Some mornings start out great and it's a portent of the day ahead. Not today, alas. Turns out that all the wacky German country & western disco on XDU was good for was a fun drive to work. And it was pretty much all downhill from there. And not even in any interesting way but just kinda boring and annoying and meh. Topped off with the last half hour of futzing around with flickr trying to blog a damn picture. I know it's kinda stupid to complain about free software though. But without the picture or the complaining, I got nothing.

just wanted to share

this just in: art coffins!! (the BBC comes thru with the goods...)

Alas, no snow. But on the upside, the sleet/freezing rain/ice pellets/wintry mix has been moving in slowly enough that the roads were fine and we were able to go out for Sarah's birthday dinner at Chamas. Highly recommended for any/all carnivores. C'mon, meat on swords... what's not to love? And continuing the sword motif, we came home and watched another Zatoichi movie. I'm impressed that, even as I can see the series was becoming more formulaic, they were still able to find new and interesting ways to stage the fighting set pieces. In tonight's installment, the standouts include the fight at the river, and the final showdown, particularly the business with the candles, and the sections shot from above.

thought for the day:
"every record label I've ever been on has made it very clear to me that my music is a bit of an imposition on the listening public" - John Wesley Harding

Here's a question that occured to me this morning as I was driving thru Cary (where else?). Quien es mas patético, Humvee drivers or H2 drivers? Both choices have things to recommend them: the H2 is utterly poseur and fake, the automotive equivalent of stuffing a sock down yr crotch (all show; no go). But the Humvee, altho it does have some of the functionality the H2 lacks, also blatantly advertises that the owner is so desperately in need of vehicular-male-enhancement that they're willing to spend over twice the US median household income on a suburban assault vehicle.

so difficult to choose...

I'm thinking about de-accessioning more of my cassette tapes. See there's this ugly but perfectly servicable CD tower (of the fake-wood-bought-from-Target variety) right next to my desk but 5 of its 7 shelves are filled with about a decade-plus worth of tapes. Which I never listen to (even tho there's still a tape deck in DJCamry). Mostly cos I'm too lazy to go thru and separate the ones that contain rare gems from the 80s (those would be the ones from friends) from the ones that contain random crap that i recorded from vinyl. What I should do, I think, is find a couple of hours to sort thru them and find the ones that are worth digitizing. And then figure out how to do that. And then I can maybe free up a shelf or two for the stack of CDs sitting on the corner of my desk.

have i mentioned enough that Sharon Jones is playing the Cradle tomorrow night? it's sure to be a kick-ass show. (you should totally be there!)

(and now, won't you please plug away... ) hey, tomorrow is also Mozart's birthday which can be celebrated with a day full o' Mozart on WCPE.

Tonight's viewing: In Bad Taste, a documentary on John Waters. Fabulous! The mere existence of John Waters just makes my world a better place. One of the fun things about this docu was realizing that several of the interviews were done at the American Visionary Art Museum (in Bawlmer, hon). Including this log castle, which I blogged (on Sarah's site) back in 2003. I was also interested that, to a person, Waters and all the Dreamland regulars, referred to Divine as "he" but in part of the interview with Jane and Michael Stern, she refers to Divine as "she". And I wish they'd talked some more about Flamingos Forever. Waters mentions that he spent years trying to get the movie made, which is why it was 7 years between Polyester and Hairspray. There's a clip of Lloyd Kaufman saying that Troma was the only studio interested but it just never worked out. Followed by Waters telling a story about how Flamingos Forever almost ended up at Troma, until he got a look at their editing room, a line delivered with all the horror he can muster.
Alas, the frikkin recording cut off about 5 minutes before the end, right in the middle of Waters explaining the curtain of irony that you pass thru just south of Philly (I think he was about to locate it specifically at the Delaware Memorial Bridge) -- this was in context of talking about Pecker and the relationship between the Bawlmer-based protagonist and the NYC art scene.
Anyway, the movie (which I recorded off IFC and which doesn't seem to be available on DVD) brought back many happy John Waters memories. Including seeing Polyester at NYU back in the 80s, complete with Odorama cards and Waters speaking after the movie.
...oh, and leave us not forget -- funniest episode ever?

