice the similarity any of the times I've watched Waking Life. Which is one of my fave movies evah. Not surprisingly the official site seems to have gone offline (i couldn't even find a google cache)
I think I heard that Slacker is out on DVD now. I probably need to pick that up at some point.

Most of the time I like my job but lately those times seem further and further apart. I actually screamed "that's it, I quit!" yesterday. Okay, admittedly, it's a very casual office but even I feel that was over the line. Or at least an indication that I'm stressing out and taking this shit way too seriously.
Latest updates from the looking-at-things dept:
(1) have started reading Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food (thanks Sarah!). It's just about what you'd expect, if you've seen Good Eats (and if you haven't -- who are you and what are you doing here?!?). In other words, it's way more information than you might at first think you want to know about, say, searing meat (the chapter I read last night). But it gets me to think about cooking, about what I'm doing when I'm cooking, in a way I usually don't. A lot of what I do in the kitchen is if not unconcious at least highly routine. While that does make things go faster it can also lead to food all coming out the same, regardless of what I set out trying to do. Highly recommended, of course. Updates to follow (of course).
(2) Last night I also read Fabulous Las Vegas in the 50s which I got for Sarah when I was out there last month. Well, read is perhaps a bit overstated. It's really a coffee table book. But lots of great pics of Fremont St and the Strip the way it looked back in the 50s. And some stuff I didn't know. Por ejemplo, I did not know that the Stardust which currently has a very cool sign, used to have a sign that was equally cool, if not even cooler (note: i just spent about 40 min. searching around the interwebnet for pics of the original 50s Stardust sign with varying degrees of no luck at all... alas) Anywayze, lots of great graphics and design ideas which I'll no doubt be referencing if/when I get around to v2.0 of Mondo Mundo.
(3) Finally got around to watching City on Fire which I'd recorded from IFC a while back. Upsides: stars Chow Yun Fat (looking very young but the movie's from 87, a year after he starred in A Better Tomorrow altho still 2 years before Woo's the Killer); also stars Danny Lee, who also co-starred w/ Chow in the Killer; letterboxed; inspiration for Reservoir Dogs. Downsides: this was the US version so bad (and I mean really bad, US-version-of-Mad-Max bad) English language dubbing -- also probably bad US soundtrack and possibly bad US edits. Director Ringo Lam is no match for John Woo in terms of visual style, but he gets in some nicely shocking bursts of unexpected violence (ala Kitano), one great moment of gross-out comic relief (what IS that on my foot? augh!), and, hey, his story was obviously good enough to be ahem referenced by Tarantino. It is mostly the story that's the same, and not so much the look of the movie. But there is this one shot of the gang walking towards their first heist that's gonna seem familiar to anyone who's seen Dogs before seeing City on Fire. Worth seeing, but more highly recommended if you can get hold of the subtitled version.

A decent enough half-weekend, I suppose. Hadda work yesterday, things still being a rather chaotic mess and it would've taken me longer to explain what needed to be done than to just go in and do it. Or so I thought but it ended up taking me 4 hours to get out the door yesterday. Oh well. We went to the farmer's market in the morning and I got back in time to help with at least a little bit of work around the yard. Last night I went to the Ricardo Lemvo show out at NCMA (Sarah begged off, still wiped out from a full day o' gardening). Good show. The band was smokin' hot. Lotsa folks dancing. NCMA is not as good a venue as, say, the Cradle for solo show attending. The seats are just bleacher so not much fun to sit on and it's tough to find a good place to stand without gettin danced upon. I shoulda brought one of the lawn chairs and just camped out up on the grass. Anyway, even though I was peripatetically moving around the venue, it was still a good night out.
CDs currently moving across my desk:
End of the World Party (Just in Case) by Medeski Martin & Wood. More super-chewy goodness from MMW, this time produced by John King (of Dust Brothers). MMW exist in the border zones of funky trio jazz, ambient dance, instrumental rock (and prolly 2 or 3 other genres). Killah! Plus guest guitars by Marc Ribot on several tracks!!
Mañana by Savath and Savalas. New EP from Scott "Prefuse 73" Herren and Eva Puyuelo Muns. S+S is Herren's chilled-in-Barcelona side project. The full-length (Aprop'at) from back in January barely worked for me -- it seemed blurry and indistinct and threatening to wander off into aimless meandering half the time. So I'm pleased to be enjoying these new tracks much more. While you'd still never confuse these with Prefuse tracks, they seem focused and sharper, even though the prevailing mood is still fairly laidback and sunny.
Back to One by Ming + FS. This has taken a few listens to really click. It's much more of a hiphop set, whereas their last Subway Series was more jungle. The jungle influences are subtler but still there. So yeah maybe no one track I love as much as "Worldwide" or "Steady Shot" but it's definitely starting to hook me in, esp. "Fish Eyes" and "Slang Verbs."