Something I've been wondering about: on one of the episodes of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares he says, referring to a situation that's totally fubar-ed, that things have gotten "pear-shaped." What in the what now? Googling, I've found several citations but they all fall frustratingly short of certainty. I mean, what it means was immediately clear from the context. But how did it come to mean what it means?

Went to a swell party last night at the Baffling English Cottage o' Death (and Birthdays). I could, at this point, pad this entry out with many links to all the fine folks who were in attendance. Or you could just click over to my sidebar and find out for yourself. (oh who am I kidding... if you're reading this you were probably there). So, yes, snacks were snacked and drinks were drunked. Insight of the evening #1: Vince Clarke spent much of the 80s composing ringtones (talk about a man ahead of his time). And, yes, weird and wonderful things were done with finger puppets. Insight of the evening #2: the Frisky might not sound like a good idea at 8pm, but it's actually damn tasty at 11pm.

Right now, I'm listening to the new CD by Sharon Jones. w00t! or, put another way: shit goddamn get off yer ass & jam...

Barring massive ice pellet attacks, I'll be on air tomorrow, 1-3pm for Mondo Mundo (radio version). As ever, 88.7fm if you're local. Or streaming from the website. Perhaps with some seasonally appropriate music from the cold, frosty climes.
For those keeping score at home, the XDU spring sked is out and my playlist show will remain every other Thursday, 8-10pm. Which would normally start next week but I'll be busy on Thurs. 1/27 gettin' my groove on at the Sharon Jones show.

Snowed again last night. At least it snowed here on the north side o' Durham. The rain/snow line seems to have been somewhere around the Freeway and by the time you get out towards the airport it looks like it never snowed at all. But at least this time there weren't any hellacious traffic jams. And for tomorrow, it's sleet. Or freezing rain. Or whatever. My fave forecast is the one that's predicting "ice pellets." And we're just about a year out from last year's big winter weather event. The weather around here may be unpredictable but at least it's consistently unpredictable.

Meanwhile, there's good news in the war against potted meat products. Google and others (inc. MT) have come up with a way to prevent comment-sp*m from boosting page rankings. Like Sarah, I'm not sure how well this will work as long as there are thousands of sites left abandoned and un-updated just filling up with comment-sp*m. I assume the theory is that if c-s'ing the highest traffic sites stops providing any page-rank benefit, it will reduce the effectiveness enough that potted-meat practicioners will move on to something else. Altho if they come up with something new it will no doubt be even more annoying.

Snowed today. Well, really, it was only a dusting, in terms of accumulation. Altho it was coming down at a pretty steady clip for a while. But it didn't last. Well, it lasted long enough to cause hundreds of accidents in Raleigh, apparently. Yet another reason not to live in Raleigh. I got to clear outta work around 3.30 and I40 was a parking lot from the airport all the way back to Jordan Lake. I felt bad for all of them as I drove past in the other direction. A couple of winters back I won the commuting-in-winter sweepstakes and received a lovely 2.5 hour drive home. Like fun! You might think this would be the point where I'd drop a rant about how the locals can't drive in the snow. But, last winter I had to make a "crisis" delivery out to one of the stores during a snow event and it was like Mister Rodny's Wild Ride thru Cary. And clearly no one had a fucking clue how to drive in a wintry mix -- the prevailing style options seemed to be: (1) drive off road into embakment; (2) drive yr SUV 15 mph over speed limit spraying slush across everyone's windshields (oh, and if you cut someone off, that's mad bonus pts); (3) drive well below speed limit, straddling both lanes (and don't clean off yr rear window -- there's nothing important going on behind you, after all). And we know they're all yankees. So it's not where you're from, I don't think. When you're out there on the roads (whatever the conditions) it really comes down to what Argus Filch says -- "you've got to have yer wits about you." If you're driving down dry pavement (even if there's snow on the median and shoulder) you can go the speed limit. Especially if you're driving a damn Benz. Hello! Big expensive car made by Germans should have decent-ish handling in snow. But I digress... If you're cornering thru slush, hell yes take yr foot off the accelerator. Pay attention. (and please don't skid into me)

Onion AV Club has an excellent interview with los Bros Hernandez. Like I said back in October, I'm a huge fan of Jaime's work. I admit tho, that I've never really gotten into Beto's stuff as much. I appreciate it. I can see why it's good and why other people love it. But it's just never clicked for me in the same way the Maggie/Hopey stories do. I remain enticed by the big Locas book, but since I've already read most of the comix, it's not something I feel a burning need to buy Right Now. Maybe one of these months. Maybe after I've gotten my way thru all the Sandman volumes.

In other news, Portishead is apparently working on a new album. I'm not sure whether I'm more excited or apprehensive. For me, they'll always be so very closely tied with the mid-90s, with where I was and who I was in those days. Dummy is one of those discs that practically time-travels me back to another place and time. I feel the same way about Massive Attack. As good as Mezzanine was (they kinda lost me with 100th Window), I feel like it's another band that also happens to be called Massive Attack cos for me it's all about Blue Lines. I was gonna say that I'll still go out and buy the new Portishead, but actually I'm alot pickier these days and I'll probably listen to it first and not get it if I think it sucks.

Here's my review of '64-'95 ::
New CD from Lemon Jelly!! (do I really need to say anything more?) (oh okay…) Album and song titles refer to years from which the core samples were drawn. Rather than just remaking Lost Horizons, they’ve expanded their range this time out, forgoing the wacky sample-delica (see “Nice Weather for Ducks”) for killah beats and leftfield brilliancy. 3 is probably most in the earlier LJ-stylee. 7 (the first single) does French house (and does it up right). 10 drops some tasty nu jazz (and, I think, a William Fucking Shatner sample, but I’m not quite sure). 2, 6 bring the rock gee-tars. 4, 5 build off hip hop beats in completely different directions.

Last night on Food Network was the series premiere of Iron Chef America. Opened up with the Wretched Flay vs. Rick Bayless. Those of y'all what are Iron Chef fans know that the outcomes are rarely surprising. And this wasn't much either. But, even with that, an overall fun and encouraging beginning. Highlights included Bayless calling out floor reporter Thirsty-Traveller-Guy (who is no Shinichiro Ohta) for his mangled mispronunciation of the names of several chiles. And the Wretched Flay informing his sous chef "dude, you killed this" (about a roont mango chutney). And the new Chairman, while no Takeshi Kaga (well, who is?) brings a certain flair and understated menace to the role. I particularly enjoy his martial arts scream of "allez cuisine." Next week it's Mario Batali v. Roberto Trevino (not a chef I'm familiar with -- apparently of the restaurant Dragonfly in San Juan). And on 1/30 it's the Wretched Flay v. Ming Tsai. I'll take the longshot! Tsai will lay the smackdown of TWF.

Well, let's try this again. I had written almost all of this entry when Safari decided to crash. Apparently, it's attention span is rivalling mine tonight. Although I'm attributing mine to the fact that I had to go into work today. Not a full day. But, still... 4.5 hours on a Saturday. That's enough, surely. So even though this is my 2nd attempt, it's still gonna be mostly random and scattered. (Which sets it apart from my usual stuff how exactly?)

This has been all over the internets and back but it's so stoopid funny that I wanted to share. And, anyway, it's true that in New York, no one can hear you scream. Well, they can, but they just don't care...

Altho the release date's not until the end o' the month, XDU just got the new Lemon Jelly CD, 64-95. I've only had a chance to check out a coupla tracks so far, but they were killah. More complete review to follow.

Saw House of Flying Daggers tonight. Awesome!! And, added bonus, got to see the trailer for Kung Fu Hustle, the new Stephen Chow movie. Which looks like it's not to be missed. Extra special bonus -- it's not being released by Miramax, so there's a chance it won't be chopped all to fuckin' hell and badly dubbed. My hope, also, is that if Chow's movies continue to do well in the US someone will finally get off their ass and put God of Cookery out on DVD

Radio radio tonight, 8-10pm. You know the drill... 88.7fm if you're local. Or streaming from the XDU website. This might or might not be my last Thursday show (spring sked begins on 1/23). I'm sure I'll end up somewhere, though. No idea what I'll be playing, except that the playlist offerings won't be all that fresh. There's a bit o' new stuff up and I'll do the best I can. I can't imagine that regular XDU listeners aren't as sick as I am of hearing "Eyeball Skeleton" or "Idiot" (by Blackouts -- and it's one of my all time fave obscure 80s songs)

I regret to report that the Durham Apple store doesn't have any of the cool new Mac shit yet. Not that I really expected them too... Overheard someone on the phone there saying that iPod Shuffle might be in next week. I don't really need any kind of iPod. (but I still want one) So it's perhaps a good thing that there are none in stock. I could buy online. But I have an Apple Store gift card which I plan to use for whatever I end up getting. And there is, as far as I can tell, no way to apply my gift card to purchases from Apple online. Stoopid Apple. I'm in the cult. But they do make it difficult sometimes...