Mad genius hyperlinked old Onion article (found at scrubbles)

Driving somewhere or other this week I saw a car with this wacky bumpersticker. At the time, I wasn't sure if it was (a)oppo snarking, or (b)elephants with unusually developed sense of humor. But since the site says that part of the proceeds from the RFV tshirts go to moveon.org I guess it'd be (a).

Finally, someone is setting the record straight

recent references: Jon Stewart, none, WTH, Chemical Bros, Evan Dorkin, Python, Lene Lovich

"I take serious offense to the RNC being in my fuckin' city; it's really pissing me off. It's the same scumbags who don't live anywhere near you, but are still going to organize a force to stop you from having an abortion -- because they care about you. The same people want to feel our pain over 9/11, but they don't realize that we're in a completely different place. The people who actually experienced it have no connection to these people coming in. They didn't experience it, they don't understand what we feel, and they don't understand us. It's just manipulation."

-- El-P

NYC rapper El-P runs the label Definitive Jux, home of Aesop Rock, RJD2 and many more. This quote opens Salon's review of Art Spiegelman's new book In the Shadow of No Towers. 9/11/01 was really the day I became a former New Yorker. Whatever my reactions, responses to, or feelings about the attack, I wasn't in the city. It's not the same. I actually learned this at the tarot conference Sarah and I went to up in NYC back in 2002. I can't remember all the specifics, but I was in a small group and we were doing a card-reading exercise -- something about memories and story-telling with tarot imagery. Anyway, I started talking about the WTC site, about having seen it for the first time while flying in the day before, and etc. I think I might have said something about the presence of absence. It was one of those moments where, as I'm talking, I realize (a bit too slowly) that it's time for me to shut up. No one said anything directly but it became clear that I'd upset at least one of the other people in the small group. Probably they didn't know that I'd grown up in the city, had spent years commuting thru or past the Trade Center 5 days a week, that I had friends who'd seen the towers come down, who'd been in WTC that morning, who'd been trapped in the curfew zone. And what would it have mattered if they had known all that? I hadn't been there. My experience was not theirs and clearly I had processed events and could talk about them in a way that they had not, were not ready for, or comfortable with.
(but anyway, remind me sometime to tell the story about an hilarious incident at XDU involving me and El-P's CD Fantastic Damage)

Randominatization continues...
Had dinner with friends at Cracker Barrel tonight. Going there (which is apparently okay now... they're now the chain that was formerly homophobic) or to other places in Chainland can feel like a trip to another land. It's probably good for me to remind myself how most (or at least much) of the country around me lives. If only -- and yes I am aware of how horribly elitist this is about to sound -- to remind myself of why I don't wanna do that. It's a tricky line. If I want to be free to live my life, my way (thanks, Ray!) then I should grant everyone else the same right, even when they make choices I simply don't understand. It's way too easy to fall into the mindset illustrated in the Talking Heads song "the Big Country" -- "I couldn't do the things the way those people do / I wouldn't live there if you paid me to." Way too easy for me at any rate. So when I find myself if Chainland, I try to enjoy the experience in a tourist-y kinda way. It's not my life but it's okay for the people that wanna live there.

So let's see... what fun things have happened in the last day or so? Work's making me feel like my head's about to a-splode. Woke up 2 hours after I went to bed last night with massive shaking chills. Finally got back to sleep only to wake up 3 hours later sweating like mad (and aren't you all glad to know that...) And now (the big) Dick Cheney is telling me that if I don't vote for him, I'm gonna die. I mean, look... I know fear is the greatest salesman and all. I heard that on a Robert Klein album 20-something years ago. And I know that TBDC and his fellow puppet-masters will stop at nothing in their craven and desparate attempts to cling to power. But, c'mon. It's only friggin' September. If they're already hitting us with "vote for us or you'll die" now, I'm scared to imagine how ugly things will get by Election Day. See, this is why I'm a cynic. Because no matter how low my expectations, somebody always finds another damn sub-basement of depravity to descend to. feh!
Or go check out the latest Get Your War On
But enough of that noise... the XDU fall schedule is up and running. Mondo Mundo (the radio show) remains at 1-3pm on Saturdays. I haven't worked out the rotation for fall yet so I don't know which weeks I'll be doing. My regular playlist shift will be alternate Thursdays 8-10pm, starting next week (9/16). Which means I'm following Divaville. woohoo!

I'd be willing to be that every single person reading this has already seen the following blogged elsewhere, but on the off chance that's not true, here's where to go to find out more on how to help in efforts to save beloved Durham institution/landmark/drive-in, the Starlite.