Had more success with movie tix. Bought ours for House of Flying Daggers on Friday night. I'm sure it won't be sold out but I like being able to walk right up and go in without having to mess around at the box office.

Watched the remake of Willard tonight. Not much of a movie but worth it for another brilliantly eccentric turn by Crispin Glover. And major rat fu (of course). Lots of nice little bits of business around the edges too. The opening credits sequence was nicely ripped off from the Brothers Quay. At one point, Glover's in the store contemplating rat traps and poisons and one of the brands he's looking at is called "Tora Bora Rat Controlla." Later you see him feeding the rats from a can of "Numm Nuts."

Found a transcript of the Michelangelo sketch (from Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl altho I think there are other versions) that I referenced a few entries ago. And can I say how surprised I was that someone actually GOT that reference. wowsers...

I've come to the sad realization that my Docs are really quite sincerely dead. Well, they had a good long run. I bought those boots in Edinburgh. In 1987. They've been to more shows than I can remember. Slid around the snowy streets of NYC. Been across the country and back. Moved to Durham twice. I'm pretty sure they made it to Vegas at least once. And back across the ocean to Italy. As you can see, they're truly beat to shit. They've been well past the point where I can wear them for the better part of a year. But I just hate to get rid of them. It feels like I'm throwing out a chunk of my life. Oh well. Didn't Buddha say something about a foolish attachment to material possessions (or was that only in the Simpsons version)?

So this'd normally be where I'd post the wrrld top 10 at XDU but there wasn't one last week. Or rather, there was only a top 6. Which is boring enough plus they're all hold-overs from mid-December. Unfortunately, it might be February before there's enough stuff for a respectable top 10 again. There's not much left out there that needs to be reviewed. And there's not all that much new coming in yet. Doing some poking around online, I see there are interesting new CDs out there -- Transglobal Underground, Kamel Nitrate, a Tanzanian hiphop compilation, Mahala Raï Banda (who were remixed on Electric Gypsyland), and Rachid Taha. But none of it's been released domestically yet so that prolly makes it unlikely I'll be able to get promos for the station.

I'd seen links to this story, about a 2nd grader who was told by a museum guard that she couldn't sketch the paintings because they were copyrighted, and thought "damn! where do they dig up these mouth-breathing idiots?" Then I actually went and read the story. Of course it had to be right here in North Carolina. Whee... At least the NCMA seems to have had enough sense to admit it was a mistake when confronted and to say they won't do it again. Somehow I sense this is related to the "no photos" mindset that Lisa B. Rockmeier was blogging the other day.

No, actually it's a page (via scrubbles) devoted to the bossa, balanco, and samba sounds o' 60s Brasil. Check those swinging graphics. Dig those groovy sounds. Very cool to see Walter Wanderley on the music page. Very sad to see that os Sambeatles are only represented by their cover art. I wonder if any of their music is available (either online or to buy). And how long will it take me to track it down. (actually, one of the sellers linked off Sabadabada has several copies for sale -- updates to follow)

Funnest thing I've seen in days -- showbiz weasels! Hey, who doesn't love weasels? I know Durham isn't exactly a tourist hotspot, but I'm hoping we'll be able to get in on some travellin' weasel action.

Good article over on Slate about Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares which is running on BBC America. I love the show and was sad to learn that there are only 4 episodes. Gordon Ramsay is one of the top British chefs, and also legendarily foul-mouthed and abusive (he shows up in one of the episodes of A Cook's Tour when Tony Bourdain is in London). Aside from Ramsay's abusive histrionics (which are tons o' fun), what I like about the show is that Ramsay's such a globe-sized jerk because he cares. He cares about making the chefs and the restaurants better. And he cares about the food. Even from my fringe position in the food biz, I've learned that one of the hard truths is that, past a certain point, it doesn't matter how hard you tried, or how nice a person you are, if the food sucks -- well, you failed. I don't think one necessarily has to take a stance as tough, uncompromising, and obnoxious as Ramsay does. Altho I'm sure that makes for better TV

So many cool things coming up this month:
Screen Society at Duke has their Spring 05 schedule up, which includes some oldschool Shaolin, Jet Li's first movie, Hero, Zatoichi (the Kitano version), and Kore-Eda's After Life which is not even a little bit martial arts but is 100% brilliant.
At the end of next week: Nevermore at the Carolina. Which is showing House of Flying Daggers. w00t!!
And on 1/27 it's Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at the Cradle. Rock over Carrboro!!

Decided I needed a fun blog project for the year so I'm biting some style from Sarah and Leesh (hey, I like to think I know a good idea when I steal one...) Anyway, I just finished reading the Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes. This is the first volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Somehow I managed to miss these when they were coming out and have never got around to catching up (altho I did read Death: the High Cost of Living back in the day). There's 11 volumes in the series. If I'm feeling calendrical, I'll read one a month and that'll be a nice, not-too-ambitious blog project, writing up my reviews of the Sandman books. (note: I also started on the Lemony Snicket books, but there's not that much to say about them beyond "hey, that was really fun; you should read it"). Preludes & Nocturnes covers the first 8 issues of the Sandman comic, written by Gaiman and drawn by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcolm Jones III. I pretty much agree with Gaiman's self-assessment in the afterword -- a bit clumsy and rough but there's something there. I found some of the art pretty distractingly mediocre (esp. in contrast to the Dave McKean covers) but some was quite good. Esp. #8 ("the Sound of Her Wings"), which intros Death and in which you really can see Gaiman finding his voice. Also, I'm amazed that the series survived at DC past #6 ("24 Hours") which is really seriously bent and quite bleak. That must have been an amazing downer to read in an open-ended, no resolution until at least next month, comic book. As clunky as some of this is (as Gaiman experiments with a variety of comix styles and works to shoe-horn his story into the DC universe) the story still grabbed me up. I read the whole thing in one big chunk last night.

Today's helpful-yet-not-helpful tip comes from the liner notes to Ethiopiques 17 (one of my Xmas presents from Sarah -- of course it's totally rockin). This volume in the series focuses on Tlahoun Gèssèssè and the booklet says: "although he is still completely unknown to Western audiences, for Ethiopians Tlahoun Gèssèssè (pronounced Guèssèssè) is the voice." Gee, thanks... that's much clearer now...

Driving home from work tonight, I was listening to NPR and it got to the "radio essay" point in the show. I was about to change stations but stopped when I heard the essayist was Hollis Gillespie. I don't expect much from ATC essays but I read and enjoyed Gillespie's book, Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch (thanks Pru!) It's a collection of pieces about life on the artsier, fringier, sketchier sides of Atlanta. So anyway, the radio piece wasn't all that. Or rather it was about what I expected, a toned-down, NPR-ized version of Gillespie's style. But at the end the announcer said that Gillespie was the author of Tales from a Bad Neighborhood. Well, no, that's the subtitle. Sorta like introducing Tolkein as the author of There and Back Again. The title of the book is Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch. I wonder which word is NPR-unsafe, bitch or honky?

Here we go again...

Anyway, we're still not all the way back up to speed so we just stayed in last night. Today was also fairly non-event-oriented. But I will say that a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain is a pretty decent way to start your year (thanks Jeff!) Spent a bit too much time this afternoon driving from store to store to store getting almost but not quite exactly what I needed. Watched a bit of the Mummer's Parade from Philly -- always a wacky sight to behold. Sarah got me turned onto the Mummers. They've always struck me as a sorta northeast-blue-collar version of Mardi Gras Indians. In fact, I remember seeing something on TV years and years ago where they were interviewing Mardi Gras Indians and the stuff they said about working on the costumes and choreography and music all year long was just the same the things I've heard from the guys doing Mummers.
Here's a cool thing (spotted on boing boing): QTVR panoramas from New Year's Eve. I particularly like the ones from Zermatt and NYC.

happy frikkin new year everybody!