I'm feeling kind of unfocused and random lately. Not sure why. Well, right now it's probably lack of sleep since I was up at 6am today to do 2 hours at XDU and then had to go to work as well. At least I got time-and-a-half so if I have to labor on Labor Day, I get a little somethin' somethin' back. And it's not like anyone held a gun to my head and told me to take a job in the food biz (i've heard of these things you call holidays, i think...)
Not much else exciting happened over the weekend, other than buying the car, which is probably enough. Finished cleaning the gutters. Boy that's some good times. And fixed the window and door screens in the kitchen so now maybe only half of the mosquito population of the backyard will end up inside the house.
XDU (see above) was a fun way to start the day, as ever. Only totally ganked up one segue. For months now, the sound on the MCR speakers cuts out completely when you go to cue/preview another song, making it all too easy for me to lose track of where I am time-wise and let song A end to dead air while cueing up track B. There's some particularly good stuff on playlist right now, including: Matthew Dear, Rough Guide to Brazilian Hip-Hop, World Groove (a surprisingly stompin' new comp from Putomayo), and Mouse on Mars (which is just insanely good -- it kicks way harder than most of their earlier CDs and more in line with their live sound)
Saw Hero tonight. Outstanding! Having been watching mostly Japanese swordplay movies recently, it took me a while into the movie (unfortunately including part of a big set-piece fight between Donnie Yen and Jet Li) to adjust to the rhythms of Chinese movie fighting, which are very different from Japanese in general, and Zhang is taking a particularly "artsy" (for lack of a better word) approach to the Chinese style. Gorgeous movie. Zhang's use of color will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen his earlier movies such as Raise the Red Lantern or Ju Dou. Same for the tone of the ending -- again, very Zhang. Great work by Jet Li, Tony Leung, and (especially) Maggie Cheung. Zhang Ziyi has less of a part to work with than she had in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She mostly does a great job here but I thought in a couple of scenes she went way over the top, more so than was necessary. Although that could be the fault of the director, or even the script for not getting me, as a viewer, down enough with the character to stay with the intensity and to end up seeing it as almost campy melodrama.
My only complaint? Not enough Donnie Yen.
Lots of complaining floating around the interwebnet about the politics etc of Hero. To which I say, hey, it's a Zhang Yimou movie. I'm not an ardent supporter of the auteur theory but I think to beat up on Zhang because he didn't make an Ang Lee movie is kinda pointless. Zhang's movies are full of glorious visual film-making but they're not usually much fun. And this would hardly be the first of his movies to have message/themes that are basically in sync with the gov't/party line. Which makes him different from most successful commercial directors how exactly? Not many people have the ability to speak truth to power. More's the pity...

What happened was I got in my car to go home from work last Tuesday and the battery light came on as soon as I started the engine. It stayed on all the way home. (on the up side, I did get all the way home) And all the way to XDU that night. And all the way home from XDU. Maybe it's just me, but there's something disquieting about driving around with a glowing red warning light on your dashboard. So Wednesday AM I picked up a rental from Avis to get me around town for a couple of days. It was a Chevy Cavalier which I have to say (to the horror of some, no doubt) was a perfectly decent, if distinctly unmemorable drive. And today we drove out to Carmax. I had a list of several cars that seemed like possibilities but fell in love with the first one we test drove. Which is now sitting in the backyard here. It's a 95 Camry. Pics as soon as I take some and figure out how to post 'em. Oh yeah, and the unexpected bonus thing: the Cam has a tapedeck not a CD player (I'll have to move the one that's in the Prelude now) so I pulled out some tapes and got to hear stuff that I hadn't heard in ages.
like fun!

A few weeks back I discovered that BBC America was showing the Young Ones. Happy happy joy joy. I remember watching these back in the late 80s, I think on MTV. Sometime or other after that my bro taped most of them for me off of Pittsburgh public TV. But still it's been years since I've seen any. Completely stupid. Completely brilliant. There's this one rant by Alexei Sayle (from the episode "Boring") about being driven mad by UK council housing that can still reduce me to tears. The first time I saw it I actually fell off the couch I was laughing so hard. The episode I just finished watching ("Bambi") is one of their best, with Vyv kicking his decapitated head down a train track, killer laundry, Bacon Sandwich (the pig-ferret), guest appearances by Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Robbie Coltrane, Mel Smith & Griff Rhys-Jones, and Motorhead doing "Ace of Spades."

reference check: Python, Dino, 60 Channels, Python, Dead Milkmen, Cubic 22, ?, Beastie Boys, Dino, Dino, Dino, Young Ones

First off, let me just say "damn Steve Jobs and the horse he rode in on!" Or in other words, yes, I've seen the new G5 iMacs. Not that I don't love my iBook but...
After back-and-forthing over at another pink world about XTC, Barry Andrews (aka, that freaky bald guy), Shriekback and etc I've had "Lined Up" running thru my head all day. Note to self: go to iTunes store and see if they've got any early Shriekback.
He's back. He's mad, bad and dangerous to know. He's Gord! Yep, Canada's answer to the Comic Book Guy is still around, with a much snappier website these days. I don't know why I find the tales of Gord so compelling. There's not much novelty or surprise. Just endless variations on the classic Cobra Commander scream ("I'm surrounded by morons!") But it's like Quadritos or crack... once I start I just can't stop. And the hours fly by...